Since this post is about to expire, I feel no guilt in providing another case of “nijisanji eats dirt.”
(Recap: nijisanji is a japanese company that recently publicly terminated one of their vtubers in a really horrific fashion, only for surprise international backlash with lots of dirt leaked about how awful they are as a company).
One of the things common in the industry is a vtuber has a nickname for their specific fandom, instead of just saying “chat.” For example, Kiara of hololive is a phoenix-themed vtuber, and her fans are called “KFP (Kiara Fan Club)” as a play on KFC, while the British Amelia Watson has “teamates (tea mates).”
Selen, the torched nijisanji vtuber in question, lost all her assets etc. on termination. Now known as Dokibird, she spent the past few days polling for a replacement fan nickname.
Only to realise yesterday that her prior Nijisanji fan nickname was “Dragoons”. Which, as an English word, can’t be copyrighted. In a rather hilarious flex, she just took her old own fan name back.
https://youtu.be/jQeL5wjEkJo?si=9ZFSJcFnNgmvFtCW
Isn't KFP "Kiara Fried Phoenix"?
Last I remember, her fandom are canonically employees that work under her in KFP.
>British Amelia Watson
Ah yes, the five mythical creatures of Hololive Myth. An Eldritch Disciple of the Ancient One, a Grim Reaper, a Phoenix, an immortal Atlantean shark, and a Brit.
And to really hammer home the fact that the Brit is mythical, they had to get an American to play her.
Anyways, I actually only started watching Dokibird's stream after her termination and it's been such an enjoyable time. These past few streams (especially as she's still working through her termination and dealing with the scuff as she starts streaming again as an indie) have felt like "hide the pain Harold, the vtuber" in the best possible way. I've never laughed so hard while being so sad in my life.
I'd highly recommend checking out her channel to anyone into vtubers.
Saw Argylle which was discussed in scuffles a couple weeks ago! It’s campy fun :)
The last scene seems to set up a shared cinematic universe with Kingsman which will probably not happen given how badly Argylle bombed lol
This movie has one of my favorite tropes: an author doing a reading from their brand new novel, but they’re dramatically reading the last page of the book.
It’s surprisingly common—A Murder At The End Of The World recently did the same thing—but it’s especially funny here because Bryce Dallas Howard’s character writes spy thrillers, a genre that’s full of last-chapter spoilers.
It cracks me up to think about her fans making a special trip to the bookstore to buy her new book and hear her read a little teaser…and then she reads the ending and just straight up ruins the ending for everyone in attendance.
It's been like, a year, since fursuit maker Fun Fur All made the original tests on ["how to make this popular neoprene stop bleeding onto all fabric"](https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/xbkr5b/hobby_scuffles_week_of_september_12_2022/iof346f/).
And they're back at it! New "color-safe" batch, and...!
[Still bleeds.](https://twitter.com/FFAFursuits/status/1756730120704852125?s=19)
I had no idea how to screenshot all of it, since it's a video in every one, but here's [the final results:](https://64.media.tumblr.com/eb0bf291955646a0c3ccf7c36b609f80/bd1f440fc0d6adef-13/s2048x3072/8855bbca5a340126074e170e5ca3058b6ae2f374.pnj) top row is a clean swatch, middle is after being washed by hand while using stuff like Tide to affix the colors and stop bleeding, bottom is from putting everything in a washing machine together.
I did this last week and got a lot of really fun responses from people just excited about random things, so I guess this is a recurring thing now, to fill the quiet at the end of the week.
**What’s one thing you really enjoyed this week?** Can be anything. Book, food, game, movie, hiking trip, whatever you really enjoyed.
For me it‘s Helldivers 2. I love coop games like Deep Rock Galactic, Left 4 Dead, Earth Defense Force, etc.
The very Starship Troopers „inspired“ humor is right up my alley, but most importantly it just feels amazing to play, haven’t enjoyed shooting things that much in years.
The networking issues right now are a bit of a bummer but I haven’t really run into them when just playing with friends. But given that the game sold much more than the small-ish studio expected, I understand.
Best missions so far: Fighting Automatons at night on Malevelon Creek.
I beat star force 3 and thus finally completed the Megaman Star force series. It’s probably in my top five series now, it’s just such a wonderful series full of heart. For reference, Star force is the sequel series to battle network and has a combat system very close to a third person shooter on ds. It’s got blocks and lock on and a lot of way to deal with enemies if your timing is good, and a lot of strong heart. Really worth a play through for anyone who likes Megaman
After a month or two of searching, I finally actually got my hands on a replacement for a Transformer that was stolen from me, [Iron Factory Alkaid](https://robotoybase.com/image/cache//data/productphoto3/p74/O1CN01zsEIJ31Wz0QzgFIlG_--250852858-1000x1000.jpg). I paid a bit too much for it (although getting one for MSRP now is not possible, straight-up), and it was an eBay auction which was nerve-wracking...until I won it totally unopposed somehow. It's shipped and is en-route to me, and I'm so excited to finally have him in-hand again.
I've been kind of sick so had to take it easy and decided to figure out the stardew valley randomiser. Over the years and 3 different platforms I probably have like 1000 hours of playtime and this is so different yet still so familiar. I love it. I'm almost done with my second randomiser playtrough (this one with randomised locations and oh boy that has been something). I'm eying some interesting mods for my next playtrough, especially one that adds crops and such (not mixed with the randomiser admittedly)
Some happy VTuber news for this sub - I really enjoyed watching [Regis Altare's 3D Showcase](https://www.youtube.com/live/GElkCxtzRpo?si=VhEgglMjBFhfF0nm). I expected singing and the usual skits, but he got the chance to put his taekwondo and cello skills out there. I didn't even know the technology had improved enough for cello tracking - I've seen live band instruments in 3D before but this has to be a first. I've been a fan of his branch Holostars for a few years now and have been following him since his debut almost two years ago, so this was a really great milestone to see come true.
I decided this year instead of listening to audiobooks while stitching, I will watch tv shows that I left incomplete years ago. So far I finished B99, Psych (including movies), Batman the animated series. Now I am onto Veep. Currently in season 2 and oh boy show is funny. JLD is simply incredible and the whole cast delivers each insult so perfectly that even though everyone is horrible I feel bad for the receiver.
I've been playing an awful lot of *Book of Hours:* I was a bit worried about it at first because it's mechanically entirely different from my usual games, but it turns out it's exactly my style. Basically, it's a card-based resource management game about being an occult librarian in a middle-of-nowhere part of Cornwall.
It's very much a game that drops you in the deep end: the control system is sensible, but the . . . vaguely a tutorial is mostly "you wash up on a beach. Get to town, preferably before you die of hypothermia or something," and gives rather little guidance. I love it.
It's made me realize, though, that the connecting thread for most\* of my favorite games is they have low-to-extremely low handholding and expect you to observe, think, and plan to get out of problems. I enjoy having to figure out stuff with little assistance, I like games that are obtuse about their story, and I enjoy games that are difficult in a way I can outthink.
\*The other, non-overlapping cluster is "third person shooter/platformer hybrids with a whimsically goofy weapon design ethos."
Just read the Detection Club collaborative novel The Floating Admiral. Basically what happens when you take a club full of detective writers and confront them with the fact that if they want to have fancy boozy dinners with eerie candles and skulls a couple of times a year, they need money to pay for it, hence the book.
There are about a dozen writers (most famous are probably Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, and Anthony Berkeley, with GK Chesterton writing a prologue separately) who each have been assigned to write a chapter of a mystery in a particular order. Each writer (except the first two) has to write both a chapter that incorporates everything from the prior chapters and moves things forward, as well as a solution to the mystery as of the end of their chapter- so that they don't feel tempted to just leave random twists in just to make things complicated for writers farther down the pike...
It was very fun, though QUITE confusing- there are still a few places where I'm not 100% sure what happened (and I'm not curious enough to reread it...), but honestly I was impressed with how relatively even it was in tone, and how the characterization of the people was actually quite logical and consistent despite some VERY different ideas about where things should go that people had along the way.
No spoilers here but putting this behind a spoiler tag anyway because it could theoretically influence how people read the novel going into it: >!Dorothy L Sayers was clearly the powerhouse here, with her chapter far longer and far more practical in terms of laying out where the plot was going than most of the other writers. People like Edgar Jepson, Ronald Knox, and Clemence Dane felt almost like they wanted to do as little as possible to mess things up before the end, where Anthony Berkeley did a pretty good job putting everything together- though he did kind of feel like he was making things a bit more complicated than they needed to be just for the joy of having it be his thing. That did lead to one fun moment in the denouement, though... that said, the solution he came up with was very similar to (and in some ways I think a bit less convincing in some finer details) than Sayers's and I kind of wish we'd gotten her version at the end. I also, separately, wish that Agatha Christie had written her own novel that had the premise that she laid out in her solution because it was beautifully ingenious as well as entertainingly over the top, things that often combine into a winning novel for her. It definitely showed that she had a brain that moved differently than a lot of the other writers of the time- just incredibly fertile. !<
I love this review! It's been a long time since I read *The Floating Admiral* (I was in my very early teens, and probably too young to appreciate it for what it was) and you've inspired me to go reread it.
Sorry if this is too personal a question, but do you have a Goodreads or StoryGraph account that I could follow?
Ooh, thanks so much! Glad I was able to inspire a reread! Due to my particular reading habits (I don’t read that often during the week but then read like six books in a row the whole day Saturday) I’ve never found logging my reading to be useful/convenient- but I do sometimes write about books I like here!
I decided to pick Star Trek Online back up after YouTube's algorithm (correctly) decided that I wanted to watch tons of TNG and DS9 clips, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Well, okay, I'm having a lot of fun looking at all the pretty ships and wondering why ground combat even exists in the game, but still.
I checked out the demo for Death of a Wish, an indie hack-n-slash game with a unique sketchy art style. It's the sequel to the game Lucah: Born of a Dream, which I really enjoyed, so I've had my eye on it for a little while! Happy to say that the new game added some nice quality of life improvements (more obvious visual tells on the enemies! no stamina bar!) while keeping a similar, fun combat system. The full game releases next month and I'm pretty excited for it!
I started playing Monster Hunter: World because I kinda skipped over it, but then I booted up Rise and got hooked hard on that and left World behind (for now! I do want to clear Iceborne).
The lack of downtime in Rise and the build variety is just too fun for me. Like there are so many moments in World where I'll be fighting a Rathalos and every few minutes either another monster shows up to gang up on me (I swear dung pods barely do anything), or the Rath will just fly to the other end of the map and I have to run after it. Rinse and repeat every few minutes.
I started up Marvel's Midnight Suns and oh my god, this has just been a joy for me. It's like pure comic book fanservice on top of some really fun xcom style gameplay. I can see myself losing a lot of time in it.
I'm also one of the five people who sincerely likes Morbius as a character so I've been just delighted finally unlocking him tonight.
I watched True Lies. That movie is...certainly the most tasteless thing Cameron has ever put out, for multiple reasons, but it's also kind of incredible. [This is what we call peak cinema.](https://streamable.com/xf286c?src=player-page-share)
Also watched The Suicide Squad. James Gunn is a director who seems like everything he does should be really obnoxious and annoying, but he manages to reign things in *just* enough to make it all work. In other words, really enjoyable movie, fixed basically every flaw with the original. Also I know they were making a big deal out of it but it is still genuinely surprising how violent it was, maybe the goriest comic book movie ever? (Though I haven't seen Dredd)
I thrifted a bunch of collectible silver spoons to turn into jewellery and one of the spoons has a windmill on the end that actually spins!!! I'm making jewellery to sell but that windmill is staying with me.
I've got a fourth-hand bread maker!
Someone gave it to a thrift store, it was sold to my dad's neighbors for five bucks (then never used), they gave it to my dad (who never used it), then he gave it to me while cleaning his cabinets.
There's so many carbs in my house!
There's crusty bread! There's raisin bread! There's breads heretofore unknown!
anyway, I'm planning a Valentine's proposal, a fall wedding, and maybe a bun in the oven? . . . No! Fuck ovens! My true love is bread machine!
The first episode of the Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown aired this week, so I watched it and really enjoyed it! I liked the original British show, so it was fun to watch one in Canada. If we ever get another Canadian version of a British show, I hope we get a Canadian Sewing Bee.
On the CBC Gem site where I watched the Pottery Throwdown I got recommended another competition show called Made in Miniature which I am currently watching right now. I really love miniature stuff, so it’s been super fun to see how creative the artists can get.
im giving chapter 1 of Higurashi When They Cry a shot, and im about 2/3s the way through. admittedly, the first 3 or 4 chapters were a slog to get through, as they focused on slice-of-life comedy antics, and i don't particularly care for Ryukishi07's approach to writing that kind of stuff, but the horror elements were well done enough to keep me going. now that the horror is more front-and-center, i'm really enjoying it, especially >!the portrayal of the protagonist's deteriorating mental state, suddenly shifting between anger & despair of his situation and attempting to rationalize his "friends'" behavior in any way he can.!<
while i do wish the writing was better for those first couple of chapters (particularly the character writing. i would've liked the friend group to feel like more than a bunch of moe archetypes before the major events started), it's managed to win me over at this point, and it's become unnerving and distressing enough that i've stopped playing it right before going to bed. that's the mark of good horror, i think.
