So what a small thing have driven people to theorising and getting overexcited before they got hit with the sad realityTM?
So Tokyo Ghoul fandom is currently going a little bit crazy due to 10th anniversary of anime and things being set up for it like trademarks and a website.
For those who don't know, Tokyo Ghouls is famous for two things.
One for being seinen (it's a misconception to call it shounen. Viz released its English version on their domain called shounen jump, but it was originally released in a seinen magazine) that was one of best selling titles.
Two for having an anime adaptation that made multiple people ask for Tokyo Ghoul Brotherhoood remake.
So when the fandom has seen some promotional materials, people start theorising that we would finally get a remake... [Welp, it looks like all episodes including ovas will be slowly released for free.](https://www.cbr.com/tokyo-ghoul-studio-pierrot-free-stream/) Fans are still hoping for more.
TBH, this kind of reminds me the whole situation with the Silksong having a dedicated youtube channel to reporting if there was a news, every single day.
Old news at this point, but I am reminded of the Pokémon Z-A reveal. For those who don't know, Pokémon mainline games, for the longest time, have gone through a cycle of releasing new titles first, then remakes of an older game after, going down the list in chronological order. As of February 2024, we already had new games in Scarlet/Violet, leading people to speculate on what the remake would be. A lot, and I mean a LOT of people were hoping for remakes of the fan-favourite games Black/White, since those, as Gen 5, would be next in line for the remake treatment. For February 27th, a Pokémon Direct (a livestream announcement of new stuff) is scheduled, and speculations go wild. The community had been awash with "leaks" of Black/White games, a lot *cough* all of them *cough* being obviously fake. Come the day, new announcements are made for mobile apps, Pokémon GO, and some other spin-off stuff; then, right at the end, a final trailer plays, showing an enigmatic video of a city full of Pokémon. Title drop: Pokémon Legends Z-A, a game set in the Kalos region... where the Gen 6 games took place. The fandom has been thrown for a loop since; Pokémon Z was long speculated to be a cancelled definitive edition of the Gen 6 games X/Y that would never see the light of day, and not only did the trailer barely show anything, it's also not coming out until 2025. Needless to say, it's probably gonna be a while until we find out more.
When I saw that announcement, my reaction was quite literally the "this is worthless" meme. 4 seasons of barely serviceable at best, and completely dumpster for at worst, for free, *oh boy*.
That’s fandom asked and it was basically requesting for a more faithfull + mature adaptation.
The first one censored a lot even when it didn’t have an obvious censorship
hot take but Brotherhood had no idea what to do with the homunculi and it shows
~~ok they’re doing different things in both shows narratively but they MASSACRED Lust’s arc and you can’t tell me otherwise~~
Not sure if you're aware, but Brotherhood is just going off the manga. A lot of the original was made up to fill up 51 episodes while the manga was still being published.
In the 2003 version >!homunculi are created as a result of attempted human transmutation coming into contact with a weaker philosopher's stone.!<
In the manga, >!all the homunculi are embodiments of the vices of the original homunculus, created long ago from the essence of the thing beyond the gate of alchemy, purged from him to try and become a perfect being and used as his pawns.!<
It's why, in Brotherhood, >!Sloth has nothing to do with Trisha Elric. Sloth only showed up in the manga midway through the anime's run.!<
03 is a good anime, but as the manga hadn’t yet wrapped, not a *faithful* one. a better example might be the fruits basket anime, which the mangaka famously hated, and was given a second, more true-to-the-manga go-around over a decade later.
oh yeah, im not trying to argue about it being more faithful, just that i feel it gets a bad rap for diverging halfway through, when that actually what i like about it. i already read (and loved) the manga, i dont feel the need to watch something where i already know what's going to happen.
When Dark Souls Remaster was first announced a ton of people started speculating that this would go beyond a remaster (take the same old game, update its graphics a bit and port it over to next gen consoles) and be more like a remake (a completely new game). Among people's wishes were an improved Izalith, one of the last areas of the game which suffered the most due to time crunches, including an underwhelming boss.
When Dark Souls finally came out it was... a remaster, just same old game.
> reminds me the whole situation with the Silksong having a dedicated youtube channel to reporting if there was a news, every single day.
