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Won't somebody PLEASE think of the FANDOMS? Jul. 23rd, 2008 @ 08:16 pm
You know, nobody's really stopped to explain why it's such a harrowing ordeal to have your real name linked to your fannish endeavors, only that it's the worst thing ever and it must be stopped.

Granted, I use my actual real name all over the place, and I've never had a problem with it.  So assume I need to have it explained to me, eh?

ETA: [info]mindset has assured me everyone has missed my point, so let me clarify.  I'm not arguing that there can't be consequences to having your online activities linked to your real-world life.  (On the contrary, lots of online activities can get you in trouble in the real world, and fanfic hardly has the patent on that.)

However, it seems to me that "fandom" is hysterically arguing the other extreme: that once you're outed, you absolutely must be doomed and it's only a matter of time before you lose your job and get shunned by society for being a nerd.  This is what I take issue with.  Not that outing someone who doesn't want to be outed is a jerky thing to do, but that outing someone is a guaranteed fate worse than death.

May. 25th, 2008 @ 01:20 am

I was surprised to see this comment in the Adam Savage wank, and then more surprised when I saw who wrote it.

Honestly, if you've never seen someone pose like that before on the Net, you've lived a very sheltered life.

Now, granted, I would expect 98% of Fandom_Wank would watch a lot of gay porn, so he does have a point.  However, use of the term "sheltered life" implies that the sheltering of one's life from a given experience is a negative, almost tragic thing.  Like seeing a guy spread his asscheeks is something everyone ought to do at least once.

I also want to note how relatively easy it's been for me in the past thirteen years to not see common poses in gay male porn.  And also once again Szulczewski cannot impart any information without trying to impress people with his pedantic expertise on the given subject.  The subject in this case being gay male porn, apparently.

I don't know why this is creeping me out.  I have friends who enjoy gay male porn.  I guess I'm worried he's gonna start promising to wear a condom for me now.

May. 8th, 2008 @ 04:50 pm
OK, since I was confused, I did some very thorough research and determined what it is Starblade is so pissed off about in this post.  Working from his profiles on FurAffinity and Encyclopedia Dramatica, I have gathered that he is envious of Palshife and has a crush on WhiteFireTyger, so this screenshot of Palshife declining Tyger's eager advances has driven him into his furious, compare-Ayn-Rand-to-Jesus state.  See, he wants something that his rival can easily have but doesn't appreciate.  (I feel like this happened in a Disney movie once.)  Anyway, I'm glad I solved that mystery.

Also I really want to thank [info]white_serpent for the best wank report I've seen in months.

Harry Potter: Bringing Stupidity Around The World Apr. 29th, 2008 @ 05:06 pm
All the way from Galilee, according to a Hasidim speaking to a reporter with Time.com: "Almost anything you need to know about Jews, you can learn from Harry Potter."  Uh huh.

I figured this would be some sort of Kaballah thing or maybe some thoughts on how the wizarding world is sort of isolated from general society by cultural practices which could arguably be called a religion.  And I could accept the metaphor up to that point.  But the fan, Adam Melech, continues to argue that "Israel's wizards are engaged in a kind of invisible spiritual warfare (just like in Rowling's books) that most muggles can't even see, much less understand."  I suppose that must be true, in that I have no idea what he's talking about.

Melech calls the reporter, Nathan Thornburgh, a mudblood because he's not Jewish enough.  I like how one time I called Hermione a "mudblood" in the wiki and someone edited it to "muggleborn" (because OMG IMAGINARY PEOPLE MIGHT BE OFFENDED!) but Hasidim Harry Potter fan here can actually call real people that based on real race, creed, or color.  Don't be sad, Nathan, we can't all be special and fight God's invisible magic war.  You know what?  I have a ball.  Perhaps you'd like to bounce it.

Also, Hizballah are the Death Eaters.  So then...Hizballah are a bunch of evil renegade Jews trying to purge the world of people who aren't Jewish enough?  Oh, and Jesus is Voldemort, so I guess Jesus runs Hizballah.  I'd like to make a Snape joke here, but I can't begin to approach this level of weird.

