State of the Fandom (AKA "where is everyone?")

Maybe the word fandom is a bit... controversial, I'll admit. But I don't know a better umbrella term to refer to the OYP community + the google group + pixiv + the Japanese community + the rest...

Anyways, some backstory. I've been around since... man, 2009? My attention to the community has been sporadic to say the least, but I was always there consuming material. I wrote a few stories under various monikers, even got interested in drawing (of course it never got anywhere), the whole nine yards. The community was more active back there - at least in the yufanfics Google Groups thingy people posted much more often. Now I'm writing more stories, but is there anyone left to read them?

It's natural to assume that interest for this tapered off a while ago... but is it completely dead? Nobody's in the IRC channel (although I never remember it being precisely full of people), and while OYP gets a few images per day at most, posts in here are scarce (granted, I never really visited here). My question is, I guess, is the Western Yukkuri "fandom" dead? I'd say that no, there are a few people here -- but where do you get material, aside from pixiv? Or is it mostly just pixiv? Is interest for Yukkuris more alive in Japan than in here, while it was always just a handful of us?

I see that there were pixiv chats regularly. Man, I missed those completely! Are those still happening? How many of you are there?

Sorry if this comes off as a bit spammy. I guess I just want to contribute and I'm curious if there's still something we can still call a "community", whether here or in Japan.

I'm still actively writing my story (the one you see in six chapters -- funny you posted this an HOUR before I gave a preview to my chapter).

I want to look into drawing -- I really feel this site needs more FF/cute pictures to balance out all the darkness. It's not that I don't appreciate the art, but a LOT of it is just recycled situations and themes. Like, we get it. They're stupid and survival is impossible, and mister human's appearance means everyone's gonna die now.

I just feel like any of the 'focus on non-violent and/or cute/family situations' part of the fandom is 99.9% dead.

I check the site every couple of days, but personally I've gotten so tired of nothing but abyuse comics that I'm losing interest. I get that nicehead comics can be boring, but the only artists still churning out work have become so focused on abyuse, even nicehead abyuse, that I just don't enjoy the stuff as much as I used to.

e: The /jp/ thread has even started dying (it barely escapes page 10 death almost daily) now that the Storyfriends there have all disappeared. For a few months last year there were two or three anons churning out some fantastic choose-your-adventure stories, but the last couple took it too easy and the stories were never finished.

pixiv Chat sessions are still happening weekly, but with a different host. Changes in work schedule forced the previous to step down, so I volunteered to take his place as host.

Full disclosure, I've actually -really- enjoyed my story thus far.

I seriously never foresaw it expanding so much, into so many avenues. It's insane. It's literally been writing itself as of late, branching off in every direction.

Seriously. I never imagined in the beginning that it'd turn into something so big and elaborate.

Yukkuris in general has always been a niche interest community within the touhou community. It started as a meme for fucks sake.

Quite honestly surprised there's still content going around. The japanese community has also shrunk noticeably, but I think overall the touhou circles has shrunken a lot. (directly proportional to kancolle's growth??? who knows...)

I'm sure a lot of people have turned form active posting to just lurking, as there's not much to discuss and people have lives to attend to.

I think it's a lot of lurking, but I think it has a lot to do with a stale topic.

Repetition is the bane of creativity.

BTW, if I may hijack for a second, kind of glad you (sort-of) banned that guy and removed his link.

I mean, I know what it's all about, it just seems... silly to plug his stories like that. I mean, why not just, like... "Hey! Finished it, come read it!"

My character in my story looks at abyusers as mentally ill. I don't make it the selling point. :P

Main problem is that the only part of the fandom that moves at speed is the Anko shorts that are really varied, abuse, family friendly and Danogoat content. Comics take time to made and translate, and games, we known.

Main problem is the lack of ability to see the ankos and translate them.

About Touhou, is healthy several mangas coming, games every year, and is still a heavy weight in comic conventions. Kantai still needs to pass the test of time.

I hang around once in a while. There really hasn't been a whole lot of new material being circulated to keep much of a fandom going. From what I've seen, most people just kind of drop off after a while.

