The Old School Otaku Lounge

This is all the fascinating crap I freaking love to hear about when it comes to these clubs and anime fandom. I'm curious if you posted this thread link on twitter to see what ani-twitter would commentate on.

No matter where you go or what your part of, it all boils down to same thing: If people start up something, there will always be some sort of drama, it's just human nature. I think if I attended a meeting about voting to have a vote on what cake to bring, that would probably be my only time ever attending that club/meeting/function.

Hey now, some of that bad fan art in Nova was yours, so take it easy there, pardnur.

Recall that Derek originally wanted to run the EDC like some of the Star Trek 'Starfleet' fanclubs, with clubs being 'ships' and 'ship class' being a function of how many members and so on. And god help me I helped with some of that for no other reason than to try and inject some sensibility into the whole thing. I imagine to Stukey that was just a living nightmare of chaos or some such.

I still have this 30+page 'manual' about the EDC that I strove mightily to pare down, based mainly on crap that happened in my own home Star Trek club. My thought was that if the rules aren't basically something that fit on one page and are mainly common sense (which with fans, sometimes you DO have to explain common sense, ya? ) you're working too hard at something that's meant to be fun.

Yes, my Star Trek club also succumbed to the 'have to have a vote to see about having a vote' nonsense.

(aside: I say "My Star Trek club" but I didn't start it, others did. I just ran it for a time, then was 'influential' for a bit later, and during my beneficial and just reign it did more and had more fun than any time after. *ahem* or so it seems to me )

The problem that Stukey had, to my mind, he sought to coerce or otherwise force people to contribute, to participate, to generate content. You can't do that with fans, even moreso with anime fans. I think my views of the breakdown of a generic club is known, how a very few are the actual 'producers', a number slightly larger are (to put it baldly) useful with minimal direction, a number slightly larger are useful with constant direction and the vast majority just want to 'eat the bread'. This is, of course, a terrible and horrible view and just about Marxist in nature but I can't get around the truth of it based on constant experience.

The base of it is, you cannot expect EVERYONE to have a creative spark AND the will AND the ability to enable it.

Consider the core difference between Star Trek and any anime. You can watch an episode, you can make notes, you can share observations. An anime show, it's in that funny Japperknees moontalk. MAYBE if you're lucky you've stumbled on something that tells you the name of the show, you might have even figured out some of the character names and on the whole you have a decent idea that the story is "these are the good guys, their job is to stop the bad guys", right? So, if that's the extent of your knowledge, how can you even attempt to write ANYTHING more than "In this episode, the good guys got a new weapon that really blows up a lot of stuff! The bad guys are worried about it" ?

Space Fanzine Yamato only worked because Ardith knew stuff and could read stuff. If I had not met her then, well, I probably wouldn't be here now.

DKop wrote:This is all the fascinating crap I freaking love to hear about when it comes to these clubs and anime fandom. I'm curious if you posted this thread link on twitter to see what ani-twitter would commentate on.

No matter where you go or what your part of, it all boils down to same thing: If people start up something, there will always be some sort of drama, it's just human nature. I think if I attended a meeting about voting to have a vote on what cake to bring, that would probably be my only time ever attending that club/meeting/function.

And of course this is true. I've put it thus: "It's human nature to seek out others of a similar mind, but once that group forms, two things happen. 1. Someone rises who thinks they can do better leadership than the leader and thus works to undermine the leader to the determent of the group and 2. people within the group (often but not always tied to example1) seek to find ways to exclude, both within (cliques) and without(no new members)"

The problem is this: At the core, an anime fan club exists because somebody wants to share this cool thing with others. It can't last long because, frankly, one person or a small group just gets plain tired of doing ALL the work. Arrange the meeting place. secure the TV and VCR. lug the tapes. clean up the damn place after everyone leaves. lug all the crap back home. Deal with the people demanding you copy stuff for them. MAYBE produce some kind of newsletter. Repeat.

I managed to talk myself out of having to do any of that. I was perfectly happy to have a 'traveling roadshow' at various nearby cons. When I didn't want to do it, I just chased everyone out, closed the room door and got some food and did other things. It was glorious.