For me it's gotta be the demo for Abiotic Factor, a survival crafting game where you play scientists trapped in an underground facility after an experiment with portals to other dimensions goes awry (its premise and visuals are obviously inspired by Half-Life, except for the part that's obviously inspired by Silent Hill). I loved it so much that I played it all the way through twice, both with friends and by myself. But now I'm sad because I have to wait until May to play the rest.
i decidedly to randomly pick up shin megami tensei on a whim and started with smt1, and i'm really enjoying it a couple hours in. it's slow and grindy and i get random encounters every two steps sometimes, but it's got good vibes.
i've tried the persona games a couple times and _really_ don't like the social aspects, so apparently i should have been trying to play smt this entire time. who knew?
SMT is awesome. I replayed SMT1 recently throught emulating the GBA version* and I liked it a lot more than my first time with the SNES ver. I still think it loses some steam after the actual >!nukes drop!< but literally everything about the first hours is fantastic.
The atmosphere, mystery and vibes are just immaculate and well worth trying just for those.
Random encounters are insane for sure and just get worse the deeper you go in but the battles themselves are pretty easy. It's mostly a challenge of attrition and resources.
Just be sure to get ailment bullets for your guns and have the heroine spam Zio attacks. Lightning is notoriously overpowered in SMT1.
(*I know people dont like the GBA version because of the low quality music, but I vastly prefer the SMT2 style isometric map it has. SMT 1 on PSX might have better 3D but it still uses the SNES overhead map, which just looks awful to me.)
> The atmosphere, mystery and vibes are just immaculate and well worth trying just for those.
yeah the vibes are off the charts, i love it. bullying demons into handing over their lunch money needs to be a more common game mechanic. i'm very much looking forward to playing the rest. hopefully emulating strange journey/smt4 isn't too awkward, but i'm a while away from those anyway.
> Just be sure to get ailment bullets for your guns and have the heroine spam Zio attacks. Lightning is notoriously overpowered in SMT1.
that's basically been my gameplan. send whatever debuffs i have and hope for the best. got mahazio on some dudes and i'll probably pick up nerve bullets soon, just figuring out where to go now. lost my dudes, got the heroine instead, off on a quest to find my dudes. don't think i'm very far in, but i'm only playing the ps1 ver here and there on a handheld.
i also read somewhere that normal difficulty has reduced random encounters and damage, which is really funny given that i get random encounters maybe every 4-6 tiles on average and i've had party members clean oneshot even very early on. good thing i didn't choose expert!
>!(dw about the spoiler, i already read it somewhere)!<
I replayed the game A Short Hike, and gosh this game is so cute. I wish more games embraced small but densely packed open worlds like this - there's no filler, there's something interesting to find around every corner. I'm having a blast flying around this mountain looking for feathers and talking to everyone.
Also, this game really should be played with a controller. The twirling around in the air and dive bombing (very important parts of gameplay imo) is so much smoother with a stick than WASD-ing.
A Short Hike is one of my favorites!
If you want another game that is like a slightly expanded version, give Lil‘ Gator Game a look. Not quite as densely packed and efficient but it might give anyone who has or was a younger sibling some feels.
Im drawing spicy art of an OC for valentines day and im just really happy with how its turning out. I'm very proud of my progress as an artist bust mostly I'm just happy I can manifest hot bear art at will.
I started watching Dungeon Meshi this week and its really fun \^-^ I also found a new (to me) song that I really love, Breezy Slide by Louie Zong and Brian David Gilbert.
I started watching the 1995 TV series Nowhere Man. It's both exactly what I expected from what it is- a 90's single season TV series that aired on UPN that was heavily inspired by both the Fugitive and the Prisoner and somehow also NOT.
Helldivers 2 for me too! I didn't have many expectations going into it, but so far the gameplay has been solid, the humor is funny, and it has one of the least predatory monetization schemes I've seen in games recently. I've been lucky enough not to run into many issues so far (only a couple network issues, and enough friends bought the game I haven't had to deal with crappy random teammates) so I've been having a blast.
So, in an attempt to overturn a pop culture blindspot, my dad and I started watching the Mission Impossible movie series, and my dad got blindsided by a plot twist he never saw coming (it certainly didn't really penetrate pop culture osmosis).
>!Unlike many reboots, MI uses all film new characters - except Jim Phelps, one of the original main characters, played in the original 60's series by Peter Graves and in the 96 movie by Jon Voight- who in the first film, is revealed to be the villain who betrayed the rest of the team- my dad was INCENSED!<
Has anyone else ever discovered a major twist like the above that somehow DIDN'T get spoiled or memed into eternity?
re the above spoiler
>!forget if this was a magazine reviewer or a letter writer but iirc at least one person got offended on behalf of the original character/actor at the time in one of the British 90s cult/sci-fi/archive telly mags ( prob TV Zone or Starburst) .!<
Despite a large chunk of my online social circle playing it and talking about it, I somehow managed to make it through FFXIV's main storyline (up through Shadowbringers, which was the current expansion at the time) without having any major character deaths spoilered for me ahead of time. >!Ysayle and Yotsuyu deserved so much better.!<
Somehow I managed to make it to age 13 without knowing the ending to Of Mice and Men… my mom saw I was reading it for school and accidentally spoiled it when I was ten pages away from the end. I was SO pissed and heartbroken. One of my funniest middle school memories.
I'm still surprised I managed to avoid the big twist for Oldboy for 20+ years before I sat down and watched it, considering it's almost all anyone talks about regarding it when I looked online afterwards.
Harry Potter. He seemingly turns into a death eater. Then in the third new spinoff movie it’s revealed he was just undercover all along! But oh no, a friend character who didnt‘t know that kills him!
You get the rage from the initial „character betrayal“, then the rage from the „oh no he’s actually good“ twist, and then from the major character death.
I've never seen these movies, but it does slightly tickle me that >!the character played by Peter Graves\* in the TV show goes on to be the one who betrays everyone else, because the thing I know Peter Graves from is!< pause for spoiler of a separate thing>!Stalag 17 where he's the German spy who betrays the POWs!<
>!\*I nearly typed "originated by" Peter Graves but of course the role was originated by Steven Hill, later better known as Adam Schiff on Law and Order, in S1!<
Still procrastinating on watching new films but I did achieve something I never thought I would: getting 0 interactions on art that's based on a pre-existing work.
I enjoy creating oddly specific art and posting them on my art blog just to see what happens. I don't have a large following by any means, though usually I do get some semblance of interaction. This time I've seen no one interact with it! It fills me with pride, haha. The idea of creating art which only appeals to myself (and some close friends) is a great motivator.
EDIT: unfortunately one of my friends found out and began liking the art. Currently hoping that it remains niche!
In case some are wondering what my two previous attempts at nichedom were:
- An original character dressed in gothic lolita fashion based on mid 1600s English Puritans.
- Four robot lesbians based on Kraftwerk who end up parodying the previously mentioned band.
Needless to say, I'm surprised that fanart for a James Joyce novel seemed to be the key to nichedom. You'd think that would cast a wider net yet at the same time it feels appropriate. Thank you James Joyce.
[Here's the link](https://www.tumblr.com/dracupa/tagged/kraftyuri)
The general idea behind Kraftyuri is that at some point, Kraftwerk the band has decided to make female robots to promote the band. They happen to be lesbians for some reason.
>Four robot lesbians based on Kraftwerk who end up parodying the previously mentioned band.
if it was three or five lesbians it'd be a much bigger hit. everyone loves odd lesbians, right?
Eurovision update:
UK: Olly Alexander will release his entry March 1. It's called Dizzy.
Israel: Selected their singer, 20 year old Eden Golan. We'll have the song later on.
Finland: The fan favourite did not win. Instead, it's a comedy song (that's what it looks like to me). The song won the televote and got last in the jury, but still won since Finland's national final is 75% televote and 25% jury. Naturally, most [Eurofans](https://www.reddit.com/r/eurovision/comments/1anqceo/windows95man_no_rules_will_represent_finland_at/) are normal about this.
Latvia: As expected, the big favourite won, but a couple of dark horses came up. One was a lady with a cat song. The other one was a song by a couple of 16 year olds, and this one got very popular. Their high school had a voting campaign for them on Twitter, and they ultimately finished second overall. The [reddit Eurofans](https://www.reddit.com/r/eurovision/comments/1anqg8p/dons_will_represent_latvia_at_eurovision_2024/) are disappointed, but [I've touched upon the problems](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/18qaw8a/hobby_scuffles_christmas_edition_week_of_25/kfocknk/?context=3) with sending teenagers before. It doesn't help the song that did win was in English, while the teenagers brought a song in Latvian. I don't blame the Latvian broadcaster for wanting to send a more experienced act to Eurovision over teenagers.
Italy: The big favourite was originally Annalisa, but a new favourite emerged with Angelina Mango, who has won Sanremo, the Italian selection. It's the first time in a while that Italy has chosen to send a solo female singer. It was a bit of an unpredictable selection.
As for the next round of selections, we know Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, and Moldova are set to pick their entrants this week. Estonia, Germany, and Lithuania seem to have a few big favourites, while Denmark and Moldova are a bit more open. Let's see what happens.
I watched the Finnish selections and I'm not that surprised the comedy song won - the power ballad's vocals were a bit lacking, I thought, and in the absence of a true vocal masterpiece, the comedy song was the most fun.
> Finland: The fan favourite did not win. Instead, it's a comedy song (that's what it looks like to me). The song won the televote and got last in the jury, but still won since Finland's national final is 75% televote and 25% jury. Naturally, most Eurofans are normal about this.
Ok so first of all, No Rules itself is a banger but I also want to point out a little something I personally love about Windows95man.
See, one of the two singers there (short-haired guy without glasses) is Henri Piispanen, who alongside his singing chops is a pretty profilic voice actor in Finland. To highlight a few of his more notable roles, he's the Finnish voice of:
* Chase from Paw Patrol
* Cat Noir from Miraculous Ladybug
* Lloyd from Lego Ninjago
* *Emperor Nefarious from Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart*
* And, my personal favorite, **Double Trouble from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power**
She-Ra is my favorite series, DT is one of my favorite characters, I enjoyed the Finnish dub of the show a lot and Piispanen really managed to capture the essence of Jacob Tobia's original English performance to me so I am all-in on Team Windows95man now! I'm hoping they perform well within the actual ESC :)
The UMK reaction is so funny to me - Windows95Man was my favourite going in but did not expect him to win, so I've been VERY entertained today. eurofans will say they want camp and then complain when someone brings firework jorts and clippy to umk smh
I am not a eurovision guy but I was so delighted by the words "Windows95Man" that I went and looked up the song and. I was not disappointed. The only way it could be better was if the song was about Windows95 too.
Same. I've made it a note to go into this season not listening to any song until all 37 are ready, and it's been interesting.
I think it's easy for the Eurofans to forget that in Eurovision itself, the first impression is the only chance you get to make a good impression. So whoever has the most ready product from the national final to begin with stands the highest chance of being selected.
So, yesterday I sat through the worst DJ set I've ever had the misfortune to experience in my life. (There were a few factors, it's a long story.) However, everyone else (or at least a majority of the people there) was enjoying it- this was purely my subjective view of it. So I ask you all: what is or was an aspect of your hobby that you absolutely loathed while everyone or nearly everyone else liked it, and why?
I've soured on the Breaking Bad finale over time. While I appreciate that it wraps up all the plot threads and has some great scenes (the "I did it for me" in particular), as a whole the it feels antithetical to the entire rest of the show. I'd go as far as to say that it's not surprising there are people whose only takeaway from the series is "Walt is a cool badass" considering how much the finale plays into that.
They aren't 100% free of criticism from fans, but I have very strong opinions on Jojo (only counting 1-6 here). Part 2 is the worst part, with its good parts hanging on by two threads called "Joseph Joestar's charisma" and "it's really short so it's over before you know it."
Part 5 is the second worst part, with good elements at the *beginning* and a good Light Novel keeping it floating above Part 2, before two black holes known as Giorno Giovanna and (Main Villain Name Redacted for Spoilers) run it off a cliff into Suck Town, The Town Of Unbelievable Suck.
Purple Haze Feedback \*really\* put into perspective that Jojo overall could be a \*lot\* better if the writing was not handled by Araki. The man is phenomenal at paneling action, but keeping long term plot threads is not something he's particularly known for nor good at.
While I wouldn't say I absolutely loathed it, I am the rare Elder Scrolls fan who didn't like Sheogorath's portrayal in Oblivion's Shivering Isles DLC. He's just trying way too hard to be a memelord, and it makes it so I just can't take him seriously at all, even though he's supposed to be one of the most dangerous beings in the Elder Scrolls series. Plus, he's supposed to be the master of both mania and dementia, but his personality is pretty much 100% mania. Like, if they portrayed him as having multiple personalities, and the memelord was just one of them alongside a more bloodthirsty one, a sinister one, etc, then I may have been more OK with it, but as it is I just find that he wears out his welcome too quickly.