In conclusion, NOTHING IS LIKE HARRY POTTER, DINGUS.

Apr. 25th, 2008 @ 08:14 pm
I'm just gonna pretend that Nevillelongbottomlover here is actually named "Neville Long: Bottom Lover."

Apr. 19th, 2008 @ 09:50 pm
[info]mindset is gonna be sorry she's missing the onslaught of teeny-boppers on the Harry Potter wiki article.

As usual, what I love about idiots who are shocked, shocked to find inaccurate information on the Fandom Wank wiki is that they have to be seeing ten thousand wrong things on a given article, but they only set out to correct one or two of them.  (My favorite remains the guy who "fixed" the list of people who've played Doctor Who, but only two of them.)  For some reason these kids have no objection to us making stuff up about Snape but can't abide by any bias against the heroes.  Although I must admit it's refreshing to see an avowed Harry Potter fan just say Harry is cool and Snape is ugly and "YAY!" that Voldemort is dead, suggesting they actually comprehend the book as intended.

The best one so far was where they tried to contribute to the sarcastic assessment of Neville's alleged importance, by adding that he marries HANNAH ABBOT~! as though this is a major accomplishment.  I'm pretty sure the plot point of "Who does Neville marry?" was so critical that Rowling neglected to put it in the book or even address it until some HP nut asked her later.  Even better, I have absolutely no idea who Hannah Abbot is or why it matters if Neville married her instead of somebody else.  NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM, THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER IN HARRY POTTER EVER!

Apr. 4th, 2008 @ 02:13 pm
I think my favorite part about soulbonding with your imaginary lover is that nobody ever does this to have fantasy sex with anyone good. It's always Snape or Sonic the Hedgehog or anime people or this thing. The closest anybody ever got, that I'm aware of, to landing a good imaginary lover is that nutjob who thought she was married to Cyclops from the X-Men, but even then you're going for a guy whose face is a deadly weapon.

If I was going to pull this stunt right now, I'd probably go for...let's say April O'Neil from the original Ninja Turtles cartoon. Because ohhh yeeeah. The point being that yes she's just a drawing, but if for some reason she became a real person in my dreams she would nevertheless be really hot. Then again, I guess it's simpler for me to just forget it and pursue actual women. To be desperate enough to retreat to the astral plane, you'd have to want somebody who cannot exist in normal space-time. (This includes Snape, because in real life nobody who looks like Snape possesses any of the qualities people like about Snape.)

This actually sends me on a weird tangent, because the other day I discovered a bunch of clips from the Letter People TV series on YouTube. And suddenly it all came back to me that when I was six I had what can only be described as a boyhood crush on Miss A of all people. Yeah, I don't get it either. The best explanation I can think of is that of the 26 Letter People only the vowels were female and our kindergarten teacher introduced them in seemingly random order, so for a considerable time the only one I knew about was A. (And maybe O too, but Ms. O is a huge bitch.) Anyway, one day I saw an episode of the TV show that alluded to a previous episode where Miss A and Mr. R were trapped on an alien planet and had to create the [ɑɹ] sound in a desperate gamble to escape. Without ever actually seeing the episode in question, I envisioned this complex relationship between these two major characters. I remember having a dream about them one time that so moved me that I proposed telling it as a story to my first-grade class, but by the time I got ready to do it I'd forgotten everything about the dream. So yeah, it occurs to me that in another life I would have never gotten over this and I'd be humping one of these.

If I had it to do over again I'd probably mack on Miss U. That's a classy lady.

I don't know why this didn't occur to me sooner... Mar. 27th, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
If you're such a radical feminist that a prerequisite to your worldview is that all men everywhere are raping women all the time, shouldn't you have much more important things to do than tell people what you think of Firefly?

Or is it supposed to be the same sort of fandom slacktivism that resulted in gay marriage being legalized nationwide five years ago, after everyone on LJ put those damned rainbow banners all over everything?