I'm really glad I got to ask Derek questions about the beginning of the EDC for that article, especially considering he isn't around any more. I'd suspected that he had patterned the military organization from the similarly-organized Star Trek clubs, but I didn't know that he got into fandom thanks to the "flight leader" in his high school Air Force JROTC.

The local Star Trek club in Atlanta was (and still is as far as I know), of course, based around the premise of being a Federation starship. There was another club in Atlanta that was a splinter faction of this group, I believe, and THEIR bright idea was that they would put all the fan clubs in town under their benevolent leadership, and instead of space ships, the different clubs would be "planets" in their "galaxy". A lot of time was spent world-building the galaxy we'd all be operating in (I believe it was called "Nebadon") and the rules and regulations that our anime club would have to follow in order to enjoy being a part of it. They weren't very happy when we said "no thanks."

Derek liked fiddling around with organizations and charts and that kind of thing. I think the EDC got a lot bigger and attracted a lot more interest than he was comfortable with; he just wanted to fiddle around with his fan fiction and his very specific vision of Star Blazers, and he wasn't really up for running a national club or publishing art and articles about Japanese animation that wasn't Star Blazers. When his relationship with Meri ended and he left the EDC, I could not understand why he'd walk away from what I thought was a great club that was doing great things at the center of anime fandom for all I knew. (NOT the case, but again, what did I know?)

But he knew himself well enough to see that there was no way he was going to be able to run that kind of EDC, and I respect his decision and his self-awareness. I wish more fans would learn to walk away from things they don't want to do.

SteveH wrote:
And of course this is true. I've put it thus: "It's human nature to seek out others of a similar mind, but once that group forms, two things happen. 1. Someone rises who thinks they can do better leadership than the leader and thus works to undermine the leader to the determent of the group and 2. people within the group (often but not always tied to example1) seek to find ways to exclude, both within (cliques) and without(no new members)"

Well, that couldn't be more parallel to the christian religion and why one religion has several denominations and churches in a 10 mile radius in any major southern town. I would know, ive grown up in both anime fandom and christianity most of life (the latter being my whole life). I had an asian friend ask me why there are so many churches based off the same belief, and joked how churches will start because they cant agree if Moses stepped off the Arc with his left or right foot. I laughed at his comment and couldn't help but to agree, because coming from his Buddhist background I can see his side on how ridiculous that is. It's not always as ridiculous as my example, but sometimes out of religious bitterness churches do form. How long and how impactful they are on their community, that's a different case.

I couldn't help but to see some similarities in your statement. I guess the anime club equivilent would be if Wildstar shot the wave motion gun with his left or right hand, and whoever agreed with what started that fanclub.

Derek was interested in Star Blazers more than he was interested in Space Battleship Yamato, and as he explained to to me, that meant he was going to stick with the American name changes and the American story edits. As far as he was concerned, Sgt. Knox really did get out behind everybody when they blew up the Comet Empire, those really were robot tanks, etc., and that's the canon he set his fan fiction universe in. He wasn't really concerned if other people followed that canon or not, unless they wanted to write fan fiction stories that intersected with his fan fiction.

That mindset really didn't spill over into fandom as a whole, but I did meet Battle of The Planets fans who were Battle Of The Planets fans and not Gatchaman fans, and I think we've all encountered Robotech fans who weren't that interested in Macross, Southern Cross, or Mospeada. As weird as that sounds.

davemerrill wrote:Derek was interested in Star Blazers more than he was interested in Space Battleship Yamato, and as he explained to to me, that meant he was going to stick with the American name changes and the American story edits. As far as he was concerned, Sgt. Knox really did get out behind everybody when they blew up the Comet Empire, those really were robot tanks, etc., and that's the canon he set his fan fiction universe in. He wasn't really concerned if other people followed that canon or not, unless they wanted to write fan fiction stories that intersected with his fan fiction.