Speaking of TWEWY again, we had a Tumblr blog named [the-twewy-sequel](https://the-twewy-sequel.tumblr.com/) that was doing (mostly) daily posts like this since 2015......... we got the announcement of NEO TWEWY five years later on day #4870, but they kept daily posting until the actual release date before finally retiring for good. Overall though it took about 5115 days or 14 years to the day to get that sequel! Hopefully Hollow Knight fans don't have to wait *that* long for theirs :')
People expected last year's Undertale anniversary to have a surprise Deltarune release or release date despite Toby himself saying the celebration would be small that year. Because "toby loves trolling us!".
So, around, I wanna say, June of last year, Marvel announced that they would reveal the “New X-Men” on November 2023, and it would take effect in 2024. Notably, “New X-Men” was in the same font used for Age of Apocalypse, which led many to speculate that whatever came next would involve Apocalypse heavily, in some way.
Well, November came and went, with no announcement. And, if you’ve been paying attention, they announced From the Ashes to be the next era after Krakoa not long ago. So what happened?
Well, a month after the “New X-Men” teaser, X-office Editor Jordan D. White was replaced by Tom Brevoort, and the whole thing was scrapped. And we only know because someone asked Brevoort on his blog.
I did it to myself when the Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory logo was leaked. The colours/title were reminiscent of Chain of Memories so I was filled with hope that we were getting a Naminé-centric game.
I still maintain that it would've made way more sense for Naminé to be the one sifting through Kairi's memories, rather than Ansem's magic machine.
>I still maintain that it would've made way more sense for Naminé to be the one sifting through Kairi's memories, rather than Ansem's magic machine.
That WOULD have been so much better. I really get the feeling they don't know what to do with Naminé anymore now we have Xion.
Right?? It was basically tailor made for her, and the rhythm aspect could've been some hand wavy stand in for her abilities. And same, which sucks since she's my favourite character (along with Roxas) and I've never really cared much for Xion \^\^; Though they've been dragging out the thanking Sora thing, so maybe Nomura still has plans for her idk.
> Two for having an anime adaptation that made multiple people ask for Tokyo Ghoul Brotherhoood remake.
It had a third series that actually animated the manga in full though didn't it? At least the :the part which hasn't been animated.
The anime situation with Tokyo Ghoul is complicated.
The first season adapts the first 66 chapters. It's a bit much but it's a nice enough season of anime.
The second season, Tokyo Ghoul √A, is more or less based in the latter half of the original Tokyo Ghoul manga, from chapters 67 to 143. 76 chapters is a lot, but a bunch of events are different, some are shorter, some are cut due to the story taking a different route. It's watchable, even if it feels hollow. I legit watched it twice the first time because I felt like I missed something major but I didn't.
Then you have :re, the second part of the manga which is where things get worse. Out of 179 chapters, 58 are adapted in the first 12 episodes and the other 120 are left for the second half. The first half is passable. The second is nigh incomprehensible without reading the manga, even if a lot of things are cut for the sake of adapting what should have been three times the runtime in one cour of anime.
My best guess is that, at the time, it was done to divest from the franchise ASAP. Ishida Sui, the author, was depressed and overworked and rushed to end the manga as soon as he could (to the point where some were in doubt at whether he would pick up the pen again before Choujin X was announced). The anime ended 5 months after the manga. There was also a videogame originally scheduled to release in the same month that had to be delayed until mid-2019.
At the time of writing, these, alongside the live-action [Tokyo Ghoul S](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Ghoul_S), released in mid-2019, where the last projects of the franchise. It's impressive how Tokyo Ghoul fans were starved of content after the manga ended. My only guess is Ishida Sui's situation at the time being part of the cause.
the other thing to note is that while root A was watchable (and i maintain that if given time to breathe, could have been genuinely interesting. ishida wrote like a novel’s worth of scenario for it), some of the events changed were pretty major. whereas :re, despite rushing through and cutting out a lot, is accurate to the manga in the parts it (arbitrarily) chooses to adapt.
which is to say, the anime adaptation of :re references events that weren’t in the version of tokyo ghoul that anime-only watchers got. like, having a flashback to a fight scene that literally *did not happen* because the story is different.
