A Look Into YCM's History - A Request of Sorts

[Christian Exodia]

7-odd years here myself... I remember when Clubs and Roleplays were HUGE.

 

Club TDI, Club Pikachu, Original Organization XIII, YCMaker Hotel (original), et cetera.

 

Oh, those were the days. Bloodrun, Darth Browarod, and so many others. All gone.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Yeah, a lot of the YCM veterans from the past are now gone.

Dark, DeMeNTeD, Larxene (although I saw them around a few months ago), Altair, Huntar!, Crab and a bunch of other guys. Even Darkplant/Kenta is gone now.

 

In terms of member cards, not many people do them any more (maybe only like 5-6 people do them any more, including me to some extent).

 

RPs are still a big thing, but not as much as the past.

Clubs are somewhat dead nowadays; I wasn't around when C&O got their post count shut off, so can't say if that made a difference.

 

Either that, or life finally got to a lot of us and we had to leave.

 

-----

Yeah. a lot of us remember things from the past.

There's even an archival site to look back at memories.

[Face McShooty]

What's the archival site?

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

http://web.archive.org/web/20090926032839/http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/

 

This is stuff from September 2009; thanks to Rod or whoever discovered this at the time. 

 

 

EDIT: It was Womi (Wii Omi) who found this out.

[Blake]

7-odd years here myself... I remember when Clubs and Roleplays were HUGE.
 
Club TDI, Club Pikachu, Original Organization XIII, YCMaker Hotel (original), et cetera.
 
Oh, those were the days. Bloodrun, Darth Browarod, and so many others. All gone.

What the hell is a Club TDI?

And R.P.820, Absolute Powerforce, Chibi Knigths, Akatasuki, etc. were all bigger than the hotel...

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/topic/44364-total-drama-island-club/

http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/topic/57541-tdi-club/

 

Likely these ones, and whatever derivatives popped up afterwards.

Had to manually search them, however.

[Face McShooty]

Just found the Ryder Cup I was talking about, it was very hard to find http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/topic/228816-the-ycm-ryder-cup/

[Dad]

I'm still laughing about the porn raid.  It happened while I was in school.  I think James texted me and was like, "Uh, check YCM, but be quick about it."  Good Lord, I was hysterical.

[Christian Exodia]

Yeah, a lot of the YCM veterans from the past are now gone.

Dark, DeMeNTeD, Larxene (although I saw them around a few months ago), Altair, Huntar!, Crab and a bunch of other guys. Even Darkplant/Kenta is gone now.

 

In terms of member cards, not many people do them any more (maybe only like 5-6 people do them any more, including me to some extent).

 

RPs are still a big thing, but not as much as the past.

Clubs are somewhat dead nowadays; I wasn't around when C&O got their post count shut off, so can't say if that made a difference.

 

Either that, or life finally got to a lot of us and we had to leave.

 

-----

Yeah. a lot of us remember things from the past.

There's even an archival site to look back at memories.

Yeah, even I just came back.

 

It's almost sad how few of us still peruse the site from back then. Life still hasn't gotten to me yet (I was 9 when I joined; I am 16 now.), but it's coming and rearing its pretty little head quickly.

 

And to Robin, those were just the ones I remember. Thank you for jogging the memories.

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

Nowadays the porn raids are disguised as "waifu" threads.

[Goose]

throwback to the porn raid by ser, byak, and mage on my account

[Rodrigo]

throwback to the porn raid by ser, byak, and mage on my account

 

The sighting of that legendary horseshit image is forever burned on the back of my mind.

[Goose]

The sighting of that legendary horseshit image is forever burned on the back of my mind.

 

I actually never saw it

[Simping For Hina]

porn raids were the raddest things on this site.

[Blake]

I actually never saw it

neither did I

though i did see mage's pic of a horse**** later.

[Instinct]

http://web.archive.org/web/20090926032839/http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/

 

This is stuff from September 2009; thanks to Rod or whoever discovered this at the time. 

 

 

EDIT: It was Womi (Wii Omi) who found this out.

 

There's an older shot from Jan. '07 for those interested:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20070115152121/http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/

[bury the year]

That skin brings back so many memories.

Only some of which were good, mind. But I remember how so many people flipped their wigs at the server change: there were all the cries of "YCM'S RUINED FOREVER!"

[Rodrigo]

"YCM'S RUINED FOREVER!"

 

But it was =D

[Goose]

It became facebook

[Icy]

porn raids were the raddest things on this site.

