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[Arashi_Leonhart]

I do too lets start a clique within this forum club.

[Rafflesiac]

I've bought volumes of SAO.

I'll stop once Alicization comes out.

[Prix with a Silent X]

I disagree with this. I have read literally no supplemental material and haven't even read/watched zero, and people don't really give me a hard time about it.

You have been here for a long time, though. No offense and I believe you, but that definitely makes a difference.

The base requirement for participating in TM conversations is having read, or even watched, the source material. Everything else you can find out in the process of posting and discussion, and even that isn't necessary unless you plan on debating lore or mechanics or powerlevels. To be honest I kinda dislike referring people to the big document in the OP for that reason; everything in it is taken from actual discussions, not some obscure tome privy to only a few which was quoted for the occasion. Learning something through experience is better than looking it up at the big compendium.

This is a valid argument which I have never argued with. I had watched UBW and Zero, had plans and hopes of reading the Fate VN, and hopefully learning more about Tsukihime so I could make a decision about trying to read it when I came here. I've also read other things, but I'm not going to give you my receipt at the moment beacuse that is beside the point. While what you are saying is true in theory, it is completely false in practice because of what you mentioned with regard to people being directed to the big document in the OP. A person who has been here for a while and "proven" themselves can go and ask a question about something they are confused about or have simply forgotten without slogging through the supplemental material. However, a new fan who is just getting used to the fandom, including a person who has read the supplemental material as recommended, is not welcome to do that.

I would honestly say the forum always supported new lurkers who slowly became a user. I was one of them. I lurked the forum for 7 months or so before I joined. I know some people who claimed they lurked a year.

But yes, I would say we are more vehement in telling people to read more instead of just answering the fucking question.

The forum has always been divided, and that makes it fun the longer your here as you become familiar with who goes to certain boards, and then randomly seeing someone who doesn't visit your board appearing and you go 'who is this guy again'.

I lurked for a while, then I joined and continued to lurk, before I finally decided to try and make a post. It was a process that took several months, and I was not a regular visitor to the site until a while after that. I agree that it is worth looking into a community before you join it when that community is supposed to be based around discussion. I was not around for a full year or something like that, but I did try to do my due diligence, and I have honestly refrained from posting certain things until I have completed certain readings I have been doing in the time since I even knew they existed. The trouble with the idea that one is supposed to have near-complete fandom literacy before even joining a website about something with a broad universe including multiple series like Type Moon is that often a person may see one or two component parts of that universe and, for a time, not realize that there is anymore to be seen. Especially someone who does not know Japanese, like myself, might have this issue. Furthermore, there is the unreliability of the Type Moon wiki that is often discussed here. The reason I discovered BL was not because I had done the requisite studying to know exactly what to look for with 'nrvnqsr,' even though I had been informed about its significance before I showed up. The reason I came to BL was because I was looking to see if anywhere in the fandom as a whole someone had done any translations of Case Files. Now, on the forum as a whole, this seems to be one of the most generally-disliked titles in terms of Type Moon direction, and so I would imagine that the people who are arguing for "basic literacy" of the fandom would, in fact, discount that as being part of it.

That is what I meant when I said "Pretentious Gatekeepers" before. It is entirely up to an individual whether or not they enjoy the direction a broad universe like this is taking when they have been a fan of it long enough for it to develop a different direction. I have no problem with people who prefer vanilla Melty, Tsukihime, Fate, whatever, but this general disdain for people who find this because they liked one of the anime and want to know more is both pervasive and gross. It is a joke to think that any of these people want to welcome any kind of newcomer except someone who has been a fan since pre-2011 and just missed the site's existence.

You are free to contribute to every thread. If you feel that someone has insulted you, report them. If you think that the atmosphere in some threads is too acidic, start a thread about it. However if you misjudge some comment and then blast off berating someone from the high horse, I'll start quoting Matthew.

I'm not really sure what you are suggesting about starting a thread about a particular thread being "too acidic" when virtually all of the threads that are actually on-topic have some element of this. Some are worse than others, granted. However, to pretend that everything I have said on this topic today was about Spinach's "joke" is a misrepresentation of what I have said. I was responding in different parts to different people, so I have not "misjudged some comment" and then started to berate someone on that basis. Spinach has not been the focus of my discussion since I spoke directly to him last. My response to him about "being mean" was intended as a light call for some civility, but I can see that in some ways this is well past the point of that now.

