#but like if every female character in actual published media that focuses on dudes is gonna be hated for being a bit mean | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rad-translations · 4 years

Text

“We’re used to death threats” 6 years after GamerGate, nothing has changed

(It’s impossible for me to continue playing Valorant. To be provoked, harassed, insulted as soon as people hear my voice, all of this because I’m a woman, is unacceptable. I won’t accept undergoing this constantly, and having to signal people constantly. I’m sickened.)

If for some years now, awareness of the bullying that women suffer from in all parts of society has been increasing, everyday changes appear to be barely noticeable.

The world of video games is one glaring example. Or how, behind the grand speeches, the life of female gamers hasn’t changed — maybe even got worse since GamerGate, an event that has triggered the first large-scale wave of online harassment against women.

In partnership with the YESSS podcast, Numerama investigated the sexism in the community of male and female gamers, with a saddening but certain report: since 2014 and GamerGate, nothing has changed. What we gathered from the dozens and dozens of testimonies that we collected, is that the daily life of women gamers is punctuated by these microaggressions. Tweet after tweet, insult after insult, from sexist comments to targeted bullying, these are individual actions that, when added up, create an incredibly violent wave of online harassment. A wave that swallow them again, day after day.

“Gamergate had set the tone”

“GamerGate had set the tone in regards to sexism, and this changed things” assesses Julie, who mostly plays on League of Legends. “When they discover that you are a girl, it’s rampage” adds Leiden, a World of Warcraft player: “As soon as you’re a girl, you’re gonna eat shit. There are comments like “You don’t know how to play (...)”, it’s a very common behavior on WoW…” Kash, who also plays MMORPG, laments that “toxic comments became the norm”. One example: during a session, the presence of three female players triggered a collective cackling from the members of her guild, who said that “the disabled quota has arrived”. “I told them that we were fed up with these kind of remarks, that is was not normal. They responded by saying it was just humor. (...) That’s really a bummer, because when the game launched, this didn’t exist, we were a community. I wasn’t judged based on my sex.”. “Playing as a woman, it’s a hassle” confirms Lisa*, tiredly “There is always some pig there to tell you to “go back to the kitchen””. Laughter always follows.

She however assesses that GamerGate did not launch online bullying. Gamers are known to vehemently defend their passion: “In 2005, a wave of online harassment had been launched against the very controversial Jack Thompson, an american lawyer who declared that shootings in the USA were the result of the violence of video games” Brad Glasgow, a journalist who then published a study on GamerGate, reminds us, now asked by Numerama. Some gamers at the time sent death threats to his home, or even developed games in which the objective was to hit the lawyer… What GamerGate changed, is adding a sexist aspect to online bullying, focusing hate and attacks on multiple women.

Between journalistic integrity and harassment

On August 16th 2014, Eron Gjoni, a 24 years old programmer, published on his blog “thezoepost”, a 9000-words vitriolic announcement, describing in detail how his now ex-girlfriend, Zoe Quinn, had cheated on him. The story could have ended there. But here is the deal: Zoe Quinn is an indie video game developer, and the man she cheated on him with is a journalist specialized in gaming-related press. That was everything gamers and the Internet needed to ignite: this man is writing for a journal which recently published a highly positive review of Zoe Quinn’s new game, Depression Quest. Between blogs, subreddits and 4chan, the GamerGate movement was born.

“They wanted to be able to continue playing with half-naked female characters without anyone saying something about it”