Mar. 26th, 2008 @ 08:24 pm
Aw hell yeah, this really did make [info]fandom_wank.  I should have made a bet with [info]mindset about this last night.  We were split on whether this would be a good thing, because she didn't want to see F_W dwell upon unfunny business and I think it's hilarious when F_W does that.  That is to say, I find it hilarious in principle, upon hearing about it; I'm not retarded enough to actually read the comments on this report.

I wonder why this difference of opinion exists.  Obviously everyone on F_W enjoys finding out about people to point and laugh at, so why should anyone mind if the members of the community itself provide themselves as a subject for this activity?  It seems a bit like the difference between your roommate picking up takeout and your roommate preparing you a home-cooked meal: Either way you get what you want and don't have to do anything, so who cares?  Maybe it's a sense of pride in one's own community.  That might explain it, since I've never really thought of myself as part of F_W even though I've been reading it since about CyrstalWank or so.  I mean, I know I'm technically a member of the community and all that, but if someone impugns the good name of the community, I never take it personally.  (Whereas, if somebody said everyone on YTMND is an idiot, I might get pissed off.)

This may or may not be intertwined with another observation, upon skimming this report, that some F_W users simply perceive F_W as a collection of like-minded people to say "WORD" when you point out someone you disagree with.  Admittedly, I'm not an objective observer--my thoughts on yaoi are perhaps closer to rosiesintherain's than [info]vergilsparda's--but it seems like the entire case presented for why rosiesintherain is being wanky is that rosiesintherain insists that someone's kinks are not okay.  I mean, fine, that is wanky, but it seems a bit commonplace unless there's something uniquely faily about it.  For all I know there is, but  [info]vergilsparda is too busy saying "Eww, someone saying 'Eww, twincest!'" to tell me what that might be.

The other thing [info]mindset and I differ on is whether I should make the commitment to carefully read the wank reports, follow all the provided links, and read the comments in order to fully comprehend the wank.  She thinks this is a great idea, and I don't.  I'm a busy man, and I expect the wank report to get right down to the business of telling me why I should care.  I don't think it's a coincidence that the most memorable wanks can usually be summed up in a brief statement, e.g., "She thinks she's Frodo Baggins," "His wife? A horse," "Harmonians know what slavery felt like," "A bunch of women think they're married to Snape," "She faked a suicide attempt to get lip gloss," etc.  I also don't think it's a coincidence that, fascinating as the downward spiral of Steve Vander Ark is, I cannot work up the interest to read all eight million words [info]cleolinda devotes to the topic because she buries the money shots under lj-cuts and giant blocks of c&p'ed legal documentation.  The Ms. Scribe story was similarly frustrating, perhaps due to the same misconception: "Since I am fascinated by this enough to drone on and on about it then you will also be fascinated enough to listen until I get to the point."

I finally decided I wasn't the one with the problem here when I was talking to [info]mindset one day and she asked if I saw the wank about the fan who copied Jane Eyre into Lord of the Rings Real People Slash, then vanity-published it as a gay romance novel.  That sounded fascinating and I could not believe I had missed it; it turned out I had seen it here and just hadn't thought enough of the report to investigate further.  For whatever reason, the wank report made me go "ennh" and scroll down some more, and [info]mindset's summary immediately caught my attention, most likely because she lead with "Someone copied the entire book Jane Eyre and turned it into Viggo Morganstern/Orlando Bloom slash," whereas the wank report barely mentions the plagiarism and the extent of it except to preface the ensuing fallout.  Problem Exists Between User And Wank.

In conclusion, regarding the recent talk of upsetting toy horses, I feel it necessary to share this one.  You see, Chris-Chan likes to make custom My Little Pony figures.  With locks of his own hair.

Mar. 9th, 2008 @ 06:14 pm
You'll have to bear with me, I'm not all that familiar with Fandom Secrets and what may be old hat to you is fresh and faily to me.