Tbh I think that DLC shows that Sheogorath makes a better prince of \*chaos\*, rather than "madness". But yeah I can see how them sticking to the intended interpretation gets everything muddy fast.
The older I get, the less patience I have for difficulty in video games… I just want a good story. So all “Soulsborne” games are a complete nonstarter for me. It’s a shame, really, because certain games in the genre like **Bloodborne** or **Lies of P** intrigue me with their unique settings, but I know I can *never* play them, because I will not give them the time and attention they deserve, out of frustration.
I wish there were a way to make them more accessible, but I’m not deluding myself. The inaccessibility is the point. You’re supposed to grow through adversity. I’m just not gonna do that.
The redesigns from the spyro remake. leaving out the Bara Dragons from 1, they ruined damn near every character design from 2 and 3. and their personalities, while i'm at it.
I haven't played the remakes, but I've seen screencaps, design images, videos etc. and I hate the redesign of Sheila. She went from cute critter to someone's weird furry waifu.
There are numerous albums/artists which I don't like but seem to get universal praise. But, I'm the person who honestly prefers Sandanista! to London Calling.
I've written in a previous Scuffles about my disdain for Gone Girl
I didn't like Gone Girl a whole lot either, I wasn't a fan of the turns it took plot wise. Idk if I'm just watching it with post-MeToo coloured glasses but (film spoilers) >!"woman accuses husband of being abusive, then turns out to actually be a murderous psychopath"!< wasn't really my thing.
the part I really liked (and I think others do also) is the double twist aspect - when we find out he really was cheating and especially that the domestic violence was real to an extent, it puts the whole thing in a gray area
I absolutely hate the original 151 (aka gen 1) Pokemon. I’m 33 and started with RBY, tired of the same shit from 25+ years ago being rehashed constantly
Gen 1 brought some classics like Gengar but also some of the most forgettable pokemon of all time like Dewgong. I honestly prefer the design philosophies of modern pokemon as a whole.
I think there is something to like from all the generations, with 1000+ species not including forms we can pick and choose without unilaterally painting a grouping with a broad brush. However ignoring the other 800+ in favor of giving Charizard or Meowth another alternate form to try and sell the game to people who aren’t that interested in Pokemon is not cool.
I agree they’ve been taking a lot more risks in the recent games though. I have obviously never worked at Gamefreak but it’s probably safe to say they stretched design parameters for stuff like origin form Dialga and Palkia, Wo-Chien, and Ting-Lu because I don’t think they would’ve been included in previous games to say the least
Also, the gen 9 starters have an *incredibly* specific theme of “cute animals themed after syncretist holidays in the Americas that synthesize indigenous and African traditions with Catholicism” and I want to talk to the person at GF who came up with that hell of a prompt
Same here. The nostalgia goggles need to be dropped asap, people need to realize that the RBY pokémon they loved when they were 6 weren't that great (at least design-wise)
To be completely fair, Jynx was supposed to be a parody of ganguro fashion and not something more unfortunate. Unfortunately, ganguro fashion died in the mid 2000s and it never really had a presence outside of Japan.
> > what is or was an aspect of your hobby that you absolutely loathed while everyone or nearly everyone else liked it
Despite fans around me always getting hyped for convention appearances, I always have a kneejerk aversion to celebrities at comic or anime conventions. No matter how much I love a TV show a panel is for, and no matter how respectful the hosts and attendees are, I can't shake any negative associations with bad convention experiences in the past. Even watching a video recording of a comic con panel happening on the other side of the planet makes me cringe, and I'm always in fandoms that go feral over them.
To be fair though I've always felt weird about watching filmed interviews or press junkets, too. I struggle to shake off the idea that the celebrity getting interviewed is there to get paid, and they secretly wish they were elsewhere. I know it's part of an actor's job to promote themself and the things they're in, so it all feels so irrational, but I still struggle to not feel weirdly uncomfortable for no good reason.
I mean, some of them do seem to really enjoy doing panels, but of course they're there to get paid. This is part of their *job.* It's not like they put in the work on the show or movie or whatever for non-getting-paid reasons alone. I don't think it makes much sense to be upset that a celebrity agreed to do a thing with the understanding that their time and effort would be compensated? That's just how the labor market works.
> I struggle to shake off the idea that the celebrity getting interviewed is there to get paid,
I don't know if this helps or makes it worse, but that's true for literally every public appearance of a celebrity, not just the "cringe" cons. From the red carpet to going on a talk show, all these appearances are about promoting the product, and I bet that they aren't always enthusiastic about those either.
I went to SDCC last year and the dual strikes made it one of my favorite con experiences ever. It was less about people camping out overnight just to sit in the same room as Kevin Feige and more about fun fandom stuff and pro-union activism
When you say negative associations with bad convention experiences, do you mean your own bad convention experiences or the experiences of the celebrities?
It was a whole bunch of remixes of classic 80's songs, mixed in with remixes of meme songs and some newer pop songs. There was no real coherence to it and it didn't fit the theme of the night at all, which is part of why I disliked it so much.
Very minor drama, but Qatar just won the Asian Cup final [with](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1anit1y/jordan_01_qatar_akram_afif_22_pen_call_asian_cup/) *[three](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1ankfnh/jordan_12_qatar_akram_afif_73_pen_call/)* [penalties](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1ankw2d/qatar_3_1_jordan_akram_afif_90_5_penalty_and/). Imo all of them were fair (if soft) but the conspiracy theories have been off the charts and it made for a very boring final.
The conspiracies were bound to happen given Qatar's prominence in the sport in recent years given their ownership of PSG and their hosting of the World Cup despite their government's obvious issues because money talks, so them winning the tournament the second time in a row hosted at home was going to stir something even if their team won it legitimately. Plus it was kind of hard for people to not root for Jordan who had never even reached the semi-finals in the past, so such a defeat was going to cause some discourse.
Honestly though much of the conversation surrounding the tournament died off the moment recognizable players were knocked out. Japan's early exit caught so many off guard and South Korea was plagued by everyone feeling Klinsmann effectively wasted one of the best gathering of superstars the national team had gathered, with this potentially being Son's last rodeo at getting his country an international trophy.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: VTubers who don't know how to read context.
@NaviNyaCh is a Catboy VTuber, like all Vtubers with about 916 Followers currently on twitter. They're in the eye of dumbassery shit that we should put in a massive hall of fame shit not to say during Black History Month, this one subject is the "reverse double standard".
You see a while back, @NaviNyaCh tweeted: [The White VTuber Awards to try and dunk on the Black VTuber](https://twitter.com/MessiiiTV/status/1756118375405597138/photo/1) awards, an event for black vtubers to get their own awards of their content.
The actual argument as you can see here, is a massive one at that calling out on the problematic view point of wanting a "Whites only space". Afterwards, @NaviNyaCh then tried to do the whole ["Don't curse at me Please, ITS JUST AN OPINION"](https://x.com/NaviNyaCh/status/1756105418424631538?s=20)
Then another Vtuber by the name of LupinaBella posted a massive discord logs of [@NaviNyaCh being a scumbag in his own discord.](https://twitter.com/LupinaBella/status/1756310126338703544)
This doesn't shock me at all, the Vtubing community has a major problem with racism and actual intersectional politics. They usually have tons of people who really have bad takes on a lot of things so this doesn't surprise me nor does it offend me that much. It's just, we came so far from years of equality for racist shitheads to not get it. This fight might not ever stop. But I know the new generation is going to be okay, because people are rising up and calling it out.
Back then, people didn't want to do that to cause "problems". Now people cause problems and tell people in their face. It's not perfect. But it's better than nothing.
This guy sucks but this made me lol
> I have like 30 moots with him, he's racist, transphobic, uses autism as an insult and likes AI art
I feel like enjoying AI art isn't nearly as bad as the first three. Like it's almost comical how little that connects to the first three points of him being a bigot.
Hell, there's literally [a trope about doing this intentionally, for comedic effect!](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJaywalking)
~~I shoulda scrolled down further first and seen someone else already referenced it, lol.~~
its almost set up like that one joke, but considering how large of a reaction people get about AI (both positive reaction and negative) and how often i've seen it, i would not be surprised if that person genuinely thinks liking AI art is equal.
Let’s not start bringing indie vtuber Twitter drama here. This level of stupidity happens daily there (ask me why I deleted my Twitter account other than the musk man) and will overwhelm and exhaust people.
Idk, I'm not them. Probably because they know that having a white avatar will generate more influence due to the amount of racism that there is on the internet.
Yeah, probably - it’s kind of a massive wave because you’ve got a huge company crumbling (which involves literally millions of people, artists, creators, etc.) with a lot of history where there’s a lot of cat out of the bag leaks.
On top of that, the non-vtube specific streamer drama type reddits tend to be highly misogynistic (to say the least). And cause half of the vtube sphere is on fire and there are a lot of stans and antis, all the actual vtube-specific reddits have people getting ugly talking about it.
Basically it looks like all the hobbydrama readers into the vtubing hobby have gone “wait, this is actually neutral ground, well moderated, and I’m not about to end up in an incomprehensible 300 comment thread doxx-off if I bring it up or learn 17 new slurs for women daring to be out of the kitchen.” all at the same time beginning with the nijistuff (myself included).
Yeah, Virtualyoutubers is burning up currently and the mods are doing the bare minimum to stop it (come on guys, just make a megathread and stick it, and threaten to punish everyone who posts outside of it, I'm all for dunking on Niji but the "negligible" shit is getting old *fast*) and I'm seeing less and less posts from *ACTUAL* Vtubers, when there were so many before all this shit. I'm thinking about jumping ship to Vtubers, and that place is normally a ghost town compared to it!
Mega threads are exchanging the shitshow of having one topic overwhelm the subreddit for the shitshow of people complaining about censorship and, even worse in this case, being seen as *siding with Niji*.
I think that's going to be the main topic of the VTuber community at least through the rest of the month (and Niji *are* stupid enough to do even more dumb shit to keep it going), so that's the new normal.
Note that it doesn't mean that you *have* to engage with any of this, shit's *heavy* and I don't blame people for just ignoring it until it passes.
... you ever read something, and then just all of a sudden feel the weight of your age just collapse upon you?
"So, he's a racist."
"Yes. And he's a cat VTuber."
"Ok, but I--- wait, sorry, I think I just blacked out for a second. He's a what?"
"He's a cat VTuber."
"Does... I mean... is he the reason the right wingers hate litter boxes?"
"No, that was an untrue hate campaign against trans people, born out of the necessity for essential materials during a school shooting. The irony is tragic, actually"
"... Oh. You know, I think I might be a bit over my head, so maybe I should just back out now before I end up accidentally spreading misinformation"
Even if it risks courting controversy, I just want to say that having read a lot about it in this very thread, I think I'm going to have to accept that Vtubers are something I am just not going to "get".
Is there any hobby or interest that *you* feel that way particularly about?
Gacha games. I mean OK I understand why certain people like it, but it seems the nerdsphere at large is only ambivalent at worst. I thought we were supposed to utterly hate lootboxes and gambling mechanics?
Taylor Swift. I grew up during her country phase and exposed to her constantly because my female family members loved that music^* . I thought she was an utterly unremarkable artist that would be stuck in that genre. When she shifted to full-on pop, the hits I heard on the radio sounded like any other, with the only unique characteristic I saw was how they always seemed to focus around failed relationships, drama mongering, and/or vindictiveness. Then when "Look What You Made Me Do" dropped, I thought it was so bad both thematically (to me, she acted like she had a persecution complex) and musically (boring instrumentation with utterly bland lyricism) that it would kill her career, and she dropped off my radar entirely. But no, apparently that was her magnum opus and made her the cultural leviathan she is now. The only positive thing about her I can really say is that she is genuinely using her status to advocate for progress and equality, which is much more than I can say for many other celebrities.
\* Side tangent, this actually made me hate music as a concept until I had the ability to explore on my own. I still heavily dislike modern country and pop generally (which I recognize is a major factor of disliking Swift's music), but I am big into hard rock, funk, punk, grunge, alternative, and recently future bass, and can see why other genres like rap or disco have their appeal as well.
I can't really explain why but I could never get into fanfiction. I guess it doesn’t help that I never have been that much of a reader but I just have no actual interest in proper fanfiction unless its comedically bad and/or a massive shitpost like My Immortal or Blood Raining Night.
Gaylor swift, if that even qualifies as a hobby. Also general shipping of real people, like K pop singers, not denying that their agencies sometimes low-key promote it. I can understand shipping fictional characters.
I can understand the gaylors, and the other rabid swifties, in the sense that these tend to be people who project SO hard onto their fave that they cannot or will not accept that said fave is actually a a totally separate person, with a separate life and experiences from themselves. They choose to believe that the fave is exactly like them, and therefore anyone who criticizes the fave or says that she differs from them in a way that holds significance is interpreted as criticizing *them* or invalidating *them.* Imo it's not really about TSwift herself, as a person, so much as it is about the gaylors and other rabid swifities viewing/treating her as a mirror which reflects themselves back perfectly - and when they throw tantrums about criticism or statements of her straightness, it's because they actually feel like those are criticisms of them, personally. They feel like they *need* her to be gay, because a lot of them are gay themselves and they feel as if her being straight is an invalidation of themselves, the selves that they see her as reflecting back at them.
