- Joined
- Jun 4, 2010
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Hi.
So, here's the thing: I know that a lot of people are unhappy here. I wanna talk about it without causing any real damage, but I also don't really see that happening. Nor do I see some things coming into perspective/context without putting parties to task. Including myself. I imagine that when this is said and done that I'll have pissed off some people from every group or clique or circle in the community, but, I hope that at least we'll walk away with a better understanding of perspectives. It's really all that we can hope for at this point.
I think the first thing you have to understand about the KHI Site Staff is that they're twenty-somethings who are veterans of the series since the earliest early days and are all queer, or people of color, or both. We weren't made in a lab to be a Super Leftist Action Team, this is just how it happened. The core members also spent the better part of the decade in a long-con, subserviently wrestling the forums away from the control of some unfortunate people who had no real interest for the very series this community's based around. None of the team have ANY desire to see the forums come to that again. So, if people of color say your view on something is rooted in some sort of internalized racism, it probably is. If queer people are telling you that your views are rooted in homophobia or transphobia, they probably are. We are the best people in the world to have that perspective.
We are (despite no longer being a staff member, my brain is still using "are" and "we", I'm not an active staff member and haven't been for a while, but my brain is still there) uptight, over-worked, and reactionary. We don't all get along and we bicker incessantly. If you think we plot together to take down users, you're mistaken, as we seldom have the same opinions on such issues. Or any issues. When KHI's accused of being an echo-chamber for KH III positivity, all I can do is cackle because the staff actually, for the most part, doesn't love the game. If they like it at all, they think it's deeply, deeply flawed. And it is, and it's okay to talk about that.
Working this site is a truly thankless job. The usual strains that go into running a community notwithstanding, dealing with this series and its community is *hard.* The staff continues to spend working and sleeping hours translating asides in magazines that are quickly stolen by influencers in the community so they can make shitty videos and profit off of the hard work of all of us, but mostly Goldpanner who's been the main conduit of information about Kingdom Hearts to the west for over a decade. She currently has a Kofi and sometimes has trouble making her finances work, and she does a job for ALL of you for free that people generally make 80k a year for professionally in California where Square handles its operations stateside. Meanwhile, we're all undergoing medical issues, serious mental illnesses, job troubles, and the deaths of our families. Every. Single. One of us is drowning, and it's not an excuse, but it is the truth.
And honestly, it's not just dealing with site-upkeep and content curation. We have to occasionally deal with really batshit red tape and/or batshit people. What do I mean by that? Well, here are some true examples that won't sever any working relationships we have because they happened to me and I don't work here anymore!
Remember the infamous Kingdom Hearts cartoon? Remember when I interviewed Seth Kearsley? Yeah, well, buckle up fuckers because what you don't know is that we were asked, mafia style, not to do that interview. Yeah. So that it couldn't be traced through official communications, we were given correspondence by a notable Japanese KH fan from the Kingdom Headquarters himself warning us that Mr. Kearsley never had permission to do a KH cartoon and was only looking to further his own career. And, here's the gag, we know it was legit because our research indicated that Nomura was actually given little to no head's up that Disney in the early 2000's attempted at least FOUR TIMES to get a KH cartoon off the ground and into development without Square. Ultimately the KH series seems to have been pulled not because of tests, not because of budget, not because of content but because they didn't want to strain working relationships with Square as they entered into the development of Kingdom Hearts II. Proof's in the pudding, this is also when Disney did the KH Mobile game without Square. I always thought there was something endearing about the way they tried to warn us, but after we showed some of what we'd discovered, they didn't respond and for that matter, the notable fan stopped interacting with KHI. Also worth noting that while we never had any issues with Seth, I believe shortly after our interview with him that he was shot down by Disney to do another attempt at the show. Last I heard he was trying again. We'll see what happens, I guess.
Working with some of the most secretive companies in the world comes with professional hurdles, but this isn't uncommon at all nor is that aspect of it very annoying. There are agreements that are signed and expectations and such we agree to in order to be able to to do things, but that's not an issue. Here's an issue, though, sometimes we're given opportunities that are almost totally blown by influencers who are more about marketing themselves and capitalizing on their relationships with the games than the actual games and fans. (Yes, not all youtubers are like that, but those youtubers aren't who I'm talking about.) Let's talk about the Toy Story Demo Premiere Event. We were approached by Square early last year to attend and agreed not to say a word about it until the embargo lifted. Months later, the youtubers were invited (some got to go twice?) and immediately began to tease it. Which was a little annoying, but didn't matter since we're all going for the same thing anyway. Square informs us of when the Embargo will lift, and tells us, explicitly, that we are cleared to announce when it's lifting so that you guys can know when to expect impressions to go up. We do this. The youtubers, in their private discord, immediately lose their minds, insult us, and are mad at us for "breaking the embargo", which we weren't-- and they clearly had no issues themselves with doing it. They went out of their way to gaslight us about the whole situation and even reached out to Square in an effort to penalize us. Which is funny, because as one of those KH Influencers (who was banned by Nomura from all KH events for life after foolishly live streaming the concert trailer and then was allowed back into such events almost immediately) will tell you, such penalizations don't tend to really stick. Square was very gracious with our questions, and we were really pleased with them allowing the three of us to come at all. We even removed some of our coverage at their request, despite them admitting that they hadn't put such limitations in the embargo.