What did gamers really want? They would say that they were fighting for “more ethics in videogame reporting, less cronyism between developers and magazines” Brad Glasgow, who conducted a study on this subject, explains. “The gamergaters who I interviewed had the impression that the industry was pushing on them more censored, family-friendly games. They wanted to be able to continue playing with half-naked female characters without anyone saying something about it, and without being considered misogynists”. The GamerGate contributors were for a long time believed to be cliché young gamers, however Brad Glasgow’s study show that the median age was 30 years old, very different from the often depicted carefree youngsters. All the people targeted by the supporters of this movement were women. The victims and numerous reporters commented afterwards that GamerGate was never about claiming anything, but simply a way to express their hate and disdain towards Zoe Quinn. Zoe Quinn, as well as the video game creator Brianna Wu and blogger Anita Sarkeesian received so many rape, torture and death threats that they were forced to move out out of their homes, fearing for their lives. In the United States, this event was huge, so much that the New York Times described it as “the beginning on alt-right hegemony on the Internet”, and even as a culture war. In France, despite being covered by the media, it didn’t have such an impact outside of the affected community. The problem however, doesn’t only exist on the other side of the Atlantic. The blogger Marlard was talking, since 2013, about a "sick community", soaked in sexism, fetishizing Lara Croft’s new design, and, in the famous 18-25 forum on jeuxvideo.com, misogyny was already the rule. She was actually one of the first to receive numerous waves of online harassment for daring to point out the sexism in the world of video games.

A masculine universe

Why talk again about Gamergate today? Because six years later, despite the problem being under the spotlight and having media coverage, female gamers still suffer. Video games seem to stay a masculine universe, a space where the famous rule 30 of the Internet “on the Internet, there are no women” could be a reality. It’s nevertheless false: according to a IFOP study published in 2018, women play as much video games as men do.The Internet and Twitch are full of casual and professional gamers, like Kayane, Trinity, Little Big Whale, Zulzorander, Marie Palot…. But, inescapably, the presence of women in online games startles, surprises, annoys.

“Being misogynistic is trendy”

To insult women and social justice warriors (nickname given to anti-discrimination activists by their opponents) is still seen today as a way to make your audience laugh, to gain a place inside the boy’s club, sometimes even to become famous. French streamer Jean Massiet admits it: “Being misogynistic is trendy”.

(I’ve been streaming for 5 years and there is an absolute constant: being misogynistic is trendy, make your chat laugh by playing the rebel. To be feminist is to oppose retaliations and gatekeeping. Conformism really isn’t where most people think.)

The “young boy” trick to conceal your voice

One of the main problems encountered by female players online, is “vocal”, the act of talking with other members of the team to coordinate certain attacks during a game. In this moment, it’s impossible to hide behind the neutral usernames of characters typically associated with male players: “As soon as people hear that I’m a girl, it’s over. Many women don’t want to communicate because of it” reveals Lisa. “You really feel a difference in behavior when comparing the before and after.”

Julie, another player, explains that the “after” is often synonymous with saucy flirting. “Immediately, dudes will come talk to you in private, ask for pictures and lewd requests…” To avoid this, almost all the female players that we interviewed explained to us that they use the “young boy” trick: passing as a young male player whose voice has not dropped yet, to justify their high-pitched tone. Lying to stay undisturbed is a common strategy. Some even prefer playing with the account of their male partners, thus avoiding unrequited comments.

The #MeToo aftermath is even worse

But it’s not always sufficient. Kate laments that “The #MeToo movement created a mistrust”, revealing a violent rejection of the liberation of feminine and feminist voices. “It has become a PMU* (“PMU” or “Pari Mutuel Urbain” is a bar/gambling place chain. Nowadays it is synonymous for many people with armchair psychology, politics and chauvinist behaviors) Everytime you want to point out to players that they are making sexist comments, it’s always the same reaction “you can’t say anything nowadays”, ‘feminazi”....” Far from letting those concerned question themselves, it seems that the #MeToo movement has reinforced their aggravation, which then leads them to be even more defensive or to conduct gratuitous attacks, especially on Discord, a chat/vocal platform often used by players to communicate with each other.

“The memes are more aggressive, everyone jeers at feminists… There is some sort of frustration towards feminist awareness, a very violent reaction. It is even sometimes almost incel behavior,” explains Kash, referencing the men's rights activists movement of "involuntary celibates". “You won’t make friends talking about feminism” Nat’ali, streamer, confirms to us.