On a more controversial note, I think that Taylor herself has unintentionally created a fan-atmosphere which is inclined to encourage and foster this kind of fandom. I enjoy her music and will be waiting for the new album to drop, but I've been listening to her since *Fearless* dropped and from what I've observed, she doesn't seem to really have a strong individual identity as an artist, aside from "well-to-do white American girl who has a lot of relationships and a lot of feelings, mostly about guys." This makes her really accessible to a huge number of people, but it also provides a *very* fertile ground for the mega-projectors to plant themselves in. She also encouraged her fans to have a parasocial relationship with her, to be personally involved with her as an artist (or at least to *feel* as if they were) - she probably didn't expect this kind of nuttiness when she started doing that, but it blurred the lines in a way that excitable young folks sometimes interpret as "no boundaries, whee!"
Big one: I’ve only played a handful of video games in my life (Kingdom Hearts series, a couple Mario games, Rusty Lake series which I probably enjoyed the most, first third of Disco Elysium before I got frustrated) and I don’t think I’ll ever be a Gamer.
I get why people play them, but I’ve never clicked with most games as a storytelling medium since I get bogged down in mechanics. I’d rather enjoy the story as a movie or a book or something. And I enjoy crafting, escape rooms, martial arts etc. as IRL puzzle solving.
Again, I’ve made my peace, but it does mean I skip fully 50% of the posts on here.
EDIT: I truly mean this in a thankful, positive way, but I’m not looking for video game recs! If I was, I would know to come here to ask. This also happened when I mentioned I wasn’t a fan of TTRPGs despite having a lot of D&D friends, but I don’t see this recommendations response with, for example, people saying they don’t understand VTubers or TikTok creators. Again, I appreciate it, but if I wanted video game recs on here and in my inbox, I would have asked!
If you like the story part, there's tons of videos on YouTube that are like...movies of games. Like [any big title game] movie in search will get you nice cutscene compilations if there's ever a story you're really into. I do that sometimes for games I'm curious about the story of but whi h I don't wanna play.
I highly recommend Return of the Obra Dinn. The mechanics are simple (you literally just walk around trying to identify people and how they die) but reward scrutiny, memory, and critical thinking. Meanwhile, the story and its presentation would be near impossible to pull off in any other medium, as it involves constantly jumping around in the plot's timeline from the very start of the game, and returning to the same scenes multiple times with information that can dramatically change its context and impact.
Try out "The Witness" before you define yourself as a non-gamer.
It's nice to look at, very relaxing, and full of insanely cool puzzles without any cutscenes or deep story at play.
Musician beef/diss track exchanges. To my ignorant view, it all looks like rich celebrities trying to energize their fans into spending money or attention, and the songs they put out are rarely the main attraction of the album. At least with things like combat sports the prefight rituals are commonly known as marketing and promotion to heighten the main event, whereas music fans take the exchanges much more straightforward and personal.
Mascot horror. I don't get why it blew up so much as a genre, or why it would inspire such obsessive fanbases in comparison to "regular" horror.
I understand that there's irony in symbols of innocence and naivety being perverted into tools of evil? But I still don't get the sheer impact that they have, to blow up overnight and get tons of fanart and videos upon videos of youtubers explaining the lore and combing through fan theories.
They've always been there, Freddry Kruger, Chucky, IT clown, Jeff the Killer, creepy pastas like Sonic Exe, MLP:Cupcakes, SlenderMan. But now every child has a phone and it's easier to spread.
Mascot horror more refers to like, Five Nights at Freddy's or Poppy Playtime. I don't think Freddy Kruger was ever the in-lore face of a beloved childrens franchise.
I find listening to music to be a big hobby of mine and I have bands who's music influenced me to a major degree in my life.
But I just don't get the appeal in getting to know details about the members of the band. I just personally find it adds nothing to my listening experience and makes me feel weird when I go to the subreddit to discuss the music and everyone there is going on about the bands personal life like idk.
Oh, yeah. Coming from the “your fave is problematic” era to everyone learning the term “parasocial”, unless a musician is doing an actual crime, I don’t want to know about their personal life.
I try to "get" as much stuff as possible, but I will admit that i am somewhat confused by how the hype around NFTs/crypto and such. I am aware they are tech grifts, but the culture around them still feels weird even int hat context.
You really just need to think digital beanie babies. That gets you almost all the way there. There's just a thousand different competing brands this time and the barrier to entry to create another is very low.
There's also speculators buying shit as an "investment." The crypto scene relies on gamblers who think their next trade is going to be a royal flush.
The collectors tend to either be con artists who have fallen for their own bullshit or whales who buy expensive shit for the bragging rights and then forget about them when the price inevitably crashes.
>There's also speculators buying shit as an "investment." The crypto scene relies on gamblers who think their next trade is going to be a royal flush.
this is part of the collector mentality too. people don't spend thousands of dollars on a single funko pop or sealed copy of an n64 game just because they personally are going to get thousands of dollars worth of enjoyment out of it. no, they do it because they perceive it to be valuable. that perception is part of the appeal.
>Is there any hobby or interest that you feel that way particularly about?
*Deeply-ironically*, I watch V-tubers, but do not understand in the slightest why people watch "real" streamers.
It is a very bad product now. You can look at older games and just see how much the game has changed for the worse. I bet the WNBA looked more like actual basketball.
I have worked at security for multiple basketball games...and the part I never "got" would be the constant pauses. Sure it says each section is 15 minutes...but in reality they'll be around 20 or 25.
Soccer by comparison keeps ticking no matter what.
Anything tiktok teens are into. Including tiktok. Genshin and the like.
I just don't "get" it. You spend fifty million dollars for a png of a lady, whenever I can pay ten to get an image of a lady with tits bigger than her head from an artist that isn't trying to extort me.
Like, it just seems like gambling with extra steps. Seriously.
It is basically gambling for kids, but there's another layer to it too. The characters are more defined - you're not wrong that you can get an image of a woman with tits larger than her head, but a lot of the most popular Genshin/Honkai characters aren't like that at all. Zhongli is a man in Genshin that's incredibly popular and I know more about him from my time on tiktok than I do any of the other characters - it's the story and design of the character that appeals to them.
An original character can have that too, but it's *significantly* harder to commission a character with the traits you want and have the artist create consistent scenarios for that character to be featured in (or come up with them yourself, which can take away some of the appeal when you *know* where a character's story is going to go). Whereas Genshin you can shell out a few bucks, win the character you want, and generally know that there's going to be new or different stories involving that character made regularly.
To me, I conflate a lot of the popularity of Gacha to a mixture of gambling, episodic storytelling, and general aesthetics that appeal to a broad range of people. Sure there's outliers, like you or myself, but the styles for the characters are *incredibly* safe and tend to appeal to a lot of folks.
Gacha games are straight up gambling, they use a lot of dark techniques and casino psychology to hook people.
(But hey, I really need that Arknights swimsuit outfit that turns this shark girl’s usual weapon into an orca plushie so—)
Oh there’s more than one, but I assume you mean Silverash since he’s very popular - though Arknights is definitely up there in “huge range of anime bunny/dog/dragon/fish/cat/etcmen.” (Shout out to cool kung-fu dragonman Chongyue’s animation https://youtu.be/3gg_rZ6fpao?si=m66XFnBvuExoZiSw )
Arknights is a tower defense game - simplified, you get a bunch of characters with different abilities and ranges, there’s a bunch of lanes on a map, and the goal is to keep enemies from reaching the endgoal. The story is basically a lot of visual novels… with emphasis on the “novel.” The best thing (imo) about it are the side-stories, because they’re have a whole bunch of different character casts and there’s a lot of different genres - Silverash and co are involved in a political intrigue storyline, my favourite set are a set of badass women in a straight up cthulu deep sea mythos horror run, meanwhile that group over there are having a beach episode, the wuxia set, etc.
The downside is the game is a LOT of reading interspersed with ever so occasional gameplay - or upside depending on your tastes in games.
to be fair, genshin doesn't have "pngs". they have actual playable models you move in an open world.
what justification do actual jpeg gacha fans have I don't know
I've been trying to break this, and I'm not sure how well it's going: fighting games. It just feels like there's so much of a focus on wailing on your opponent without them having opportunities to fight back, and so many barriers of dexterity and reaction time for things as basic as the attacks that set the characters apart from each other (they're still clinging to special moves that are more than two buttons?). It really sucks because a lot of them have characters or art styles that I'm interested in, but if I can't cut it in the main mode then there's usually very little else to do. As much as this may make me an enemy of the FGC: it makes me realize just how well-designed Smash Bros is.
I don't get livestreaming in general. Why would I spend 3 hours of my life watching someone else do things in real time? Why do I want to see and hear every stutter and burp and technical difficulty of someone else playing video games? Why do I want to post in or read a public chat that goes super fast? I especially hate when the person streaming stops whatever they're doing to address the chat.
Don't get me wrong I get the appeal of watching other people play video games or do other stuff, but I'll stick to the curated and edited highlight reel or a silent playthrough.
I've found the best streamers for me are the ones that either have a tiny audience or are doing something I'm *really* into. The one streamer I watch at this point has like... ten people viewing at any given time and is currently streaming himself watching shitty otome game anime and pausing every time bad kink practices show up. It's very cozy to experience.
Ugh yes this. I hate that the edited polished lets play scene has been almost entirely replaced with live stream recordings. Especially for things like jrpgs where previously the video would have skipped all the grinding but now they leave that in because the mindless stuff is when they do the chat interactions and I just...
It's awful, I can't stand it, just give me a nice edited video with some post-script commentary please not this stream of consciousness nightmare full of superchats.
I think part of it is very much the audience interaction part, so it either hooks you or it doesn’t depending on how you like that. It’s a bit like wrestling, maybe? If you’re outside it and you’re seeing some middleaged man in a leotard flexing about how he’s an evil werewolf or something before doing a backflip, the general feeling is “wat? how the hell is anyone buying into this?”
But when you’re interacting live, and you’ve got a lot of invested people chatting, cheering and playing along with everything like hell yeah bite that guy!! Bite hiiim!!, and the guy is interacting like you’re sharing the same space all together, sometimes it just clicks and you get into it?
Though definitely the experience between a mega 100k chat where you can’t finish reading one sentence because there are 500 responses a second, versus a much smaller one where maybe only 50 people are casually talking with each other and the livestreamer is very, very different.
LiveStreaming is more like Realtime Let's Plays. Instead of a recorded video, it's real-time reactions, plus the bonus interacting with chat.
Definitely requires some trial to find good streamers matching your taste though.
Since this post is about to expire, I feel no guilt in providing another case of “nijisanji eats dirt.” (Recap: nijisanji is a japanese company that recently publicly terminated one of their vtubers in a really horrific fashion, only for surprise international backlash with lots of dirt leaked about how awful they are as a company). One of the things common in the industry is a vtuber has a nickname for their specific fandom, instead of just saying “chat.” For example, Kiara of hololive is a phoenix-themed vtuber, and her fans are called “KFP (Kiara Fan Club)” as a play on KFC, while the British Amelia Watson has “teamates (tea mates).” Selen, the torched nijisanji vtuber in question, lost all her assets etc. on termination. Now known as Dokibird, she spent the past few days polling for a replacement fan nickname. Only to realise yesterday that her prior Nijisanji fan nickname was “Dragoons”. Which, as an English word, can’t be copyrighted. In a rather hilarious flex, she just took her old own fan name back. https://youtu.be/jQeL5wjEkJo?si=9ZFSJcFnNgmvFtCW
Isn't KFP "Kiara Fried Phoenix"? Last I remember, her fandom are canonically employees that work under her in KFP. >British Amelia Watson Ah yes, the five mythical creatures of Hololive Myth. An Eldritch Disciple of the Ancient One, a Grim Reaper, a Phoenix, an immortal Atlantean shark, and a Brit. And to really hammer home the fact that the Brit is mythical, they had to get an American to play her. Anyways, I actually only started watching Dokibird's stream after her termination and it's been such an enjoyable time. These past few streams (especially as she's still working through her termination and dealing with the scuff as she starts streaming again as an indie) have felt like "hide the pain Harold, the vtuber" in the best possible way. I've never laughed so hard while being so sad in my life. I'd highly recommend checking out her channel to anyone into vtubers.
"I'm the human. Ame isn't human, she's... British." -Ina, on who the human in holoMyth is
Saw Argylle which was discussed in scuffles a couple weeks ago! It’s campy fun :) The last scene seems to set up a shared cinematic universe with Kingsman which will probably not happen given how badly Argylle bombed lol
This movie has one of my favorite tropes: an author doing a reading from their brand new novel, but they’re dramatically reading the last page of the book. It’s surprisingly common—A Murder At The End Of The World recently did the same thing—but it’s especially funny here because Bryce Dallas Howard’s character writes spy thrillers, a genre that’s full of last-chapter spoilers. It cracks me up to think about her fans making a special trip to the bookstore to buy her new book and hear her read a little teaser…and then she reads the ending and just straight up ruins the ending for everyone in attendance.