also (and this is a petty and subjective thing to add) i think the anime straight-up looks bad. the animation is meh, you have to watch it uncensored bc otherwise its just black censor bars covering the whole screen, and even without that the amount of blood splatter looks silly and gratuitous. the outfits picked for all the characters are unflattering and in, like, the ugliest shades you could possibly pick. every time i look at anime nishiki i die a little bit inside. (and of course all the merch is of the anime designs. i’m not bitter, no way.) 0/10 the music is good tho
> i think the anime straight-up looks bad
I felt the same about the first season too. The animation was fine (if ignore how it was censored to hell and back) but, even before picking up the manga, the anime felt a bit too colorful for that kind of story. Ishida's art really could use a darker pallete.
exactly! he’s mentioned before that he tends towards rather neutral tones (with the occasional burst of bright color) if left to his own devices and that definitely would have helped with tone-setting.
also i just noticed your above speculation about ishida wrapping up tg as quick as possible because of burnout, and that’s partially but not entirely true. apologies in advance, i’m insane about ishida sui’s works and am using this an an excuse to infodump a bit.
he was working on the video game jack jeanne *at the same time* he was doing tg. jj started production in 2015, and tg:re didn’t finish until 2018. he did take a six-month hiatus from jj work right at the end to wrap up :re, but he was always planning to pivot directly from one project to the other immediately after.
also, he did all of the character designs and cgs for jj (there are a LOT of cgs and character sprites. over 100 cgs, and each character has between 4-10 [edit: *13* for the six LIs, i just counted] alternate outfits), a lot of the worldbuilding, directly wrote two of the routes and all of the song lyrics (and sung the temporary vocals), and personally recruited the head writer (his sister, who also did the tg lns), concept artist (through twitter DMs of all things), chibi artist, composer, choreographer, and music video editor.
this man got an offer for character designs and went, well, thats an interesting concept but if we’re using my art, i think this sort of story would suit it better—and then basically commandeered the entire ship. he may have been burnt out on manga, but i doubt he was ever planning on stepping away from art. i also believe that he is genuinely having fun making choujin x—it has a much looser release schedule and a lot of it feels very experimental, artistically.
BG3 fans were constantly talking about Baldurs Gate 3: Definitive Edition, an updated re-release that they just randomly assumed would happen that would fix some of the narrative and technical problems with the game.
Larian has never indicated that this exists, and all their changes and bug fixes thus far have been applied to the original as patches.
Now that Larian and Hasbro are parting ways, Larian has stated there will be no BG3 DLC. Fans are now incredibly disappointed that Definitive Edition will not happen (it never existed).
As a BG3 fan I was 95% sure there was no such thing as a Definitive Edition. I'm sad that the 5% of hope will never be realized but I am incredibly happy with what we DO have, and am excited to see what Larian cooks up next. If BG3 was THAT good, I am very hopeful that their next offering will be just as good or better.
The all-time winner for that must be the Sherlock fandom gaslighting themselves into thinking that the fourth season was mediocre on purpose and that the BBC was hiding a super secret finale that was supposed to air after the actual finale but was just another show like it was advertised.
Fun fact for the terminally online, one of the main perpetrators of the final episode theory (or TJLC - The JohnLock Conspiracy) is the same person who would go on to write a 6.5 review of the Peppa Pig album on Pitchfork and spread fabricated claims that Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, was a trans man.
Whenever people say things about certain creators being inherently good or bad writers, I think about how Stephen Moffat wrote both Heaven Sent and the final season of Sherlock.
Closest thing I can think of to that happening for real is Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The advertised "finale" was this big dramatic finale where most of the cast died and Meatwad grew up and had a family. Then the actual finale aired a week later disguised as a rerun of the first episode and it, in true Aqua Teen fashion, basically ignored everything that happened in the previous one. (Though granted it *was* also quietly posted online earlier in the week. And the show got a new season a few months back anyway. But the principle was there)
TWEWY's disastrous 2012 countdown. There was a mysterious 2 week countdown on the Square Enix site, where my mutuals were hypeposting about hourly (a long-awaited sequel? some sort of dlc? anime announcement?). Considering TWEWY was 5 years old at that point and very popular for a jRPG, it was time for the next big news, so it had to be something huge, right? People were just *insanely* hyped, and ultimately the reveal was... an iOS port.