That mindset really didn't spill over into fandom as a whole, but I did meet Battle of The Planets fans who were Battle Of The Planets fans and not Gatchaman fans, and I think we've all encountered Robotech fans who weren't that interested in Macross, Southern Cross, or Mospeada. As weird as that sounds.

But of course if one maintains that Star Blazers is the 'true' telling of the story, then Sasha doesn't even exist and we both know how important she was to Derek.

What I've found interesting, and it's a question I can never get answered, to my eyes it really looks like Yamato 2199 was in some part, in some way, influenced or informed by Star Blazers. Slight changes in some character interaction (compared to original Yamato), the introduction of honest-to-gnu robot tanks (or tanks piloted by robots) and a few other things, including characters that died in Yamato but live in Yamato 2199.

It makes me wonder if the upcoming Yamato 2202 is going to have 'Knox' get out right behind 'Wildstar' 'for reals'.

Derek's retcon for inserting Sasha into the SB universe was that her name would be "Astra" (named after Starsha's sister, of course), but I think even he realized this was going to be confusing for anyone not immersed in his own particular vision.

Like everybody else, his views likely changed over time, and I think by the 90s when he was writing the "Weird APA" stories with Ken Mayes, the "SB ONLY" view may not have been so important in his eyes.

I can't help but see the android soldiers in 2199 to be direct callbacks to Star Blazers.

davemerrill wrote:Derek's retcon for inserting Sasha into the SB universe was that her name would be "Astra" (named after Starsha's sister, of course), but I think even he realized this was going to be confusing for anyone not immersed in his own particular vision.

Like everybody else, his views likely changed over time, and I think by the 90s when he was writing the "Weird APA" stories with Ken Mayes, the "SB ONLY" view may not have been so important in his eyes.

I can't help but see the android soldiers in 2199 to be direct callbacks to Star Blazers.

Of course there were the androids in Arrivederci, Yamato as well but they were kinda goofy. But the whole battle around the Yukekaze, yeah, "It's a robot tank!!" *pew pew pew*.

Another moment, to my mind, is right in the first episode, where in Original Yamato Mamoru Kodai is angry at Okita for running away, shouting about dying for Earth. Star Blazers made his stand more about "we'll cover you to make sure you can get away" and that's the way 2199 rolled.

I think Izubuchi was laying out a REALLY deep game for the revival Yamato project, I hope the new director keeps that in mind.

Steve

Maybe interesting, Fred Patten's response to Sean Leonard's theory about why the C/FO fell apart from Leonard's 2003 papers "Progress Against the Law: Fan Distribution, Copyright, and the Explosive Growth of Japanese Animation" and "Celebrating Two Decades of Unlawful Progress: Fan Distribution, Proselytization Commons, and the Explosive Growth of Japanese Animation":

Fred Patten wrote:In 1989 a power struggle ensued at the very top of the C/FO. Patten felt that he should step down for the organization and for anime to move to the next level. Many accused Patten of disloyalty because he began to write articles for general magazines.72 Patten reasoned that if the purpose of his fan involvement was to proselytize anime and make it better known in America, it would be certainly advantageous to publish his work in a popular culture magazine instead of a club zine.

In other words, the high priest of the closed proselytization commons recognized the value of an open one, but the custodians of the closed commons branded him a freethinking traitor.

Patten stepped down amidst the fury, but he did not set up a clear line of succession. In the infighting that resulted, new leaders came to power who wanted to change C/FO operations to fit their own images. (pg. 21)

I began writing articles about anime for general magazines around 1980, not as late as 1989, and had pretty much separated myself from the fan politics within the club by 1986; and I was never the club's president so it was not up to me to "set up a clear line of succession". I was sorry to see the C/FO tear itself apart, but not to the extent of giving up my professional anime writing to try to take the club away from the petty dictators who were throwing out any members they didn't like, and to persuade the ex-members who were resigning in disgust to come back. Anyhow, it is interesting to find out after four years what happened to that November 2003 telephone interview. I don't believe that I have ever been mentioned in a law review before.

(http://www.kayshapero.net/fredpatten/ap ... 02207.html)