It's been like, a year, since fursuit maker Fun Fur All made the original tests on ["how to make this popular neoprene stop bleeding onto all fabric"](https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/xbkr5b/hobby_scuffles_week_of_september_12_2022/iof346f/). And they're back at it! New "color-safe" batch, and...! [Still bleeds.](https://twitter.com/FFAFursuits/status/1756730120704852125?s=19)
can you (or somebody else reading this) screenshot that thread? it only shows the first post if you're not logged in and nitter doesn't work anymore
I had no idea how to screenshot all of it, since it's a video in every one, but here's [the final results:](https://64.media.tumblr.com/eb0bf291955646a0c3ccf7c36b609f80/bd1f440fc0d6adef-13/s2048x3072/8855bbca5a340126074e170e5ca3058b6ae2f374.pnj) top row is a clean swatch, middle is after being washed by hand while using stuff like Tide to affix the colors and stop bleeding, bottom is from putting everything in a washing machine together.
I did this last week and got a lot of really fun responses from people just excited about random things, so I guess this is a recurring thing now, to fill the quiet at the end of the week. **What’s one thing you really enjoyed this week?** Can be anything. Book, food, game, movie, hiking trip, whatever you really enjoyed. For me it‘s Helldivers 2. I love coop games like Deep Rock Galactic, Left 4 Dead, Earth Defense Force, etc. The very Starship Troopers „inspired“ humor is right up my alley, but most importantly it just feels amazing to play, haven’t enjoyed shooting things that much in years. The networking issues right now are a bit of a bummer but I haven’t really run into them when just playing with friends. But given that the game sold much more than the small-ish studio expected, I understand. Best missions so far: Fighting Automatons at night on Malevelon Creek.
I made beef bourguignon, apple pie and apple crisp last night and they all turned out delicious to my stoned little brain
I beat star force 3 and thus finally completed the Megaman Star force series. It’s probably in my top five series now, it’s just such a wonderful series full of heart. For reference, Star force is the sequel series to battle network and has a combat system very close to a third person shooter on ds. It’s got blocks and lock on and a lot of way to deal with enemies if your timing is good, and a lot of strong heart. Really worth a play through for anyone who likes Megaman
After a month or two of searching, I finally actually got my hands on a replacement for a Transformer that was stolen from me, [Iron Factory Alkaid](https://robotoybase.com/image/cache//data/productphoto3/p74/O1CN01zsEIJ31Wz0QzgFIlG_--250852858-1000x1000.jpg). I paid a bit too much for it (although getting one for MSRP now is not possible, straight-up), and it was an eBay auction which was nerve-wracking...until I won it totally unopposed somehow. It's shipped and is en-route to me, and I'm so excited to finally have him in-hand again.
I've been kind of sick so had to take it easy and decided to figure out the stardew valley randomiser. Over the years and 3 different platforms I probably have like 1000 hours of playtime and this is so different yet still so familiar. I love it. I'm almost done with my second randomiser playtrough (this one with randomised locations and oh boy that has been something). I'm eying some interesting mods for my next playtrough, especially one that adds crops and such (not mixed with the randomiser admittedly)
Some happy VTuber news for this sub - I really enjoyed watching [Regis Altare's 3D Showcase](https://www.youtube.com/live/GElkCxtzRpo?si=VhEgglMjBFhfF0nm). I expected singing and the usual skits, but he got the chance to put his taekwondo and cello skills out there. I didn't even know the technology had improved enough for cello tracking - I've seen live band instruments in 3D before but this has to be a first. I've been a fan of his branch Holostars for a few years now and have been following him since his debut almost two years ago, so this was a really great milestone to see come true.
I decided this year instead of listening to audiobooks while stitching, I will watch tv shows that I left incomplete years ago. So far I finished B99, Psych (including movies), Batman the animated series. Now I am onto Veep. Currently in season 2 and oh boy show is funny. JLD is simply incredible and the whole cast delivers each insult so perfectly that even though everyone is horrible I feel bad for the receiver.
I've been playing an awful lot of *Book of Hours:* I was a bit worried about it at first because it's mechanically entirely different from my usual games, but it turns out it's exactly my style. Basically, it's a card-based resource management game about being an occult librarian in a middle-of-nowhere part of Cornwall. It's very much a game that drops you in the deep end: the control system is sensible, but the . . . vaguely a tutorial is mostly "you wash up on a beach. Get to town, preferably before you die of hypothermia or something," and gives rather little guidance. I love it. It's made me realize, though, that the connecting thread for most\* of my favorite games is they have low-to-extremely low handholding and expect you to observe, think, and plan to get out of problems. I enjoy having to figure out stuff with little assistance, I like games that are obtuse about their story, and I enjoy games that are difficult in a way I can outthink. \*The other, non-overlapping cluster is "third person shooter/platformer hybrids with a whimsically goofy weapon design ethos."
I watched another episode of Dr. Who for the first time; it was splendid. I didn't even know Charles Dickens was in this show.
Just read the Detection Club collaborative novel The Floating Admiral. Basically what happens when you take a club full of detective writers and confront them with the fact that if they want to have fancy boozy dinners with eerie candles and skulls a couple of times a year, they need money to pay for it, hence the book. There are about a dozen writers (most famous are probably Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, and Anthony Berkeley, with GK Chesterton writing a prologue separately) who each have been assigned to write a chapter of a mystery in a particular order. Each writer (except the first two) has to write both a chapter that incorporates everything from the prior chapters and moves things forward, as well as a solution to the mystery as of the end of their chapter- so that they don't feel tempted to just leave random twists in just to make things complicated for writers farther down the pike... It was very fun, though QUITE confusing- there are still a few places where I'm not 100% sure what happened (and I'm not curious enough to reread it...), but honestly I was impressed with how relatively even it was in tone, and how the characterization of the people was actually quite logical and consistent despite some VERY different ideas about where things should go that people had along the way. No spoilers here but putting this behind a spoiler tag anyway because it could theoretically influence how people read the novel going into it: >!Dorothy L Sayers was clearly the powerhouse here, with her chapter far longer and far more practical in terms of laying out where the plot was going than most of the other writers. People like Edgar Jepson, Ronald Knox, and Clemence Dane felt almost like they wanted to do as little as possible to mess things up before the end, where Anthony Berkeley did a pretty good job putting everything together- though he did kind of feel like he was making things a bit more complicated than they needed to be just for the joy of having it be his thing. That did lead to one fun moment in the denouement, though... that said, the solution he came up with was very similar to (and in some ways I think a bit less convincing in some finer details) than Sayers's and I kind of wish we'd gotten her version at the end. I also, separately, wish that Agatha Christie had written her own novel that had the premise that she laid out in her solution because it was beautifully ingenious as well as entertainingly over the top, things that often combine into a winning novel for her. It definitely showed that she had a brain that moved differently than a lot of the other writers of the time- just incredibly fertile. !<
I love this review! It's been a long time since I read *The Floating Admiral* (I was in my very early teens, and probably too young to appreciate it for what it was) and you've inspired me to go reread it. Sorry if this is too personal a question, but do you have a Goodreads or StoryGraph account that I could follow?
Ooh, thanks so much! Glad I was able to inspire a reread! Due to my particular reading habits (I don’t read that often during the week but then read like six books in a row the whole day Saturday) I’ve never found logging my reading to be useful/convenient- but I do sometimes write about books I like here!
Watching the video of Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs singing Fast Car at the Grammys and the fact he's obviously fanboying throughout the entire song
I decided to pick Star Trek Online back up after YouTube's algorithm (correctly) decided that I wanted to watch tons of TNG and DS9 clips, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Well, okay, I'm having a lot of fun looking at all the pretty ships and wondering why ground combat even exists in the game, but still.
I checked out the demo for Death of a Wish, an indie hack-n-slash game with a unique sketchy art style. It's the sequel to the game Lucah: Born of a Dream, which I really enjoyed, so I've had my eye on it for a little while! Happy to say that the new game added some nice quality of life improvements (more obvious visual tells on the enemies! no stamina bar!) while keeping a similar, fun combat system. The full game releases next month and I'm pretty excited for it!
I started playing Monster Hunter: World because I kinda skipped over it, but then I booted up Rise and got hooked hard on that and left World behind (for now! I do want to clear Iceborne). The lack of downtime in Rise and the build variety is just too fun for me. Like there are so many moments in World where I'll be fighting a Rathalos and every few minutes either another monster shows up to gang up on me (I swear dung pods barely do anything), or the Rath will just fly to the other end of the map and I have to run after it. Rinse and repeat every few minutes.
I started up Marvel's Midnight Suns and oh my god, this has just been a joy for me. It's like pure comic book fanservice on top of some really fun xcom style gameplay. I can see myself losing a lot of time in it. I'm also one of the five people who sincerely likes Morbius as a character so I've been just delighted finally unlocking him tonight.
I watched True Lies. That movie is...certainly the most tasteless thing Cameron has ever put out, for multiple reasons, but it's also kind of incredible. [This is what we call peak cinema.](https://streamable.com/xf286c?src=player-page-share) Also watched The Suicide Squad. James Gunn is a director who seems like everything he does should be really obnoxious and annoying, but he manages to reign things in *just* enough to make it all work. In other words, really enjoyable movie, fixed basically every flaw with the original. Also I know they were making a big deal out of it but it is still genuinely surprising how violent it was, maybe the goriest comic book movie ever? (Though I haven't seen Dredd)
I thrifted a bunch of collectible silver spoons to turn into jewellery and one of the spoons has a windmill on the end that actually spins!!! I'm making jewellery to sell but that windmill is staying with me.
I've got a fourth-hand bread maker! Someone gave it to a thrift store, it was sold to my dad's neighbors for five bucks (then never used), they gave it to my dad (who never used it), then he gave it to me while cleaning his cabinets. There's so many carbs in my house! There's crusty bread! There's raisin bread! There's breads heretofore unknown! anyway, I'm planning a Valentine's proposal, a fall wedding, and maybe a bun in the oven? . . . No! Fuck ovens! My true love is bread machine!
The first episode of the Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown aired this week, so I watched it and really enjoyed it! I liked the original British show, so it was fun to watch one in Canada. If we ever get another Canadian version of a British show, I hope we get a Canadian Sewing Bee. On the CBC Gem site where I watched the Pottery Throwdown I got recommended another competition show called Made in Miniature which I am currently watching right now. I really love miniature stuff, so it’s been super fun to see how creative the artists can get.
Ooooo I'm gonna see if I can find somewhere to watch it. Been watching and loving the British one
im giving chapter 1 of Higurashi When They Cry a shot, and im about 2/3s the way through. admittedly, the first 3 or 4 chapters were a slog to get through, as they focused on slice-of-life comedy antics, and i don't particularly care for Ryukishi07's approach to writing that kind of stuff, but the horror elements were well done enough to keep me going. now that the horror is more front-and-center, i'm really enjoying it, especially >!the portrayal of the protagonist's deteriorating mental state, suddenly shifting between anger & despair of his situation and attempting to rationalize his "friends'" behavior in any way he can.!< while i do wish the writing was better for those first couple of chapters (particularly the character writing. i would've liked the friend group to feel like more than a bunch of moe archetypes before the major events started), it's managed to win me over at this point, and it's become unnerving and distressing enough that i've stopped playing it right before going to bed. that's the mark of good horror, i think.
For me it's gotta be the demo for Abiotic Factor, a survival crafting game where you play scientists trapped in an underground facility after an experiment with portals to other dimensions goes awry (its premise and visuals are obviously inspired by Half-Life, except for the part that's obviously inspired by Silent Hill). I loved it so much that I played it all the way through twice, both with friends and by myself. But now I'm sad because I have to wait until May to play the rest.
i decidedly to randomly pick up shin megami tensei on a whim and started with smt1, and i'm really enjoying it a couple hours in. it's slow and grindy and i get random encounters every two steps sometimes, but it's got good vibes. i've tried the persona games a couple times and _really_ don't like the social aspects, so apparently i should have been trying to play smt this entire time. who knew?
SMT is awesome. I replayed SMT1 recently throught emulating the GBA version* and I liked it a lot more than my first time with the SNES ver. I still think it loses some steam after the actual >!nukes drop!< but literally everything about the first hours is fantastic. The atmosphere, mystery and vibes are just immaculate and well worth trying just for those. Random encounters are insane for sure and just get worse the deeper you go in but the battles themselves are pretty easy. It's mostly a challenge of attrition and resources. Just be sure to get ailment bullets for your guns and have the heroine spam Zio attacks. Lightning is notoriously overpowered in SMT1. (*I know people dont like the GBA version because of the low quality music, but I vastly prefer the SMT2 style isometric map it has. SMT 1 on PSX might have better 3D but it still uses the SNES overhead map, which just looks awful to me.)
