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

[goddamnit names are a pain]

That requires a lot of thread hunting down deep in the sections. That'll take a while to get TBH.

I mean, that is fair.

But some of these guys know enough but are holding out on me, I know it >=D

[Chiri Tsukikawa]

Darth Revan of the Sith MAY be the other guy

I can prove he was Izaya for a fact.

 

[spoiler=Proof][/spoiler]

[~British Soul~]

Another thing I remember was that one guys posting horse d*cks everywhere. Anyone else remember that?

[Northern Sage]

Another thing I remember was that one guys posting horse d*cks everywhere. Anyone else remember that?

I think that was ~late 2011-early 2012.

…Wasn't it Mage or something?

[~British Soul~]

I think that was ~late 2011-early 2012.

…Wasn't it Mage or something?

I can't remember tbh.

[Goose]

It was Ser, Byak, and Mage

[Blake]

^


LZ is the pinnacle bae, literally all you need to know.

Clair was pretty dope. Prior to my promotion I would only ever dwell in showcase, she was one of the few "outsiders" I interacted with when I wandered into the other sections.

Clair was a cheating bitch in actuality, but.. =T

Izaya was banned for posting nsfw stuff, iirc.

[J-Max]

Another thing I remember was that one guys posting horse d*cks everywhere. Anyone else remember that?

I don't remember that but I DO remember something much much worse. A few years back, a handful of Trolls decided to post some absolute filth on the forum. I am not going to go into details about what it was, but I can still remember it.... Put it this way, it made the Horse d*cks look nice in comparison.

[Night]

You did "interact" with me a bit on HD Forums iirc, Night. That was a long time ago, but that is a story for another day.

 

I've literally no recollection of that to be honest. Though the fact that you put interact in quotations tells me that I was probably a dick to you, considering I was far worse back then it's entirely plausible. My bad if that's the case.

 

Clair was a cheating bitch in actuality, but.. =T

 

First time hearing of this, what's the story there? 

[goddamnit names are a pain]

It's odd because somehow I felt something had happened between Black and Claire. Not directly, but still.

 

 

Oh yeah, it was that thread I'm not posting for various reasons.

[Rodrigo]

First time hearing of this, what's the story there? 

 

She was iCherry's girlfriend but cheated on her.

[Nathanael D. Striker]

I've literally no recollection of that to be honest. Though the fact that you put interact in quotations tells me that I was probably a dick to you, considering I was far worse back then it's entirely plausible. My bad if that's the case.

More like we were on the same forum and may have talked once or twice. I don't know if that was the Summer of 2010 though. *shrugs*

She was iCherry's girlfriend but cheated on her.

She was also Sweet Lightning's girlfriend before that happened. Not sure what happened in between. *shrugs*

[~British Soul~]

I don't remember that but I DO remember something much much worse. A few years back, a handful of Trolls decided to post some absolute filth on the forum. I am not going to go into details about what it was, but I can still remember it.... Put it this way, it made the Horse d*cks look nice in comparison.

Can you remember what year that was?

[goddamnit names are a pain]

Ok, so basically I want to know all about all of the First 2-3 Pages of top posters.
I know the least about them .~.

For the most part, anyway.

I mean, technically I know the least about the people who post least, but still.

[Simping For Hina]

Ok, so basically I want to know all about all of the First 2-3 Pages of top posters.
I know the least about them .~.
For the most part, anyway.

I mean, technically I know the least about the people who post least, but still.

Those are the mile high members. They are a part of us.

[Catterjune]

You have my permission to post whatever you want about me. Whatever story you heard, whatever private message, whatever mod report, or anything you think I might not want you sharing, I don't actually care.

I may, on occasion, wish to "clarify" things though.

I think I've heard this one before, just a bit. Did this have something to do with Pika or am I confusing it with another power tyrant

Crab half-banned YCMaker, and was then banned and demoted for it (or... the other way around). And... I'm not a power tyrant. =|

Or maybe I was here, IDK.

Yeah my part came in when Pika gave me and a bunch of other people a 70% warn in one day for absolutely nothing

I can just about guarantee it wasn't "for absolutely nothing". I usually only increased warns when people broke the rules. You probably just broke a particular rule 5, 6, or 7 times all on one day.

I'll agree it was probably heavy handed, but no harm done. There's not much harm in warn increases until it reaches 100.

Then there was the whole Hatcher conspiracy, but I am still trying to figure that one out...

Not sure what you're refering to, but if it was I think it is, I'd probably need permission to discuss it further. They know who they are.

There was also the time when 1 of the mods found their way into the Admin CP and changed some stuffs. If that was already mentioned, then whoops.

Unless you're talking about something else, that was me.