So if things are so difficult, why bother doing it? Why are we here? If we all dislike each other so much, if we always come to fighting if we don't like the thing that brought us together, then why are we all still here?
Beats the hell out of me.
Despite myself, I have things I truly love about the series. The series has enough going on that it actually demands a higher quality of discussion than what we see across the entire community, here and elsewhere. You have a crossover franchise that strings together, somewhat faithfully, two major canons. Disney and Square. We could have people discussing Japanese culture in relation to the narrative, the epic conventions of the storytelling in humanities-related studies, you've got SO MUCH ART DESIGN and literary references for the Disney worlds alone. Take Olympus, which has appeared in every game except for DDD, you can do an epic hour-long video discussing world designs, the history of the movie, the art style translating across FIVE platforms, not to mention the original MYTHOLOGY FROM GREECE
What do we have instead? Occasionally, some guy on youtube will mispronounce a couple of names while stealing posts that my colleges and I had made months ago over some irrelevant clips from the games that have nothing to do with the topic because they don't care about the quality. Meanwhile, we argue about fucking Xehanort's vessels for five years, and then get sidetracked by sexism and racism, and homophobia and etc etc etc etc etc. We don't enter into the arguments really considering the other person's existence as a human on the other side, and yet we don't separate the person from the post and seem to take the friction personally. We miss nuances, cultural differences, tone and intent because it's a computer. And I own it. I got so tired of all the bullshit in this community that I truly lost all tact and patience. I don't *like* feeling that way. I don't like knowing that the users are always going to be on the defensive, especially because it seems everyone's having the same existential crises and the realization that cartoons and video games are no longer being made for us.
Is this really where we want to be? I came here because I wanted to discuss all the cool things KH was and could be. I don't want to be mad about something I like every time I think about it. I don't want to assume everyone here is a big shit. I don't want to be attacked for liking something harmless by the same people who are mad about a *fish.*
The future isn't ours anymore. We gotta grow up right now.
So, here's the thing: I know that a lot of people are unhappy here. I wanna talk about it without causing any real damage, but I also don't really see that happening. Nor do I see some things coming into perspective/context without putting parties to task. Including myself. I imagine that when this is said and done that I'll have pissed off some people from every group or clique or circle in the community, but, I hope that at least we'll walk away with a better understanding of perspectives. It's really all that we can hope for at this point.
I think the first thing you have to understand about the KHI Site Staff is that they're twenty-somethings who are veterans of the series since the earliest early days and are all queer, or people of color, or both. We weren't made in a lab to be a Super Leftist Action Team, this is just how it happened. The core members also spent the better part of the decade in a long-con, subserviently wrestling the forums away from the control of some unfortunate people who had no real interest for the very series this community's based around. None of the team have ANY desire to see the forums come to that again. So, if people of color say your view on something is rooted in some sort of internalized racism, it probably is. If queer people are telling you that your views are rooted in homophobia or transphobia, they probably are. We are the best people in the world to have that perspective.
We are (despite no longer being a staff member, my brain is still using "are" and "we", I'm not an active staff member and haven't been for a while, but my brain is still there) uptight, over-worked, and reactionary. We don't all get along and we bicker incessantly. If you think we plot together to take down users, you're mistaken, as we seldom have the same opinions on such issues. Or any issues. When KHI's accused of being an echo-chamber for KH III positivity, all I can do is cackle because the staff actually, for the most part, doesn't love the game. If they like it at all, they think it's deeply, deeply flawed. And it is, and it's okay to talk about that.
Working this site is a truly thankless job. The usual strains that go into running a community notwithstanding, dealing with this series and its community is *hard.* The staff continues to spend working and sleeping hours translating asides in magazines that are quickly stolen by influencers in the community so they can make shitty videos and profit off of the hard work of all of us, but mostly Goldpanner who's been the main conduit of information about Kingdom Hearts to the west for over a decade. She currently has a Kofi and sometimes has trouble making her finances work, and she does a job for ALL of you for free that people generally make 80k a year for professionally in California where Square handles its operations stateside. Meanwhile, we're all undergoing medical issues, serious mental illnesses, job troubles, and the deaths of our families. Every. Single. One of us is drowning, and it's not an excuse, but it is the truth.
And honestly, it's not just dealing with site-upkeep and content curation. We have to occasionally deal with really batshit red tape and/or batshit people. What do I mean by that? Well, here are some true examples that won't sever any working relationships we have because they happened to me and I don't work here anymore!