Because I don't really feel like writing an I think necessary monologue here, I have made a blog post that responds to the attitude expressed here, in this thread, and in a certain portion of the discord chat that spawned from a direct linking of my post here.

Think of it like this. You're a freshman at school. You decide you like anime. There's an anime club that runs at your school. You know nobody there. You walk in, and the first thing you do is announce loudly, at the front, "Sword Art Online is the best show ever made!" Naturally, you're going to get crap for it. Or you walk in and the first thing you hear is some guy up front with a recently-shaved neckbeard with a glowing green nametag go "Freshmen are the wrost, they should totally go commit sudoku!" and instantly decide he's being serious since obviously it was not like there was a time he was a freshy or anything, also isn't it "seppuku"?

Instead, you go in, you introduce yourself quietly to one or two people. You listen in, quietly attending a couple of days. You realize the green guy always with something that looks suspiciously like weed is in fact the team clown and was being a dumbass sarcastic. You might even have picked up on other anime recommendations that make you realize, oh, SAO is not the BEST THING EVER, although you do find a couple of people who obviously enjoy it. You hang out with them, as it is a nice, comfortable place to begin. Congratulations, you have begun integration into the larger whole like everybody else that's come through those doors. In the future, it'll certainly be easier to become one of the obsessive ones up front that know anime inside out and watch to the detriment of the rest of their lives, but it's also cool if you just hang out in the back with the people who only like the popular shows that crop up a couple times a year.

tl;dr: Spinach a shit and everyone knows it.

Honestly, thank you for this. I suspect that being on BL is going to suck for me because of my blog post, if anyone reads it, but I really appreciate that you took the time to respond in this way. It is certainly a lot better than I've felt about the nature of being here in spite the attitudes I discussed in it than I've felt in a few weeks. I have been trying to grit my teeth, risk hazing where it might be 'beneficial' to me as a fan, and just realize that there is a certain joking rudeness culture that is meant in good fun here. But this is exhausting and I'm sick of it.

No amount of making the front page better, in my opinion, will improve until it stops being appropriate and expected to haze, bully, and be rude when there is not a reasonable understanding that it is a joke between genuinely friendly people.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

The thing is, which my post is somewhat supposed to illustrate, is that for the most part, the "hazing" going on is mostly to people that sort of bull rush into things without looking first. Hilariously enough, someone like Christemo was a good example, as when he started he would come in and say things like he was an expert and, naturally, got shot down. A lot. Because he was posting these expert things in threads where people who know better post.

If you go into GD's regular threads like Questions or Create-a-Servant and start talking like an expert, people are going to nail you for any wrong info. If you go into 7th and don't realize that 100% shitposting and not-so-secret homoerotic crushes on other members is the norm, you're going to be very lost in sarcasm and strange flirting. Most people that become regular posters had the presence of mind to lurk and take a look around, get a feel for a place, and even figure out whether they want to be around the content offered first before they decide to take the plunge. Honestly, that's what most people do in all social situations to a greater or lesser degree. I really wouldn't advise anyone who just got into the Game of Thrones tv series to go onto a GRRM/Song of Ice and Fire community and start immediately talking like they've always been there, or for someone who just started to like watching a baseball on tv to go to a pro team event and participate in a trivia contest about statistics.

A lot of the really caustic stuff we tend to have is reserved for that kind of attitude, which, while maybe not forgivable, makes sense. If you're going to be thick-headed enough to dive headlong into the pool with terrible form, you're just going to have to deal with the fact that the water smacks you in the face first. Most people just start by wading in with their feet. A lurker who even just takes a glance around for a week is going to probably pick up on

1) Read the source material
2) Don't wiki, wiki bad
3) FGO is our new overlord

or such. Naturally, when someone then starts asking questions in the questions thread and goes "So, I heard that Alter means evil or something, I read it on the wiki, who is this Okita Alter everyone is talking about?" we're probably going to give them shit since that question could be solved by reading FSN, not going on the wiki, and knowing that FGO is currently doing a Kara no Kyoukai crossover.