[~British Soul~]

Unless you're talking about something else, that was me.

Was it? I just couldn't remember it was that did it, but I remember it happened.

[Catterjune]

I believe it was on Halloween about a year or two ago.

http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/topic/292074-the-shops-been-refilled/

If this is what you were referring to, that was me.

For security reasons, I don't want to say what I did specifically, but I found a way to make any account into an admin account. So I made AdminTestAccount and used it to poke around in the forums. I moved a bit of the forum around, refilled the shop, and then eventually was able to clean up the staff and when needed, add new staffers.

If thats what you were thinking about... that was me.

[Catman25]

And on that note, anyone remember Pikachu? 

hell yeah, somehow got that guy to add me on Facebook. Him and Tiger were the nicest mofos in their prime.

[Goose]

Fuck tiger

[Catman25]

that's why I said his prime man, he went like apeshit towards the end.

[Fusion X. Denver]

Ok, so basically I want to know all about all of the First 2-3 Pages of top posters.
I know the least about them .~.

For the most part, anyway.

I mean, technically I know the least about the people who post least, but still.

Challenge accepted.

I'll tell you the history of stuff I've seen on YCM.

It might take a day or two, cuz it's a lot, but I'll tell you everything I remember.

[Fusion X. Denver]

There once was a lad in green.

And much like the Luigi avatars he wore, he was green in cardmaking and forum etiquette.

A member named BlackSkullCortez showed him a site called YCM where he made some Sonic cards, prompting him to join.

[spoiler=And this is some stuff he saw]

Don't worry, it's not all about him. Though this is all from his perspective, so keep that in mind.

[spoiler=YCM's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Club]

Circa mid-2009, this kid started posting in Pop Culture. Naruto and Smash Bros sets proved to be his major projects, each reaching 250/200 cards or so during his time there (not all at once, this took a while). But the first thread he made was about Avatar TLA. Much to his dismay, his cards were broken, his grammar off-center, and he saw none of the construction in commenters' criticisms. He lashed out in ALL CAPS, feeling hurtful and dismayed and attacked those who only meant to lend a helping hand. One of said helpful helpers was a kid you all may know as Smear.

Leave it to the 16 year-old kid to act less maturely than a 12 year-old at the time.

He would only remain in Pop Culture (with occasional dabs in RC, but not much) for two years or so, and the events he beheld were:

-Hulkty's Dragon Ball Z Set (supposedly the biggest DBZ set of YCM).

-At least 10 "decent" attempts from members making Naruto sets. Others not so decent.

-A handful of YCMember cards in AoC or in Clubs made by Black, BT, Deustodo, himself, and many others.

-And what he considered to be the best cardmaker at the time, Sora (not the gay one), who made very pretty cards chock-full of GFX and jam-packed effects, most clearly seen in his Naruto and Kingdom Hearts sets.

This was a time where cards were more heavily focused around creative effects, and as long as they weren't overpowered, it was considered decent design. YCM wouldn't become more centered around the metagame until 2010-2011 when big names fleshed out the TCG section (more on that later).

 

Interestingly enough, there was a period where members competed in PC to have the best Pokémon cards of the forum. Deustodo made cards about "realistic" Pokémon, BT (an active cardmaker at the time) had a set of his own with Japanese naming, HitoKage had plans to make a card for every single Pokémon, it's believed J-Max started Pokévolution around this time, and there were many others. No one won, but Pokémon basically took over PC for a while, is the point.

 

After the first 8 months or so, this kid began to become able to distinguish members from one another, their personalities, what made them tick, etc. Remember, this was before YCM switched from MyBB to IPB, like it is today. So no status bar was there for members to be silly, express quick thoughts, and so on. What he had...was Clubs & Organizations. 

So this kid received a PM from a member named pkmnmaster440 (or something) asking to join his new club, the Akatsuki of YCM. Little did pkmnmaster440 know that he was on the cusp of creating one of the most enduring organizations to grace YCM in that period of time. And this kid had the privilege of experiencing this rise himself.

So the kid joined and saw a few members there. There was a guy named JK (now one of our esteemed mods, Sakura Haruno), pkmnmaster440 himself, who would later change to his well-known name: Aa'une's Apprentice, the most badass 12 year-old to grace a children's card game forum who had an obsession with Death the Kid named Dranzer, and DL (the guy with #1 posts, in case you were confused), though back then he was Darklink401.

"can i join? last week's chapter with killer bee and kisame was sooo awesum!" the kid spoke, awkwardly stumbling into a thread, inciting direct contact with other members. He didn't know what to expect, but before he knew it, he would log straight onto Akatsuki after school every day and began talking to the members there about Naruto and other interesting things. He had become friends with a couple of people in PC before this (BT and true_madara_uchiha-->now Lost Soul, to be specific), but began feeling a real connection with Darklink401. 

