Yesterday marked Legend of Dragoon’s 25th anniversary. Well, the original release in Japan. For folks in North America that’ll be June 2025, but I felt it was important to start celebrations now. Therefore, I created Dragoon Fest – a digital long-form festival spanning many weeks. The premise is to have fans celebrating worldwide: reminiscing, participating in activities, et cetera. Various community projects will be featured, and there will be brand new reveals as well.
Originally, I planned to have more things happen on the day of, but between real life and a non-cooperative brain I was not able to meet my goals. To be fair to myself, I was setting the bar way too high for one person. I projected that we would have more help, but our volunteer roster unexpectedly shrunk. Part of me is sad, but I’m not giving up yet. I pivoted the plan, so that yesterday acted as the “launch” event. Then, every week there will be at least one significant event, activity, reveal, or such. Though, for today I just want to reflect on my journey with the fandom.
I have said in passing that I never saw myself being so involved in the game or its fandom. I liked LoD as a kid, and into my 20s I knew I’d keep a long-term interest… but archivism? Community organizing? Web services, and dozens of other roles in the last seven years? I would have a hard time believing it. I think I ended up helping so much because A. there was demand, and B. no one was filling that demand. In many regards. So I gravitated into operations and other parent-level stuff – which made it easier to facilitate the “regular” tasks and projects I was building up.
Normally I would tell you that my home turf is lore and archiving, but I’m no longer certain that’s true. Looking back, my main role hasn’t been any specific task or field in the traditional sense, but rather something like the art of kintsugi: A Japanese term where broken pottery is repaired by patching its cracks or pieces with lacquered gold. I’ve grown into so many assorted roles in the LoD fandom: research, archiving, regular website, wiki, an entire Discord server, loremastery, social media moderation, project curator, video production, livestreaming, podcasting, graphic design, writing news articles, fandom unification, and so much more. If there was a need and I was capable or skilled, I picked it up.
Then again, it sorta feels like I’ve become a specialist in at least 30% of the fields I’ve covered for LoD. It shouldn’t be the case considering how large our fandom is, but we have so few loremasters and I’m still the only archivist spanning seven years active. It’s mega weird. In any event, I gained a ton of assorted skills I can re-use for any purpose; real life, other games/shows/films I enjoy, et cetera. As I’ve said before, doing stuff for LoD has been my life’s work thus far.
Lately some people have been asking what’s next for the LoD fandom, and what’s next for me. For the first question: More of what’s happening already, at a larger scale I suppose. Severed Chains will keep getting better and better with more QoL, mods, and other capabilities. Fans will continue making fun content, from simple fanart to a custom-animated music video using LoD’s character models (This one is a total gem). Community projects, events.. I predict it will all keep leveling up. I always say we’re living proof of how a legacy fandom isn’t limited to just surviving – with a little TLC it can thrive.
As for me, I started expanding beyond Dragoon last year pretty substantially. For example, I did some work to help the Hydro Thunder community enjoy the PC release a bit more; and gave them a new website in a bid to re-grow the fandom bit by bit. Outside of games, regular readers will be aware of my ongoing tinkering in other fields – sometimes new ones like audio dramas.
I also keep teetering on the edge of starting an indie studio that makes a range of things from games to short films. I’m also writing my LoD book. To add something I haven’t mentioned before: I started writing a series of premises for short stories. I have a strong feeling that this may be a hidden specialty of mine – will have to write a few of them out and see if I have what it takes. If I do, I’d love to turn those stories into a.. what is the term? Anthology book?
I’ve come a long way, starting out as just another LoD fan on a random web forum. And yet, that first username ended up being so prophetic: “Ultimate Dragoon Fan”.
Happy Dragoon Fest, to all the LoD fans who read my little blog.
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