“#MeToo has revealed the privileges that men have, and they didn’t like seeing it”

She isn’t the only one who saw the situation getting worse after Gamergate and #MeToo. “Since I started playing in 2007, I truly saw the atmosphere deteriorate” Kash told us. “I saw more bullshit these last two years than in the ten years prior, "I now see things that dudes never dared to do before. The whole community got worse”. Lisa also observed the explosion of sexism after #MeToo. “It’s really then that I started hiding the fact that I was a woman. #Metoo has revealed the privileges that men have, and they didn't like seeing it. Don’t touch cis white hetero men, or you will get branded a fucking feminist, a whore, a feminazi.” Lisa reached the point of “not wanting to play anymore, too toxic. Gets on my nerves too quickly.” There is, too, a fear of underperforming: “I’m scared to play certain FPS (First Person Shooter, like Call of Duty) because I’m no very good at them, and I don’t want to help the belief that “girls sucks at video games” to persist” laments Nat’ali.

The liability of professional streamers

In the eyes of Julie, part of the problem resides in the fact that the gamer community is growing rapidly. “There are more and more gamers, and the newcomers are usually very young and very sexist. Even if some people change and gain understanding regarding this problem, they will be drowned by comments by teens that have no reflexion on sexism”.“ In addition to the jeuxvideo.com 18-25 forum, numerous streamers and professional players are accused of perpetuating sexism. As Numerama showed in a study made in April 2019, members of the Solary team, a french esport structure, have encouraged online harassment against several women, and have contributed in spreading sexist insults (a woman receiving compliments from a stranger, not responding to them and “calling them out on social media” is in their eyes a “whore”)

“It’s an environment in which men pat each other on the back”*

(Translator’s note: a more literal translation would be “men forgive each other” but the underlying idea in this sentence was that they allow themselves to forgive each other’s faults without actually hearing the people targeted.)

Sardoche, a League of Legends streamer and Twitch partner (video creators able to monetize their videos) has also been known for years for his very violent remarks against female players, that he calls “shitty little virgins” or “huge whores”. In addition to being aware about inciting his followers to harass, he often mocks feminist activists on twitter, and his followers always join the party. “The problem is that he is followed by a lot of boys that want to imitate him” Nat’ali tell us.

“Trolling feminists, best thing to do in the morning. Thanks to @MrKryorys for archiving these kinds of clips” Yet Sardoche is not called out, and can still enjoy the free publicity made by numerous other streamers, promoting him and condoning his unacceptable speeches. At the start of June however, the streamer announced that he was now suffering from online harassment on his Twitch lives, coming mostly from 18-25 users. These behaviors have no influence on the mentioned players’ and streamers’ careers. “They still don’t understand that they are participating to the trivialization of hatred against women” Nat’ali angrily adds “Sardoche is now co-hosting PopCorn, one of the most viewed programs on Twitch. It’s an environment in which men pat each other on the back.”

“One girl per team, no more”

This impunity is reinforced by the erasure of female players, firstly because some are reluctant to present themselves as women in online games, and secondly, because the professional environment is not giving them a platform. We call that “the quota effect”. “Those who want to become professional know that there is only one “girl” slot per team”. complains Nat’ali. This infamous “quota woman” reminds us of the “Lara Croft effect” a overused argument often put forward when criticism against the lack of female characters in video games arise: You got it wrong, look over here, there is one woman.

“At the beginning of big web TV, 7 or 8 years ago, there was a of of competition between female players. No sisterhood whatsoever, girls were awful with each other because they knew there wouldn’t be a spot for everyone” Nat’ali, who had seen the problem herself, continues.

Once hired, these female streamers still have a lot to face. A friend of Nat’ali told her last year that her team forced her to wear a mini-skirt during a marketing campaign. According to Leiden “People still see their female players as sexy props, instead of focusing on their playing skills”.

The ambience is now healthier, and “there is a real solidarity on Twitch between us, we talk a lot. With #MeToo, we understand that we needed to help each other. These topics have the spotlight, we feel more comfortable talking about them. Dudes still behave the same, but the relationship between female players changed. This is the big victory of #MeToo.”

