Topicless thread

[DustiiWolf]

Nonsense, they may be made by Microsoft, but the fandom doesn't center around "OS-tans made by specific communities", its supposed to center around OS-tans as a whole. The whole fandom is about the anthropomorphic personifications of Operating Systems. at least, thats what my understanding was... And wasn't Claudia crafted by Microsoft as well (I think she was the first fully Microsoft tan. Nanami was made by someone else and adopted by Microsoft JP)?

[Chocofreak13]

no, Hikaru was the first full Microsoft-tan. why does everyone forget the silverlight sisters?

it's in the word. FANdom implies those type of things which are made by fans and developed by fans. taking a concept made by fans and turning it commercial takes it out of the fandom. without the fans, fanfiction is just another novel.


EDIT: i think i want to learn korean. -w-

[stewartsage]

I think my antipathy to the post XP-tans is directly linked to my dislike of the OSes they represent.  That and I just think XP's eh cool dude.

It seems that I waited two weeks for a response from someone I e-mailed because their spam filter stole my message.

[DustiiWolf]

no, Hikaru was the first full Microsoft-tan. why does everyone forget the silverlight sisters?

it's in the word. FANdom implies those type of things which are made by fans and developed by fans. taking a concept made by fans and turning it commercial takes it out of the fandom. without the fans, fanfiction is just another novel.


EDIT: i think i want to learn korean. -w-

So the "Sherlock" fandom doesn't exist by you terms. Nor the puella magi madoka magica fandom. nor the Doctor Who fandom. Nor a lot of fandoms. A fandom implies something you are a FAN of. not FAN created content. Some fandoms are started commercially and get fan content later. others, like OS-tans, is the opposite where fan content comes first and commercial content comes later. In reality, I think it was smart of MS to catch on to OS-tans. They saw people liked it and that they use it. They didn't turn everything into something commercial. they just streamlined it a bit

I mean, theres art being made of them, theres fan content of ai and yu, theres lots of Claudia art and stuff out there... Theres fan content too, just this time its in the more traditional sense. (Company makes something > People become fans > Fan content)

Just because their "official" doesn't mean we exclude them. that's discriminatory. XD

I think my antipathy to the post XP-tans is directly linked to my dislike of the OSes they represent.  That and I just think XP's eh cool dude.

It seems that I waited two weeks for a response from someone I e-mailed because their spam filter stole my message.

That seems about right. I know choco loathes windows 8 and apparently doesn't consider Windows 8 and Windows RT's tans part of the fandom. While im all sunshine and daisies peachy keen on Windows 8, and I enjoy the new tans. (Claudia FTW)

Also, sucks about your email. That sounds correct. spam filter isn't perfect (once spammed an important digital content purchase email I was waiting on)

EDIT: I wanna learn Japanese. started to. twice. but had to return the library book :c

[SleepyD]

alright alright calm down.
And I'll be honest, my interest kinda waned when Vista came around. Probably for similar reasons as stew. And since I was looking around at the beginning, I saw a mishmash of Vista-tan versions being drawn, and I never did get to see Vistake and Visbou become established. Nanami got me interested again for a little while, before my interest tapered off again. Nanami's (Japanese) twitter account was entertaining for a while, I must admit.

Yes, they weren't produced by fans. Yes, they were used by Microsoft to market towards the niche otaku market. And yes, there will always be some sort of wall between the past fan-made OS-tans and the newer, commercially produced ones. Do a pixiv search for OS-musume, and you won't see Nanami or any of those OS-tans tagged with that. (OStan or OSGijinka, you might have a smidgen more luck, but even then they're often not included with those tags)

Okay sure, their origins aren't pure fan-based. It's a marketing ploy, pure and simple. Can't get around that fact. In doing so, they prevented a fan version from being truly established.
They still developed some character through the fandom (even if it's a bit on the Mary Sue side of things). People still made fanart and comics. A quick pixiv search did seem to produce a not-very-popular fanmade sister to Nanami.

In the end though, I don't really have strong feelings one way or the other.

As a Touhou fan, I understand the sentiment of keeping commercial hands out. At the same time, I don't find commercial marketing inherently evil or anything. A lot of people wanted to see the professional anime studios do something with Touhou, and I can respect that sentiment. I can only guess that some of the high-quality fanmade Touhou stuff out there are made by those same professionals. I mean, what's the difference? The person would probably enjoy making it regardless of commercial backing or not. The question I'd like answered is, whether the designer for Nanami had a similar passion.

Well, even if the artist wasn't all that into it, it wouldn't suddenly turn me against Nanami. Apart from the images, sound pack, and brief commercial in the first year or so after release, they looked to be mostly hands off from then on. Let the fandom run with it. The results are admittedly mixed, but I don't think it's a complete failure.

[Chocofreak13]

@sleepy: he made his bed in regards to me, he can now lie in it with my retort. (he's also the one bringing favouritism into the conversation, i was only stating that the "current" OS-tans can never be completely part of the fandom as they were purely a marketing ploy and the fans had no say in creating them. characterizing, yes. creating, no. doesn't mean i don't care for them.)

@dustii: wow, someone develops a rather amusing level of snark when someone disagrees with them.

you can't have a commercially created fandom, it doesn't work that way. you can't force it, it's gotta be organic. YES, there can be fandoms of commercially created things, but it is when the fan experience itself is corporatized that it ceases to be fandom. sitting there and telling me that it is still regarded as fandom when a company shoves something down my thoat just because it's something within the fandom that i liked doesn't work.