I was struck by Secret #8 here, perhaps because I was still disturbed by #7.  The gist of the story in #8 is that Person A was in some shippy RPG and fell hard for Person B's handling of her character, so Person A willfully broke up the ship of Person B/Person C to make way for Person A to ship with Person B.  Person C bullied them off the game, but they played in private and became bestest friends.

(It's worth noting here that I have no idea who the characters in question are supposed to be.)

Two things occurred to me here.  First, Person A is clearly just in love with Person B.  There's no way around this.  I cannot even conceive of this situation unless Person A--consciously or not--is directly attracted to Person B.  Person A doesn't seem to realize this because she calls Person B a "friend" and acts like their mutual goal is the admiration of the characters' love.  Person A has officially gone to more trouble to "seduce" a best friend than I have ever expended to obtain a romantic partner.  If you pitched this plot as a movie, it'd have to be a wacky romantic comedy.  If you rewrote it so Person A and Person B are both males, it would have to be a wacky Seth Rogen/Judd Apatow buddy comedy that reviewers would watch and decide the leads are gay for each other.  I say this because I am terrified that these two are emailing sweet nothings to one another, wasting their overtures on an external fictional OTP, without ever realizing what they truly mean to one another. 

Second, what part of this is a secret exactly?  Person A readily admits that the first part of the story, where Person C runs them off the game, is not the secret.  According to her the secret is that they stuck together and Person A continues to delight in having "defeated" Person C where it really matters.  Which is fine, if a bit creepy but...I thought the point was that nobody was supposed to find out who posted this image.  If I'm Person C, it should now be incredibly obvious that it's Person A...her Person A, the one who ran off with Person B that one time.  To anyone who cares, this is no secret at all!  Unless Person A is counting on the assumption that this sort of thing happens so often in fandom RPGs, with players apping the same two characters, that it's impossible to know which one she is.  I'm really terrified that this is a safe assumption.

Mar. 9th, 2008 @ 04:47 pm
Dr. Pizza has returned from disgrace and reopened his account, wherein he announces he now has a girlfriend and in comments notes that he lost his virginity. Yes, a human being has actually had sexual intercourse with Dr. Pizza.

This is probably not worth posting about except so that I can type this.
D:
I know enough CSS to keep making it bigger, but it never seems big enough.

Interestingly, his announcement video shows him behaving much more calmly and rationally than he's been in years, which provides a highly unexpected data point for my theory that jerks like this could maybe get over their shit if they could just get laid even once.

Feb. 29th, 2008 @ 05:58 pm
Since [info]mcity bashing is totally hot these days, I direct your attention to his really retarded edit of the Final Fantasy article on the wiki. [info]mindset  of course instantly fixed it, much as she is always on top of my wiki spelling errors. Perhaps [info]mcity  is in fact one massive typo.

Anyway, this got me to thinking, because if you look at what the paragraph said before he edited it, it's not really much better. Which reminded me of something [info]hooverdam  said during the Achebutt wank, when trying to explain why s/h/it expected that fandom to get a free pass in fandom_wank:
Think of it this way: When was the last time someone pointed out how Smallville, Supernatural, Torchwood, or any of the other mediocre sci-fi/fantasy shows that turn up here so frequently are, in fact, awful? Think of it as "other fandoms, other rooms" day here.
Everyone immediately pointed out that Smallville, Supernatural, and Torchwood do in fact get reamed on F_W all the time; there is no elite coterie of immune fandoms for Achewood to join. Nevertheless, I couldn't shake the thought that [info]hooverdam  had a point somewhere in there. And now it's hit me: fannish self-deprecation is almost as wanky as gushing fannish self-love.

Case in point: Harmonians and Slytherfen. They hate the Harry Potter books, but they hate it in the wankiest manner possible, because their scorn is ultimately just an extension of how much they care about the HP fandom and expect better from it. Whereas the average "Harry Potter sucks" comment that I see on fandom_wank takes on a tone more like "I read the books and have an amusing Septimus Slurch icon, but I still don't really give that much of a shit," and is thus kinda funny.