“Streamers need to question themselves”

Should we see this whole problem as unsolvable? For Aurélie, “in practice men are not yet supportives. The knowledge is here, we know that “sexism is bad” But if you point out that a comment is sexist, they will immediately jump and respond that no, it’s just humor”. There are many hard to unlearn habits,” Lisa remarks: “It’s the patriarchal structure: nice guys sometimes have awful reactions. It’s rooted inside of them, they don’t even realize what they’re doing.” For all of the interviewees, the education of men regarding these problems is the solution. Kash affirms: “This men-only community create a unease. Streamers need to be the example. They need to question themselves, and they shouldn’t hesitate to take clear stances regarding this.” Still, it would be easier if these stances were the norm, and taking them was not a risk.

“When you keep talking to them about it, our male friends realize the problem” Lisa happily notices. One of Kash’s friends, with whom she’s been playing for years, has evolved a lot despite starting as “mostly uninterested in the sexism problem in games”. After our interview, she decided to talk to him about her experience, and he listened to her testimony. “Last week, during a raid in which I didn’t introduce myself, a player made a sexist remark about the body of a woman. My friend told me he felt uncomfortable and talked to the guild leader about it. Nothing happened, the player wasn’t sanctioned, but I’ve known my gamer friend for 11 years and it was the first time he reacted like that. So I’m hopeful!”

Aurore Gayte for Numerama

*names have been changed This article was created in partnership with the YESSS podcast. .Their latest creation, "Warriors and Games" is available here. Every month, the YESSS team gathers testimonies of women who triumphed against sexism: those who responded, who corrected, who snapped and resisted. YESSS is a podcast for warriors, positive and decidedlyfeminist. It is conceived and hosted by Margaïd Quioc, Elsa Miské et Anaïs Bourdet, produced by the Popkast label in Marseille.

#gaming #gamergate #sexism #radfem #radfem safe #feminism #video games sexism #sardoche #numerama #gatekeeping #french radblr #french to english #rad-translations #radical feminism

8 notes · View notes

ramajmedia · 5 years

Text

All Of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Controversies Explained

Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Here’s a complete breakdown of every Once Upon a Time in Hollywood controversy. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, the 161-minute film uses real people and celebrities from the 1960s to drive a storyline about two fictional characters, actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). The overall mashup of reality and fantasy has rubbed some people the wrong way for various reasons.

Tarantino has been one of cinema’s most controversial filmmakers for nearly 30 years. His 1992 feature debut, Reservoir Dogs, breaks from traditional storytelling and stylizes the inherent violence. With Pulp Fiction, Tarantino’s 1994 follow-up, he pushed harder across the board via more violence, more cinematic style, and more challenging dialogue. Over the years, Tarantino’s trademark style has continuously polarized viewers, as some people love his creative vision and cinematic references, while others take offense to what they see on the surface, and also for what the subtext appears to imply.

Related: The Real Actors Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton Is Based On

When news first broke about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s storyline, rumors created a false narrative about how Charles Manson would be incorporated. Since then, Tarantino has often stated that filmmakers should be free to follow their creative vision, rather than focusing on what modern moviegoers expect and want. Here’s a timeline for all the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood controversies.

Cannes Backlash And Sharon Tate Representation

In May 2019, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Early reviews praised the film, but some critics questioned Margot Robbie’s lack of screen time as Sharon Tate, who - in real life - was murdered by Manson Family members in August 1969. When questioned about Robbie’s role, or lack thereof, Tarantino said that he rejected the reporter's “hypothesis.” Unsurprisingly, this news spread quickly on social media, which made Tarantino appear like he was more interested in telling stories about fictional men rather than highlighting the tragic tale of a real-life female actress and murder victim. At this point, only a select group of people had actually seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

When Once Upon a Time in Hollywood released to the masses in July 2019, American moviegoers received clarity about the storyline. The film isn’t about the Manson Family murders, nor does the film re-create Tate’s death. Instead, Tarantino uses Los Angeles as a backdrop for a commentary about Old Hollywood ideals and the rise of the counterculture movement. Both Rick and Cliff try to find their place in Hollywood as trends change. Still, the Robbie controversy didn’t fade away, though Tarantino did indeed add two extra minutes of screen time for the actress.