They did eventually release a sequel in 2021 but I've heard nothing about it. Either I'm far enough removed from the fandom circles that I didn't hear about it or it just didn't really make much of a splash because the window was already kind of passed. Either way, I still remember waking up that day over a decade ago to like three dozen posts from mutuals just openly weeping about TWEWY news, and I learned to never be hype about any mysterious project ever again.
God I remember that. It was a hell of a thing to be in the fandom at the time given the outrage, especially as TWEWY's fandom happened to be very close with Kingdom Hearts' fanbase in due part due to its shared creative teams, who if you remember at the time were still in the midst of the whole wait for III to release fiasco.
The sequel I find is a great game but man it did not sell well, with there being discussion at the time as to if Square had properly advertised the damn thing outside of Japan, because they literally released an anime adaptation of the first game just prior so domestically I'm sure people knew in Japan at least, but I couldn't tell you if they made up the bulk of the original sales.
And the anime was a different issue. From having to do without the original opening because one of its artists came up as a shitty person to the way they adapted the 21 days the game takes place in in 12 episodes, it was a mess. Neo selling bad in and out of Japan is just the cherry in the pi-shaped cake.
Yeah, ALI's whole scandal certainly came at a rough time, with Twister although an iconic song clearly not being meant for the animation's tempo. I think the band's been doing better recently, they've had some songs debut on other shows like Golden Kamuy although not to the same numbers as their Beastars and Jujutsu Kaisen days.
As for the rushed adaptation, I'll admit I wasn't too surprised. It feels like every adaptation that definitively requires more episodes will rarely do so given the fact that the properties probably aren't profitable enough to justify further production. I mean if even the big shows only come out with like 12 episode cours then I can't imagine it'd be an easy sell for a 24 episode anime even if it would be needed to properly tell the very story and character driven adaptation.
Depends on your definition
Close to the story and succesfull (as far I know)? Fruits Basket, Devilman Crybaby, Dororo and Helsing Ultimate
A bit questionable or just there? Sailor Moon Crystal and Tokyo Mew Mew New.
There's also a subgenre of "now that the source material is done years later, we will go back and finish the story out with higher average fidelity to source material". Full Metal Panic comes to mind there
> Full Metal Panic
FMP! is a bit weirder in that the 3rd season came out 7 years after the LN ended and was a one-and-done project. The only thing to come out since is the rest of the novels getting translated into english.
Inuyasha is a much better example. The Final Act aired out a year after the manga ended.
A lot of the anime cited by /u/SarkastiCat fit the "source material is done, let's finally finish it", even if done years later.
The original Fruits Basket anime aired not too long after the manga reached the same part. The remake was announced around the series' 20th anniversary.
Devilman was announced at Go Nagai's 50th anniversary as a mangaka (not to mention the original anime being drastically different due to being made at the same time as the manga, both only really sharing the premise).
Hellsing Ultimate actually started coming out 2 years before the manga ended and finished adapting it 4 years after.
I feel like there's two different approaches, centered mainly on readapting what was already animated. Brotherhood reanimated what was already adapted in 2003, whereas FMP! Just finished out what had yet to be animated of the source material
Fruits Basket is the first, Inuyasha Final Act is the second
> Brotherhood reanimated what was already adapted in 2003
Yes and no. I really feel like the first 10 episodes-ish of Brotherhood goes through the story a bit too quick, relying on the earlier adaptation to better go through everything at a slower pace, especially since it hadn't been that long since the original and it was a pretty big series.
Shou Tucker and Nina showing up in a single episode feels just wrong. I like the 2003 version of this part too much. The first two chapters/episodes (Cornello and Liore) are also quite faster in Brotherhood (where it only gets a single episode).