The thing with DL is he talked a LOT. He always had something to say, something to do, random ideas striking his whimsy, to others it seemed chaotic, but to this kid, he seemed chaotic and fun. Little did they know the years ahead of them held much more fun, and lots of chaos. A lot of people knew DL, some even called him the ragnarok1945 of Clubs since he posted everywhere all the time, but he cooled down after a while.

DL also convinced his best friend on YCM to join Akatsuki, a kid named El Make. El was cool, he had an edge to him, but not edgy in the sense he was a dick (well yeah he was, but the good kind), but that he spoke his mind and wouldn't bullshit you. And he goofed around like the rest of the weirdoes he knew, but also seemed relatively normal, like someone you knew IRL. The kid quickly warmed up to El as well.

Eventually, DL introduced this kid to other friends of his in HIS club, the Chibi Knights. He had met El through there and the Fake Type Knights (more on them later) and made some cool friends. So the kid proceeded to meet three other members: LeCreateur, Deustodo (who he'd seen here and there in PC) and Marsuvees Black.

The kid went on to learn about the rest of YCM's community through the Chibi Knights, and later the whole of Clubs. Creator was a purple guy, always sporting avis/sigs with Mewtwo, Lelouch, or something else. He liked RPing and always had ideas mulling over his head as well. And like Ike, he fought for his friends. The kid liked him.

Deustodo was, well, nuts. Imagine a guy whose mind often went to...unique, entertaining places like Raine's, but injected with troll blood, proud Brazilian heritage and a propensity to get weird. The kid liked Deustodo, though had to admit he'd piss people off a lot. Especially Creator. They were the literal embodiment of Shizuo and Izaya from Durarara!

Marsuvees Black always sported Ulquiorra avatars (this was a common trend, the kid always looked like Luigi, other people on the forum had common "looks" much how like Showcase people today wear pretty avatars sporting real-life people) and typically played the straight-man to everyone's antics (though he would also go zany and things got nuts). One moment he was down in the dumps and the other he would be so gleeful you'd think the sun was shining out of his ass. It took the kid a little longer to reach a friendship with him, but that became easier over time as now the kid started to pick up proper grammar, putting more thought and oomph into his posts, and became more comfortable with speaking his mind. And before the kid knew it, he'd had his circle of friends.

Others would join over time. There was Donovyn Mikara Gerra (original name being Dark_Magician_Girl=3 or something), founder of the Fake Type Knights who liked vampires and controversial opinions (he also made a thing called the Anti-Synchro). There was Ultimate Assassin Ninjew, a tough guy RPer who also fought for his friends and was super edgy. Shadow Zero (now known as Torma Ximnus, 5th highest poster), a blundering godmodder who was very straight-forward in his actions and thoughts. He tended to get under people's skin, but the kid found himself liking this guy as well. Later would come this crazy guy named Itachi who was rather silly and said stupid stuff, much like your typical noob, but also provided lots of entertainment for those around him and came off as an affable guy who had a surprising intellect when it came to certain topics. He would later grow to become a good friend of the kid's, you many know him as Remo.

There was also the kid's friend from IRL, BlackSkullCortez, who had joined the site at the same time he did and occasionally posted in Akatsuki and Chibi Knights. He always had a Sonic avatar and got along with most people he talked to, but he wouldn't be afraid to throw down in debates and talk stuff out. He's also a lot like Mugendramon, if you could believe that.

 

But anyways, YCM's community didn't just boil down to this kid's friends. It was blessed with many different sorts of members, all conglomerated within a club of some sort.

There was RP 820, the biggest and best RPing club in the site's history. Black and Creator were members (Black being the owner) as well as other people sadly absent from us today like Tempest Dahlia, ThatPhantomGuy (who had a Creative Writing series similar to Broken's Heart Breakers called Phantom's Weather Report, more on CW later), Broxret (who wrote a lot of disturbing YCM porn, though Broken topped him that one time in Powerforce, also more on that later), Broken (who loved Homestuck, Kingdom Hearts and dark stuff)  and Jake the Sage (there were more, but you get the idea). Out of them, the kid got to know Jake the Sage and his daughter Lora the most and would get to bond with him as he joined Jake's YCMaker Hotel and over his big story in CW (also more on that later). These guys kept the RP section thriving for a while and were always brimming with ideas; they were also seen as sort of an elite group (a concept essentially absent in current YCM's social hierarchy, despite the supposed controversy around the current modding staff) that the kid was afraid of approaching for a while since they had standards and were all professional and stuff. If you want to know more about them, ask Black; he was there since the beginning and could go more in-depth about their history than what this kid had seen.