Explaining Robbie's role in the movie, Tarantino said that he wanted to celebrate Tate existing in the world, just living her life as a young Hollywood starlet:

“I thought it would both be touching and pleasurable and also sad and melancholy to just spend a little time with her, just existing. I didn't come up with a big story and have her work into the story so now she has to talk to other characters and move a story along. It was just a day in the life. It's a day in the life of all three of them, that Saturday in February. A day in the life, driving around, running errands, doing this, doing that, and just being with her. I thought that could be special and meaningful. I wanted you to see Sharon a lot, see her living life. Not following some story, just see her living, see her being.”

More: What Happens After Once Upon A Time In Hollywood's Ending?

The Twist Ending And Manson Family Portrayal

Tarantino subverts expectations with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s ending. Most viewers know what transpired on Cielo Drive during the late hours of August 8, 1969. The Manson Family murdered Tate and four others. But in Tarantino’s alternate history, the Manson Family members are killed by Rick and Cliff (mostly by the latter character). The film builds towards the real-life Cielo Drive tragedy and then refuses to provide audiences with the dark ending they expected.

The Manson Family members target Rick’s home because they identify him as the former star of “Bounty Law” (a fictional TV show), and decide to kill the man who introduced them to violence. Their plan backfires, and Old Hollywood essentially wins. Rick and Cliff save the ‘60s lifestyle. Meanwhile, Tate remains next door, free from harm, and she invites Rick over for a drink. The title card then appears, reminding viewers that what they’ve just seen is indeed a fairy tale: “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.”

The main criticism of the movie's ending has been that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has a lot of fun showing Rick and Cliff kill the female members of the Manson Family - similar to the gratuitously gory death of Hitler in Inglourious Basterds. The Hollywood Reporter published an op-ed on a pattern of violence against women being used as a "punchline" in Tarantino movies, making the case that the "so-called Manson girls had been brainwashed by a madman," and that it "seems short-sighted to mark them strictly as villains worthy of slaughter."

More: How Many Films Has Quentin Tarantino Made (& Why Does He Count It Wrong)?

The Bruce Lee Depiction

In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the iconic Bruce Lee appears during a flashback sequence, portrayed by Mike Moh. On the set of The Green Hornet, an ABC television series that aired from 1966-1967, Lee displays his famous bravado prior to a friendly fight with Cliff, who doesn't seem impressed by the actor's heightened sense of self. For historical context, the scene in question takes place before Lee's most iconic films like Fist of Fury (1972) and Enter the Dragon (1975). Overall, Lee comes across as incredibly arrogant, and his mannerisms are used as a source of comedy, evidenced by a moment when Cliff mimics a sound made by Lee.

One aspect of the fictional Lee's portrayal that sparked a particular backlash was his boast that he could "cripple" Muhammad Ali. Lee's protégé, Dan Inosanto, told Variety, "Bruce Lee would have never said anything derogatory about Muhammad Ali because he worshipped the ground Muhammad Ali walked on." Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, was also unhappy with Tarantino's interpretation of her father:

“I have always suspected that [Tarantino] is a fan of the kung-fu genre and a fan of things that kick ass in cool and stylish ways, which my father certainly did. But whether he really knows anything about Bruce Lee as a human being, whether he’s interested in who Bruce Lee was as a human being, whether he admires who Bruce Lee was as a human being, I’m not really sure that I have any evidence to support that that would be true... [Lee] was continuously marginalized and treated like kind of a nuisance of a human being by white Hollywood, which is how he’s treated in the film by Quentin Tarantino."