The deeper lore stuff, people probably aren't gonna give you crap for not knowing if you're new. They'll even occasionally point to places where you can find out about it. Fanfiction may be an exception: if you plan on writing about stuff in this setting and you go to the forum where a lot of hardcore fans are, chances are if you don't pay at least some deeper lore attention then people are going to call you out for writing on a setting you don't actually know about. Would you expect any different if you wrote a Star Wars fanfiction after having only seen the latest movie and then going onto a hardcore fan community and passing it off there?

tl;dr: I don't think there's a ton of overly inappropriate hazing or whatever that goes on since a good chunk of it goes to things that could be solved if people use a slight bit of their own brainpower and initiative. And a frontpage that had something on it might be a resource readily available for people with a slight bit of brainpower or initiative can use to even further the tools they have to be a part of the community.

tl;dr 2: Spinach is a shit still.

[Strife ❤️]

Why would I read Seika's doc, it's just a repository of things I already know, compiled for filthy secondaries and bottomfeeders who don't memorize extra material books or browse GD all day.

Uhm, could you stop being constantly mean? Please.

I don't think he's being serious

[Spinach]

Do you think I'd do that? Just post sarcastically on BL?

[Prix with a Silent X]

I don't think he's being serious

I knew there was a very high probability of that, and at the time I was gently being playful about maybe not being as harsh when I am already really constantly insecure about my status as a "new fan." But that really, abundantly clearly, doesn't matter now.

[You]

Do you think I'd do that? Just post sarcastically on BL?

yes because you're a confirmed sociopath.

[mewarmo990]

I am already really constantly insecure about my status as a "new fan."

why

What if I told you it does not reflect poorly on your character in any way to not know every in-depth detail of an obscure nerd IP

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I think the fact that you feel unwelcome has less to do with forum culture and more with the fact that you somehow didn't recognize Spinach and Mcjon's comments as extremely obvious absurd jokes.

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Maybe it speaks to a wider pattern of misinterpretation on your part.

[JetKinen]

I know i'm probably late to it, but how do you even access the front page through the forum?

[SeiKeo]

You actually can't, you have to enter the URL manually.

[Spinach]

Not true, in the bottom right of the forum there's a link to it.

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[SeiKeo]

Weird

[Arashi_Leonhart]

no wonder they kicked you out of modding, you can't even basic forum features

[SeiKeo]

Front page is an advanced feature

[Marmadillo]

However, to pretend that everything I have said on this topic today was about Spinach's "joke" is a misrepresentation of what I have said.

That's exactly it. It wasn't "about" Spinach's (or McJon's) joke. You just used it to air your grievance, and you did that on people who didn't deserve it. That was my problem.

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It's too hard to find the front page, in fact it's nearly impossible to get there if you don't know about it.

I didn't even know about it until Sheep.

[ZidanReign]

Jesus the front page. I thought that disappeared, but I guess I never really tried to find it again.

It's weird to see it after so long since I dove head first into the forum registering with no forethought, with only the F/SN VN under my belt at the time from my old junker computer and only maybe a few days of lurking the FF sub-forum.

I don't remember how I got even linked there now that I try to think about it. It sure wasn't Google.

But I had it bookmarked for the longest time as my way into the forum.

[Five_X]

Sometimes I accidentally go there. It's a blast from the past.

[aldeayeah]

re:topic I like the monthly/bi-monthly digest idea. Lump together the translation updates, TM news ranging from new manga chapters and product release dates to figmas and Nasu's blog entries, and fill in the gaps with Grand Order and you should have a decent amount of material.

The thing is that, without post tagging features or similar, this becomes a totally manual affair and frankly, quite a chore. That's why I advocated for a team of digesters that tagged the important/informative posts, then one person could wrap them all together into the digest updates.

Dunno who else'd be up for it, but I'm OK with volunteering as long as such tools are there.

the energy one would spent writing a TYPE-MOON LORE AS TRANSCRIBED IN THE ANNALS OF THE BEAST'S LAIR article series would be much better spent editing articles on the bl wiki hint hint nudge nudge strangle

IMO it's only worth doing it if it's a low-effort initiative. Not redacting an actual article, more like making a bullet list of links. Avoids the broken telephone issue, too.

[Petrikow]

yeah, tagging posts and such sounds easy and good

you could have some people per major sub-forum division just tag posts that look good and then have a few people compile those links at the end of each month/each second month and perhaps just add a little commentary or a few notes on the content

doesnt really have to be much more than that