Lady Emily

Lady Emily is another youtube video essayist. You may know her as Sarah Z's co-writer, but she does her own stuff, usually about medias that she was very into, or just weird ones. Found I like her stuff more than Sarah Z, and well, figured she'd get her own thread.

Probably her big breakout video was her recap of Doug Walker's Demo Reel

Her most recent video is about the controversy around James Rolfe, the AVGN

I'd do a disservice if I didn't also mention her video on Berserk's adaptations which strongly covers how much she loves the manga.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 3rd 2022 at 9:55:04 AM

You know, I also like her stuff that I've seen more than Sarah Z's but other than rerecommending the Demo Reel video, her stuff never gets recommended to me. I've never seen those two videos come across my Youtube, at least.

Well one of them came out today. Otherwise youtube does recommend me her stuff.

I don't even know what to say about it specifically, but I can't recommend the AVGN video enough. Emily took a very complex array of internet interactions and did every part of it justice.

I could've sworn that Mike disowned Loco Bandito sometime on Reddit, saying it was a bad attempt at shock humor and all that.

The AVGN video really feels almost like a companion video to the demo reel one, as the same "story beats" repeat themselves.

Content Creator makes a thing that becomes popular

Content Creator grows tired of their creation

Content Creator makes big personal project that means alot to them hoping it'll let them springboard into new projects

Thing fails to take off and garner an audience

Content Creator finds they are stuck doing the thing forever now, as its their one financially viable path

I wonder how much this will be a story for Youtube content creators. Will Scott The Woz being doing the exact same thing when he's 55? This where the sharp divide between being a youtuber and being on tv shows. TV Shows do die eventually. Exceptions asides (The Simpsons for example), shows end and you move on to some other project. For a lot of Youtubers that seems to not be an option.

I think what makes James a more harrowing story is that like (and this is gonna sound mean but I really don't mean it to be), that after the flop that was the AVGN Movie - he kinda conceded to himself that he was a failed filmmaker and that profoundly shook him.

Meanwhile Doug has always been an incurious Ed Wood styled creator who, even though he clearly doesn't want to be doing his shtick under the NC Label, is still trying to make Fetch happen with post Demo Reel NC basically being Demo Reel with the Nostalgia Critic serial numbers slapped on top

I don't know which one is more sad tbh.

Was the AVGN movie really that much of a failure in terms of reception?

IIRC, the people who watched it generally liked it, the professional reviews it got were mostly a bit confused about it, and then it completely and entirely failed to get any sort of traction.

From what I recall, Rolfe always wanted to be a filmmaker of some sort and AVGN was just a one-off thing that got big and he ended up making more of to pay his bills. I don't know what kind of relationship he has with AVGN as a show now (does he resent that he's doing it vs making films like he originally wanted?).

Making his big debut project essentially an AVGN "lore movie" (as Quinton Reviews coined) and trying to use that to launch a grander film career was probably always gonna be a folly that was never going to gain traction with the people he wanted outside of his core base.

But at the same time, what else could he have realistically done? He got his fame off AVGN, any project of his that wasn't tied to that brand was probably never going to be funded.

Real rock and a hard place situation

I mean going by Emily's own comment (And some more comments under the video), seems that plenty of AVGN fans also found the movie nigh unwatcheable.

I do agree that the situations aren't identical (For one James makes more effort to diversify his output than Doug does)

The AVGN movie was a bad movie. Whatever Doug made a decade ago can't be classified as movies.

Edited by HBarnill on Mar 4th 2022 at 9:27:29 AM

Seen worse with more of a budget.

Honestly, it was about on par with some of those weird microbudget fantasy movies you can find on Amazon Prime where someone just kinda tried to film a movie version of their D&D campaign. There's clearly some passion involved, but no meaningful experience or budget behind it. The Channel Awesome movies don't even hit that level though, because even the weird microbudget ones will generally like, actually pay their actors, even if not that much.

Yeah, or anything made by "That guy in your high school that's way too much into having a camera".