Remember the infamous Kingdom Hearts cartoon? Remember when I interviewed Seth Kearsley? Yeah, well, buckle up fuckers because what you don't know is that we were asked, mafia style, not to do that interview. Yeah. So that it couldn't be traced through official communications, we were given correspondence by a notable Japanese KH fan from the Kingdom Headquarters himself warning us that Mr. Kearsley never had permission to do a KH cartoon and was only looking to further his own career. And, here's the gag, we know it was legit because our research indicated that Nomura was actually given little to no head's up that Disney in the early 2000's attempted at least FOUR TIMES to get a KH cartoon off the ground and into development without Square. Ultimately the KH series seems to have been pulled not because of tests, not because of budget, not because of content but because they didn't want to strain working relationships with Square as they entered into the development of Kingdom Hearts II. Proof's in the pudding, this is also when Disney did the KH Mobile game without Square. I always thought there was something endearing about the way they tried to warn us, but after we showed some of what we'd discovered, they didn't respond and for that matter, the notable fan stopped interacting with KHI. Also worth noting that while we never had any issues with Seth, I believe shortly after our interview with him that he was shot down by Disney to do another attempt at the show. Last I heard he was trying again. We'll see what happens, I guess.
Working with some of the most secretive companies in the world comes with professional hurdles, but this isn't uncommon at all nor is that aspect of it very annoying. There are agreements that are signed and expectations and such we agree to in order to be able to to do things, but that's not an issue. Here's an issue, though, sometimes we're given opportunities that are almost totally blown by influencers who are more about marketing themselves and capitalizing on their relationships with the games than the actual games and fans. (Yes, not all youtubers are like that, but those youtubers aren't who I'm talking about.) Let's talk about the Toy Story Demo Premiere Event. We were approached by Square early last year to attend and agreed not to say a word about it until the embargo lifted. Months later, the youtubers were invited (some got to go twice?) and immediately began to tease it. Which was a little annoying, but didn't matter since we're all going for the same thing anyway. Square informs us of when the Embargo will lift, and tells us, explicitly, that we are cleared to announce when it's lifting so that you guys can know when to expect impressions to go up. We do this. The youtubers, in their private discord, immediately lose their minds, insult us, and are mad at us for "breaking the embargo", which we weren't-- and they clearly had no issues themselves with doing it. They went out of their way to gaslight us about the whole situation and even reached out to Square in an effort to penalize us. Which is funny, because as one of those KH Influencers (who was banned by Nomura from all KH events for life after foolishly live streaming the concert trailer and then was allowed back into such events almost immediately) will tell you, such penalizations don't tend to really stick. Square was very gracious with our questions, and we were really pleased with them allowing the three of us to come at all. We even removed some of our coverage at their request, despite them admitting that they hadn't put such limitations in the embargo.
So if things are so difficult, why bother doing it? Why are we here? If we all dislike each other so much, if we always come to fighting if we don't like the thing that brought us together, then why are we all still here?
Beats the hell out of me.
Despite myself, I have things I truly love about the series. The series has enough going on that it actually demands a higher quality of discussion than what we see across the entire community, here and elsewhere. You have a crossover franchise that strings together, somewhat faithfully, two major canons. Disney and Square. We could have people discussing Japanese culture in relation to the narrative, the epic conventions of the storytelling in humanities-related studies, you've got SO MUCH ART DESIGN and literary references for the Disney worlds alone. Take Olympus, which has appeared in every game except for DDD, you can do an epic hour-long video discussing world designs, the history of the movie, the art style translating across FIVE platforms, not to mention the original MYTHOLOGY FROM GREECE
What do we have instead? Occasionally, some guy on youtube will mispronounce a couple of names while stealing posts that my colleges and I had made months ago over some irrelevant clips from the games that have nothing to do with the topic because they don't care about the quality. Meanwhile, we argue about fucking Xehanort's vessels for five years, and then get sidetracked by sexism and racism, and homophobia and etc etc etc etc etc. We don't enter into the arguments really considering the other person's existence as a human on the other side, and yet we don't separate the person from the post and seem to take the friction personally. We miss nuances, cultural differences, tone and intent because it's a computer. And I own it. I got so tired of all the bullshit in this community that I truly lost all tact and patience. I don't *like* feeling that way. I don't like knowing that the users are always going to be on the defensive, especially because it seems everyone's having the same existential crises and the realization that cartoons and video games are no longer being made for us.
Is this really where we want to be? I came here because I wanted to discuss all the cool things KH was and could be. I don't want to be mad about something I like every time I think about it. I don't want to assume everyone here is a big shit. I don't want to be attacked for liking something harmless by the same people who are mad about a *fish.*
The future isn't ours anymore. We gotta grow up right now.
