Media interacts with consumers through its content, visual, and many other factors. Depending on the content that I skimmed through, I was in between passively consuming and actively analyzing. Through video, image, or text content, it can be video games, films, songs and fanfictions. 

In my opinion, attracting new audiences and maintaining old consumers is equal to creating fresh but satisfactory content. The content creators should keep in mind that audience reception is important in creating new content. If the update does not meet the expectation, the value of the content is most likely to be disappointing. 

For instance, a rhythm game that I played for a few years named Ensemble Stars. Their visual design is a timeless anime style which suits my visual taste, and the gameplay is music and gacha based. Additionally, I really love some of the characters, specifically due to their storyline, music genre and characteristics. Given how the game constantly updates throughout the years, the media tries to maintain their fanbase and attract more audience by adding in new characters, storyline and songs to the game. However, the development of the new characters ended up disappointing most of the fans as we do not expect the new idol group to be young teens as well as the ridiculousness of adding a new member to an existing and prominent unit. This ended up with major backlash especially from the Japan EnStars community, whereas I remain neutral as much as possible. 

Moving forward, content creators also tend to do adaptation or transmedia to attract more audience. In my recent activities, I am getting addicted to Paradox Live, a hip hop media mix project which mostly focuses on rap songs. In this case, I took interest in a few of the characters and their music videos. I tend to analyse and interpret the lyrics because they told a hidden story that sympathizes with the listeners. When my interest peaks, I stumble across their stage play on a website and become more fascinated with the project. I believe in a way, the project has used different media platforms to make it more appealing to throw oneself into the fandom. 

I engage with media based on their content and oftentimes interact or analyse the subject with my personal view. It was a two way communication of critique and response for media to evolve in engagement between both creator and consumer. 

Fragments of Fanatic's Library

*all the images used belongs to their respective owner