There were the Fake Type Knights, a group of members who felt that custom cards should allow members to use fake types in the cards they posted. It was one of the earlier clubs as well, dating back to late 2008/early 2009. It was so chaotic that if you refreshed a page after a couple minutes, they would already be well onto the next page. Donovyn Mikara Gerra made this club, Creator was a member as well and would later reincarnate it in a much tamer form, I believe Deustodo was there too, among many others. Also, there was this guy there named hollowblade who was only around for a bit, but everyone said he was really cool. Like he was the man. Even El and Creator were praising this guy, and that wasn't something you saw often. But the crazy thing was that FTK fostered a rival club called the Fake Type Rebellion, led by Majortim (now known as Admiral Tim), with their sole purpose in existing to bring the FTK down. They "warred" over their histories and while ultimately irrelevant, they remained a very fond memory for those who beheld the whole thing.

Clubs had 2 huge clubs back in the day, perhaps the biggest in membership and scale that YCM had ever seen. Only the Absolute Powerforce (more on them later) would ever come close in reaching those heights. The two clubs were Club Pikachu, led by the member Pikachu, and Organization XIII led by Phantom Roxas (he's a mod now). And then one day, they decided to go to war.

This got big attention. This was YMB/Awards (more on them later) levels of hype, as people not even remotely involved were wondering what was going on. 

So in RP, there was major mayhem in organizing applications and sides together. Unfortunately, the war never did reach a conclusion. Although Org 13 went on to live longer than CP did, so maybe you could say they won in the end. I think. But the actual fighting boiled down to mass hysteria, godmodding and over everything else, absolute confusion. Many of the people previously mentioned chose a side and fought in the war, others of note were War Torn, who was absolutely power-hungry (you know him now as Striker) and...I thought I had someone else in mind. Some other members could fill in the blanks here, if they remember other fun specifics.

Overall though, it was fun and it got people invested in something for a couple weeks. 

So concludes Part 1 of the Clubs Saga.[/spoiler]

[spoiler=YCM's Bizarre Adventure: Creative Tendency]

The Creative Writing section was always an interesting section to watch over because most of the time, it was as dead as the Literature forum typically is.  But there were brief times where it positively surged with activity.  The following members are noted to be some of the few that actually finished writing a story on YCM.

Umbra used to be a Mod of the section and was known to write stories that were typically of higher quality compared to the stock YGO fics other members wrote there. You know him now as Roose Bolton, the guy who made the Arc V thread.

There was also Bahamut, mostly known to people as Matt, who wrote:

Yu-Gi-Oh! Armageddon-A medieval fantasy tale where the fate of the world rested in the hands of teenagers and their duel monsters.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 24-A sci-fi fantasy tale where the fate of the world was parallel to the hit television show 24…in the hands of teenagers and their duel monsters.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Armageddon: Birth of the Ice Queen-A prequel to his first hit story about one of its side characters, a teenager who takes fate into her own hands, alongside her duel monsters…but it was never finished as he had a falling out with his readers’ lack of comments and stormed off the forum.

Matt took feedback very seriously and was dismayed when he didn’t receive any.  Despite his tragic exit, however, he entertained with his previous stories and showed caring for the CW section that barely any others lent aside from their own stories or reviews (more on that in a bit).  And he wasn’t too shabby a writer either.

There was also a breakout story that launched from late 2010 to mid 2011 that got some of the forum’s attention.  It also happened to be the kid’s major breakout and “claim to fame” if you want to call it that.  The kid was talking in Akatsuki one day with DL and El and the suggestion came up that there should be a show about the three of them.

DL was currently writing a fanfic called Naruto: Kyuubi Shards (which was a good read, though sadly the last 4^th or so of the story is lost somewhere in un-accessible PMs) and took it upon himself to write a fic about misadventures between the three.  However, considering he had that other story, the kid decided what the heck and wrote two chapters before publishing it as Trio of DEF.

The unique draw to this fic was that it directly starred YCM members.  This concept wasn’t new; a previous work called YCManga (which I believe was penned by Atman, double-check with Roxas or anyone from 2008 era) and also a story titled something like The Adventures of Huntar. Huntar was a Mod notoriously known for abusing his power back in the pre-2008 era until he was ultimately demoted.  The story was written by Lance Corporal Atlas, a member with a high intellect that liked to play devil’s advocate in General at times, much like Dark, Mihail Tals and occasionally Polaris (though he’s more light-hearted about it from what I’ve seen).

As far as the kid knew, his story had the most attention than any other story had had in CW’s history.  There was enough hype and chatter between chapter releases that made him feel special and motivated to keep writing his story to the very end.

While that was nice and all, the kid’s ego inflated a little too much.  

