Dragonblade's Dreams

takaburuzo:

They say the best day of a man’s life is when he buys himself a yacht.

ACTUALLY, the best day of a man’s life is when he SELLS it. |D

Adapted from a skype conversation that I had this morning with some friends after reacting to the yugiohfandomgossip blog. 

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I consider it Yugioh: the abridged series to be the start of the decline of the yugiohfandom. Honest to god. Why? Because it made the fandom accessible to people who have never read the manga or seen the show.

>[1:55:24 PM] Liquid Snake: but yugioh abridged isn’t doing a parody the right way imo. he’s turning the characters into embarrassing caricatures of themselves, and it saddens me, especially when the ygo fanboys at my school are like ‘PLAY THE CARD GAME AND MAKE TAS JOKES :D’ and i’m like ‘…but…the original series…?’

>[1:57:00 PM] Revengence is totally my new nickname, wat:  and they’re all “NEVER SEEN IT LOL”

And what kills me is that a lot of the jokes (at least when I still followed the series) were pulled directly from the fandom, and those are fandom jokes. it’s funny to the fandom, makes sense to the fandom. They’re memes, in the honest to god sense of the word. And those memes were the language we as a fadom spoke so that we could all tell that we knew we had seen/read the series, interpreted it, and found the same things ridiculous, or heartfelt, or simply had the same experience of interpreting the media. Our memes were our qualifiers, and what kept our culture just that — our fan culture — not something for everyone. And every single fandom has this. It’s not “mean” it’s not “excluding;” it’s how we tell fans in the community apart from those who aren’t.  It’s what seperates a fan from a member of fandom: a community of shared memes.  When the abridged series made the memes of the yugioh fandom accessable, and LK paired it with his own jokes, everyone not in the fandom thought that the memes that helped define the fandom were all his creations, and suddenly LK was credited with creating yugioh fandom humour. And, now, everything he says is word of god about the fandom, which is just simply not true. Now, that’s not to say I don’t dislike Little Kuriboh himself; he’s a legitimate member of fandom. I also know this whole thing wasn’t his intent when he started making the abridged series. But nonetheless, the way people reacted to his work is what makes me mad.

You see, fandom is community. Its never one person. Fandoms shouldn’t have figureheads. And what really rubs the salt in my wound is that the yugioh fandom was about to hit maturity. It was starting to stand the test of time. The people who had gotten into it for its initial popularity were starting to naturally get weeded out, and those who weren’t in it for the long run were moving on to the “next big thing.” The fandom was stabilizing; those who were into it because they loved it, versus those who were into it because it was popular.

>[2:08:20 PM] Auron: Not wanting to get into an argument, but I feel like I should say this. Fandoms will always have Big Name Fans and Figureheads, whether you like it or not.

>[2:08:42 PM] Revengence is totally my new nickname, wat: I understand that it’s unavoidable, but I’m not saying it’s right.

My issue here with LK is that, yes, he’s a ‘Well Known Fan’, but it’s what he did — make the fandom accessable to those outside of it via a localization of memes which flooded the fandom with people who didn’t know or care about what actual yugioh fans know and care about (you know, the ACTUAL PLOT OF THE SHOW) — that makes me dislike his series and mourn the beginning of the end of this fandom.

>[2:12:36 PM] Liquid Snake: and like i keep saying, i dislike what he did to the characters personalities

In fandom, there are character idealizations, stereotypes, and interpretations. This is something unavoidable, and perhaps even necessary for fandom humour to work. A lot of fanfictions, etc. play off of those very simplifications. But we, as members of fandom also know that there are many different versions of these stereotypical interpretations, and that they are just exaggerated FACETS of the character. You know this when you actually watch the series, and understand the character as a whole. The humour comes from this part of the person being exaggerated. However, the people who watch(ed) the abridged series without that knowledge believe that this is just a humourous interpretation of what the characters ARE, which is simply untrue.

It is these reasons which I dislike Yugioh Abridged, and what its popularity has brought into the yugioh fandom. I thought that the fandom would kill itseff with fandumb, but, with the introduction of a blog like yugiohfandogossip, I can only shake my head and sigh. I thought this fandom would drown in stupid, not burn up in flames of malice and ego. But Yugioh is my home fandom. The first fandom I really felt a part of, and felt like I had a family with, if only online. No matter how I see the decline of the fandom, I do wish that there was a way to turn it all around, and we could all be where we once were. The platform of fandom will always change, as will the times. Yugioh has been around for 10 years now — there’s no way I can expect the fandom to be stagnant for that long, and never change. But what we can do is provide a positive community of fans for both veterans and newbies. ZeXal is being dubbed? That’s a whole new generation of potential members of fandom who could grow up, discover the rest of the franchise (or not) and want to be a part of the community. I know when I first joined this fandom, I was a 6th grader. I didn’t know what a Mary-Sue was, I didn’t know of any “popular fans,” and there was no abridged series or gossip blog for me to be scared away by or get the wrong idea about. And isn’t that what we should be providing for our fellow fans? What’s the point of watering down content, or creating a hostile environment? What does that do for our community, and the people in it? Yugioh, by its very nature has always had prevalent themes about friendship and unity. Its stories are about triumph after long struggles, a hand in the dark at the last minute, earning your happy ending, and occasionally card games.

Fandoms have a way of reflecting the messages of the source material, so I ask you, members of the yugioh fandom: Where did it go? 

Where is our friendship and unity, our quality and our substance? I challenge you all to find it.

-D.

At a convention, two relative trends emerge that are relevant to a cosplayer. There are the cosplayers themselves, and perhaps more notably, there are the fans who approach the cosplayers.  There is an interesting symbiosis that exists between cosplayer and fan which likely operates at a subconscious level for most. To cosplay and assume the role of a character is a privilege given to a cosplayer by (a) fan/s. In exchange for the ability to suspend their disbelief and indulge in the escapism that they are interacting with their favourite characters, fans give cosplayers an escapism fantasy of their own in which they are the character they are portraying. It is an exchange of mutual love for the character. The fan, who has the fantasy of expressing love, empathy, or anything else that he or she felt that he or she wanted to say to the fictional character is then able to indulge in that by interacting with the cosplayer as if they are the actual character. The cosplayer, then has a responsibility to his or her fellow fans – s/he is the closest that a fan will ever get to sharing their feelings, whatever they may be, to the real thing. To act as the emissary of the character for the fan, and be the medium through which a connection between the reality of the fan and the fiction of the character – That is what it means to cosplay.

This still does not give a fan the right to treat a cosplayer like a personal hug pillow. If you met that character in real life, I doubt you’d glomp them upon your first interaction.