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radcowboylad · 1 year

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I think that actors being super involved in the fandoms for franchises they’re in is truly the ULTIMATE marketing tactic that I don’t think the actual creators really take notice of.

As someone who reeallly only gets deep into franchises based on the fandom, these actors are like the fucking backbone of them. Not even exaggerating on that. They unintentionally bring more content for fans to thrive on and keep them involved with the community a lot longer than usual which is absolutely fantastic for people like me who are tired of fandoms dying so quickly because of how short our attention spans have become (thank you tikTok and thank you Streaming services for releasing content all at once instead of one episode per week, totally didn’t completely backfire on your longevity)

For example, let me talk about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) Ghost, Soap, König and Horangi:

Initially, Ghost had started appearing on tik tok when the game released sometime around October or November, and because this character was sexy as fuck, he brought in a HUGE AMOUNT of fans from an entirely different demographic (more women, more lgbt people, more mask kink people too lmao) which is so vastly different from its stereotypical community (being males who are often insufferable, sexist, homophobic and transphobic)

But the interesting thing is, once Neil Ellice (Soap’s actor) started showing up and involving himself within TikTok after That One Interview, his character’s popularity BOOMED, while Ghost kind of just remained the same level, despite both Neil and Samuel being present in that interview. I think this is because Ghost’s actor (Samuel Roukin) never really took too much interest in social media’s or the newer cod fandom, and his reactions and responses to questions in the interview never seemed (to me at least) that he cared too much or that he didn’t want to be there. (I don’t think it was intentional though, but it’s hard to know for sure)

After a week or so of the game release, König started to win the hearts of the new cod fans as soon as players started to unlock him in DMZ/multiplayer; people were obsessing over him, despite not being a story mode character (all we had was his character backstory written in his bio)…. And then his Voice actor (Jim Boeven) suddenly made an instagram story reply to someone and either unintentionally or intentionally made a remark in regards to König that came off as homophobic. This actually kind of killed the König fans temporarily; it felt awkward and uncomfortable to express liking König for a while because a lot of the homophobic fans or even just other regular fans would reply to fan art and comments and edits saying “but he’s straight/but his VA is homophobic and calls himself an alpha male unironically” etc. it was also interesting to see how the lgbt fans would actually start rejecting Jim and fully separating him from König in attempt to “reclaim” him and say “Jim isn’t technically his creator/writer, therefore the things he says in regards to König is irrelevant and not canon”, but when Neil would say something about Soap, those same fans would treat it as canon despite it being just as true as the heterosexual König remark Jim made.

I wrote an extra paragraph for Horangi but I accidentally deleted it all ugh I didn’t know adding a link would replace the entire paragraph with the preview and disappear let me do a tldr I don’t know much about Horangi because his character popularity increase is extremely recent OR because I kinda fell out of the fandom briefly until a week ago but essentially I think that Nick Martineau (horangi VA) interacting with the fandom on Neil levels is definitely reviving some cod fans and making player’s interest in COD last just a bit longer.

Anyway the tweet I was gonna link was him talking about joining AO3, the fanfic writers were FREAKING OUT and scared him out of it

I think this really shows how much effect these voice actors & actors have over these characters outside of professional work. Fandoms are a slippery slope so of course, if an actor puts a negative input on ‘their’ character, it’s going to have a negative response or effect from some of the fandom, and vice versa. It needs to be treated with respect and open mindedness.

I guess also the beauty of not having actors involved is that you can avoid this issue all together. You can’t really stop actors from “tainting” characters outside of official media because their words outside of it doesn’t make it official or canon at all

But anyways, Old fashion interviews can be nice too. but it’s different. Interviews can easily seem too professional and insincere, that the actor doesn’t actually have to have any passion for the franchise/character, can only be there for the money or because they have to be there, etc even if that’s not always the case… so it’s truly on another level when an actor has a lot of passion and love for their community and interacts with fans outside of interviews. The casual-ness, it feels more personal, and there’s a lack of need for censoring for company image or whatever and those factors name it so easy to become more attached to the character AND the actor themself.

It feels so special when the art, memes, projects, edits, and even fanfics you make can have an unprompted response from an actor involved. i think it’s normal when you see their reactions and it put you on a small high + silly bragging rights even if they comment on a lot of things.