Trio of DEF had its definite upsides: the kid learned more about writing, he made friends with people through his story, and it helped him come to terms with his strengths and weaknesses. 

However, once the story was over for a while, members went back and realized the story warranted more criticism than it received at the time (which was barely any).  Trio of DEF was struck with Bleach syndrome, where characters were constantly created to the point the story was clogged.  And while featuring YCM members in the story served as a huge draw into bringing readers in, it also backfired in the fact that the kid had to work out balancing screen-time, which led to a series of inconsequential fights as well as leaving some other members ultimately disappointed.  Making the plot up as he went along probably didn’t help the cohesiveness much either.

The lesson he learned: if you’re gonna do a YCM fic(s), keep it simple.

Thar struck upon a novelty when he decided to write crack fics starring some of the members.  One could argue his tragic love story starring good cop Mugen and insane killer coolspy is nothing short of a masterpiece. The fics starred a series of other members, often resulting in hilarious, memorable results. 

 

Another common trend in Creative Writing was review serials. 

The most famous of these was former Super Mod Crab Helmet’s Foe Fiction. Crab Helmet went around the section and tore apart the first chapter of any story she saw through harsh, yet hilarious commentary, which also possessed heavily veiled constructive criticism. Foe Fiction’s other gimmick is it had a thinly weaved “plot” developed bit by bit as she moved to different stories, providing extra entertainment for those who tuned in weekly (or however often she wrote these). She did much to stimulate the section’s activity for a good portion of 2008/2009 until eventually fizzling out as her interest in the website waned.  She stood amongst the other highly intelligent, cynical critics and would often stimulate General and other sections with forthright, interesting points.  She eventually got banned when she accessed managed to accidentally delete YCMaker’s account circa early 2011 without fixing it.

Phantom Roxas was inspired by Foe Fiction and did his own review series called Phantom’s Divinations, with the gimmick being split commentary between two “characters” that read the story together, also providing feedback and constructive criticism. Crab Helmet once left him a comment voicing her support of his serial.

Another early fic review series as old as Foe Fiction was ThatPhantomGuy’s Weather Reports.  The kid admittedly never got around to reading them, but saw that they received positive attention for the most part.

For a brief period of time, a member by the name of C4 (you know him now as TheFinalFan) tried his hand at reviewing fics in C4’s Bomb Scans, though Crab Helmet made a Foe Fiction out of his review of another fic’s review (things were meta that day), which in retrospect was probably her best “chapter”.

Dark (more on him later) teamed up with fenrir (another intelligent RPer and Powerforcer<-more on them next) and took a different approach to reviewing fics: they recorded their reviews in a podcast called Fen & Dark’s Fan Fic Reviewing and Generally Wasting Time!, often providing their live reactions to the stories as they read them.  Their reviews probably had some constructive criticism, but they’re mostly remembered for being pretty funny (at least the kid thought so).

Dr. Cakey-ko (mostly seen to post in Anime/Manga or CW, always had interesting opinions) hosted a “shotgun” sort of fanfic reviewing in his Fanfic Forum Life-or-Death Rampage of Doom where he read through all the first chapters in the section and boiled down a really quick summary of the premise mixed with his honest opinion as whether it was interesting or not.

DL also had a fic review series titled Fan-Fixtion Riffview where he collaborated with a member named 20thCenturyBoy.  Their specialty was providing snarky commentary and making fun of the chapter in question, while ending it with their advice and CC.

The latest fic reviewal series was Broken’s Heart Breakers where he’d play it straight with two voices, similarly to Roxas, though he’d make sure to go into great detail in his analysis and CC. 

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=YCM's Bizarre Adventure: Powerforce Crusaders]

Clubs moved onto a major 2nd period in its history circa mid/late-2010. While Club Pikachu was gone and Org 13 had shrunken greatly over the years, other clubs were ready to uphold activity. Akatsuki was on its 2nd incarnation (out of the 4 it'd have in its lifetime), now led by the kid himself alongside DL and El Make. DL remade Chibi Knights, which was basically a 2nd meeting place for Akatsuki members. Although there was a funny time where this member Nathren brought some of his friends from Gaia Online (or somewhere) and they joined YCM to hang out and talk in Chibi Knights, adding about 100 pages to the thread in their tenure there. And they mentioned bringing more friends numbering in the 100s.

Not kidding.

Almost 100-something Gaia members were gonna come posting in one of YCM's clubs.

But then one of them got kidnapped IRL or something and the group was never seen again. Nathren popped in here and there, but we never did find out the story there.

Also, the dynamics of Clubs changed a bit as well since the IPB switch happened and now people could converse over the Status Bar. Clubs was still active, but now was when YCM started to change into the preliminary version of what it is today.

