The word you're looking for is "parody."

Abridged Series? by Anonymouse on 2014-10-22 01:02:00 UTC Reply

Boo.
I'm back, sorta. I'll be popping in and out every few weeks or something.

Anyways, what are your opinions on "Abridged Series"?

For those that have no clue what I'm talking about, an Abridged Series is a series of Youtube vids that use clips from the actual canon show, strung together with new (fan) voice actors going along a script written by what I will refer to as the Writer. (This is your author.)

The whole point of an Abridged Series is that every character in it is a replacement, EVERY SINGLE ONE, yet they usually follow a rough outline of the canon universe's plot.

An interesting example is "My Little Pony: The (Abridged) Mentally Advanced Series" by FiMFlamFilosophy. Here's a link to the MLP Fan Labor Wiki page for the series itself and its characters, because as I said, every character is a replacement.

As for why it's interesting? You might have seen it in one of the two pages I linked, you might not have, but FiMFlamFilosophy (with the aid of artist Petirep as badfic don't have clips to redub) has created a spinoff of his own Abridged Series called "Rainbow Dash Presents," essentially using the replacements from "The Mentally Advanced Series" to make an Abridged Series style sporking of badfic, including a self-spork of his own fic, "A Beautiful Day in Equestria,"- and he insists in the last part of the video that the video's ending is the 'canon' ending to the fic. Here's a link to the MLP Fan Labor Wiki page.

So are these Abridged Series bad or good?

The word you're looking for is "parody." by Neshomeh on 2014-10-22 16:36:00 UTC Reply

As the intro to every DragonBall Z Abridged episode helpfully explains, it and all the abridged series are fan-based parodies. The personalities of the characters are deliberately exaggerated to highlight their idiosyncrasies, flaws, plotholes in their canon, etc. Because that's what parodies do. For humor. (Close kin to what PPC missions do to badfics, in fact.) Calling them out for creating character replacements seems to be massively missing the point, IMO.

That doesn't mean they're all done as well as Team Four Star's stuff—the PPC has a Department of Bad Parody for a reason—but I'd advise against tossing out the entire concept based on how you feel about just one or two of 'em.

~Neshomeh

Ehh by Anonymouse on 2014-10-23 00:24:00 UTC Reply

Ehh, I don't actually think I got my personal opinion across well.

Yes, I know that they're parodies, and personally, I like the idea myself. However, I'm a guy that goes to 8chan, so my opinion might be biased, and I was wanting to see what you guys thought about abridged series.

Although I question how Thrackerzod is an exaggerated Sweetie Belle, but that's not the point.

*shrugs* Eh... by eatpraylove on 2014-10-22 14:19:00 UTC Reply

They're all right, I guess. I haven't seen too many, and they strike me more as gag dubs than actual abridgements.

(Also, hi again!)
Hey hey, you're back! by Iximaz on 2014-10-22 01:20:00 UTC Reply

Kinda. *thows cakefetti*

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Avatar: The Abridged Series. I think it's mostly because the characters are so wildly OOC that I find them funny, because it's not meant to be a serious representation of canon. To be fair, not all of them are good. Ones that rely on jokes involving male genitalia are usually the bad ones.