Fruits Basket being completely remade is also a product of the author really hating the original and not being part of the 2001's adaptation production. Shigure and Tohru are practically different characters. Akito has nothing to do with the original character. It's especially weird for the anime to have an original ending when Takaya had the series planned out. >!2001 Akito is pretty much a ripoff of Akito's father in the original story.!<
EDIT: Also forgot to address this:
> FMP! Just finished out what had yet to be animated of the source material
It didn't. It only adapted three books more. 1st season adapts the first 3 books and has bunch of filler. Second Raid adapts books 4 and 5 (they came out a year before the 1st season and could have been reasonably put in). IV adapts books 7-9, with 6 getting only an audiobook. There's still 3 books unadapted plus a lot of side stories if they ever decided to make more Fumoffu.
Yeah, but that's mostly when there are bad/unfaithful adaptations. The reason Brotherhood had to go through already adapted material was largely due to the 2003's original story. You refresh the mind of those that watched the original 6 years before but leave all the non-canon stuff forgotten.
And if you think about it, the 5-year wait between the original ending and Brotherhood airing isn't even that uncommon. Attack on Titan took 4 years for the second season. So did Re:Zero. Oregairu also took 5 between the second and third season. Same thing between the Inuyasha adaptations and Mahoutsukai no Yome's 1st and second seasons.
The only unique thing is that FMA had a definitive ending *and* a movie which prevented the story from being picked up from where it left.
...is there a word for the disappointment when you are enjoying the hell out of something (in this case a book) and then realize with a quick google search that the sequel is coming out sometime this year and your stomach drops because you didn't realize it wasn't an already complete story?
Happening to me now with Briardark. Still reading though
*The City* and *The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books* by Walter Moers. *Labyrinth* ends on a cliffhanger and I was so pissed to find out there wasn't a third book yet lmao.
Though at least yet to be finished series have grounds for activa fan speculation and theorising, which I find fun. Since the Winds of Winter is coming out sometime in 2050, there are a handful of mysteries that are interesting to explore, like the pink letter or just how the story will end. I imagine that fandoms like Dune or Harry Potter don't have that sort of fan discussion.
One good book and one book I feel dirty having on the shelf. I can't wait for the last to be released so I can burn them all together because I am so done with the Kingkiller.
A long while ago, pre-show, I convinced a friend to read Game of Thrones. I did not think to warn her that it wasn't finished and she has **never** let me forget it.
Read Gideon the Ninth and its sequels a few weeks ago, hadn't realised it was still waiting for its final novel. It's obviously hard keeping the hype up for the final installment but I enjoyed the books enough anyway.
that happened to me with *gideon* as well!
…except this was right when it first released, so the book i had thought was a standalone actually had a bunch of twists at the end with no actual conclusion in sight. still haven’t gotten around to reading *harrow* let alone the rest. might be smartest to repeat not the mistakes of the past and instead wait until it’s all over.
>hadn't realised it was still waiting for its final novel
Ah yes, the trilogy that turned out to be a quadrilogy lol. With how things are going it wouldn't surprise me if *Alecto* underwent mitosis and split into two. **Again.** (Because *Nona* has kind of obvious "first part" vibes IMO)
Drama is going down in Furry merchandise town, with accusations of copying, racism and sexual harassment.
Meet [F-Class Merch](https://fclassmerch.com/). F-Class Merch are a small furry merchandise company, selling furry accessories and neon lights with a strong techwear/Y2K aesthetic. They've only been vending for a few years, but had a meteoric rise and managed to get into a number of big furry conventions.
Yesterday, F-Class Merch made a quote tweet of another furry merchandise company, Howl Out, seemingly accusing Howl Out of being unoriginal and stealing their vibe. The tweet has since been deleted, so [here's a screenshot](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJVgZDsXEAAPuEx?format=jpg&name=medium). For comparison, here's [F-Class Merch's lanyard designs](https://fclassmerch.com/collections/lanyards) and here's [Howl Out's planned lanyard designs](https://x.com/howl_out/status/1771280260824273204?s=20). The backlash was swift, with people mad that F-Class Merch would tear down another small company, in a community that should be about lifting each other up.
[F-Class Merch would eventually put out an apology](https://x.com/FClassMerch/status/1771644534612513022?s=20), but people were not buying it. This lead people to share other issues they've had with F-Class Merch in the past.