It's that distance that makes the mockery clever and not simply the mock-er jerking off about his thoughts on the mock-ee. I think that's the distinction [info]hooverdam  tried (and failed) to locate: Smallville, Supernatural, and Torchwood fans are funnier when they're beating up on some webcomic they don't care about than they are when they're trying to be cool about how much their favorite TV shows really do suck ass.  For example, somebody said they thought the two cats in Achewood looked more like pitbulls, which is great because you know there's some Achewood fan reading that and going nuts with rage; that's the kind of punch you pull when it's your own fandom.

Back to the wiki article, there's nothing particularly funny about [info]reeve thinking Final Fantasy VII is the worst game ever or [info]mcity thinking Final Fantasy VII is the best game ever.  What's hilarious, however, is that they both think their opinions of Final Fantasy VII are so damn important that they have to say so on the same wiki, which in turn has nothing to do with whether Final Fantasy VII is any good or not.  That's why I have half a mind to edit the article and dick with the Japanese/North American numbering of the series, because I suspect it would give them both heart attacks.

Feb. 26th, 2008 @ 07:38 pm
Since most of the relevant material has been deleted, I don't think I can get a wank report out of this story, but I feel it has to be documented somewhere.

( The Rise and Fall of Dr. Pizza )

Feb. 23rd, 2008 @ 05:35 pm
This probably says more about me than anyone else, but I'd never heard of Achewood before the recent Achewood wank, and when I saw the word I thought it was supposed to be some cutesy nickname for Torchwood. Like, I don't know, maybe there's a guy on the show named Ache and there's an in-joke about how he's the whole f'n show. Or it's a way to complain about how the show is all about heartache or (more plausibly) ass-ache from all the buttsecks.

I am also heartened to see other people having to deal with "I love my fandom so much that if you don't love it I must do something about it!" fans.  It doesn't particularly shock me that webcomics fandoms are rife with this mentality.

UPDATE: Oh wow, somebody made a chart!  I was thinking I should do this, and now I don't have to!  I may have to start reading wankitywank.

Feb. 22nd, 2008 @ 12:24 am
I didn't want to editorialize too much in the wank report, but I still boggle at the idea that a comics fan can consider the dividing point between two major thematic eras in sequential art can be determined by the cover price, or whether Captain America and Iron Man appear in the same magazine. 

Anyway, my personal definitions for superhero comic book ages, let me show you them:
  • Golden Age: 1938-1956 (introduction of Superman and entire superhero genre)
  • Silver Age: 1956-1970 (The Superman Family; Comics Code Authority forces movement from horror back to superheroes; Julius Schwartz revives Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Atom, and Batman; Atlas Implosion; Lee & Kirby at Marvel)
  • Bronze Age: 1970-1985 (Mort Weisinger leaves Superman, Kirby jumps to DC, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Conan the Barbarian, relaxation of CCA results in wave of horror and sword & sorcery titles)
  • Copper Age: 1985-2000-ish (Crisis on Infinite Earths, Secret Wars, Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, company-wide crossovers, Mike Carlin edits Superman, Epic, Vertigo, the speculator boom and bust, rise of creator-owned heroes, "They're not comic books, they're graphic novels!")
  • Modern Age: 2000-ish-present (Ultimate Spdier-Man, Identity Crisis, Joe Quesada at Marvel, comics as pitches for blockbuster movies, celebrity writers on comics, decompressed storytelling, relaxed approach to DC continuity, expansion of trade paperback marketing in bookstores, Dan Didio raped your parents)
I still haven't pinned down where I think that last big division happened, but I'm pretty sure it already has; fans and the marketplace tend to call everything since 1980 "the Modern Age," which made perfect sense in 1993 but seems a little silly now, since that would make the fourth age of comics half again as long as any of the first three.

Feb. 9th, 2008 @ 04:57 pm
Some days I just want to beat this man to death with a hammer.