Even if the actor is not like their character (let’s be real, actors are very rarely anything like the characters they play) it still sort of feels like that character is still alive in them, even if the character has died and the show has ended… it fills me with so much happiness especially when these actors react like their characters or answer questions on behalf of the character, or give their opinions on silly discourse, headcanon’s, theories and ships. The fandoms FEAST on this shit for a good while and it becomes the talk of the week!

Oh boy and let me tell you more instances where actors have completely amplified my emotional attachment to franchises!!! (Warning: irrelevant rambles you don’t need to read)

I was hyperfixating HARD on rdr2 a few years ago and obviously it’s just so easy to fall in love with the world and the characters in that amazing game on its own, but when I discovered Roger Clark (Arthur Morgan), Robert Wiethoff (John Marston) and Peter Blomquist’s (Micah Bell) instagram accounts, I had so much fun seeing their involvement in the fandom (despite it being little in comparison to mw2), seeing how Peter would make his instagram captions allude to not being human and kind of just acting as a Micah parody, seeing Peter make (hilarious) dad jokes (that I steal to this day) and build a fucking chicken coop on live it just makes it SOO SPECIAL!

One moment that was super special to me was when Roger Clark voiced a western audiobook and gave out some copies for free on twitter and I was a winner. I was able to have a chat with him, and after a while I made some doodles of the book characters and he saw them and ended up following me back 🥹🥹🥹 (STILL SAD THOUGH BECAUSE I NO LONGER HAVE ACCESS TO THE ACCOUNT)

Oh oh oh and TF2, those voice actors are quite literally carrying TF2 more than the actual fucking devs GENUINELY! It’s actually kind of upsetting how these actors really openly want to do more official things with the game but valve is sadly dead as fuck these days… Medic’s voice actor especially (who I think streams occasionally? I’ve never made it to one before) makes the fandom much more livelier and so fun, doing lines in medic’s voice and the fans creating funny sfm’s and comics from them!

Actually, one of the hugest impacts an actor has made on me definitely has to be Bill Moseley. I’m sure most of you probably have no fucking clue who this dude is so let me tell you all about him

I first discovered Bill Moseley in the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (still my #1 favourite film) and he plays Chop Top, the brother of Leatherface. Sadly that character is only in that film though but oh my god, Bill Moseley did what no other actor could ever do…

I fell into a rabbit hole and discovered that Bill Moseley formed a band called Cornbugs where he essentially roleplays/sings AS CHOP TOP and it also had fucking BUCKETHEAD in it (I believe he’s one of the musicians who has made the most albums (435) in the world) and he is an absolute guitar legend and genuinely amazing music despite his silly iconic look (you guessed it he wears a bucket on his head)

Although it sounds…. Extremely unique, to say the least, I am lucky enough to be one of those people who actually enjoys all kinds of music (yes, even country, before you roll your eyes. Don’t underestimate my tastes) because most of the songs are extremely silly and fun but would probably sound… too interesting to the average person. Most of the appeal to me initially was how in some of the songs it was pretty explicitly about chop top, bubba and Drayton and my hyperfixation thrived for so so so so much longer than it should have purely because of that music career.

It also doesn’t end there though, he has an even Niche’r band that is active currently (unlike Cornbugs bc it got dispanded after buckethead got bored and left I think) called Spider Mountain that has music that genuinely surprised me. These songs are actually so good and underrated even though they are also silly (and definitely would be more appealing to Normal listeners in comparison to Cornbugs) but even though it’s about completely disconnected to chop top, I’ve noticed that the lyrics in a few of these songs seem to be about some family members and himself, like Maple Men which is an extremely silly but catchy song, and they just fill me with so much glee. Like this dude is just a dad having fun in the studio!! Making songs about silly and random topics like Goose Steppin’ Down Broadway, incredible shrinking man, and stupid life of a mom eater LIKE THEYRE JUST SO SILLY AND FUN AND CHARMINGGG these types of passionate actors increase my lifespan and when they go far and wide for the franchises they’re in its so magical.

I have to stop here now but im just about done talking about this anyway, my phone is starting to lag from my hyperfixation rambles. I’ve been writing this for 3 hours.

I’d also love to hear about whatever experiences that any of you have with actors amplifying your experiences, or just general thoughts about this recent trend that’s happening with them!

#mw2 #cod mw2 #rambles #rdr2 #Texas chainsaw massacre 2 #Bill Moseley #neil ellice #samuel roukin #jim boeven #ghost mw2 #soap mw2 #König mw2 #horangi mw2 #chop top sawyer #roger clark #rob wiethoff #Peter blomquist

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