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yeonchi · 5 years

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Dub Logistics Part 29: Toxicity and Hypocrisy (Retirement Speech Part 1)

“I may have been a toxic hypocrite, but at least I know who and what I’ve been fighting for.”

I’ve said more than enough about my trolls, haters and naysayers over the years; this time around, I’m going to be talking about myself and the roles I played in the past through my English dub rants.

At the start of this year, I announced my intentions to end the Dub Logistics series and my English dub rant posts with it. Among my reasons, I explained that last year’s feud has contributed to my decision, but it wasn’t the main or only factor. Much as I hate to admit it, the events and aftermath of the feud have affected me more than what I’ve stated; I was understating the effects of the feud in my recounts because I never let my haters dictate my life or what I do with it, whether it be online or in real life. That was true then and this is still true now.

Reeling back from the feud has made me think about how toxic I may have been over the years, particularly while responding to the comments and addressing the hypocrisies of dub haters and opinion-neutrals. More recently, however, I’ve come to realise that my ever-changing views may have made me look like a hypocrite, if anyone hasn’t called me out as such already.

In this special instalment of Dub Logistics, I’ll be reflecting on my toxic hypocrisy and hopefully, setting the record straight for people who may have the wrong idea about me, particularly those who have heard about me from the biased perspectives of my haters and naysayers. It’s going to be long, so you’ll have to bear with me here.

The main point that I realised about my hypocrisy is that I am totally fine with reading subtitles when my rants make me look like I don’t like or want to read subtitles at all. This is a common assumption that many non-dub fans make about dub fans without considering some of the deeper reasoning behind their decision. In actuality, I’ve had my fair share with both dubs and subs myself, so to set the record straight, I’m going to be stating a few anecdotes relating to my experience with subtitles and dubbing, along with my experiences of video games, particularly the Koei Warriors game series. In case you didn’t know already, “Azuma Yeonchi” is a persona I use online, I am from Melbourne, Australia and my family is from Hong Kong. You’ll see how this is relevant as you read on.

In Australia, television stations are required by law to provide closed captioning on their programs, which isn’t really a surprise. We also have a public broadcasting network known as SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) that specialises in multilingual and multicultural programming. In addition to programmes from Australia, the US and the UK, they have also broadcast imported programs from other countries with their own English subtitles. Admittedly, they haven’t been doing this as much as they used to, however I sometimes watch the Japanese game show VS Arashi if it’s on.

In Hong Kong, many programs on TVB’s channels are broadcast with Chinese, while some programmes are additionally broadcast with the option to switch to English subtitles. A lot of non-locally produced programs are dubbed and broadcast with dual audio options, namely Cantonese and whatever language the program was originally made in. In a sense, Hongkongers and by extension, other Chinese people (not to make a political statement) can’t get away from subtitles in their media. Likewise, gamers can’t get away without reading the text and/or subtitles in games, Japanese or not.

I’ve played Koei Warriors games, mostly Dynasty Warriors, on the PSP, PS2 and the PC with English and Japanese voices along with English, Japanese and Chinese subtitles. Hearing that WO3U and SW4 wouldn’t be dubbed (despite the 18-month gap since WO3) inspired me to start the Koei Warriors Rant Series in 2014, but when I discovered that Koei Tecmo had cheapened out on the dubs for Dynasty Warriors 9 (among other things, but granted, it wasn’t entirely their fault given the voice actor strike), all hope I had for them was gone and I decided to stop following them on social media for good. This, combined with other commitments and interests that popped up, have led me to lose interest in video games, including the Koei Warriors series.

I’ve watched a few dubbed and subbed animes, but in 2014, I stopped following new animes, again because of other commitments and interests, but also because of the flagrant (female-centric) sexism I noticed in recent anime works. The only reason why I’m still posting on my Facebook anime pages and the Yui Hirasawa Waifu Network nowadays is out of gratitude because some series have served as inspirations for my personal projects.

The void left by video games and anime was filled by Japanese tokusatsu, which I have started getting into in the past few years. Honestly, I prefer watching live-action works, including tokusatsu, with subtitles since it’s pretty much the only way to watch them. I’ve also been watching some episodes raw (without subtitles) right after they’ve premiered in Japan; I’ve come to loosely understand the plot and dialogue thanks to years of contact with the Japanese language and vice versa. I have watched Power Rangers in the past as a gateway into the world of tokusatsu, but to me, it doesn’t exactly fit under the English dubbed category as it is rather an adaptation, mixing dubbed fight scenes with original footage. I still sometimes watch clips for comparison purposes.

If you’re still hating on me without having read everything up to here, or if you’ve read all this and you still consider me a hypocrite, then congratulations for missing the entire point of my argument. If you’ve supported my views and opinions in the past and you consider me a hypocrite now, then maybe you should have a think about whether you have really supported me at all.

Contrary to what some people may have assumed, I never did all this for myself alone. I can adapt my views and opinions to be fair to everyone because I can understand why some fans have their own preferences for dub or sub. Aside from my fans, it is rare to find people in the same boat as myself because the haters and naysayers I’ve encountered are ignorant, short-sighted or just unable to understand the bigger picture behind things.

Given my position towards subtitles and dubbing, it was never my intention to derail the dub-sub debate and demonise dub fans. From the very beginning, I had high hopes and good intentions for my English dub rants and the fanbases involved or mentioned, but in most cases, I’ve either come short or had the opposite effect to what I wanted.

It has been difficult to talk some sense into the haters and naysayers because aside from being ignorant, many of them have been toxic to me or other dub fans as well. Therefore, the only way I was able to do that was by being toxic back at them. I’m not saying that any of these attempts backfired on me, but most of the time, those people just don’t seem to listen because they are unable to listen to the opinions of others without being offended themselves.