I'd say "Don't ever change," but I think we know there's no danger of that ever happening. Feb. 6th, 2008 @ 09:37 pm
[info]mindset knows I loved the retarded "Harry Potter = Calvinism" bullshit from the doofs on Mike's LJ, so she was surprised I didn't comment on this wank.  The difference, I explained, is that over there I delighted in directly telling the fans why they were idiots; over here that's verboten, so there's nothing for me to do but nudge the other spectators and say "Man, those guys are idiots."  Which everyone here already knows, so what's the point?  But since she insisted...

We need a name for this brand of lunacy.  I keep wanting to call people like Anise "Calvinists."  But she isn't herself a Calvinist, nor does she endorse Calvinist themes in Harry Potter, nor are the alleged themes even actually Calvinist--she just insists that Rowling is cramming her stories with what she thinks are Calvinist messages, to the detriment of the final product.  I'm not sure what term would best summarize that position.

Anyway, what I think I like best about this flavor of crazy is that there is absolutely no reason to bring up Calvinism, but Harry Potter fans are a pseudointellectual and self-congratulating lot, and nothing is worth doing unless you can act like you're some humanities professor drawing parallels to the great literature and philosophy of world history.  You could simply argue that in the context of Harry Potter a character is locked into his fate regardless of how hard he rebels against the archetype of heroism and villainy to which he's been arbitrarily assigned.  That's all this is--the notion that Harry can get away with anything because he's the hero and Draco isn't given credit for anything because he's the villain.  You could assert that claim and it would be perfectly valid.  (Of course, the same can be said of virtually every narrative from the Bible to Popeye cartoons, so it's not particularly insightful, but at least it's valid.) 

But they can't let it rest there.  They have to invoke Calvinism because it sort of sounds like the same basic idea, and from there it snowballs into all these notions about whether Rowling herself is a Calvinist and then she must have a Calvinist agenda in doing all this and so forth.  So if you're arguing with one of these people (as I have foolishly attempted), you can't even get into the real premise because you first have to address what sort of church Rowling's demographic usually attended at age seven.  It's just layer upon layer of rhetorical misdirection to distract from the real problem these fans have, which isn't that Rowling is biased towards her protagonist (what writer isn't?), but that she's not terribly good at getting the reader to share that bias to the point of not noticing that it exists.  Because ultimately Harry Potter fans hate Harry Potter books, but can't bring themselves to admit that it's their own dumb fault for expecting Shakespeare from The Babysitters Club, so there must be some massive conspiracy behind it all.

The other thing I like is that, dude, the last book came out six months ago.  Even if we assume all these theories are correct and Rowling really was using the novels to broadcast Calvinist propaganda into your fillings, what difference does it make now?  And what does it profit anyone to successfully prove it?  It's the sort of windmill-tilting I eternally enjoy from my good friends in the craziest fandom of all.

Two Things I Hate Seeing In Wank Reports... Feb. 3rd, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
...Helpfully demonstrated by this one.

1) "It's my first wank, so be gentle."  Animosity towards this one is pretty widespread and well-documented.  For my part, the problem with it is that so many people have said this that it ought to be obvious that there's nothing particularly noteworthy about you doing it, so you shouldn't yammer on about it.  Extra penalty for trying to put a clever spin on this with "please use lube," which around here is about as original and creative as a "My fandom is..." icon was in 2004.

2) "It all starts when..."  I don't see anyone else ever complain about this, so I guess it's just me.  This has bugged me for years.  I've always been too lazy to keep track but it seems like far too many wank reports begin this way.  It's probably natural to use "It all starts when" any time one wants to write down an amusingly long, complex story, since it's the written equivalent to taking a deep breath before a "Randy Beaman"-type monologue.  But again, since that's all anyone does on the wank communities, it gets very repetitive.  Frankly, I think it can go unstated that a particular set of related incidents did, in fact, initiate with the earliest of those events.  Causality is pretty consistent like that.

I always wanted to complain about this in the wiki, but since I never take the time to document this phenomenon it would have ended up no different than me going "These kids today with their loud music and their hula hoops and their lol_memes and their E. coli...."  But in a perfect world someone who isn't me would compile a list of "It all starts when" wank reports and whenever anyone does it they get the list shoved in their face.