 

They really weren't. Me and Browarod were up for 2 days straight cleaning it out (I relayed to him links over MSN). And we threw up more than once during the course of that.

And it wasnt just porn. It was guro, real gore, scat, sh**ingd*cktits, the works.

[Simping For Hina]

They really weren't. Me and Browarod were up for 2 days straight cleaning it out (I relayed to him links over MSN). And we threw up more than once during the course of that.

And it wasnt just porn. It was guro, real gore, scat, sh**ingd*cktits, the works.

So, they were the raddest for those who weren't mods. Cleaning that shit up must've been gross, though.

[Just Crouton]

When I started posting in TCG, Brandon was my sempai and taught me Machinas.

 

Also, I miss The Rebel. I think he still plays IRL (he got perma'd on DN.)

[J-Max]

They really weren't. Me and Browarod were up for 2 days straight cleaning it out (I relayed to him links over MSN). And we threw up more than once during the course of that.
And it wasnt just porn. It was guro, real gore, scat, sh**ingd*cktits, the works.

Yeah I remember all that...... The worst was when I was the only Mod on and the only section I could sort out was CC. Those were some horrible times. The images that were being posted was beyond nasty.

[Larxene]

I was one of the two second-gen leaders that Roxas/Patrick promoted in Organization XIII. I can explain the whole thing if anyone cares. I have the very slight suspicion that I am the traitor Lar is referring to, but am mildly confused about the "he who must not be named" vibes in that post, considering I'm on good terms with both of them last I checked. (Lar and I are mutual follows on tumblr and I can pretty much pick up a conversation right where it left off with Zex).

 

Phantom Roxas can probably explain all of this better than me btw.

 

Organization XIII was originally just a Kingdom Hearts themed club, but branched out into generalized Square Enix and beyond pretty rapidly. The community was relatively close knit and we all had the same general sense of humor. This, combined with our tendency to start prolific RP's granted the ((p)(un))fortunately nicknamed) Orgy an absolutely extreme amount of momentum. Posting essentially never died down, but was usually paced well enough for people to catch up quickly. This was hampered to some degree by that GOD DAMN NEXT PAGE GLITCH where certain actions would randomly devour the last few posts of a given page. There was some magic ritual to avoid it, which half of the members ignored or forgot about, which resulted in some of the most quality rage-fueled Tyler-isms ever seen. New trends, such as Touhou and Homestuck, would usually first take root in Organization XIII before branching off into their own clubs once they began to steal the spotlight from precious amnesiac animu boys.

 

One extremely hilarious recurring meme was the tendency for someone to ask Lar a question about Touhou when Lar literally had the EXACT PAGE about the thing open in their browser. It was straight up uncanny.

 

One very notable event was YCMfic (I believe it was called? I have the chapters saved on my old computer I think, so I maybe I could recover them for history), which was essentially a gigantic fanfic that included literally every member of note on the website, set in a fantasy world. This would have been an absolute clusterfuck of a trainwreck if the legendary Zexaeon was not at the helm. For the duration of its run, it essentially captured the attention of the entire site. It was totally the bomb for real or some such.

 

Tangentially related to the club was the YCM Grand Tournament, which was pretty much like gamefaqs Character Battle nonsense, but with more informative bios of each character's capabilities and, eventually, guest-written narratives for each match based on the results of previous rounds. There was much drama and political pressure on MSN as to who to vote for, what with being able to see exactly who voted for what. This coupled with the ability to revise your vote before the poll closed resulted in a lot of last minute trickery, such as convincing a party disinterested in the result of that particular match to vote in favor of a character at the last second (ostensibly before a rival could do the same).

 

Around this time Roxas became a super mod, which is probably the reason we didn't get shut down for being completely out of control and off-topic 30% of the time.

 

To add on to Striker's considerable legacy, he was one of exactly two members to ever be perma-banned from Organization XIII.

 

Another semi-significant event was the month or two long period of time in which everyone thought me and Zeonark (who most of you probably know as Cherry or iCherries) were the same person running two accounts. We were essentially similar enough in personality and literally finished eachother's thought in such a synchonized manner that it could easily be interpreted as coyly hinting at us being one and the same. The hilarious part was that this occurred without either of us trying in the slightest.