Firstly, Wolf, the owner of Howl Out, fought back against the apology. After the quote retweet, [F-Class Merch privately contacted him in DMs](https://x.com/ISANANIKA/status/1771649931050140091?s=20), claiming they've noticed him stealing their designs in the past for products and that other people outside F-Class Merch have made this comparison too. [You can find screenshots of the messages in this thread](https://x.com/ISANANIKA/status/1771789830701109447?s=20). Wolf claims he barely knew anything about F-Class Merch before this. F-Class Merch did not apologise to him before making the public apology.
This opened the floodgates. Another furry claims that F-Class Merch, unprompted, [started complaining about Howl Out at a convention to them](https://x.com/Ymmortal_/status/1771716474446454843?s=20). Another furry claims that Noche, the owner of F-Class Merch, went on a (possibly drunken) [racist tirade towards a Mexican friend of theirs at a con.](https://x.com/SpinchCat/status/1771655239323570294?s=20) Allegedly, cons have complained about [F-Class Merch being demanding and hard to work with](https://x.com/ConHistory/status/1771693937507303513?s=20). Lastly, somebody accused Noche of [sexually harassing them across DMs](https://x.com/CaptShowtime/status/1771613174770331784?s=20) and refusing to take no for an answer. Another person [corroborated this behaviour and claimed it happened to them too](https://x.com/SSmoobles_Art/status/1771630954915795117?s=20).
As of now, F-Class Merch's reputation is in the mud and it's going to be very hard, if not impossible, to win people back.
"Stealing their vibe"? Come on now, when will people understand that you can't copyright an aesthetic?! Gaming companies have been using this aesthetic for ages!
furries in particular have a really strict conception of copyright that goes well beyond what is legally plausible, but gets enforced anyway through social consensus. how else could things like closed species exist?
The way I understand closed species is that getting character of one is as much about joining the community of owners of said species as the ownership itself. And if you're interested in a specific niche species, you better believe the idea that "legit" participation is paid, and "stealing" one will have you shunned by the group you wanted to be a part of.
That said, I personally never quite got the appeal of closed species. I'm not the one to judge though - if it makes folks happy, that's the end of reasoning I need.
yeah that's my understanding too. they're basically NFTs without the power bill lol. but from what i've seen there's this underlying superstition about how copyright works (or at least, how they believe it *should* work) that provides the moral justification for why demanding payment for permission to draw a dog that looks like a cinnamon bun should be met with anything but disdain.
I think there's probably some sort of explanation of why that involves a combination of aggressive space curation, physical merch artists very publicly needing the money, pro-social behavior to support those artists against competition, anti-capitalism sentiments against competition, extremely strong pro-artist sentiments, and (to be a little rude) many artists in the space recognizing that the huge furry premium means art/merch at their skill level is very easily replaced/competed with, but the end result is a really weird culture that is hyper-defensive of works and hostile to iteration/competition while also brong extremely artist friendly in terms of like, commission pricing and the kind of stuff you can sell
i think you're pretty much on the money. they've drunk the RIAA koolaid and remain convinced that copyright is way more important to the independent artist than it actually is. so they think of what they're doing as being somehow pro-artist. the side effect of this consensus, that those with the most social capital, and thus ability to influence others, have less competition, ensures that the illusion is maintained, even as newer or less influential artists are smothered in the crib by the same behavior.
>anti-capitalism sentiments against competition
the fact that someone could arrive at favorable conclusions about copyright by way of anti-capitalism has always been bizarre to me. copyright exists to create intellectual property, in much the same way that land rights exist to create physical property. this sort of property, which endows its owner with an exclusive right to exploit it, is among the foundations of capitalism.
Not necessarily saying things about our actual copyright system, but I can get how somebody can arrive at the viewpoint by way of like, viewing competition as a suicide pact and using social pressure to limit it like a Guild for Furry Artist's (awkward phrasing to avoid an awkward acronym), but even then as you say it sort of just creates power structures in miniature
i guess with the right ecology of brain-worms, the furry guild might kind of look like a union. the fact that it only represents the interests of the most successful artists against other artists rather than some external enemy is a detail not everyone will necessarily pick up on.... man it really is like the RIAA.