It was in that vein that my warped sense of self-justice led me to name-and-shame dub haters by screenshotting their comments and reposting them. This started following the announcement of DW8E being localised without English voices, after it was erroneously announced that it would be localised with dual audio. This practice spread to the #NoDubNoBuy page (now English Dubbed Game News) and it wasn’t until late last year that I realised that it was going against the spirit I wanted to create for the page, so I deleted the name-and-shame album after I ended the feud.

Looking back, I think the events of the feud brought out the worst in me and the other party behind it. During the initial debate, I tried to convince him and his fake sock-puppet accounts that he was missing the point about dubbing and localisation, but he later claimed to his fans/white knights (in an act of virtue-signalling) that I ignored his points completely when that was not entirely the case. And let’s not forget that time when he spread that hoax about that one game under the name of a fake company. Even though the hoax became true in the end (as he claimed), it didn’t excuse his actions on social media.

The turning point for the feud, I believe, was when I did the parodies of iDubbbz’s Content Cop and Content Deputy in an effort to expose him as a lolcow. This was an escalation on my part, and he retaliated by pettily editing the Sea Princesses Wiki and reporting my posts on him along with other unrelated posts (I’ll go into this in the 2018 review post in late December), leading me to be postblocked on Facebook three times. Yes, I effectively copied someone else’s criticism format (while missing the point of it as well) in the hope that it would start a witchhunt, but in the end, I think we both got off lucky since not a lot of people read the posts and nothing major happened as a result.

While I have long moved on from the feud, I must admit that I still feel some guilt over my part in it a year on. The only way that I’ve been coping with it is to convince myself that while I may not always be right, wrong or perfect, nobody else is either and that I should not let this hater affect me any more than he already did (and I never have). As far as I care or know, the feud is over, the page where the debate started was deleted (which was ironically karmic to see) and we have both moved on to other endeavours (though like Keemstar or RiceGum, I doubt that he really learned anything from this).

When we ended the feud, we agreed that while we would never mention each other by name again, we would be allowed to maintain our own views and opinions on it and that any posts that have not been taken down or deleted already will be kept up or deleted at our own discretions. This applies to my Content Cop and Content Deputy posts as well, because I want him to remember that he is not immune from criticism regardless of what he thinks.

There was another feud I had with the Undub page, but it was never really a feud with the page directly; it was more like the childish prattling of their ignorant fans/white knights who associated English dubbing and its fans to politics, political correctness and SJWs, which were totally irrelevant to the topic. When the Undub page first noticed us, they accused us of copying their posts, which in reflection, I believe is bullshit because of reasons which I outlined in a post at the start of the year. However, they came to accept us at the start of 2018, particularly following the rebranding of the #NoDubNoBuy page to English Dubbed Game News.

Speaking of SJWs, I’ve never considered myself to be one of them, but after reflecting on everything that has happened, I came to realise that I was no better than an SJW in denial. In regards to other political references, I’ve been called a “nationalist”, a “Trump supporter”, or even an “alt-right” when I don’t identify with those groups. These are merely buzzwords that people learn from the news and on the internet to insult people they don’t like, but then again, I’ve called dub haters and opinion-neutrals “cucks” twice this year. But hey, why don’t we go out with a bang by forcing a meme to associate people with!

You know how opinion-neutrals always tell dub fans that they are entitled and that they should be grateful to the producers for localising the games in the first place (among other things)? Yeah, in my opinion, these are the traits of an NPC and if you think that’s dehumanising, then you have missed the point behind my argument and you are part of the problem. Even if you try to deny that you’re being like an NPC, then you’re just making up excuses to defend the publisher’s decisions or not participate in civilised debate (like a cuck).

I have unironically advocated suicide to some parties in some of my older rants. I understand that suicide is a problem and wishing harm on others is wrong, but I just can’t respect people who make no effort to understand why people think the way they think. Luckily though, I decided to stop doing that at the start of 2018 following the Logan Paul suicide forest incident because regardless of how much respect I have for people, I wouldn’t want someone like Logan Paul laughing at your corpse either.

If you have ever thought anything negative of me because of my posts and rants, you are part of the problem as well. I’m not going to apologise to the haters and naysayers (or their white knights) I may have offended because I think it will only validate their flawed opinions or vitriolic insults. The onus is on them to enlighten themselves and learn that there are people who disagree with themselves or the status quo. Luckily however, I’m going to be nice and give you a few tips about how to do that, which I will cover in the next and final instalment. Our negative criticism should be directed at the gaming companies for letting their fans turn against each other instead of fuelling the fire ourselves. If you’re looking for an apology (or maybe even forgiveness), then the best thing to do is to forget about me and move on, knowing that I will do the same for you as well.

In Part 22 of Dub Logistics, I used this quote from The Dark Knight to refer to gaming companies in general - “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Portions of the past few years have been downward spirals for me and in thinking about everything I’ve done during that time, I must admit that this quote is starting to apply to me as well, though I wish my haters and naysayers (and maybe their white knights as well) could feel the same way about themselves. Aside from that, this is my way of atoning for all the drama I’ve caused and leaving with my head held high in the knowledge that my fans will remember me for my efforts.

If you have heard about me from the negative opinions of others, then I recommend that you take their words with a few grains of salt and see for yourself how I have been trying to help Japanese anime and video game fanbases get over such a trivial and prolonged problem. If you then find yourself agreeing with those negative people, then you should realise that you are becoming part of the problem. Or, like I said, you could just let go of your animosity towards me, because I’m a busy person myself and I don’t want to have to deal with anyone’s bullshit, let alone be the target of a petty witchhunt.

This was a particularly deep instalment for me to write, but I’m kind of glad that it’s nearly over. The second part of my retirement speech will be in the next and final instalment of Dub Logistics.

#dub logistics #english dub

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