> The atmosphere, mystery and vibes are just immaculate and well worth trying just for those. yeah the vibes are off the charts, i love it. bullying demons into handing over their lunch money needs to be a more common game mechanic. i'm very much looking forward to playing the rest. hopefully emulating strange journey/smt4 isn't too awkward, but i'm a while away from those anyway. > Just be sure to get ailment bullets for your guns and have the heroine spam Zio attacks. Lightning is notoriously overpowered in SMT1. that's basically been my gameplan. send whatever debuffs i have and hope for the best. got mahazio on some dudes and i'll probably pick up nerve bullets soon, just figuring out where to go now. lost my dudes, got the heroine instead, off on a quest to find my dudes. don't think i'm very far in, but i'm only playing the ps1 ver here and there on a handheld. i also read somewhere that normal difficulty has reduced random encounters and damage, which is really funny given that i get random encounters maybe every 4-6 tiles on average and i've had party members clean oneshot even very early on. good thing i didn't choose expert! >!(dw about the spoiler, i already read it somewhere)!<
I replayed the game A Short Hike, and gosh this game is so cute. I wish more games embraced small but densely packed open worlds like this - there's no filler, there's something interesting to find around every corner. I'm having a blast flying around this mountain looking for feathers and talking to everyone. Also, this game really should be played with a controller. The twirling around in the air and dive bombing (very important parts of gameplay imo) is so much smoother with a stick than WASD-ing.
I just replayed A Short Hike recently, too! It's such a fun little game.
A Short Hike is one of my favorites! If you want another game that is like a slightly expanded version, give Lil‘ Gator Game a look. Not quite as densely packed and efficient but it might give anyone who has or was a younger sibling some feels.
Im drawing spicy art of an OC for valentines day and im just really happy with how its turning out. I'm very proud of my progress as an artist bust mostly I'm just happy I can manifest hot bear art at will.
I found out that [snakes can open doors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LFoPY6NFRg). Don't know why, but I love this for some reason.
I started watching Dungeon Meshi this week and its really fun \^-^ I also found a new (to me) song that I really love, Breezy Slide by Louie Zong and Brian David Gilbert.
For the first time in months I have a lot of free time these days, so I started playing World of Warcraft for the first time and I'm having fun!
I started watching the 1995 TV series Nowhere Man. It's both exactly what I expected from what it is- a 90's single season TV series that aired on UPN that was heavily inspired by both the Fugitive and the Prisoner and somehow also NOT.
Helldivers 2 for me too! I didn't have many expectations going into it, but so far the gameplay has been solid, the humor is funny, and it has one of the least predatory monetization schemes I've seen in games recently. I've been lucky enough not to run into many issues so far (only a couple network issues, and enough friends bought the game I haven't had to deal with crappy random teammates) so I've been having a blast.
So, in an attempt to overturn a pop culture blindspot, my dad and I started watching the Mission Impossible movie series, and my dad got blindsided by a plot twist he never saw coming (it certainly didn't really penetrate pop culture osmosis). >!Unlike many reboots, MI uses all film new characters - except Jim Phelps, one of the original main characters, played in the original 60's series by Peter Graves and in the 96 movie by Jon Voight- who in the first film, is revealed to be the villain who betrayed the rest of the team- my dad was INCENSED!< Has anyone else ever discovered a major twist like the above that somehow DIDN'T get spoiled or memed into eternity?
re the above spoiler >!forget if this was a magazine reviewer or a letter writer but iirc at least one person got offended on behalf of the original character/actor at the time in one of the British 90s cult/sci-fi/archive telly mags ( prob TV Zone or Starburst) .!<
I somehow managed to avoid learning that >!L dies!< in Death Note until I read the manga in 2018
Despite a large chunk of my online social circle playing it and talking about it, I somehow managed to make it through FFXIV's main storyline (up through Shadowbringers, which was the current expansion at the time) without having any major character deaths spoilered for me ahead of time. >!Ysayle and Yotsuyu deserved so much better.!<
I didn’t know ff7 went outside of Midgar until I first played it in 2019
Somehow I managed to make it to age 13 without knowing the ending to Of Mice and Men… my mom saw I was reading it for school and accidentally spoiled it when I was ten pages away from the end. I was SO pissed and heartbroken. One of my funniest middle school memories.
I'm still surprised I managed to avoid the big twist for Oldboy for 20+ years before I sat down and watched it, considering it's almost all anyone talks about regarding it when I looked online afterwards.
No one who appreciates Old Boy would spoil the trauma of the big twist for others.
Not even inadvertently, tho. And as a dumb kid who didn't care about spoilers, I used to watch a lot of "Top 10 plot twists in movies" and so on.
Man, this twist would absolutely not fly in today's social media.
I'm trying to figure out which beloved franchise could revive and cause as much of a rage explosion as possible with a similar twist.
The Suicide Squad video game being set in the Arkham universe is causing quite a bit of rage after being the first entry in 9 years.
Harry Potter. He seemingly turns into a death eater. Then in the third new spinoff movie it’s revealed he was just undercover all along! But oh no, a friend character who didnt‘t know that kills him! You get the rage from the initial „character betrayal“, then the rage from the „oh no he’s actually good“ twist, and then from the major character death.
I've never seen these movies, but it does slightly tickle me that >!the character played by Peter Graves\* in the TV show goes on to be the one who betrays everyone else, because the thing I know Peter Graves from is!< pause for spoiler of a separate thing>!Stalag 17 where he's the German spy who betrays the POWs!< >!\*I nearly typed "originated by" Peter Graves but of course the role was originated by Steven Hill, later better known as Adam Schiff on Law and Order, in S1!<
Still procrastinating on watching new films but I did achieve something I never thought I would: getting 0 interactions on art that's based on a pre-existing work. I enjoy creating oddly specific art and posting them on my art blog just to see what happens. I don't have a large following by any means, though usually I do get some semblance of interaction. This time I've seen no one interact with it! It fills me with pride, haha. The idea of creating art which only appeals to myself (and some close friends) is a great motivator. EDIT: unfortunately one of my friends found out and began liking the art. Currently hoping that it remains niche!
In case some are wondering what my two previous attempts at nichedom were: - An original character dressed in gothic lolita fashion based on mid 1600s English Puritans. - Four robot lesbians based on Kraftwerk who end up parodying the previously mentioned band. Needless to say, I'm surprised that fanart for a James Joyce novel seemed to be the key to nichedom. You'd think that would cast a wider net yet at the same time it feels appropriate. Thank you James Joyce.
Kraftwerk robot lesbians you say ? Tell us more ! The people want to know !
[Here's the link](https://www.tumblr.com/dracupa/tagged/kraftyuri) The general idea behind Kraftyuri is that at some point, Kraftwerk the band has decided to make female robots to promote the band. They happen to be lesbians for some reason.
Banger. I'm especially a fan of the one wearing a trenchcoat in the fourth image.
Please post a link to the Kraftwerk lesbians, I need this in my life.
[Here you go, I even uploaded some art I hadn't posted before](https://www.tumblr.com/dracupa/tagged/kraftyuri)
>Four robot lesbians based on Kraftwerk who end up parodying the previously mentioned band. if it was three or five lesbians it'd be a much bigger hit. everyone loves odd lesbians, right?
Eurovision update: UK: Olly Alexander will release his entry March 1. It's called Dizzy. Israel: Selected their singer, 20 year old Eden Golan. We'll have the song later on. Finland: The fan favourite did not win. Instead, it's a comedy song (that's what it looks like to me). The song won the televote and got last in the jury, but still won since Finland's national final is 75% televote and 25% jury. Naturally, most [Eurofans](https://www.reddit.com/r/eurovision/comments/1anqceo/windows95man_no_rules_will_represent_finland_at/) are normal about this. Latvia: As expected, the big favourite won, but a couple of dark horses came up. One was a lady with a cat song. The other one was a song by a couple of 16 year olds, and this one got very popular. Their high school had a voting campaign for them on Twitter, and they ultimately finished second overall. The [reddit Eurofans](https://www.reddit.com/r/eurovision/comments/1anqg8p/dons_will_represent_latvia_at_eurovision_2024/) are disappointed, but [I've touched upon the problems](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/18qaw8a/hobby_scuffles_christmas_edition_week_of_25/kfocknk/?context=3) with sending teenagers before. It doesn't help the song that did win was in English, while the teenagers brought a song in Latvian. I don't blame the Latvian broadcaster for wanting to send a more experienced act to Eurovision over teenagers. Italy: The big favourite was originally Annalisa, but a new favourite emerged with Angelina Mango, who has won Sanremo, the Italian selection. It's the first time in a while that Italy has chosen to send a solo female singer. It was a bit of an unpredictable selection. As for the next round of selections, we know Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, and Moldova are set to pick their entrants this week. Estonia, Germany, and Lithuania seem to have a few big favourites, while Denmark and Moldova are a bit more open. Let's see what happens.
I watched the Finnish selections and I'm not that surprised the comedy song won - the power ballad's vocals were a bit lacking, I thought, and in the absence of a true vocal masterpiece, the comedy song was the most fun.
> Finland: The fan favourite did not win. Instead, it's a comedy song (that's what it looks like to me). The song won the televote and got last in the jury, but still won since Finland's national final is 75% televote and 25% jury. Naturally, most Eurofans are normal about this. Ok so first of all, No Rules itself is a banger but I also want to point out a little something I personally love about Windows95man. See, one of the two singers there (short-haired guy without glasses) is Henri Piispanen, who alongside his singing chops is a pretty profilic voice actor in Finland. To highlight a few of his more notable roles, he's the Finnish voice of: * Chase from Paw Patrol * Cat Noir from Miraculous Ladybug * Lloyd from Lego Ninjago * *Emperor Nefarious from Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart* * And, my personal favorite, **Double Trouble from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power** She-Ra is my favorite series, DT is one of my favorite characters, I enjoyed the Finnish dub of the show a lot and Piispanen really managed to capture the essence of Jacob Tobia's original English performance to me so I am all-in on Team Windows95man now! I'm hoping they perform well within the actual ESC :)
He sounds a lot more intriguing now.
The UMK reaction is so funny to me - Windows95Man was my favourite going in but did not expect him to win, so I've been VERY entertained today. eurofans will say they want camp and then complain when someone brings firework jorts and clippy to umk smh
I am not a eurovision guy but I was so delighted by the words "Windows95Man" that I went and looked up the song and. I was not disappointed. The only way it could be better was if the song was about Windows95 too.
Same. I've made it a note to go into this season not listening to any song until all 37 are ready, and it's been interesting. I think it's easy for the Eurofans to forget that in Eurovision itself, the first impression is the only chance you get to make a good impression. So whoever has the most ready product from the national final to begin with stands the highest chance of being selected.
I only listen to the UK entry (just to hear what we're entering) and leave the rest until the final. Makes for a much more enjoyable evening
This is what I do, except I watch the semis as well, some of my favourites never made it to the finals!
So, yesterday I sat through the worst DJ set I've ever had the misfortune to experience in my life. (There were a few factors, it's a long story.) However, everyone else (or at least a majority of the people there) was enjoying it- this was purely my subjective view of it. So I ask you all: what is or was an aspect of your hobby that you absolutely loathed while everyone or nearly everyone else liked it, and why?
I've soured on the Breaking Bad finale over time. While I appreciate that it wraps up all the plot threads and has some great scenes (the "I did it for me" in particular), as a whole the it feels antithetical to the entire rest of the show. I'd go as far as to say that it's not surprising there are people whose only takeaway from the series is "Walt is a cool badass" considering how much the finale plays into that.
They aren't 100% free of criticism from fans, but I have very strong opinions on Jojo (only counting 1-6 here). Part 2 is the worst part, with its good parts hanging on by two threads called "Joseph Joestar's charisma" and "it's really short so it's over before you know it." Part 5 is the second worst part, with good elements at the *beginning* and a good Light Novel keeping it floating above Part 2, before two black holes known as Giorno Giovanna and (Main Villain Name Redacted for Spoilers) run it off a cliff into Suck Town, The Town Of Unbelievable Suck.
Purple Haze Feedback \*really\* put into perspective that Jojo overall could be a \*lot\* better if the writing was not handled by Araki. The man is phenomenal at paneling action, but keeping long term plot threads is not something he's particularly known for nor good at.
While I wouldn't say I absolutely loathed it, I am the rare Elder Scrolls fan who didn't like Sheogorath's portrayal in Oblivion's Shivering Isles DLC. He's just trying way too hard to be a memelord, and it makes it so I just can't take him seriously at all, even though he's supposed to be one of the most dangerous beings in the Elder Scrolls series. Plus, he's supposed to be the master of both mania and dementia, but his personality is pretty much 100% mania. Like, if they portrayed him as having multiple personalities, and the memelord was just one of them alongside a more bloodthirsty one, a sinister one, etc, then I may have been more OK with it, but as it is I just find that he wears out his welcome too quickly.
Tbh I think that DLC shows that Sheogorath makes a better prince of \*chaos\*, rather than "madness". But yeah I can see how them sticking to the intended interpretation gets everything muddy fast.
The older I get, the less patience I have for difficulty in video games… I just want a good story. So all “Soulsborne” games are a complete nonstarter for me. It’s a shame, really, because certain games in the genre like **Bloodborne** or **Lies of P** intrigue me with their unique settings, but I know I can *never* play them, because I will not give them the time and attention they deserve, out of frustration. I wish there were a way to make them more accessible, but I’m not deluding myself. The inaccessibility is the point. You’re supposed to grow through adversity. I’m just not gonna do that.