On Twitter, film critic Walter Chaw posted an extensive thread about the portrayal of Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, stating "If it's a 'white boy fantasy' that a white guy could best Bruce Lee, it's the same kind of fantasy that would posit Lee as the ultimate test of fighting ability for a fictional white guy. Your racism is either bigoted or paternalistic. Who would win? Bruce or imaginary guy?" Just days later, Chaw further addressed Tarantino's version of Lee with a Vulture essay entitled "Why Are You Laughing at Bruce Lee?":

"Growing up as a Chinese kid in a predominantly white area, one of the most common ways people mocked me was by mimicking the noises Lee made. The reaction to Moh’s performance — the chuckles that followed his impression of Lee — felt like a similarly racist gesture. In truth, until very recently, the vast majority of appearances by Asian characters in mainstream American films carried with them the same potential for unintended, racially motivated laughter."

From Tarantino's perspective, he believes that his depiction of Lee wasn't inaccurate. He addressed the controversy at a press junket in Moscow, as reported by Variety:

“The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up. I heard him say things like that, to that effect. If people are saying, ‘Well he never said he could beat up Muhammad Ali,’ well yeah, he did. Not only did he say that, but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read. She absolutely said that."

The Cliff Booth Mystery

Moviegoers can have wildly different viewing experiences based on their interpretation of Cliff. Here are the facts: he’s an aging stuntman who’s loyal to Rick. The two men drive around Hollywood together, and Cliff mostly appears pleasant, calm, and balanced. By himself, Cliff appears a little more prickly: he beats up a hippie at Spahn Ranch, he beats up Bruce Lee during a flashback sequence, and he ultimately kills Manson Family members while tripping on acid. From the beginning in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino sets a narrative hook for the audience: Cliff may be a bad dude, and he just might've killed his wife.

But, no - Cliff did not kill his wife, at least there’s no evidence of that in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s a brilliant strategic move by Tarantino, one that was clearly inspired by the mystery surround Natalie Wood’s tragic death in 1981. Once again, Tarantino uses Hollywood lore to keep the audience off-kilter. He creates a myth through character dialogue, and then subverts expectations by not showing what viewers expect. Cliff never kills his wife in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

More: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: Luke Perry's Cameo Explained

A brief Twitter search reveals that many people fully believe that Cliff is a wife-killer, which fundamentally changes how one views Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Through Tarantino’s cinematic magic, people believe that they saw a murder take place. But here’s what actually happens: Cliff remembers being on a boat, and his wife complaining. There’s a harpoon gun on his lap, and it seems that he’s contemplating, well, homicide. But Tarantino then cuts away. In terms of storytelling, the moment represents another Cliff memory. And the narrative implications are directly connected to a famous Hollywood myth.

In November 1981, the aforementioned Wood drowned off the coast of Catalina Island near Los Angeles. Earlier that night, she’d been drinking heavily with husband Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken. All three were on board Wagner's yacht when Wood suddenly disappeared and was ultimately found dead. For years, people have speculated that Wagner killed Wood. At this point, it doesn’t necessarily matter why (drunken rage, jealousy, an accident), but rather that people simply believe that Wagner did indeed kill his wife. As for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the speculation is what’s crucial. Nobody is right or wrong, because nobody can know for sure what happened. It’s simply more Hollywood lore, courtesy of Tarantino, designed to keep viewers discussing the film.

Boots Riley's Criticism

In August 2019, director Boots Riley criticized Once Upon a Time a Hollywood on Twitter. Whereas some viewers don't like Tarantino's portrayal of hippies, the Sorry to Bother You filmmaker believes that Tarantino badly misrepresented Charles Manson and his clan:

“The Manson Family were overt white supremacists who tried to start a race war with the goal of killing black folks… They weren’t ‘hippies’ spouting left critiques of media. They were rightwingers. This fact flips Tarantino’s allegory on its head.”

Manson did indeed reportedly plan to start a race war, and was known to be a manipulative individual who used drugs and slick rhetoric to influence vulnerable young men and women. Because of this, there has been debate over the extent to which the Manson Family killers Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel should be blamed for their terrible crimes, and how much responsibility should be laid at Manson's feet for brainwashing them. This controversial topic was also raised in the second season of Mindhunter, and interestingly actor Damon Herriman played Manson both in Mindhunter and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Though the movie received overwhelmingly positive reviews, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has already proven to be one of the most divisive issues of the year when it comes to its take on 1960s Hollywood and real-life personalities who were around at the time. Still, it's not the first time that a Tarantino movie has been the topic of fierce discussion, and it probably won't be the last.