MS catching on to OS-tan doesn't really show any degree of intelligence other than them taking it as a marketing opportunity, and that was only after the fans came together to create Nanami. in a way, WE had to shove it down THEIR throats for them to get it. OS-tan wasn't something to be "used" until that point, so to say otherwise doesn't make much sense.
and "streamlined" how?

just for the record, you're putting words in my mouth, and i don't take kindly to that. i don't mind Yu and Ai (their voices aren't my favourite), or Claudia, or any of the marketed OS-tans. i'm only saying that the element of Fandom is taken out of the equation when companies become involved. instead of discussing what a character should look like before it becomes "official", they are instead pre-packaged and shipped out to us, with little to no input at all.

every time i talk to you i grow to dislike you a little more. why? i think it has to do with the fact that every time you talk to me, it sounds like you're talking DOWN to me. or, in this case, ascribing traits to me that aren't true. if you're gonna talk smack about me, i suggest doing it in a place and time where i don't have the power to fight back, such as your facebook or a personal journal.

by the way, *there's, *there's, *there's, *There's, *it's, *they're, and *I'm (capitalizing that one since you capitalized the following "I").



@stew: well shoot. did the filter accidentally set to block them, or did it just wind up there by some weird coincidence, the way some of my newsletters do?

[Dr. Kraus]

I agree with Sleepy

To add to sleepy's comment; The artist of Nanami does have some passion as they have gone on to draw Cloudia and AMD-tan Ikina with making little comics for them from time to time when not asked by Microsoft to make a comic for Cloudia. Ikina wasn't drawn to be marketed at first (She was the artists first OS-tan, before asked by Microsoft Japan to make Nanami, Cloudia, and the Windows 8 twins) and she was not commissioned by AMD japan for marketing purposes. A local tech store bought the right to market Ikina for AMD products in their store from the artist as the artist really was not making much of a living at the time, Microsoft grabbed hold of the idea fast and had the artist do Nanami & the rest of the family for marketing Microsoft products.

There is my 2-cents, now I'm going to the beach. see ya.

[Nichi]

I'm siding with Kari on this one. Fandom is something that can't be forced; it has to come naturally

[Chocofreak13]

@kraus: microsoft didn't hire the artist to make nanami. or were you talking about the subsequent nanami comics with claudia?

[stewartsage]

Kari: I think its because he was getting a lot of e-mails with the same header (about something a couple of people were supposed to send him so it'd be recognizable) and it just bin'd mine.

Like hell you can't build a fandom *coughnarutobleachonepiececough*

Perhaps I should clarify after what Sleepy said; my disinterest in the Windows 7+ -tans isn't a hatred of their systems, it is plain indifference.  None of their -tans ever struck me as really distinctive.  Plus, I don't use 7, 8, etc.  I use Vista.  Katharine is one of the last laptops ever shipped with Vista, she literally shipped about a month before Windows 7 debuted.  And I've never used my free upgrade.  Why?  Because I'm easily confused and have as much faith in 'modern' computing as I do 15th century medical science.

[Chocofreak13]

those series gained popularity on their own, they weren't marketed. One Piece has been going for 15 years, i think longer than the creator intended. (he's said that he REALLY wants to do a robot story. thankfully, he's also said that he will see his creation through to a proper end.)

makes sense, but why did you put that tagline in then if everyone was? :\

[Bella]

@Dustii and the lack of talk about OS-tans on OSC: Welcome to my world bro. Then again, I deal in such an esoteric branch of OS-tan personification (namely, rare / vintage / antique personifications) that I've become well accustomed to not having many people to talk to about them. Not that it bothers me much - I enjoy making my own characters and my own stories, so it's nice having a high level of creative freedom.

Re: Post XP Windows-tans: My lack of interest in them stems from the fact that, well, the Japanese artists who delivered us the "canon" OS-tans seem to have given up deciding on (or not coalesced around) a canon Vista-tan, W7-tan, W8-tan, etc. -w-;; That being said, I like Chivistan (or whatever the green-haired, transparent-dressed one is), Esu's Windows 7-tan (the blonde gal with wings), and that black haired Windows 8-tanm design.

As for the OSes themselves - I honestly never thought I'd get along with Vista, but when I started using it in Virtualbox it worked just fine. I never thought I'd like Windows 7, but here I am using it as we speak - something I didn't even plan to do, I was going to install 'Buntu but Windows 7 has been fulfilling my computing needs well enough that I don't need to install another OS at the moment. I can't imagine using Windows 8 on a laptop or desktop, but I can imagine using it on a tablet or even recommending it to my dad (since he's awful with computers and the interface might be easier for him to comprehend), and who the hell knows, maybe I'll end up with a Windows 8-running computer that I'm too lazy to convert to a better operating system.

It's like the old (and now horribly misquoted) adage goes - The worse enemy of a good design is one that works just well enough.

[Chocofreak13]

tbh i'd enjoy more OS-centric conversation too, but all that's ever talked about is people's personal stories or OCs or whatever, not the original OS-tans themselves or anything pertaining to them. so i just stepped out of it since i had nothing to add.

[Nichi]

I guess because it just doesn't feel like there's much to discuss on the originals that isn't set in stone already? :\

[Chocofreak13]

there was a lot of ground uncovered, such as the original theory topics i laid out, like the world and race/class hierarchy. :\