Jan. 22nd, 2008 @ 09:58 pm
I think what I like about discussions of neurological disorders on JF is that they invariably break down along the lines of a typical whose-dick-is-longest argument, wherein if your psychiatric history has the shortest description in DSM-IV then you got served, bitch.  (e.g.: "I'm bipolar, so I know what I'm talking about!"  "Oh yeah?  I'm more bipolar so I have the authority to say you're full of shit!"  "Screw both of you, I'm manic-depressive!"  "Whatever, I have Creutzfeldt-Jakob, so I win!")

Jan. 13th, 2008 @ 02:13 pm
Now that people have explained this to me, I guess I understand. It's just that, as someone who has never scrapped a book, I would have assumed the cost of scrapbooking would have extended no further than the basic costs of the following:
  • Scraps
  • A book
  • Some glue
Even now I'm still pretty blown away. Next thing I'll find out is that repainting My Little Ponies to look like Kyle Rayner and Ted Kord is a $5 billion industry.

Lucky for me I have a shot of testosterone for all of you today! I don't think I've ever discussed CAW in this space, but I have mentioned Allan Caesar III, aka Dr. Pizza, aka "Sonic The Hedgehog," who was something of a pioneer in CAW in its glory days, circa 2004. CAW stands for Create-A-Wrestler, a feature in all quality pro wrestling video games, and a CAW league is a guy posting video of his homebrew wrestlers (usually video game characters and superheroes) competing in matches as though it were a true wrestling promotion. It's sort of like machinima-meets-fanfic. I first discovered CAW when Allan began using YTMND fad characters in his ACWL, and I soon came to appreciate his curious show. There's an odd charisma to Allan, so when he interrupts his own color commentary to tell you why he's a virgin or that his dad's sleeping down the hallway or some punk flamed him on a message board, it's almost something to look forward to rather than forgive.

But a couple of things soured me on Dr. Pizza. First and foremost, he never shuts up about how it's not fair that he isn't allowed to use the N-word or criticize black people for being criminals and thugs. So yeah. Second, he's the master of the flounce. CAW fandom celebrates Wade Needham (Slam-N-Jam) and Aaron Rift (NoDQ CAW) as pioneers of the concept, and since Allan came third he'd rather view CAW as having a Big Three, not a Big Two. So he'll tell anyone who'll listen that he's the third-oldest CAW league and demands the respect that comes with that, which in his mind is a lot. Anytime he gets pissed at someone in the fandom, or doesn't feel he gets the attention he deserves, he ends ACWL "forever". This never lasts, in part because ACWL has an annual supercard, AEC Mania, and although he's quit 20 times AEC Mania happens every year because around that time he gets nostalgic and revives the league. At some point last year I realized the entertainment I get from ACWL doesn't balance out the disturbing racist and sexist rants on his YouTube page, especially when he stops doing ACWL.

So I've given up trying to coddle his ego and feedback him to keep him from quitting.   He'll quit over and over no matter what.  Besides, I'm an outsider--it's not my feedback he wants. He wants BNFs like Rift and Needham to give him his due, and they never will to his satisfaction. About six months ago Rift held the NoDQ Cup tournament and invited Needham to do the play-by-play, and did a "CAW Idol" gimmick where someone in the fandom would be chosen to announce with Needham for the finals. Allan and a half dozen other CAW promoters were in the running, and he was absolutely devastated when he was eliminated before some guy he didn't respect. Of course, the whole thing had always been a work and the winner was always meant to be Needham's alter ego Bobby Spade. Didn't matter--Allan might as well have been picked last for the softball team.

Which brings us to now, and this video.  It's 30 minutes of ranting about the absolute least important thing I can think of to complain about.  Mind you, he' s not complaining that the CAW of him was booked to lose the match.  He's complaining that he was booked to look weak.  IT'S A FREAKING VIDEO GAME!
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