Everyone has a favorite show, or at least a ranking of their top five. But lately, there have been a slew of “fans” mischaracterizing and misrepresenting characters they claim to love. These “fake fans” are referred to as larpers or larps. Larpers are annoying fanbases across media by claiming to have watched a show they deem their favorite, but under scrutiny, their opinions are baseless and wrong. 

Do you have a favorite show, or video game, or book? Maybe you haven’t consumed every single piece of media attached to a certain franchise (i.e. Star Wars or Marvel), but in some niche fanbases, like the anime “Devil May Cry”, the creators behind these shows will actively address this issue with inside jokes written into the show. 

Historically, larpers, or L.A.R.P.ing, stood for live-action role players. These were the fans who would dress up and role play at conventions, meet-ups, or small groups, but now it’s used to describe someone pretending to be someone they’re not, and so that’s how it will be used going forward.

This usually happens when a piece of media becomes trending on social media and all of a sudden everyone is on it, but only about half of the fans actually have read/watched/played said media. Stories go viral often by clips and edits posted on social media, made by those who have spent hours pouring over the content to make these edits. Larpers will take these edits as canon, and base their opinions and interpretations off these reduced versions of the original stories. 

Anime/manga

Anime and manga are the biggest victims of larpers, due to the expansive forms of content within a single franchise, like “Dragon Ball Z” (DBZ)  and “Jujustu Kaisen” (JJK). These stories become trending on social media, enter the limelight, and some are so desperate to be a part of a fanbase that they put their foot in their mouths. 

DBZ is a huge victim of this. Because the show has been running for decades, many people are put off of going back and watching the original content. The franchise did attempt to attract new fans with a shorter remaster of the anime, DBZ Kai, which cut all of its filler, improved the translation, and cleaned up the animation. Despite this easier option, larpers still decide on short form, social media edits, or even DBZ Abridged by Team Four Star. 

DBZ Abridged is a comedic redub of the original DBZ anime, simply made for giggles. “Fans” that chose this shortest version of the story, take it as official canon, often give mischaracterized interpretations of characters. For example, Son Goku, whose parenting is respected and revered in the full story, can easily be boiled down to ‘he’s a terrible father’ by larpers. 

It’s fans like this that create the joke “Don’t mess with DBZ fans, they haven’t watched the show,” or “Don’t mess with JJK fans, we don’t read the manga.” 

These jokes come from the fact that fans from both fandoms don’t read or watch the said series and typically just watch edits or short clips, and sometimes when these fans are told to watch/read the series they flat out refuse to.

Ryu Ishigori, and JJK character commonly known as Jane Juliet within the anime, often gets edited over various songs (“Hello Juliet” by Clarion or “Jane!” by The Long Faces) to the point where she is no longer known by Ryu or Jane, but by the song titles.

Jose Alverez said, “It’s annoying when people cosplay characters that they don’t even know.”

Videogames

Video games also have these kinds of fans that don’t play their own video games for many reasons, from being unable to play because of not having time or not being able to play because of financial reasons since video games and video game systems only get more expensive.

It becomes an annoyance when the said fan can play the game but refuses to and just follows the watching short clips from social media, which leads to missing context and mischaracterization.

James Carey, a lifelong “Final Fantasy” and “Resident Evil” fan, said, “It’s really annoying because [larpers] never actually play the game and mischaracterize it. Some people harass other fans and some of the actors themselves over opinions. It’s more prevalent in ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘Resident Evil’ with shippers that don’t understand the dynamics between characters.” 

One of the most recent examples of this comes from “Devil May Cry” as the recent anime adaptation came out in March of last year. The anime was a financial success but was a bad adaptation of the video game, its story, and characters. 

Many people who watched the anime didn’t play the games so they mischaracterize some of the characters and get stuff from the game wrong, which annoys most of the fans who did actually play the games. One of the most popular things being said that annoys the “Devil May Cry” community is that Dante is a funny pizza man and nothing more.

Movies/TV

The Harry Potter franchise is a common victim, with the fanbase split between the movies, the original books, and this new limited series adaptation releasing on HBO. Some “fans” even go as far as mischaracterizing an intentionally-flawed character into a saint simply because they are a main character of a show. Dean Winchester from “Supernatural” is a great example – while misogynistic and deadly, in certain corners of the fandom, he’s painted has this wonderful human, when in actuality he’s very flawed.

Comic Books

Comic books may fly under the radar, but they are still victims of larping, especially with the heightened attraction of superhero movies in recent decades. The sheer success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe compared to who has actually read the comics is an easy example to point to.

Some comic adaptations are merely loose interpretations of cannon, and really only use the same titles while wanting to tell a different story. For instance, “Man of Steel” is considered both one of the best and worst Superman movies due to its complete change in who the character is, while trying to be a decent superhero movie.

Brandon Morse, a student at Highline and a lifelong comic book fan said, “It has you fall into the characters they want you to like, instead of developing true connections with characters that aren’t as mainstream. Although there are tons of good movie adaptations of characters that influence their change in the comics (Joker), more often than not the comics version is more fleshed out than their on-screen counterpart.” 

At the end of the day, while this mischaracterization and misinterpretation doesn’t actually hurt anyone, it’s still an annoyance to those who have actually invested into their favorite stories and characters by reading, watching, or playing the source material.