Ever since my life has returned to a “normal” situation without having to worry about airplanes, trains, and plantains, I’ve been looking back on my three year stunt as a fansubber. Last year was my busiest year as a fansubber, to the point that it nearly dominated my life as to where I was sitting behind my computer for five hours or more trying to push a project out on time. But with the frustrations of stream sites, unappreciative and impatient viewers, and technical problem in terms of poor quality raws and computer constraints, I essentially burned myself out with fansubbing. I went on a hiatus that turned into me quitting the fansubbing world. Of course, I will admit, a lot of personal reasons played into that (like me working for the airlines), I had really lost the love to fansub.
And when you lose the passion for something you love, its the worst thing in the world.
When you’re a fansubber, its an experience. You are providing a service to a fandom that in the long run can turn into something beautiful. Without fansubbers, fandoms like this do not exist. Its our work that keeps the blood pumping through the veins of fandom. Its nice to see people downloading your work, commenting on your work, critiquing your work, and offering their services to make your work better. The only thing you, as a fansubber, ask for in return is to respect the work. Respect the translations, give credit when credit is due, and respect whatever else the fansubber requires before you download. If that means to not distrubute, to delete within 24 hours, to not upload to a stream site, to not remove the sub team brackets from the file name — then it should be something that is respected.
Unfortunately, its not like that. Fansubbing has turned into a world where the viewer doesn’t care about the fansubber. Its a ” gimme, gimme, gimme ” mentality that has corrupted the enjoyment of fansubbing and boosted the egos of others. The viewer has developed this self entitlement that believes that they should get fansubs when they say they want them, how they want them, and do whatever they want with them without a thanks in the world. The fansubbing world has turned into an ugly place where the viewers are attacking the fansubber and the fansubbers are attacking the viewers. The respect is gone, the fun has died.
My last major project as a fansubber that I completed was The Quiz Show 2, a joint project with fellow friends at JE Mix Fansubs. We came into the project as fans wanting to do something that we loved. We wanted to sub this show as Kanjani8 and Yoko fangirls. We wanted it to be the best damn fansub out there and we put so many hours in to that project – something that we were doing for free. When the drama escalated with Stormy, the stream sites debacle, and with our own personal welfare it began to get to a point where subbing The Quiz Show wasn’t fun anymore for me. I began to hate the show, the fans watching it, and the fansubbing process. It was like my group was put in a position, that because ARASHI fandom was getting dicked by Stormy, we ended up getting the brunt of it. I will admit that in the heat of passion I made things difficult to simply get back at the demanding, ungrateful, viewers but regardless the respect was lost and the passion for fansubbing died.
I value my sanity and peace of mind. Putting in 15 hours or more to release a 45 – 60 minute drama episode a week isn’t worth the stress. Those who continue to fansub either do it because they’re masochists or because they like getting their dick stroked. Its a brutal and thankless job that many try to enter but few manage to stay. When people underestimate fansubbers and say its easy, I really wonder if someone put something in their koolaid. Yeah, it can be easy if you push out a shitty sub with timing errors, typos, shitty typesetting, and encoding — but to put out quality, that takes a lot of hard work and effort. Fansubbing is not easy and fansubbing will never be easy.
Looking back, I still have that urge once and a while to fansub something but I sedate it with translating news articles and gossip for a livejournal community. When I look at the fansubbing drama in the first half of 2009 with the collapse of Share and stream sites, I only can say there were days where I enjoyed what I did and other times where I absolutely hated/regretted what I did. Now, when it comes to stream sites, I don’t care. Or, to say, I don’t stress over it. There’s nothing that can be done, no matter how hard I say don’t do it they will still do it. They will still earn revenue off my sweat and all the credit for my work. Why put extra work on myself to protect my (illegal) work? In the long run, I will always loose.
There was a person I used to talk to fansubbing a lot with, she was associated with a very popular fansub group at the time, and we became good friends. When we met in 2008, we had some Starbucks coffee at the hotel as we bitched about our groups and the people that watched our subs and praised about how much fun it still was. We would be in the hotel room subbing our respective dramas (Yasuko to Kenji at the time for me) and just having fun. In those times, it felt good to be a fansubber. Now, we’re both tired. It’s not fun anymore… She decided to go on an indefinite hiatus. I ended up doing the same thing a few months later.
For those who want to fansub, it can be rewarding — but you need to also realize that what you love will turn into something that you hate. You will have people disrespect you, steal from you, ignore you, and demand from you. There will be times where you loose good friends due to the stress of subbing a show and there will be times where you will loose your entire team. There will times where you’ll love what you’re doing and times where you wish you could do it full time. Then there will be times where you are reminded that this is no longer a hobby, but a job. An unpaid job with no benefits and 3,000 inpatient angry fans waiting once a week for your subs or whoever is the fastest in releasing.
I’m done with fansubbing, for now at least. Maybe I’ll start doing it again but for now I want to survive through my last year of college and focus on building my resume and starting my career. I don’t want to be stressed out doing something I no longer enjoy doing.