To be honest, I find that there's only a handful of content creators:

Fantastic artist, awful writer
Cute artist, abyuse addict
Decent art, great writing, DAAAAAAAAAAAARK stories
Random cute picture
Random abyuse picture
Random display of yukkuri stupidity

Hitosura said:

BTW, if I may hijack for a second, kind of glad you (sort-of) banned that guy and removed his link.

Funny because earlier in the evening, Fly mentioned to me that he was gonna ban the guy for trolling and I told him not to. Then I got home and changed my mind after looking at his post history and realized he hasn't done anything other than plug his stories in the past year.

More than a few people have tried to be accommodating and offer him feedback despite his obvious attempts at trolling, but after 2-3 rounds of him ignoring everything to say "HURR HURR ABYUSERS ARE INSANE SICK PEOPLE HURRR DERP here read my story" I've come to the conclusion he's just trolling to get people to read his story. Kinda like a buzzfeed article: "YOU WON'T BELIEVE HOW THESE ABYUSERS ARE PROTRAYED IN THIS STORY! CLICK HERE NOW!" Then the story actually has very little to do with yukkuris or abyusers, and is full of smash characters that are indistinguishable from one another if you replace the names with "he said" and "she said". There's plenty of other anti-abuse works that I've read that are far harsher on abyusers and I've enjoyed them greatly because they were well written, had coherent storylines and identifiable characters/villains. You know, good stories. Things he could actually create himself if he listened to feedback instead of getting butthurt and thinking it's all the abyusers ganging up on him.

He thinks people are all upset that he's portraying abusers in a bad light when in reality, his stories are just not very good and incoherent. They're boring to read and the characters uninteresting and indistinguishable from one another and because of that nobody really cares about his writing.

If it looks like Mario, says it's Mario but doesn't do anything Mario-like or behave like your favorite Nintendo plumber, is it really still Mario?

Reality is most people just don't care.

poweryoga said:
If it looks like Mario, says it's Mario but doesn't do anything Mario-like or behave like your favorite Nintendo plumber, is it really still Mario?

Except (canon) Mario doesn't talk. -coughs-

Heh.

Yeah, I tried to read one of his stories, but was completely pulled out. Couldn't get into it.

I kind of caught that from him -- it was trolling in order to draw attention and do clickbait.

Even if Mario doesn't talk, you can still create a lot of personality based on some things that he would do. That's like middle school writing 101: make a personality for your guy. He doesn't have to be Holden Caulfield or George and Lennie, but he doesn't need to sound like Toyota Voiceover Man along with every other character.

Or do what I do:

Infer as if the character knows what the non-speaking one is saying.

Kind of like some of us (me) do with our pets. xD

I was thinking about drawing up a story that is more of a series. One of my favorite things is seeing yukkuri just existing and striving without Mr. Human there to murder them all for no apparent reason. Maybe something that shows their life in different settings. Woodlands, pastures, mountains, warmer climates, colder climates, living with and without dosus, individual families, etc. I think it would be pretty interesting and give OYP a break from

Cute

Murder/Yukkuri Gore
Stupidty
Gore
Cute
Gore
Gore
Gore with a storyline
etc

Are these stories going to be tied together via overarching plot or will they be standalone? We definitely need some more FF or at least a break from abyuse oriented stuff.

exitstrategy said:

Are these stories going to be tied together via overarching plot or will they be standalone? We definitely need some more FF or at least a break from abyuse oriented stuff.

Second.

At least stuff that doesn't always end in, "everyone dies."

I'd love to see humans take more of a passive role, rather than just being the death flag.

I thought about writing a story without involving senseless abuse or yukkuri stupidity. However, other projects and things beyond my control have kept me from working on it.

there will always be someone to read what you write or see your art, or hear your ideas that you post.

community will continue as as long as new content continues

Well I'm back for now. My problem is my attention span and severe ADHD. Those stories I started never got finished cuz something shiny flew by. Might get back to them at some point soon but no promises. Also gonna try my hand at some MS Paint Yu work...might make a comic. Dunno, haven't thought that far and don't know if I'll enjoy it.