Accidental Star Trek Cosplay + Re: The YOMYOMF Blog

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

As I still haven't done my own write-up of the YOMYOMF blog (it's on my docket), below is a link and a couple paragraphs from Jimmy J. Aquino who gives an overview of the blog, his likes, dislikes, and ultimately the closing of the site. While I can't subscribe to everything he says about it (I liked a lot of the later content and especially some of the more feministy POVs--but I also don't mind listicles xD and I do wish the content was still up) it's still a good read, and I wonder how come I haven't seen more posts on the closing--because it definitely gave voice to a lot of great people.

http://accidentalstartrekcosplay.tumblr.com/post/182036709742/a-prada-sweater-model-left-a-soong-android

Nobody who follows this Tumblr blog will give a shit, but in mildly sad news, the Asian American online content studio YOMYOMF (You Offend Me You Offend My Family)—whose blog was the only site that gave a plug to Accidental Star Trek Cosplay—shut down its blog. The staffers at YOMYOMF (pronounced “yawm-yawm-eff”), who nicknamed themselves the Offenders, said farewell to the blog’s readers at the end of an eventful year that, as Vulture writer E. Alex Jung noted, saw Asian American art coming into its own.

YOMYOMF was founded in the late 2000s by Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin to promote his 2007 indie movie Finishing the Game, an alternate-history mockumentary about a ’70s casting call for the next Bruce Lee. (The blog’s name comes from a frequently repeated line during Finishing the Game’s kung fu flick audition scenes.) It evolved into an often enjoyable blog full of posts from the likes of Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang; occasional insights into being an Asian American actor that were written by performers Lin frequently casts in his movies, particularly Roger Fan and Sung Kang, who was concise in his words just like Han, his Fast and the Furious alter ego; and great pieces about film, screenwriting and racism against Asians by filmmaker Quentin Lee and playwright Philip W. Chung, who co-wrote “Seconds,” an episode of Lois & Clark’s much-maligned Clone Lois arc in 1996, and the 2015 Vicki Zhao comedy Hollywood Adventures.