darkSpyro

A childhood is often defined as the joyful embodiment obtained from the happiest moments during youth. Spyro defined that childhood for me. I don't want to get into the Aquaria Abyss (don't use that as a new level name, pls) specifics, but I just want to say this...

You may wonder why it is that the title says what it does. Well, it's true. It's impossible for me to love Spyro nowadays, and trust me, it's not the stereotypical factor of the looks of the modern Spyro (well, partly, but not wholly) -- it's the community.

Okay, in and of itself, this discussion already seems stereotypical, getting all antsy about what the community has started favoriting over one individual fan. Trust me though, I'm sure one of you feel out of place being a fan of any other franchise every now and then, due to its own communities' favoritism as well. Sonic's community is a perfect example of favoritism gone overboard, gone wrong, gone poddie-hits-the-sack. Both fandoms have their separate shares of flame wars, sometimes to the point that they'd start scaring each other by straight-up emailing them some nasty words they'd never say on a website DM, or worse.

But here's my main reason why it's impossible for me to love Spyro nowadays:

catering

You may call this "cultivation" instead of "catering," if you so please...maybe even "gratification." Even when the Spyro games after the first 3 were not as good as people would've wanted (and hell, they make me have a little distaste when trying to play them today, minus A Hero's Tail), the catering was there for the Spyro fans, for ones who identified themselves as not necessarily friends of Spyro, but ones that are fond with the purple dragon that had a bit of an awkward thick bill-like snout but ultimately had a personality and super cool abilities that our IRL friends would never have, coupled with adventuring through the many settings of nature and Victorian structures, with periodical touches of modern elements (seriously, machine guns were in the original trilogy). With some exceptions, I and many others, maybe even some of you, have loved the sensation of having someone the size of a dog flaming, ramming, swimming, and flying his way through all the adversaries that we as a community, one that is now very conflicted with ourselves, have been catered to satisfactorily have for the first 7 years of his existence, and even when they've catered to us the wrong way, they were quick to at least try fixing their mistakes to cater us properly.

But nowadays, I see a tangle with the Spyro community, and it mainly seems to do with the efforts of catering today. Every time Spyro has been tossed to a new owner, nobody knew how to cater to the fans. With TLoS, they thought we wanted an adventure of a rare-breed that's, by standards both at the time and today, been a cliched story of that one particular kind needing to go on an adventure to "save the world," and with gameplay and lore that completely abandoned the original formula and almost disrespected it. The follow-up franchise is a bigger offender in my eyes, because we have a bit of Sonic's fate of having too many playable characters that are unrelated to the supposed-to-be star of the game, and then it somehow gets a pass just because it gives vibes of the classic games? What? I'm sorry, but how? Why? No, those are rectorical. Proper catering for Spyro fans is supposed to include catering to Spyro, and they don't even do it in today's games.

And then I see this forum and the direction it's taken, as well as similar curator groups. I end up feeling conflicted, and it's gotten to the point that I see doom within the entire Spyro community, and part of this definitely has to do with lack of proper catering from the ones who are truly responsible for Spyro. No offense, dark52, but you and many other fan group owners play a role in this catering game, too, as you and many other fan group owners didn't even know whether we'd like these changes to the Spyro franchise in the long run. With all due respect, it's fair that these curators tried to adapt to these new styles of curation in vain of wanting to keep discussions about Spyro alive at the very least (and I know that it'll still be alive), but seems like everyone and their damn mother in charge of "keeping the Spyro community alive" is no longer catering to the Spyro fans that would define themselves as victors of Avalar, the saviors of forgotten realms, the...man, I can't even come up with a third identifier for this sentence. You know how far we've strayed from the roots when an OG such as I has forgotten a good amount of elements from the OG days, and this is not a good stray, either.

I can understand change. Some change is necessary for life's longevity, but there's a difference between making change based on respecting the history of an entity's life and flat-out throwing the history away and making detrimental transformations as a result. I can also understand that not everyone cares about history, but Spyro's history was important for its own franchise's longevity, and we've thrown it away so far that it's impossible to recover the franchise to its former glory, and with some horrible side-effects, too: shipping, shipping, more shipping, and limited fan creativity to honor Spyro: when was the last time something a fan-sub franchise of Spyro hasn't accidentally emulated the entire lore of TLoS? Some of you may think that Spyro is at least doing well as a character, but as a franchise, it's been ruined by two dramatic shifts that broke the foundation to an unfixable state, at least in my eyes.

This is what's made it impossible for me to love Spyro nowadays. Many of our childhoods are now gone, and it's hard for me to get invested with Spyro when both the people officially in charge of Spyro and the people who want to make sub-fandoms and communities don't know how to properly cater to satisfy 99% of the Spyro fanbase without making internal conflicts as a result. I've tried coming up with ways to cater to myself as a result, but the results have been significantly unsatisfactory, so I've officially given up and rendered Spyro as dead to myself. Due to the business practices surrounding Spyro, I won't even get the inevitable remaster coming in 2018. I don't want to support this kind of practice, especially with the given slew of some additional practices that Spyro's current owners have been hated for over the years. I won't stop you guys from continuing to like Spyro if you want to continue to like Spyro, but I just can't do it with the fullest of my heart for more than a day in a row anymore.

Also, this is why I've started preferring Minecraft and will prefer Fe instead.

This all sounds awfully familiar to another user with an unhealthy obsession with Spyro.

Indeed....... I wouldn't be surprised if this is just another one of his alts, he keeps coming back...

Plus his rant about us being the cause of darkSpyro's turning support to Skylanders is awfully similiar to the rants that other user made too.....

lol, I love how you two instantly shaved this topic away from its focus.

Seriously, stop assuming that I'm that "obsessive" (as you say) fan. Even if the tone's somehow similar to you two, I don't mean disrespect. The last thing I want to is disrespect a fan, because as it said in the last line, "I won't stop you guys from continuing to like Spyro if you want to continue to like Spyro." Hell, I won't stop you two from liking 'landers. JEsus, get a life and stop picking on me, or get back to the topic.

Get a life says the person who wrote an entire novela about a fictional purple dragon who hasn't had a video game dedicated to him in a while...

Yes, they are the ones who clearly need a life!

Dude, you got Haedox giving criticism to Skylanders. Why tf you gotta hate on me for giving my own criticism on Spyro?

I'm not hating because you're criticizing Spyro, I am merely mocking the mountain of text you wrote for a fictional character that no one on this site will take seriously in the slightest. Sorry if I come off a bit rude in saying that, but it's the truth.

Well, you kind of prove a point I forgot to mention: nobody cares about Spyro in his foundation form anymore. Believe it or not, neither do I, because I've given up. I just decided to say this, anyway, because I just sorta kinda wanted to start a discussion about this, but when I now look at the responses from the first three people coming in....well, idk man. I'm still conflicted after these responses, but whatever. I'm just done with Spyro.

Sure you are. You said that before, yet you bring him up constantly. You can't help it, because you are mentally obsessed with a fictional character. Like many others said before us, Get a psychiatrist 24/7.

Honestly, I've rarely brought up Spyro during my time here. Hell, I've barely been active during my time here (when counting my hiatuses, anyway. I take a lot due to people like you). I've only made, what, 1 other semi-serious topic about Spyro. Just, wtf.

Yeah, screw this. You're very rude and would make this topic very toxic. I'm closing this topic. Don't try provoking me ever again.