The Bright and Massive Team Hatoful Question Box

[davidn]

In what might turn out to be the culmination of this insane chapter of my life, we - as the largely accidentally-formed Team Hatoful - got together for a webcam session and answered questions from the people who have so enjoyed our specific voiceover of an assortment of pigeons and the versions of the characters that we've projected on to them. This two-hour special includes an explanation of how the group came to be, details of the recording process, opinions on characters, a really nicely crafted table, impressions of each other, a giant Yoshi, plot speculation, future plans, and me running away twice. ...and My Little Pony.

Part One

Part Two
For me, the most surprising moment happened quite early on, when it was suddenly revealed that I had been listening to ravenworks' voice years before I met him, as part of Misteroo's legendarily berserk Arfenhouse series. You can plainly see my brain melting from about here onwards.

I first found those because Misteroo was in the ZZT community at the same time I was (what else could cause the kind of mental decay necessary to produce something like that?), and with the combination of that and discovering kjorteo's link to xaq who were both on a furry-related forum I used to visit but somehow never directly talked to either of them... budgiebin is the only one not to have had a shocking revelation that went back to the very first place I established myself on the Internet! What's that going to be, once we eventually discover it?

Comments

[raptorianone.livejournal.com]

Silly rabbit, it's "zee" not "zed". :p

Anyways, this is probably just my perspective, but it seems like the ZZT community spawned a lot of things. S'how I discovered the furry fandom, for starters.

[davidn]

It's "zed", and it will be "zed" until I'm dead.

It was definitely a launchpad for me as well, in ways that I couldn't even begin to fathom at the time... it's certainly ultimately responsible for me being in those videos above. I, too, discovered furries through it thanks to the images that Kracken and Nadir used to put on their livejournal, and it led me through the uncomfortable process of realizing that I was one of them.

There's nothing else quite like it (apart from perhaps a lunatic asylum on fire) - it's very difficult to imagine what my Internet existence (and, therefore, admittedly, life) would have been like if I had discovered the Internet and ZZT at separate times rather than simultaneously.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, it feels a little strange being a non-fur in this group sometimes. While I won't deny enjoying some amount of the community's artwork (hey, if the proportions are right and the art quality's decent...), I've just never been able to identify myself as "furry." It's like one of those survey questions you ponder over for a moment before finally just checking "no" and moving on.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

For me, furry's a fun hobby and creative outlet. Furry's different things for different people, and you don't have to subscribe to anything to really *be* furry. The only requirement I can think of is having an anthro avatar, but I know people active in the community who don't even have that, so there are exceptions to everything.

[davidn]

Yes, I didn't have one until about 2008 even though I'd been in the community for years by then - somehow I just hadn't been able to think up a good representation of myself. Even though I would have considered myself 'furry' then, it definitely made me feel invisible, like I couldn't participate and interact in the same way that the rest of the community could.

I absolutely hit the jackpot with the first commission I ever got from anyone, though - I absolutely loved it and have continued to use it as my main avatar for many years since!

[davidn]

Each of us has things in common with the team, and also properties that make us entirely unique among them! We're pretty diverse in our backgrounds and approaches, which I think contributes to our charm a lot. Although the method by which someone chooses to present themselves on the otherwise faceless Internet is one of the most immediately visible things...

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Nearly had a spit-take moment after looking up Tohri's voice actor in response to that seiyuu question.

Turns out Budgie was a bit off (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin-ichiro_Miki); he did the voice of Sagat rather than Vega. She was right on the money with James, however...but what got me was that he's also the voice of Ryusei Date, a character from the Super Robot Wars series whose enough of a mecha otaku that he could have single-handedly overloaded all of Tohri's lasers.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

The James was helpfully supplied by someone in the chat~ i'm pretty sure at the time I looked, I saw "vega" in the wiki article.. hummmm.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

He did Roy Mustang though, holy shit.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

I know what may shock you. It's probably not very amazing but I am generally responsible for the demise of VCL_Horrors here on LJ.  I discovered the identity of BigBadMod, or just one person with access to the account. They ragequit and deleted the entire community in a panicked move that puzzles me to this day.

Beyond that I also controlled an active and large Neopets forum up until 2006.

