Greets again, at long last! At this point in my life I accept that unexpected hiatuses happen and that’s okay. I could go into a long explanation, but I will put that on-hold for now. Suffice to say that the COVID-19 pandemic took priority. Several months ago, or perhaps it was late 2020 (what is time?), I made an attempt to write a new blog entry. However, my website had a mysterious error that I couldn’t wrap my head around at the time. Fast forward to now, I made a new attempt and somehow got it working again. I am that weird kind of techy person who knows more about computers in general than the average person, but I swear I’m just a tinkerer and have no formal/professional training. In terms of coding I lean more toward wiki writing, if anything.
Despite being out of commission website-wise for awhile – along with a halt on game design and development for over a year – my pursuits in archivism continued! As 2020 went on I grew to have a much larger appreciation for general archiving and preservation of various documents and materials. Personally I am still focused on video game stuffs, but it’s really telling how much has gone lost in many mediums.
I will preface by pointing out that I’m at peace with how things come and go in life – be it people, games, films, books, lifestyles. However, there’s still cultural value that gets lost. Especially here in 2021, where for the last several decades our species has been on a consecutive rush/race for the latest and greatest tech/entertainment/etc. This led to a quantity-over-quality mess in multiple industries, to the point where even the hottest stuff is forgotten in record time; let alone all the unpopular and obscure-but-interesting stuff. So, in a period where things are changing really fast, it’s the most important time to document what’s changing and why.
Story time! I started archivism on accident with Legend of Dragoon, the Playstation video game, about four years ago. Since this year I’ve begun branching out to other games, so that’s my current trajectory as far as I know. I have a mild interest in branching out beyond the video game medium as well, so I’m bundling all this into the phrasing of “legacy fandoms” to futureproof myself. I know legacy fandoms are a real concept! Before I had a single thought about preservation, there were plenty of retro communities out there for things such as old music and retro gaming.
For my part, since the more popular old stuff is already more well documented and those communities are usually organized already, I tend toward weird outliers. And this isn’t to say all legacy fandoms should suddenly rise up and get a lot of new fans. Even if new fans came, say for a movie, it doesn’t mean all the licensing would be in order to make a new film – or that it would be made well even if greenlit. So you’re kinda stuck with what exists already. Still, it’s fascinating in an almost-dumb way.
A great example of this might be the film Battleship. Whoever at Hasbro ordered this project clearly had little concept of how much of a miss the “alien invasion” angle was gonna be when loosely married to the classic board game. The film was OK but could’ve been so much better. It’s not supposed to have a lot of fans, though. This was one of several movies at the time which were ordered just to cash in on a temporary trend of alien-invasion genre films in the early 2010s; another of these films was Battle: Los Angeles. Now, with that said, there are little strokes of genius in these films sometimes.
Do any of you remember the death ball things that were shot out of the main alien vessel? They’re assembled in real-time right before launch, which is a novel concept, and then they’re launched into the air like a mortar shell. When they land on an aircraft carrier or the mainland, they start shredding through everything in their path. They clearly have strategic targets, but there’s also this weird element of whimsy to them… which fascinates me because these things are supposedly just machine, not influenced by emotion. And yet..
That hellacious machine just spun around like it was in the middle of a joyride, in-between the destruction of two military helicopters. So much personality – I love that. Definitely recommend watching the full sequence (3 minutes). These are very clearly machines, yet the scenes play out like they’re some kind of gladiator pushing through dozens of obstacles with variance and attitude. Also, just found out that these are apparently called Shredders; I’m into it. Regarding the full film: my base conclusion is that this might’ve been a much better movie if it wasn’t affiliated with a random board game.
Well then, this was super fun to share. It’s one perfectly-goofy-yet-serious example of the charm that a legacy fandom can have. It’s not just about what’s new or what’s popular. ANd the whole work doesn’t have to be great – just a piece of it. Have your own unique collection of fandoms that you feel for!
Now that I finally have this site back online I am going to focus on publishing the work I have been doing on and off for the last year. Also more blog entries. For those of you who come here mainly for my work in the Legend of Dragoon community, yes that will be one of the recurring topics! Keep in mind that I also write for Dragoon directly at legendofdragoon.org.