Jake the Sage made the YCMaker Hotel, which was constantly on the fence since this was back when Clubs needed to be on-topic at all times or serious bad business would go down, since the Hotel was basically a place to talk about whatever.

This problem was actually discussed in length in another club called YCMthropology, which was a club made to discuss the site, some ideas to make it better, some parts of the site that needed improvements, and so on. It was actually a nice, genuine effort on the community's behalf to get together and talk about stuff to do. And a lot of big names were in there too like Flame Dragon, Dark, Smesh (who made the club iirc, more on him later), Nexev (picture a more down-to-earth Machismo), BlindMonkey (now known as Mugen), and others. The kid was there too. And while it wasn't around for that long, there was a lot of productive, engaging discussion there that thankfully was taken seriously instead of being completely screwed around with like previous efforts.

A club like Akatsuki was made by Chaos Sonic called the Vongola of YCM, centered around the hit anime/manga Reborn! Over the years, the kid had grown into himself on YCM and became just as active in Clubs, General and other places, like his friend DL. So he often joined the new clubs and since post count wasn't disabled in the section back then, he had risen very high up in the top posters list by this point. So he and DL befriended Chaos Sonic in this new club, which was unique in that it brought old FTK members together like Kailyn Leona Kyosuke and Chase, or newer members that started to become active in the forum like Desu and Agro.

DL and the kid also joined YCM's Code Geass club called the Black Knights, led by a nice guy named Archwing (he reminded the kid of Aa'une's Apprentice, who had left YCM by this point and passed on Akatsuki's leadership to him, DL and El). They met and friended members like FTW (For the Wynn), Mako109 (creator of the infamous moa meme, one of the status bar's first big fads), and Paranoia Infinite (you know her now as Hina).

Striker made his own club called the Treehouse, which some considered a "rival" club to the Hotel and to the biggest club of all...

 

Absolute Powerforce. Led by Zeonark/Cherry, it was essentially the cool kid's table of YCM's high school. It was where all the big names of the site gathered. Silliness, all things YGO, drama, RDA and Jack Atlas hype, Ace Attorney and other VG hype, Armz webcomics, the club had it all. This club was unique since members from all over was a part of it at some point.

First you had Cherry, who also talked a lot and was a very open, friendly guy. And just like the kid, he liked GETTING EXCITED IN ALL CAPS (though honestly, a lot of Powerforcers did). It was hard to get on his bad side too, unless you were a dick.

There was Clair, Cherry's girlfriend. They were YCM's It Couple before Black and Caeda started dating (they actually met in this club). She was worshipped by most of the site since she was super nice, wore attractive Miku avatars, and was basically Jennifer Lawrence before Jennifer Lawrence became Jennifer Lawrence yo dawg i heard. The only other person that was worshipped as much as her was Larxene, who was more active in the 2008 era and essentially had her own cult of followers, though she eventually fessed up to being a dude and later only came back here and there to sh*t on YCM for being sh*tty and stuff (also, he was on the top 5 posters in his tenure here, see where he is now). Clair also had a fun club called the Mushroom Kingdom where some Powerforcers and other members like Shradow, ZeroChill/Lonk and Night (then known as Nightwalker) came to talk all things Nintendo.

There was Dark. He was a huge debater and loved screwing with people, which led to really entertaining results whenever he posted in a topic. He came off as a dick to some, but was incredibly intelligent and gifted in his craft and he was fun to talk to. He and Clair were YCM's Best Male and Female Members of 2009, as voted by the community in the YCM Awards. He also had a tendency to butt heads with a member named ADHD-Guitar (you know him now as Tentacruel); you could attribute Tentacruel's growth into one of General's better members thanks to constantly arguing with Dark.

Ice was a kid who loved Ace Attorney and usually picked fights with people. If he ever knew Striker became a mod, he'd probably kill himself. But if he didn't hate you, then he was a good kid (kinda like Desu actually) with a penchant for fighting games, also for talking with split personalities. Other people did that too, like a really big amount actually. The kid even caved and made a split identity called the Wiseman (more on that later).

ProtoMachineKing was "the kid," even though he was close to everyone's age. One of the fresher faces on the forum, he had a more positive outlook on things compared to his fellow Powerforcers and had a penchant for video games and Mega Man. Kind of like Armz actually.

Speaking of, Armz and Koko were big members then too. Armz was basically the same funny guy that talked video games and memes whereas Koko made a complete 180 from being a b*tch to one of the coolest people in the community's history.

There was Andx (who recently came back from a 2 year journey to become a monk, you know him as Toboe) who was evilfusion before evilfusion was evilfusion. He had everyone's respect because he treated everyone respectfully, he was an excellent RPer, had high post quality, and he always had a dog for his avatar/sig (mostly Repede from the Tales of series).