Pretty insignificant in general though!

[kjorteo]

I remain convinced to this day that I know the identity of another person who had BBM access, but nothing ever came of it, since the person in question just laughed the implication off and changed the subject and carried on like nothing ever happened, instead of, you know, deleting the entire community. So congrats on that one.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

Well, this is what wikifur says: http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/BigBadMod

Though it happened way too closely to when they lifted my ban and allowed me back under careful watch. It was a day or so afterwards that I posted who I thought it was on my personal journal and then it all disappeared, so whether or not I was actually responsible, I can't help but feel that I influenced it somehow.

edit: http://en.wikifur.com/w/index.php?title=BigBadMod&action=historysubmit&diff=143431&oldid=139275 although if you look back it appears that EXODITE HIMSELF namedropped me specifically as the cause of the deletion so HMMMMMMMMM i'm guessing he just wanted to make himself look better after a while

[davidn]

Well done :D

This is something that I was to learn later about the furry community, once my idealism wore off... that among the people who have found a home in an imaginary society, there are many people who have been rejected from the real world for incredibly good reasons. You only have to look at any Furaffinity news post to see that 90% of the fanbase is composed of semi-functional whining dickheads, and the people in it that I've met and formed friendships (and voiced pigeons) with are few and very valuable.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

My time in communities like that WAS my rebellious phase. I'd gotten tired of a particularly coddling forum I chanced upon discovering furry (remember, FA wasn't around then!), got banned, and discovered there were people making fun of the laughably bad art i sometimes caught on VCL.

Eventually I realized I was pretty much becoming a terrible person and had to leave. I'm still good friends with a few of the people that were fairly regular in the community, so it was apparently a good way to filter people I didn't want to talk to with those who were more or less worth it. (Remember, at the time, the fandom was PARTICULARLY open-armed)

EDIT: By leave I mean stop involving myself in general - After VCL_H died, WTF_FA reared its head and I was pretty solidly posting there for a while.

[kjorteo]

And I'm still in wtf_fa and fd2 and basically almost everything to this day, so I guess some people are just more vulnerable to getting toxic poisoning in environments like that than others? (Even I won't go anywhere near lulz or the like)

Also, "[BigBadMod] was created shortly after the founding of VCL_Horrors by Iatro, Thrack and IndigoFox, who later gave secondary access to Exodite Dragon, Jade Sparrow and Skwerl." I KNEW IT

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

Oh don't get me wrong, I still hover around certain communities. I'm fully aware of drama that happens in the fandom, I just don't make it my primary method of entertainment any more.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

That's...one way to deal with being found out, I suppose. o_O;;

"Sir, someone in Zimbabwe knows that you're Batman."
-And suddenly Africa's gone.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Not Hatoful related but something of interest for you.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/apr/08/how-we-made-knightmare

[davidn]

It certainly is :) It's always so hard to remember that at that stage it wasn't as adorably dodgy as we treat it now - it really was groundbreaking technology... and it was only after viewing it years later that I realized how amazing everyone was at improvisation in a free-form environment.

It's a shame that Tim Child doesn't think it's worth bringing it back (it doesn't seem to have stopped him until now, with a couple of test videos of possible revivals over the last decade...) "We wanted to build an actual castle with scary dungeons, but we didn't have the budget" - and I think that the crumbling causeways and the corridor with circular saws in it would have been impractical at best!

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Not to mention sending an actual circular saw at a child is probably not very H&S. It is worth noting though that although the effects obviously have aged, it did not become cringeworthy. In some ways I think of the show like the Sinbad movies, I think even today it would stand up. It was fun to read that out of boredom, sometimes the kids went suicidal.

I wonder if it would actually be allowed today, as the 'violence' was directed at a child as opposed to a character.

[davidn]

Yes, it was only after describing a lot of the UK television I used to watch to people over here that I realized just how unusually likely people were to be 'killed' on it (Knightmare, Scavengers, etc...)

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

At least in Knightmare you didn't get John Leslie making a pass at his holographic co-presenter as a eulogy. Some things really are worse than death. :P

D.F.

[davidn]

Ah, yes. Forget the special effects (and they usually did) - that's the definition of cringeworthy.