 

Eventually, in a silly MSN group chat involving Zex, Lar, Xirno, and myself, everyone was revealing dramatic "Oh? You didn't catch this dramatic reveal I've been hiding?" things, such as Lar not being a girl named Claire. Not wanting to be one-upped, I took advantage of the Zeonark scenario to declare that Zeo was in fact my double account. This was a total bluff, which mildly annoyed Zex because he thought he should have picked up on it like he did literally everything else. For the next few weeks I was able to successfully lead Zeo (who was still completely oblivious to the whole thing) into maintaining this illusion that we were double accounts. It was actually pretty incredible. The only other person who knew was Phantom Roxas, as the facade was getting so strong that I was worried we might literally get banned if I didn't let a moderator in on the joke.

 

Eventually we told Zeonark, who promptly replied that it was one of the funniest things they'd heard. In the end, all had a good time, despite a few minor incidents where Zeo unwittingly responded too perfectly to my leading statements, to Zex's annoyance (I don't blame him, because it looked downright masturbatory from his perspective at the time).

 

 

My other favorite story is the time that Broken literally ragequit all association with me because of the ridiculous topdecks etc I managed to pull dueling on BYOND. He told me my decks were "too lucky" to the degree that their luck defied some statistical framework that all decks were beholden too. His absolute least favorite thing was clutch Solemn Warnings/Judgments (at this time, Judgment was limited and you could have 2 warnings). He would get incredibly excited anytime my plant synchro deck managed to mill a warning, which made it all the more satisfying when it was revealed I already had the other set and waiting. Then I milled three wulfs in a row with my lightsworn deck and he was 5000% done with me. Left then and there and hasn't spoke to me since. I have screenshots of the more hilarious instances, including the infamous 3 Wulf Moon scene.

 

Anyway, onto the drama:

 

In the beginning, there was the triumvirate of Phantom Roxas, Larxene, and Zexaeon. All major decisions were handled by a two-thirds majority vote of the three. Lar and Zex pretty much ran everything because their opinions rarely differed. In theory, Roxas could perform an executive override, which happened once in a blue moon. There were also of course positions for the 13 (later 14) organization members. This followed the general trend of sounding cool and official for claiming a username or title etc of a character from established fiction. At one point we had TWO Marluxias (one of which was the official Marluxia of the club, and the other a returning member who was the previous Marluxia but actually held a different position then) which got confusing as hell to distinguish between Marly 1 and 2.  During the height of the club's relevance, these were always full and generally in high demand whenever one opened. After building my own influence by befriending most of the more prominent members, I was able to claim the then-inactive Dorian's seat as Xemnas. This is ironic because Dorian is literally one of my most significant friends now (he returned maybe a month or two after my ascension). The other 10 Organization Members had some degree of sway, but not any major decision making power. At some point, we appointed two additional leaders. The exact details on why aren't exactly clear to me, although it may have had something to do with members increasingly noticing (and occasionally clashing with) the fact that Lar and Zex pretty much ran everything. Nexev and myself were appointed as additional leaders. This brought voting pool up to 5, although I believe the original three had slightly more power in terms of making executive decisions on the fly.

 

The drama revolved around a member who, though he went through many names, was known at the time as Mineku. Mineku was interesting because he occupied almost the exact middle-line between someone as obnoxious as Striker and an actually decent human being. Personally, I thought he was always closer to a Shadow Zero (who sincerely doesn't try to be an obnoxious dork but just kinda can't help it in an innocent way it's complicated alright?) than an outright Striker. His performance fluctuated like a sine wave, going through periods of being tolerable, to genuinely enjoyable, to insufferable. He had a tendency to god-mod, which is what usually got on everyone's nerves. He had been put on probation from Organization XIII a few times, but was let back in due to consistent improvements in attitude.

 

We had just voted to allow Mineku back into the club about a week or so before the fabled drama explosion occurred. Zex was not present at the time of Mineku's reinstatement, but when he got back was (understandably displeased). Although Mineku was still behaving himself, Zex made an immediate executive decision to permanently kick him out of the club. Mineku had been a drama time-bomb in the past, and had earned the eternal dislike of Zexaeon, so I believe he wanted to preemptively eliminate the issue. Honestly, I didn't particularly like Mineku that much either, but he seemed on the road to redemption finally, and I thought it was a dick move to deny him that last chance that he had been doing so well with. Combined with my obsession with idealized justice (which still persists in some degree today), I decided I was going to put my foot down and stand up for Mineku and the established rules. We were essentially some of the biggest public figures on YCM at the time, and I felt it was important not to devolve into that club of leaders who are friends and do whatever the fuck they want because reasons.

