Amphibia fandom : Yo! Disney fucked up and released the episode online way before the TV program date. Please don’t watch the leaked episode or if you do watch it, at least don’t publish anything about it online out of respect Matt Braly and his team and the fans wanting to enjoy it on TV!
ML fandom (as of S4): Yo! We got the first part of the finale earlier thanks to Spectrum who accidentaly released it! Also, we dug and found Penalteam for you guys. LEAK US STRIKE BACK NOW! Also, f*ck the ML Team. How dare they make us wait?
For real. I haven’t watched the latest 2, and while I understand why people wouldn’t want to wait, I do think it’s kind of sad that the fandom is (unintentionally or not) encouraging places like Gloob to air out of order just to be the “first” and get the majority of viewers
Obviously, with Spectrum it was an accident, but that kinda makes it worse, as OP said. I remember when the writers asked fans to wait before watching the S3 finale. I don’t think anyone who did watch it without seeing Chat Blanc first could truly appreciate those episodes and the echoes to Chat Blanc. But even aside from that, it was frustrating as a fan to be forced to avoid all fandom spaces because spoilers were everywhere. In the end, my efforts were wasted anyway because I had the finales spoiled by a commenter on one of my fics 😔
Like, I get it. You want to know what happens. The episodes are out anyway, so why wait? But just put yourself in the writers’ shoes for a moment. Imagine you wrote a fic and someone got a hold of it and released chapters out of order. You could plead all you like for people to wait and read in order, because you know they won’t be able to appreciate it properly, but people don’t care. They complain about having to wait, complain when they don’t like something shown in a trailer, or when things don’t make sense (usually because they don’t have proper context). And then they talk about it everywhere so that even those who want to wait and enjoy things in the proper order can’t have that experience
I really feel for the writers. I don’t care if you don’t like Thomas, just remember that he is not the only writer, and this situation will be incredibly frustrating for them. It’s not their fault that things are aired out of order. It’s not their fault when trailers twist things to emphasize stuff that is basically nothing once you watch the actual episode, or give away too much. All they’re doing is their job and the rest is out of their hands. That’s why it’s so important for fans to do their part too
I mean, I’m so glad I waited to watch s4 in order. It sounds like my experience was so much nicer — I could appreciate the humour more, the continuity, and how things were built up. And at the end of the day, while you might not care, there are those who do
So yes, it is your choice if you want to go ahead and watch things as they’re released or leaked, no matter how out of order. But please remember that is not how the show is supposed to be watched — things will not always make sense, will seem lacking or reveal things you can’t appreciate properly without context. And yeah, please use spoiler tags and be careful of what you say in asks, comments etc. because some people will choose to wait and won’t want to be spoiled
The ML fandom is like this and then we have the audacity to complain that the animation for “Qilin"—the episode, remember, that Winny told us a while back they expected it would be finished last, and one that at that time had four unaired episodes that were supposed to follow it—looks like the animators could have used a few more weeks to get it right.