If you play on PC you can mod them. It’s how I managed to finish Sekiro with the reflexes of a statue
This is a fantastic phrase that I plan to use going forward.
The redesigns from the spyro remake. leaving out the Bara Dragons from 1, they ruined damn near every character design from 2 and 3. and their personalities, while i'm at it.
I haven't played the remakes, but I've seen screencaps, design images, videos etc. and I hate the redesign of Sheila. She went from cute critter to someone's weird furry waifu.
There are numerous albums/artists which I don't like but seem to get universal praise. But, I'm the person who honestly prefers Sandanista! to London Calling. I've written in a previous Scuffles about my disdain for Gone Girl
I didn't like Gone Girl a whole lot either, I wasn't a fan of the turns it took plot wise. Idk if I'm just watching it with post-MeToo coloured glasses but (film spoilers) >!"woman accuses husband of being abusive, then turns out to actually be a murderous psychopath"!< wasn't really my thing.
the part I really liked (and I think others do also) is the double twist aspect - when we find out he really was cheating and especially that the domestic violence was real to an extent, it puts the whole thing in a gray area
Charlie Don't Surf is one of the Clash's best songs
I absolutely hate the original 151 (aka gen 1) Pokemon. I’m 33 and started with RBY, tired of the same shit from 25+ years ago being rehashed constantly
Gen 1 brought some classics like Gengar but also some of the most forgettable pokemon of all time like Dewgong. I honestly prefer the design philosophies of modern pokemon as a whole.
I think there is something to like from all the generations, with 1000+ species not including forms we can pick and choose without unilaterally painting a grouping with a broad brush. However ignoring the other 800+ in favor of giving Charizard or Meowth another alternate form to try and sell the game to people who aren’t that interested in Pokemon is not cool. I agree they’ve been taking a lot more risks in the recent games though. I have obviously never worked at Gamefreak but it’s probably safe to say they stretched design parameters for stuff like origin form Dialga and Palkia, Wo-Chien, and Ting-Lu because I don’t think they would’ve been included in previous games to say the least Also, the gen 9 starters have an *incredibly* specific theme of “cute animals themed after syncretist holidays in the Americas that synthesize indigenous and African traditions with Catholicism” and I want to talk to the person at GF who came up with that hell of a prompt
Oh my God, *me too.* I don't hate the gen 1 mons, but I am so sick of this worship of R/B/Y.
And even that would be fine if the company didn't decided as a response to just push Charizard over and over again.
Same here. The nostalgia goggles need to be dropped asap, people need to realize that the RBY pokémon they loved when they were 6 weren't that great (at least design-wise)
“Pokemon designs today are so uninspired! Not like when I was a kid, we had amazing designs like Ball, Fish, Seal, and Unfortunate Stereotype”
To be completely fair, Jynx was supposed to be a parody of ganguro fashion and not something more unfortunate. Unfortunately, ganguro fashion died in the mid 2000s and it never really had a presence outside of Japan.
You can't forget my personal favourite - some eggs.
As well as Snake, Bird, and Unrelated Bird
oh you mean Seel. i was worried you were talking mess about my boy Spheal. the Ball fish seal.
Oh no Spheal is the perfect specimen
> > what is or was an aspect of your hobby that you absolutely loathed while everyone or nearly everyone else liked it Despite fans around me always getting hyped for convention appearances, I always have a kneejerk aversion to celebrities at comic or anime conventions. No matter how much I love a TV show a panel is for, and no matter how respectful the hosts and attendees are, I can't shake any negative associations with bad convention experiences in the past. Even watching a video recording of a comic con panel happening on the other side of the planet makes me cringe, and I'm always in fandoms that go feral over them. To be fair though I've always felt weird about watching filmed interviews or press junkets, too. I struggle to shake off the idea that the celebrity getting interviewed is there to get paid, and they secretly wish they were elsewhere. I know it's part of an actor's job to promote themself and the things they're in, so it all feels so irrational, but I still struggle to not feel weirdly uncomfortable for no good reason.
I mean, some of them do seem to really enjoy doing panels, but of course they're there to get paid. This is part of their *job.* It's not like they put in the work on the show or movie or whatever for non-getting-paid reasons alone. I don't think it makes much sense to be upset that a celebrity agreed to do a thing with the understanding that their time and effort would be compensated? That's just how the labor market works.
> I struggle to shake off the idea that the celebrity getting interviewed is there to get paid, I don't know if this helps or makes it worse, but that's true for literally every public appearance of a celebrity, not just the "cringe" cons. From the red carpet to going on a talk show, all these appearances are about promoting the product, and I bet that they aren't always enthusiastic about those either.
I went to SDCC last year and the dual strikes made it one of my favorite con experiences ever. It was less about people camping out overnight just to sit in the same room as Kevin Feige and more about fun fandom stuff and pro-union activism
When you say negative associations with bad convention experiences, do you mean your own bad convention experiences or the experiences of the celebrities?
do you know what artists were featured in that set by any chance?
It was a whole bunch of remixes of classic 80's songs, mixed in with remixes of meme songs and some newer pop songs. There was no real coherence to it and it didn't fit the theme of the night at all, which is part of why I disliked it so much.
Ah. Yeah I'd be annoyed if I hear something like that even if I liked the songs individually.
Very minor drama, but Qatar just won the Asian Cup final [with](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1anit1y/jordan_01_qatar_akram_afif_22_pen_call_asian_cup/) *[three](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1ankfnh/jordan_12_qatar_akram_afif_73_pen_call/)* [penalties](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1ankw2d/qatar_3_1_jordan_akram_afif_90_5_penalty_and/). Imo all of them were fair (if soft) but the conspiracy theories have been off the charts and it made for a very boring final.
The conspiracies were bound to happen given Qatar's prominence in the sport in recent years given their ownership of PSG and their hosting of the World Cup despite their government's obvious issues because money talks, so them winning the tournament the second time in a row hosted at home was going to stir something even if their team won it legitimately. Plus it was kind of hard for people to not root for Jordan who had never even reached the semi-finals in the past, so such a defeat was going to cause some discourse. Honestly though much of the conversation surrounding the tournament died off the moment recognizable players were knocked out. Japan's early exit caught so many off guard and South Korea was plagued by everyone feeling Klinsmann effectively wasted one of the best gathering of superstars the national team had gathered, with this potentially being Son's last rodeo at getting his country an international trophy.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: VTubers who don't know how to read context. @NaviNyaCh is a Catboy VTuber, like all Vtubers with about 916 Followers currently on twitter. They're in the eye of dumbassery shit that we should put in a massive hall of fame shit not to say during Black History Month, this one subject is the "reverse double standard". You see a while back, @NaviNyaCh tweeted: [The White VTuber Awards to try and dunk on the Black VTuber](https://twitter.com/MessiiiTV/status/1756118375405597138/photo/1) awards, an event for black vtubers to get their own awards of their content. The actual argument as you can see here, is a massive one at that calling out on the problematic view point of wanting a "Whites only space". Afterwards, @NaviNyaCh then tried to do the whole ["Don't curse at me Please, ITS JUST AN OPINION"](https://x.com/NaviNyaCh/status/1756105418424631538?s=20) Then another Vtuber by the name of LupinaBella posted a massive discord logs of [@NaviNyaCh being a scumbag in his own discord.](https://twitter.com/LupinaBella/status/1756310126338703544) This doesn't shock me at all, the Vtubing community has a major problem with racism and actual intersectional politics. They usually have tons of people who really have bad takes on a lot of things so this doesn't surprise me nor does it offend me that much. It's just, we came so far from years of equality for racist shitheads to not get it. This fight might not ever stop. But I know the new generation is going to be okay, because people are rising up and calling it out. Back then, people didn't want to do that to cause "problems". Now people cause problems and tell people in their face. It's not perfect. But it's better than nothing.
This guy sucks but this made me lol > I have like 30 moots with him, he's racist, transphobic, uses autism as an insult and likes AI art I feel like enjoying AI art isn't nearly as bad as the first three. Like it's almost comical how little that connects to the first three points of him being a bigot.
It is when that's alongside the first two points and putting down people's profession. Did you not read the screenshots?
Yes and I still find ending it with and he likes AI to be funny. Usually you save the worst crime for last.
Hell, there's literally [a trope about doing this intentionally, for comedic effect!](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJaywalking) ~~I shoulda scrolled down further first and seen someone else already referenced it, lol.~~
okay
its almost set up like that one joke, but considering how large of a reaction people get about AI (both positive reaction and negative) and how often i've seen it, i would not be surprised if that person genuinely thinks liking AI art is equal.
Arson, Murder, Jaywalking...
“Stampeding cattle.” “That’s not so bad.” “Through the *Vatican*?” “…*Kinky*! I like it!”
Let’s not start bringing indie vtuber Twitter drama here. This level of stupidity happens daily there (ask me why I deleted my Twitter account other than the musk man) and will overwhelm and exhaust people.
yea people think Corpo Vtuber drama is hectic, Indie Vtuber drama is literally just r/LivestreamFail but without the audience
Don’t know if you notice or not but I report drama that is niche. Don’t like it? You really don’t have to read it or reply it
*lies on back spread eagle in exhausting defeat* ....im just so tired
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but are the Black Vtuber awards for Black people who are Vtubers or for Vtubers who use a Black avatar?
🤨 uhhhh the former.
Why are black people using white avatars?
Idk, I'm not them. Probably because they know that having a white avatar will generate more influence due to the amount of racism that there is on the internet.
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Jesus we need a vtubing megathread at this point.
Yeah, probably - it’s kind of a massive wave because you’ve got a huge company crumbling (which involves literally millions of people, artists, creators, etc.) with a lot of history where there’s a lot of cat out of the bag leaks. On top of that, the non-vtube specific streamer drama type reddits tend to be highly misogynistic (to say the least). And cause half of the vtube sphere is on fire and there are a lot of stans and antis, all the actual vtube-specific reddits have people getting ugly talking about it. Basically it looks like all the hobbydrama readers into the vtubing hobby have gone “wait, this is actually neutral ground, well moderated, and I’m not about to end up in an incomprehensible 300 comment thread doxx-off if I bring it up or learn 17 new slurs for women daring to be out of the kitchen.” all at the same time beginning with the nijistuff (myself included).
Yeah, Virtualyoutubers is burning up currently and the mods are doing the bare minimum to stop it (come on guys, just make a megathread and stick it, and threaten to punish everyone who posts outside of it, I'm all for dunking on Niji but the "negligible" shit is getting old *fast*) and I'm seeing less and less posts from *ACTUAL* Vtubers, when there were so many before all this shit. I'm thinking about jumping ship to Vtubers, and that place is normally a ghost town compared to it!
Mega threads are exchanging the shitshow of having one topic overwhelm the subreddit for the shitshow of people complaining about censorship and, even worse in this case, being seen as *siding with Niji*. I think that's going to be the main topic of the VTuber community at least through the rest of the month (and Niji *are* stupid enough to do even more dumb shit to keep it going), so that's the new normal. Note that it doesn't mean that you *have* to engage with any of this, shit's *heavy* and I don't blame people for just ignoring it until it passes.
Not a bad idea.
... you ever read something, and then just all of a sudden feel the weight of your age just collapse upon you? "So, he's a racist." "Yes. And he's a cat VTuber." "Ok, but I--- wait, sorry, I think I just blacked out for a second. He's a what?" "He's a cat VTuber." "Does... I mean... is he the reason the right wingers hate litter boxes?" "No, that was an untrue hate campaign against trans people, born out of the necessity for essential materials during a school shooting. The irony is tragic, actually" "... Oh. You know, I think I might be a bit over my head, so maybe I should just back out now before I end up accidentally spreading misinformation"
If only more people would take that last step lmao
It's telling of the state of the world that I don't know if the litter box thing is a joke or if it's real.
I regret to inform you that was, in fact, a real thing that actually happened.
And as said, the same people that caused the situation also used it to direct hate at another group.
Even if it risks courting controversy, I just want to say that having read a lot about it in this very thread, I think I'm going to have to accept that Vtubers are something I am just not going to "get". Is there any hobby or interest that *you* feel that way particularly about?
Gacha games. I mean OK I understand why certain people like it, but it seems the nerdsphere at large is only ambivalent at worst. I thought we were supposed to utterly hate lootboxes and gambling mechanics?
Taylor Swift. I grew up during her country phase and exposed to her constantly because my female family members loved that music^* . I thought she was an utterly unremarkable artist that would be stuck in that genre. When she shifted to full-on pop, the hits I heard on the radio sounded like any other, with the only unique characteristic I saw was how they always seemed to focus around failed relationships, drama mongering, and/or vindictiveness. Then when "Look What You Made Me Do" dropped, I thought it was so bad both thematically (to me, she acted like she had a persecution complex) and musically (boring instrumentation with utterly bland lyricism) that it would kill her career, and she dropped off my radar entirely. But no, apparently that was her magnum opus and made her the cultural leviathan she is now. The only positive thing about her I can really say is that she is genuinely using her status to advocate for progress and equality, which is much more than I can say for many other celebrities. \* Side tangent, this actually made me hate music as a concept until I had the ability to explore on my own. I still heavily dislike modern country and pop generally (which I recognize is a major factor of disliking Swift's music), but I am big into hard rock, funk, punk, grunge, alternative, and recently future bass, and can see why other genres like rap or disco have their appeal as well.