Next: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Breaks Tarantino Formula (& That's Why It's Great)

source https://screenrant.com/upon-time-hollywood-controversies-explained/

#screenrant

0 notes

cookinguptales · 7 years

Note

Omg with TokyoPop 😂 Please share the early 2000's anime days this is new to me and sounds hilarious.

they were dark-ass times, my friend

TERRIBLE AMERICAN PUBLISHING (idk how it was in other countries; I went to Paris many years later and was impressed with their...everything when it came to different kinds of comics but) Tokyopop which was basically run by people who only half knew what they were doing, Viz which mirrored manga for a long time bc they assumed Americans were too stupid to learn how to read the other way (which was particularly annoying in comics where like a right arm or something was important), ADV which probably couldn��t actually release an entire series if their goddamn lives depended on it (yes, I’m still mad about MaLoki), and various other publishers that would publish like one title ever

No legal streaming!! Which meant you either had to buy super expensive DVDs or pirate them online. (BACK IN THESE DAYS, CRUNCHYROLL WAS A PIRATING WEBSITE. NEVER FORGET.) This was right at the end of VHS days, though, so it could be worse!! If you got a VHS, it would be subbed or dubbed. When I watched Evangelion it was on bargain bin VHS tapes so it was like 70% subbed and 30% dubbed and it was a painful time.

Fansubs online were a huge thing. Legit companies had pretty slow turn around (you were lucky if something like the Anime...Network? I can’t remember. or Toonami or Funimation picked it up, bc they had tv channels -- though you’d usually have to put up with a shitty-ass dub) and you’d usually have to wait for a large-chunk release. If you wanted to watch something as it aired, you had to watch it raw or depend on fansubs. These were uh. Of varying quality. They’d usually have a 2-24 hour turnaround depending on the size of the group, with Shounen Jump titles having the fastest turnaround. Those were anime that were already published in manga form in the US via Viz, so they were already mostly familiar with how they’d go, plus...lbr, a lot of those shows were....easier to translate. If you catch my drift. (They tended to be dumb and repetitive. That is what I’m saying.) Also a larger fandom, so greater pool to get workers from and a greater reward re: downloaders. (And people usually torrented new fansub releases bc there were fewer online streaming sites, so popular shows downloaded faster.)

So like, picture if you will, a group of tween-teen nerds sitting around a computer watching fansubs of suspicious quality and shrieking the theme songs in unison because a fansub wasn’t a fansub without bouncing karaoke at the top. We got a DVD player that could play avis at one point and that was kind of mind blowing. Otherwise, you could use an AV cable or buy a DVD.

You bought things legit if you wanted to really support the industry or you really loved a show, not because they were always better quality. I’ll leave it at that.

There were also a lot of scanlation communities, which were basically fansubs but for manga. These were also of extremely variant quality, and there were a lot of rules for a very weird online translation subculture. I always kind of got the impression that most of them hated each other. A lot of these groups required IRC use, which was confusing af, and I honestly believe that’s the biggest reason why most of these ended up getting put on online manga reader sites. There were fewer of those back then.

Most anime fandom was very strongly demarcated. Most of the fandom I engaged with was on livejournal, which meant it was like...maybe 95% female. You’d get more men on forums, which is why we all fled the forums and went to LJ. lol. Trash spaces. Trash.

