I just found this Free! post (which it is old but I don't care) and it makes me regret joining the fandom. It may seem childish for this one post, but I have been seeing more and more of the fandom's true colors. I have uncovered a lot of bad stuff and I know it is their opinion, but I swear some of these people are insane. But I have a question, do you know what happened to the makoharu "fandom"? Apparently, something had happened and they blamed it on the studio.
Yeah kinda. idk the details, but I know some of the basics of what happened.
Back in like... late 2015, some Makoharu fans sent Kyoani a gift basket/box type thing. It was a collection of letters and art, mainly focused on Makoharu, thanking Kyoani for Free! Something like that.
A short time after that, some Rinharu shippers did the same thing, sent Kyoani a thank you gift of similar items but focused on Rinharu.
After getting the Rinharu gift, Kyoani publicly thanked the fandom for its support on twitter. They specifically posted photos of only Rinharu gift items, but not of the Makoharu gifts.
Because of that, some Makoharu shippers got very jealous and accused Kyoani of being biased or something.
This is where I’m not sure how badly it escalated. Idk if they were just tweeting their hate at Kyoani or what exactly happened. I did not have a twitter account at the time, and I was busy with work when this all went down so I wasn’t up to date on the latest shipping drama. And from what little I heard, as a Makoharu shipper, I was very embarrassed at the behavior of shippers, so I wanted to just... not know what was going on lol, ignorance is bliss. I do remember being salty that people were using this to generalize all Makoharu shippers though, but I was mostly disappointed in how Makoharu shippers behaved.
Just to reassure you, that was a small group of shippers being babies. While most Makoharu shippers were a little upset they didn’t get recognition for their gift box, most were really disgusted with the actions of these few and we didn’t condone it. Just like with all ships, there are both lovely people and jerks, unfortunately :\