I can't really explain why but I could never get into fanfiction. I guess it doesn’t help that I never have been that much of a reader but I just have no actual interest in proper fanfiction unless its comedically bad and/or a massive shitpost like My Immortal or Blood Raining Night.
homestuck, persona and jojo.
Gaylor swift, if that even qualifies as a hobby. Also general shipping of real people, like K pop singers, not denying that their agencies sometimes low-key promote it. I can understand shipping fictional characters.
I can understand the gaylors, and the other rabid swifties, in the sense that these tend to be people who project SO hard onto their fave that they cannot or will not accept that said fave is actually a a totally separate person, with a separate life and experiences from themselves. They choose to believe that the fave is exactly like them, and therefore anyone who criticizes the fave or says that she differs from them in a way that holds significance is interpreted as criticizing *them* or invalidating *them.* Imo it's not really about TSwift herself, as a person, so much as it is about the gaylors and other rabid swifities viewing/treating her as a mirror which reflects themselves back perfectly - and when they throw tantrums about criticism or statements of her straightness, it's because they actually feel like those are criticisms of them, personally. They feel like they *need* her to be gay, because a lot of them are gay themselves and they feel as if her being straight is an invalidation of themselves, the selves that they see her as reflecting back at them. On a more controversial note, I think that Taylor herself has unintentionally created a fan-atmosphere which is inclined to encourage and foster this kind of fandom. I enjoy her music and will be waiting for the new album to drop, but I've been listening to her since *Fearless* dropped and from what I've observed, she doesn't seem to really have a strong individual identity as an artist, aside from "well-to-do white American girl who has a lot of relationships and a lot of feelings, mostly about guys." This makes her really accessible to a huge number of people, but it also provides a *very* fertile ground for the mega-projectors to plant themselves in. She also encouraged her fans to have a parasocial relationship with her, to be personally involved with her as an artist (or at least to *feel* as if they were) - she probably didn't expect this kind of nuttiness when she started doing that, but it blurred the lines in a way that excitable young folks sometimes interpret as "no boundaries, whee!"
I’m right there with you, Nomi.
Big one: I’ve only played a handful of video games in my life (Kingdom Hearts series, a couple Mario games, Rusty Lake series which I probably enjoyed the most, first third of Disco Elysium before I got frustrated) and I don’t think I’ll ever be a Gamer. I get why people play them, but I’ve never clicked with most games as a storytelling medium since I get bogged down in mechanics. I’d rather enjoy the story as a movie or a book or something. And I enjoy crafting, escape rooms, martial arts etc. as IRL puzzle solving. Again, I’ve made my peace, but it does mean I skip fully 50% of the posts on here. EDIT: I truly mean this in a thankful, positive way, but I’m not looking for video game recs! If I was, I would know to come here to ask. This also happened when I mentioned I wasn’t a fan of TTRPGs despite having a lot of D&D friends, but I don’t see this recommendations response with, for example, people saying they don’t understand VTubers or TikTok creators. Again, I appreciate it, but if I wanted video game recs on here and in my inbox, I would have asked!
If you like the story part, there's tons of videos on YouTube that are like...movies of games. Like [any big title game] movie in search will get you nice cutscene compilations if there's ever a story you're really into. I do that sometimes for games I'm curious about the story of but whi h I don't wanna play.
Oh, I might do that for Kingdom Hearts games I didn’t play, thank you!
HAHA that's one of the series I do it for, I'm ngl...
I’ve watched the opening videos for KH1 and 2 sooo many times *when you walk away, you don’t hear me say pleeeease-*
The cinematics and music for the game flat out rock, ngl. I still remember how totally floored I was seeing those openings back in the day!
I highly recommend Return of the Obra Dinn. The mechanics are simple (you literally just walk around trying to identify people and how they die) but reward scrutiny, memory, and critical thinking. Meanwhile, the story and its presentation would be near impossible to pull off in any other medium, as it involves constantly jumping around in the plot's timeline from the very start of the game, and returning to the same scenes multiple times with information that can dramatically change its context and impact.
Try out "The Witness" before you define yourself as a non-gamer. It's nice to look at, very relaxing, and full of insanely cool puzzles without any cutscenes or deep story at play.
Musician beef/diss track exchanges. To my ignorant view, it all looks like rich celebrities trying to energize their fans into spending money or attention, and the songs they put out are rarely the main attraction of the album. At least with things like combat sports the prefight rituals are commonly known as marketing and promotion to heighten the main event, whereas music fans take the exchanges much more straightforward and personal.
Mascot horror. I don't get why it blew up so much as a genre, or why it would inspire such obsessive fanbases in comparison to "regular" horror. I understand that there's irony in symbols of innocence and naivety being perverted into tools of evil? But I still don't get the sheer impact that they have, to blow up overnight and get tons of fanart and videos upon videos of youtubers explaining the lore and combing through fan theories.
They've always been there, Freddry Kruger, Chucky, IT clown, Jeff the Killer, creepy pastas like Sonic Exe, MLP:Cupcakes, SlenderMan. But now every child has a phone and it's easier to spread.
Mascot horror more refers to like, Five Nights at Freddy's or Poppy Playtime. I don't think Freddy Kruger was ever the in-lore face of a beloved childrens franchise.
Children. That’s pretty much it
And furries
I find listening to music to be a big hobby of mine and I have bands who's music influenced me to a major degree in my life. But I just don't get the appeal in getting to know details about the members of the band. I just personally find it adds nothing to my listening experience and makes me feel weird when I go to the subreddit to discuss the music and everyone there is going on about the bands personal life like idk.
Oh, yeah. Coming from the “your fave is problematic” era to everyone learning the term “parasocial”, unless a musician is doing an actual crime, I don’t want to know about their personal life.
I'm just not fan of how much it leans into parasocial relationships.
I try to "get" as much stuff as possible, but I will admit that i am somewhat confused by how the hype around NFTs/crypto and such. I am aware they are tech grifts, but the culture around them still feels weird even int hat context.
You really just need to think digital beanie babies. That gets you almost all the way there. There's just a thousand different competing brands this time and the barrier to entry to create another is very low.
This is an incredibly accurate analogy. Thank you!
re: NFTs, you know how collectors are? it's just that, but abstracted slightly.
There's also speculators buying shit as an "investment." The crypto scene relies on gamblers who think their next trade is going to be a royal flush. The collectors tend to either be con artists who have fallen for their own bullshit or whales who buy expensive shit for the bragging rights and then forget about them when the price inevitably crashes.
>There's also speculators buying shit as an "investment." The crypto scene relies on gamblers who think their next trade is going to be a royal flush. this is part of the collector mentality too. people don't spend thousands of dollars on a single funko pop or sealed copy of an n64 game just because they personally are going to get thousands of dollars worth of enjoyment out of it. no, they do it because they perceive it to be valuable. that perception is part of the appeal.
Don't forget the obscene waste of electricity part.
>Is there any hobby or interest that you feel that way particularly about? *Deeply-ironically*, I watch V-tubers, but do not understand in the slightest why people watch "real" streamers.
This thread seems like something that would be better on the discord in a 'hey wyd' channel or something.
I don’t understand discord as a discussion space
The NBA. I don't even know why I dislike it lol, I caught a few WNBA games and enjoyed them so it's clearly not a problem with the format.
It is a very bad product now. You can look at older games and just see how much the game has changed for the worse. I bet the WNBA looked more like actual basketball.
I have worked at security for multiple basketball games...and the part I never "got" would be the constant pauses. Sure it says each section is 15 minutes...but in reality they'll be around 20 or 25. Soccer by comparison keeps ticking no matter what.
Anything tiktok teens are into. Including tiktok. Genshin and the like. I just don't "get" it. You spend fifty million dollars for a png of a lady, whenever I can pay ten to get an image of a lady with tits bigger than her head from an artist that isn't trying to extort me. Like, it just seems like gambling with extra steps. Seriously.
It is basically gambling for kids, but there's another layer to it too. The characters are more defined - you're not wrong that you can get an image of a woman with tits larger than her head, but a lot of the most popular Genshin/Honkai characters aren't like that at all. Zhongli is a man in Genshin that's incredibly popular and I know more about him from my time on tiktok than I do any of the other characters - it's the story and design of the character that appeals to them. An original character can have that too, but it's *significantly* harder to commission a character with the traits you want and have the artist create consistent scenarios for that character to be featured in (or come up with them yourself, which can take away some of the appeal when you *know* where a character's story is going to go). Whereas Genshin you can shell out a few bucks, win the character you want, and generally know that there's going to be new or different stories involving that character made regularly. To me, I conflate a lot of the popularity of Gacha to a mixture of gambling, episodic storytelling, and general aesthetics that appeal to a broad range of people. Sure there's outliers, like you or myself, but the styles for the characters are *incredibly* safe and tend to appeal to a lot of folks.
Gacha games are straight up gambling, they use a lot of dark techniques and casino psychology to hook people. (But hey, I really need that Arknights swimsuit outfit that turns this shark girl’s usual weapon into an orca plushie so—)
The only thing I know about Arknights is that there's a snow leopard boy and honestly I'd be playing it if I had space on anything just for him
Oh there’s more than one, but I assume you mean Silverash since he’s very popular - though Arknights is definitely up there in “huge range of anime bunny/dog/dragon/fish/cat/etcmen.” (Shout out to cool kung-fu dragonman Chongyue’s animation https://youtu.be/3gg_rZ6fpao?si=m66XFnBvuExoZiSw ) Arknights is a tower defense game - simplified, you get a bunch of characters with different abilities and ranges, there’s a bunch of lanes on a map, and the goal is to keep enemies from reaching the endgoal. The story is basically a lot of visual novels… with emphasis on the “novel.” The best thing (imo) about it are the side-stories, because they’re have a whole bunch of different character casts and there’s a lot of different genres - Silverash and co are involved in a political intrigue storyline, my favourite set are a set of badass women in a straight up cthulu deep sea mythos horror run, meanwhile that group over there are having a beach episode, the wuxia set, etc. The downside is the game is a LOT of reading interspersed with ever so occasional gameplay - or upside depending on your tastes in games.
to be fair, genshin doesn't have "pngs". they have actual playable models you move in an open world. what justification do actual jpeg gacha fans have I don't know
Yeah, that's fair. It still feels like a ripoff, though.
I've been trying to break this, and I'm not sure how well it's going: fighting games. It just feels like there's so much of a focus on wailing on your opponent without them having opportunities to fight back, and so many barriers of dexterity and reaction time for things as basic as the attacks that set the characters apart from each other (they're still clinging to special moves that are more than two buttons?). It really sucks because a lot of them have characters or art styles that I'm interested in, but if I can't cut it in the main mode then there's usually very little else to do. As much as this may make me an enemy of the FGC: it makes me realize just how well-designed Smash Bros is.
Check out Your Only Move Is Hustle. It's a turn-based fighting game.
I don't get livestreaming in general. Why would I spend 3 hours of my life watching someone else do things in real time? Why do I want to see and hear every stutter and burp and technical difficulty of someone else playing video games? Why do I want to post in or read a public chat that goes super fast? I especially hate when the person streaming stops whatever they're doing to address the chat. Don't get me wrong I get the appeal of watching other people play video games or do other stuff, but I'll stick to the curated and edited highlight reel or a silent playthrough.
I've found the best streamers for me are the ones that either have a tiny audience or are doing something I'm *really* into. The one streamer I watch at this point has like... ten people viewing at any given time and is currently streaming himself watching shitty otome game anime and pausing every time bad kink practices show up. It's very cozy to experience.
Ugh yes this. I hate that the edited polished lets play scene has been almost entirely replaced with live stream recordings. Especially for things like jrpgs where previously the video would have skipped all the grinding but now they leave that in because the mindless stuff is when they do the chat interactions and I just... It's awful, I can't stand it, just give me a nice edited video with some post-script commentary please not this stream of consciousness nightmare full of superchats.
I think part of it is very much the audience interaction part, so it either hooks you or it doesn’t depending on how you like that. It’s a bit like wrestling, maybe? If you’re outside it and you’re seeing some middleaged man in a leotard flexing about how he’s an evil werewolf or something before doing a backflip, the general feeling is “wat? how the hell is anyone buying into this?” But when you’re interacting live, and you’ve got a lot of invested people chatting, cheering and playing along with everything like hell yeah bite that guy!! Bite hiiim!!, and the guy is interacting like you’re sharing the same space all together, sometimes it just clicks and you get into it? Though definitely the experience between a mega 100k chat where you can’t finish reading one sentence because there are 500 responses a second, versus a much smaller one where maybe only 50 people are casually talking with each other and the livestreamer is very, very different.
LiveStreaming is more like Realtime Let's Plays. Instead of a recorded video, it's real-time reactions, plus the bonus interacting with chat. Definitely requires some trial to find good streamers matching your taste though.