And Saint Dane. Dane was also an excellent debater, being chummy with Ice and Dark and whatnot, he would often come in Striker's defense when Striker pissed off Powerforce by acting arrogantly. While ultimately giving up after too many second chances, Dane had a noble streak that not many other people had and left YCM like the rest of the people here to embark on better quests (though he occasionally comes in to make a post as Cipher Admin Ein). He also is the only person here besides the kid who ever read Pendragon, which is a really good book series, but anyway.

Dane brought his little sister into Powerforce after a while, her name was Caeda (you know her as Caeda(duh)/Kazooie). Powerforce would often go into Duel Monsters Genesis (before DN really became big) and sometimes the kid would tag along to go watch. And there he saw a relationship kindle between Black and Caeda which still burns bright to this very day, as well as members just hanging out and having fun. It was like a beta version of the supposed YCM Skype chat which most certainly exists (or something). And the kid felt like he had made it. Members who were high up in post count and status were now talking with him and it was cool because it wasn't even a total sausage fest and there was a renewed interest in dueling since E-Heroes were high up in Tiers again and...you get the point.

Powerforce went on for 1500+ pages before finally being locked. Fact of the matter is, most of the members left over time, moving on to bigger and better things. There was lots of drama, lots of arguing and hurt feelings, there was also Broken writing that one fic where every Powerforce member died a gruesome death while also including a graphic sex scene involving Black and Shadow Zero that remains an enduring visual to this day (damn it Broken) (or was it Broxret that wrote that, I think it was, though correct me if I'm wrong, Broken). 

The point being, Powerforce had its good sides and a lot of cool members came and went, despite some of the drama going on underneath. So basically it was high school.

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=YCM's Bizarre Adventure: General is Unbreakable]

But that's enough about Clubs for now. Now, at this point, the kid had left CC after finding his niche in Clubs. So the details here are not as clear, but the cliffnotes that can be given are these.

Icy was the ruling CC mod there for most of the kid's early tenure. Some people liked him, some people did not. He in particular had a hostile relationship with ragnarok1945, who previously trumped DL's post count having 50K+ posts for constantly flooding CC with comments. So his gripe was understandable.

He left YCM after a while and passed CC onto Koko, Black and Mihail Tals (now known as Karkuk). The kid didn't see much of their reign, only that things got a lot stricter (supposedly better post quality, but he didn't see) and Mihail tried to exact his revolutionary ideas through his mod power.

 

Unfortunately, the kid never really did venture his way into Showcase or Role-playing. Some other kid needs to be found to fill the gaps.

There is also a lot of history in TCG that the kid bore witness to and was amazed at the tomf***ery occuring there. Prominent members involved included Rodrigo, Welche, Dog King, Mage, byak, Koko and Black became more knowledgeable of the game here, Klavier Gavin, Armz, Sleepy, AND MANY MORE. Someone should fill in TCG history, since it is at the very least entertaining.

 

General has seen some interesting shenanigans over the course of time.  There were controversial threads about religion in the past, homosexual marriage, Lunar posted a thread about being transgender and was thankfully met with gracious support that encouraged other members of the site to eventually do the same. There were incredible bouts of noobery in cases like ianwatters who was basically coolspy before coolspy was coolspy, chedbonlahor who abhorred anyone using special effects in their cards and many more eyebrow raisers occurred over the years.

As a community, YCM has hosted events to bring the forum together.  The YCM Awards was a practice dating back to the 2008 days where they would host them…very frequently apparently. Like every month or 2 months, some absurdly frequent rate.  In 2009 though, they started an annual trend, hosted by different members each time.

In 2010, Kingdom Star (frequently known as King, not to be confused with Kyng) hosted a successful round of awards and added a council of members to help organize the event, brainstorm ideas for awards, etc. Overdrive helped design the awards for people to wear in their sigs.

The kid decided to take a stab at running the 2011 Awards.  While it was successful and boasted a whopping 40 awards for members, he unfortunately didn’t communicate well with a GFX team he quickly hashed together.  He foolishly thought that they would know what to do, but failed to give them any direction in which to go.  Ultimately, no awards were physically made because it was his bad.

J-Max hosted the next awards in 2012, which encountered similar problems, leading the Awards to die out.  Though like the YMB, it’s entirely possible the practice will be revived at some point.

 

Another huge phenomenon to overtake Polls was the YCM Member Brawl.  There was a guy named Smesh (who was known for being chill and Mexican) that thought up the idea and after being met with positive reactions, made it into a thing.  There was huge success as everyone and their mother flocked to these polls, paying close attention to who was voting for whom and fishing for votes.  The kid was equally guilty, for now that he had gained decent attention from the community, he wished to see how popular he actually was.