But either way I wasn't talking about Doug's Movies, I was talking specifically about Demo Reel, which Lady Emily made a video on. It's Demo Reel, not the movies, that were Doug's attempt to show he could do something else. And it backfired spectacularly and he had to go back to being the NC.

So, I figured out the heart of why I liked the AVGN video so much: I feel like Emily gets at the problem where a fanbase is deeply invested in getting their entertainment from this one person, with no regard for whether that person is capable of making what they want. That seems like the core of the backlash, fans who specifically want more good AVGN, and who have gotten fixated on trying to get that out of James Rolfe instead of migrating to something else that would make for a similar experience.

Because really, maybe Mike or Screenwave or whatever is the reason that AVGN is bad at a given time, but like, what relevance is that unless you're really committed to still watching AVGN? It becomes a non-issue as soon as you accept that AVGN is just never going to be what it was, because the context it started in will never be repeated.

Edited by TheEvilDrBolty on Mar 4th 2022 at 3:24:49 PM

James is a man in his 40s with a wife and kids. It's really hard to expect a person who's been doing this for almost 20 years (fuckin christ) to have the same passion and energy as they did when they were making videos essentially for fun (with monetization being just a nice bonus) in his basement in his 20s, even without the emotional blow of his film being rejected by all but a small core of his dedicated fans

That's what I noticed the most a while back when I was watching one of his later year videos (the one on Polybius which was released 4.5 years ago jfc). He's just more... muted, just doesn't have the energy in him that he did when he was in his twenties and didn't have a wife and kids.

I did notice that the camerawork and editing was much less energetic, but mostly I just noticed it in his voice.

Edited by PippingFool on Mar 4th 2022 at 8:19:52 PM

The whole make it personal isn't even with say Cinemassacre Truth and James.

Maybe it's just cause they interact with their fanbase versus the entertainment you'd see on TV but it's like a person can't just dislike an internet show or it's producer. No you apparently have to make them into Nazis and prove they are morally horrible.

Even before say James started his movie with crowdfunding or before any problems with TGWTG came about, discussing a reviewer or just comedian like Linkara wasn't popular outside the forum for the shows. It's why I'm glad I found this forum last year.

I don't know, if people don't like AVGN, maybe they should just stop watching it and move on with their lives? I haven’t watched AVGN in a couple years because I got bored with it and moved on with my life.

These controversies seem mostly overblown and frankly given everything in the world, I just don't care about them.

Yeah the toxic sides of AVGN's fanbase are just blowing this up because they are now just realizing their hero has other things to do than make videos to entertain them like raise a family.

It's the same with Spoony, like have you seen his subreddit?

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 5th 2022 at 8:50:04 AM

I honestly forgot James was still making the AVGN at some point. The few recent episodes I watched last year, it wasn’t bad or anything but he was clearly just running the motions.

I understand the hate towards Doug Walker, because he seems like a guy with bad business practices and makes questionable decisions, but really none of the stuff Rolfe is accused of seems that bad.

Edited by Overlord on Mar 5th 2022 at 6:36:44 AM

It's because the toxic sides of his fanbase want to lash out and it's pathetic. They see James Rolfe as their performing monkey and are furious with the realization that he's burnt out and has a family to look after. Of course they would try to make anything Rolfe did worse than it actually is to justify this petty crusade. What's more impressive, hating a guy because you don't like the direction he's going with his videos, or hating a guy because 's literally the devil and cancer on the internet? Or at least he will be after the pathetic whining that subreddit thinks is a smear campaign. Trying to make a fire when there's little kindling.

Even the plagiarism was handled properly, Rolfe fired the guy and apologized for it. He isn't some sexual abuser or creep, he's just burned out.

Seriously, internet comedians just tend to attract the worst types of entitled creeps.

Like there's that certain youtuber channel trying to harass Linkara with ableist insults or that subreddit that stalks the Spoony one.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 5th 2022 at 10:44:42 AM

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