 

I understood his position, but I felt that it would be best to win this argument and let Mineku get himself kicked if it was going to inevitably happen. Apparently I severely underestimated his disdain for Mineku though because this was something he really did not want to back down on. At one point he pretty much stated that he had been a great leader for so long that it was alright to abuse his power once in awhile, especially considering that this was a relatively minor issue that few people would object to. Some important backstory on this: for a very long time, Zex was pretty much the closest friend I had on YCM. Obviously we weren't as close as he was with Lar, because that is pretty much the unbreakable burning chains of passion incarnate right there. Still, we texted very frequently and he was essentially my de facto mentor. I idolized him to a significant degree, so this harsh bit of unfiltered reality mixed with visions of noble leaders falling to corruption one minor abuse at a time dancing through my head lead to me to resolve that I absolutely had to win this argument.

 

Yes, this whole thing pretty much revolved around two stubborn, arrogant people arguing about something that didn't actually matter.

 

Shocking Truth!

 

The Mineku debate got incredibly heated over the next few days, and in the end Mineku got to stay, at the cost of Zex essentially vanishing from YCM proper and Lar becoming less active for a few months. They did later explain that they had grown bored with YCM and were essentially looking for an excuse to leave anyway. To top it all off, Mineku only stayed for like a month before deciding to leave of his own accord. So I was like "Well that was god damn pointless".

 

We've all since reconciled though, which is good because sweet fancy moses was that a dumb thing to ruin a friendship over.

 

 

Anyway, I actually have a sappy word document with a list of people I knew from Organization XIII so that I wouldn't forget anyone:

 

Zexaeon/Thomas

Phantom Roxas/Patrick

Larxene/Tyler "Logic is my bitch."

Nexev

Davok

Mineku/Xaru

Skuldur/Riku/Alucard

Byakuya/James

Sleevecard

Xirno

Marly/Sakuya

Luxlord

Solus Shade/Eros/Dorian

Zeonark/Cherry

Madchurro

Clair/Jaelin

Coyote Starrk

ProtoMachineEmperor

Shadow Zero

Miranda

BrokenHeart15

Fenrir

Ice

 

You may know some the people on this list. I know I've seen some of them still around.

 

This here be a significantly delayed reply to all of this nonsense. I really only stop by every now and again, just to glance briefly at the forum or work on my Touhou card set that is still a thing.

 

To address a few things, I don't remember mentioning a 'traitor', but if I did, it wasn't you. Honestly, I had actually forgotten about the whole Mineku ordeal. I do remember that you and Nexev had been promoted to commanding positions by Roxas at some point toward the end of the group's lifetime. Which was, honestly, what really led to the group's ultimate downfall. No offense. It was a terrible idea, but it wasn't your idea. And for the record, I do absolutely back up Zex's decision to ban him from the group. I'm pretty sure I said the same thing way back then.

 

No, there was someone else I was referring to, who I shall still not mention. And it involved someone else, who was not part of the group at all, that I shall also not mention. It's like fucking Voldemort. Say his name and he'll probably magically show the fuck up. And I am having none of that shit.

 

Whether or not Mineku remained in the group wouldn't have mattered, because by that point, both Zex and I had lost interest in the site. We both conversed regularly outside of YCM, via MSN and subsequently Skype, and I had already become intigrated with another group on another site. Which I also inevitably took over as supposed 'second' in command, underneath an effective figurehead. No offense Roxas, but me and Zex ran the group. You were basically leader in name only, up until the moment you promoted Amethyst and Nexev against our wishes. That, and the fact that you became a moderator. I'm not entirely unconvinced that this wasn't an attempt by the mod staff to undermine the Organization. The point is, we would've eventually have gotten bored enough to just stop posting at all. We just stopped caring.

 

I am more appalled that you did not spare even a single mention for our site, Drifting Evanescence, AKA Drift for short. Essentially, the largest YCM spin-off site ever made, short of the one made by Draco Straybyrn. (I wonder what ever happened to him, anyway? I'm probably spelling the name wrong, anyway.)  Unfortunately, the site got shut down when IPB closed down their free sites. And it was part of what led to me and Zex getting bored with YCM in general. But I am still rather proud of the fact that the site got as large as it did. We even had about half of YCM's mod staff as members at the time.

[Goose]

Draco Straybyrn aka Wahrheit is back on YCM, is still running SummaXR (or was until last summer), I believe posted in this thread, and is off to law school next year.