Fandom.

Meme/chain thing.

Comment to this entry and I’ll pick three of your fandoms. You must then update your journal and answer the following questions:

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
02: Do you think you’ll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

Thomas chose Touhou, Fate/Stay Night, and Planetarian.

 

 

Touhou:

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?

I’m a fan of Mahoraba manga, and followed the fan community as it developed.  Several months before the release of PoFV, the Mahoraba fan scanslator, Puredragon, made a thread about Touhou on the Mahoraba forums, with links to the demos.  I tried them out, liked them, and found that I caught on to them fairly quickly as well.  I went on to look for other Touhou fan communities and eventually came across Shrinemaiden.com, which was in its infancy at the time (and totally different from what it is today).  I really liked the people there, and that was probably where my interest in the series was solidified.  Though I’ve left the community at this point, I made some very good friends there, and have managed to keep in touch with most of them.

02: Do you think you’ll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?

Touhou fandom has become its own beast at this point, which is a mixed blessing.  While I’m glad it has gotten more exposure as I greatly respect ZUN and his work, I dislike how the English-speaking fandom is clouded by general 4chan-esque jackass/Internet troll behavior.  It is this behavior that made me leave Shrinemaiden several years ago, and as a result my own interest in the series has waned over time.  I still keep up with the games, but I keep a careful distance from the bulk of the fandom at this point.  

I believe Touhou has made a significant impact on my life, but I definitely have some things to sort out if I’m to stick with the series in the long term.

03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?

I’ve spent the most time with Perfect Cherry Blossom and Imperishable Night, but out of the two I think I like PCB the most.  While I am far from skilled at the game itself, it still does just about everything right.  It’s a healthy step up from EoSD in tech/visuals, its music is great, its levels are fun and mostly free of bullshit moments, it does not encourage bombing, and its patterns are not as gimmicky as the ones found in later games.  Moreover, its score running scene is the most entertaining out of all of the Touhou games, thanks both to its bomb-wisely scoring mechanics and the presence of almost incomprehensibly skilled runs by players like I.O and GIL.  

This is also the only game that I really tried to score run.  I may be the first North American player to break the 1 billion score mark on Phantasm stage, which was far higher than anything else at the time on the Shrinemaiden score boards.  That score has been thoroughly beaten several times since, but it was still an interesting experience.  I remember pausing several times throughout that run to wipe sweat off my controller because I knew I had a good run on my hands and was getting incredibly nervous as a result.  I still have the gamepad that I ruined mostly through practicing those runs (cheap Chinese ripoff pads…).

Favorite fanartists are easily Mizuno Kurage (Lost Rage) and Gatau (questionably sfw), who are each single-handedly responsible for my fanboyism for Patchouli and Sanae, respectively.

While I haven’t kept up with the doujin manga scene in some time, my favorite doujin circles are Quarter Iceshop, Tako, Ishikiri, and Leaf Garden (also known as Haniwa’s Shop, though I never understood why English speakers labeled it that way – their books have Leaf Garden written on them, in English).

04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?

These days I’m still always happy to give random Touhou shooter advice to those who ask on MSN and whatnot.

While I’ve left the fan community at this point, I used to be a very active participant in it.  I took part in impromptu group playthroughs and was a regular in the Shrinemaiden forums and IRC channel.  I also tried to do my part in breaking the “foreigners aren’t good enough to play Touhou” stereotype by taking part in scoring runs, if that counts.

The biggest mark I made on the community was probably in the form of fan scanslations.  While I don’t know Japanese myself, I taught myself enough Photoshop to do cleaning, editing/rebuilding and text insertion (which is way harder and more time consuming than it looks) and have have worked with various translators to pump out a fair number of scanslated Touhou doujins.  Among others, I scanslated the first “psycho-fangirl Youmu” doujin, several books by Leaf Garden/Haniwa’s shop (Smiling in the Sixteen Moonlit Nights, Suika Book), that Mystia doujin by Hole of Yago, and several 4-koma series by Ishikiri.  The most well-known work that I worked on is probably Neko Reset by Quarter Iceshop.  I’m particularly happy with finishing this one not only because it was any editor’s nightmare (full color, every text bubble being semitransparent and sometimes a gradient to boot), but because this project was done with Puredragon (the guy who got me into Touhou in the first place), and was officially okayed by Quarter Iceshop itself.

The editing skills I learned doing fan scanslations has made a significant impact on my life and job search, and I like how everything went full circle when I later used these skills to take PD’s place in finishing the Mahoraba manga scanslations when he became too busy to continue the project himself.  I feel that helping him out in scanslation work is my way of thanking him for his previous work with Mahoraba, and also for bringing me into Touhou.

I was probably within the first generation of people who did these scanslations, and I like to think I helped get the ball rolling and set an example for the scanslators/editors that followed. I’ve gotten thanks for my work, and have also been called a bastard for setting a high bar for future scanslators.  I guess it’s an indirect compliment.

05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?  

By all means, sure.  The games themselves are great, and some of the fan works are awesome too.  But don’t be an ass.  Someone saying that something is hard is not an invitation for you to brag about how easy you thought it was.  If you can’t say anything useful, don’t say anything at all. 

 

 

Fate/Stay Night:

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?

02: Do you think you’ll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?

03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?

04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?

05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?

Planetarian had gotten me interested in visual novels as they were nothing like what I had expected (they sound lame by description – you really do have to play one for yourself to see what the buzz is about), and Tsukihime had gotten me into Type-Moon.  Add the anime adaptation, IRC talk, random fanart and Mirror-Moon’s translation, and there you go.

02: Do you think you’ll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?

Type-Moon fandom has grown so large it’s hard to imagine dropping it entirely, but I’ll probably eventually move on from F/SN itself as it is complete at this point and any further additions to the series would be milking the franchise.  I’ll  keep following Type-Moon and general visual novel translations in the future, though.

03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?

This may be biased since I only played through each story path once and thought they were all awesome, but I think I like Heaven’s Feel (Sakura’s path) the most, followed by Unlimited Blade Works (Tohsaka’s path).  Favorite female character is Sakura, and my favorite male character is probably Archer.  I definitely liked the visual novel more than the anime, though the anime was good for what it was – it’s just that anime as a medium can’t match the depth and variation possible in a visual novel.

04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?

Not really.  To be honest, I didn’t expect Thomas to choose this or Planetarian as topics.

05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

Sure.  The visual novels are awesome, and I still pester my friends to keep plugging away at it even if they dislike reading (Neeeeeethhhhhh…).

 

Planetarian:

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?

I blame Raven.

02: Do you think you’ll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?

I still mention it in passing on occasion, but there really isn’t much to keep up with at this point.  It was a short novel in the first place.

03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?

Just the visual novel itself, I guess.  There isn’t that much fanart, and the novel itself was short, sweet, and was executed brilliantly.  There really isn’t anything bad I can say about the novel itself.  Even the translation quality was utterly flawless, with no typos or grammatical errors that I remember seeing, which is something that cannot be said of any other visual novel translation I’ve played, even if you include things like Phoenix Wright games.

04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?

Nothing besides randomly plugging it and encouraging people to try it if they seem interested.  I can’t draw either, so fanart is out of the question.

05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

Sure.  It’s a very moving novel, the downloadable version is quite cheap, and it doesn’t take very long to get through.