The whole yaoi/shounen-ai/BL situation was very different. LGBT stuff was considered more niche and still something you needed to “warn” for in most environments. For a long time, the only legit published stuff was like. FAKE and Gravitation and CLAMP and maybe Eerie Queerie or Loveless or something. So basically, it was shit. lol. (As a young teen, I was particularly attached to CLAMP/Kaori Yuki stuff. Thank god my parents never caught on.) Anyway, to get to scanlated BL works, you usually had to go to special communities/sharing circles online or figure out the prominent scanlators and follow them. Very, very little doujinshi was scanlated. Very few (English-speaking) people ventured onto pixiv. There were a lot of arguments about the differences between yaoi, shounen-ai, and BL. Don’t let anyone nowadays fool you. When I was a teen, 90% of all “yaoi fangirls” were queer, and half of that annoying sex-focused excitement was because it was the first gay sex we’d seen in any publication anywhere. It was a different time in the media landscape. BL has a lot of shitty-ass tropes, but we were basically starving in a desert. We took our Gravitation and we liked it. F/F manga was very rarely translated, and I guess that’s still the case today. There’s less of it, and I think we’ve all been trained to prioritize male sexuality. (Plus most of the shoujo-ai that got posted online was like uber-innocent schoolgirl stuff.) People make fun of “yaoi fangirls” and “fujoshi” and all that now, but I can honestly say I would have never understood my own sexuality without that subculture. Like the anime clubs were full of obnoxious little weebs, but let’s be straight about something, no pun intended. They were full of obnoxious little gay weebs. People are all about gay (western) cartoons nowadays, but when I was a teen, they were all about that anime.

Because almost all published anime/manga was in hard copy, you’d get mini congregations of fans in stores. See: hordes of manga fans sitting in the manga aisle of the book store, fans chatting with each other in...suncoast, or wherever they could find DVDs/VHS. The level of social skills in these areas was...not high. Also, a lot of fuckin creepy predatory dudes going after girls. Hooooly shit. I was so glad when they started releasing anime/manga online. Y’all livestreamers on Crunchyroll don’t know how good you have it. You used to have to deal with the fedora bros who were a good 10-20 years older than you but still following you around in stores, conventions, etc. any time you wanted to get new stuff. Like it was a legit problem.

LIKE I’M TRYING TO CONVEY HERE THAT JUST GETTING ANIME/MANGA WAS A PAIN IN THE REAR END. not as bad as the dark days when people had to physically mail each other shit, but it was still definitely a subculture and you’d definitely be thrown in with a lot of people you wouldn’t want to be around. (Similar to how things are in modern western comics fandom...)

Fandom itself was basically a tire fire. In every possible way. Like I’m nostalgic for it in some ways, because in some ways I really miss how text-based it was. There was a lot more meta and conversation, and fanfic was much better supported. Comment culture was a lot stronger and you’d become friends with people who read your work and/or people who wrote stuff you liked. But on the other side of that, there was a lot of weird fanfic gatekeeping. Sporking communities and flaming and fic rating communities were much more of a problem back then. You release stuff to crickets nowadays, which is demoralizing, but back then there was a solid chance you’d wake up to an inbox full of hate mail, especially if you wrote slash. It definitely happened to me a few times as a kid. I think they really targeted teens, too. So writing fic could be shitty. There was less fanart in American spaces, too.

I do agree that to some degree things have gone too far with the whole virtue-signaling/issuefic thing, with a lot of people yelling very loudly about things they may not always understand very well, but you gotta understand. Fandom was a hateful place in many ways back then. Sexist, racist, homophobic, you name it. Female characters are still ignored now, but they’re typically treated less horribly than they were back then. People try to be more educated about other ethnicities and sexualities and such now. You’re less likely to get bullied because you were gay. I think the big problem is that sometimes people hijack important movements to be giant dicks, and a lot of people, especially younger people, get swept up in that.

There was a very specific kind of anime badfic back then. I could write literally an entire post on that. Like god. Where do I even begin??? The bluenettes? The super kawaii fangirl nihongo? Script fic? “Tell me what to write next!” fic? lolololcrack fic? I mean, there were a lot of varieties of suck back then.

Weird subcultures. Like...really weird ones. Things got kind of cult-y relatively often. Just say no to cults.

if you want more details on anything, I’m having particularly painful flashbacks right now. ugh, the free hugs signs.

20 notes · View notes