The first Brawl ended in Black’s victory.  The 2^nd Brawl was hosted by Dark half a year later (as Smesh took a leave) while the kid, who was really caught up in the hype, decided to help in making threads for the individual matches as well as hosting the YCM Mod Brawl (which was won by Phantom Roxas).  The 2^nd Brawl ended in Clair’s victory.

After a little while, the kid stepped up and oversaw the 3^rd YCM Member Brawl by collaborating with Creator.  They reworked the way it was run (forget how) and they added a story to it where their alter-egos, the Inventor and the Wiseman, hatched a plot to pit the YCM members against one another, all for their nefarious evil plan and such.

The Brawl ended with Black winning once more and taking down the Wiseman with the help of gone-good Inventor. 

Also there must be a brief mention of the member Overdrive (the one who made the 2010 awards) who made really sick logos and sigs; he helped in designing awards for the winners and for a brief while, he was the guy to go to for requests.

The Brawl went away for a little while until DL decided to do the 4^th one and added a team mechanic to it.  The way it worked is everyone was randomized into teams of three; if your team had at least two victories, all three of you would advance.  The ultimate winner of this Brawl was Hina.

The YCM Member Brawl would then go off into purgatory, briefly spoken of here and there, but never to be revived again.  Until Agro came and revived it once more, where Armadilloz barely scraped the win over Black.

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=YCM's Bizarre Adventure: (Other) Golden Members]

The last part of this tale is to highlight certain members that were once (arguably still) an instrumental part of YCM’s history.

 

Frunk was a former Mod that joined YCM at the very beginning.  He was apparently promoted to modship after YCMaker needed staff to help out with the new site and happened to pick him, amongst a few others. Interestingly enough, Frunk was the 37^th member to join YCM, which he remembered up until his departure from the forum to start his own MyBB forum titled Project 37, inviting YCMers to come with him.  The only other similar cases involving YCM flocking to other forums were E Neos’ HD Forums (the member was also known to make signature tags for members, they looked pretty cool), Draco Straybyrn’s site (forget the name, more on him in a sec) and Rodrigo’s Cardgame Coalition.

Incidentally, around the time Kitty, Rodrigo and J-Max were banned, Frunk returned from his long hiatus and egged on J-Max that ultimately brought Crab Helmet’s attention to the lolicon situation, which ended up in his permaban (until his recent and reformed return a few months back).

Frunk had written a more-detailed analysis of his early YCM escapades in a stickied thread in CW, where most of the above info was recalled from.

 

Draco Straybyrn was one of YCM’s earlier members and is the only known member in YCM’s history to ever direct YCMaker’s attention and have a full-on conversation with him.  Much like how former CC mod Mihail Tals would instigate the Mods and discuss YCM politics, Straybyrn went further to incite “revolution” (or something) in how the forum was run and basically made enough ruckus where YCMaker came to talk to him on Staybyrn’s forum to settle the matter.

Unfortunately, these details are not enough to shed light on the full situation; if someone was around to witness what happened, please feel free to fill the gap.

 

Darkplant was one of the most popular and respected members of the forum, particularly TCG. He was unique in that he actually lived in Japan (the only other member to live there was Stark, who was a cool guy, chummy with Smesh and Powerforce, and also made the Ten Commandments of YCM which still stand today) and was often trusted as a reliable source for translating or verifying leaks for things as they came in.  He also accrued a “troll tarturus” (spelling?), where he collected funny/dumb/troll posts into a collection and would often make a hilarious anecdote when one was collected.  One of these can be seen in Greiga Necross’ sig today. He was also one of the few to accrue 1000 rep before it became easy for anyone else to do so, and is one of the few names whispered today when people murmur over those they miss.

He also penned The Noob Tutorial, one of the best tutorials on the site to date.

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=YCM's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Conclusion]

You may not have guessed this, but the kid mentioned through all these parts wasn't just some kid.

And most of my observations boiled down to everything I've seen 2009-2011. Everything onward are things that do deserve to be covered, but can be done by someone better than me.

If anyone feels I got something wrong or looked at something a different way, feel free to say your piece too.

And thanks for reading.[/spoiler]

[/spoiler]

[Blake]

R.P.820 was the third biggest club, not AP, iirc.

Also Darkplant is part of The Organization/YGOrg nowadays and pops up rarely.


And byak was one of the top 3 in TCG when I started there (Jenny/byak and Lily/Koko are a couple, btw)

Overall seemed more or less correct.

[Northern Sage]

Does anyone remember the fake YCMaker account on DN? And Frog the Jam?