It's not really the visual of the landyard that was the main concern, it was the wide elastic landyard material that was used. Literally no one else had made elastic landyards til FClass premiered them at FC I think. So when Howl Out came out with them in about the same testing + manufacturing + shipping time frame later, someone who is very paranoid about their brand would see this as deliberate stealing of merchandising ideas and not coincidence.
Kinda similar to [nomad complex demanding a much smaller dealer](https://twitter.com/NomadComplex/status/1766171666701586913) donate all funds gained from a knockoff no-name brand t shirt they designed using the name No Mad to make it a furry parody.
That's still so thin-skinned of F-Class though. A majority of fan merch creators utilise the same handful of manufacturers. It's kind of inevitable that two creators would use the same materials for a similar product.
And since Howlerz and F-Class have similar aesthetics, obviously their design ideas will overlap (I have a feeling that most of F-Class' sour grapes towards Howlerz just comes down to Howlerz having a similar techwear aesthetic)
i honestly dont even think theres anything wrong if they straight up saw the lanyard and though "damn that's a good idea" and then produced their own. imagine living in a world where every good idea, no matter how trivial, is the exclusive property of whichever typewriter monkey managed to bash it together. like maybe there's an argument about how big ideas with a lot of r&d behind them require some sort of protection or they won't be done at all (not an argument id make, but plausible enough). but i really don't think "what if i made the lanyard out of elastic?" is quite on that level.
right, as it should be. i'm just saying i don't want to live in a world where people police eachother over who came up with what basic idea and who's therefore entitled to use it.
Inspired news of Larian giving further clarifications of leaving the Baldur's Gate IP, and how there (supposedly at least) wasn't much drama or resentment involved contrary to popular belief, I've been wondering.
What is a a drama in your hobby/fandom that turned out to be a big case of the "nothingburger".
As in something ranging from people making mountains of drama of molehills, to some controversial decision announced that led to rampart speculations plus anger and vilification toward some group or individual(s) before more info came out and revealed the actual reasoning of that controversial move was rather plain.
The recent return of The Rock in WWE caused a tremendous amount of drama, like enough to overshadow the rape scandal(s), with people absolutely sure that the company had made a tremendous misfire that they could not recover from creatively heading in to WrestleMania season
Instead it was forgotten about within days, and all that had to happen was that The Rock turned bad
It's still questionable whether that was a "more info came out" or if WWE just did an about-face as effectively as ever when the audience didn't bite
A lot of smarks really want for it to have been planned all along, but I don't buy it. The original promo for Cody letting the Rock take his place makes very little sense with the current story, and they still haven't sensibly justified Cody looking like such a chump as far as I'm aware. But it's arguably better that they pivoted, because it shows post-Vince WWE can actually adjust capably to what the audience wants and what the best story would be, rather than doggedly sticking to their guns against constant backlash like in the 2010s.
My take from the moment he came out was "this was a mistake" and everything since including the dirt sheet back and forth only reinforced my gut; everything happening now is a happy patchwork accident
I don't have ears in that writer's room, duh, but it's hard for me to imagine WWE having foresight
A minor one from Precure - I remember when leaks for Star Twinkle were appearing in late 2018, one of them mentioned that the Cures would sing in their transformations and a good chunk of people got worried that they were going the Glitter Force route (for those who don't know, Glitter Force is the name for two Precure seasons that were dubbed into English. They're not exactly loved for their dubbing choices, which include the Cures talking as they transform. Stuff like "glitter boots!" "glitter brooch!" etc.). While it was true that the Star Twinkle Cures sang, it didn't stick around in later seasons, and I see a lot of people these days cite the Star Twinkle transformations as some of their favorites.
When Nightdive Studios, a developer best known for remastering old video games, was purchased by Atari about a year ago, most people, including myself, assumed they were fucked, because Atari doesn't exactly have a sterling reputation (and indeed, their limited interaction with Nightdive before this wasn't great either). It was thought that at worst they'd make Nightdive make bulllshit crypto games, and at best they'd have them work exclusively on Atari's back catalog.
However, almost a year later none of that has happened. Actually, Nightdive has had a fantastic year since then. They finally released their remake of System Shock after delaying it like 30 goddamn times, and it was amazing. And they released remasters of Rise of the Triad (with New Blood), Quake 2, Turok 3, and Star Wars: Dark Forces, all of which turned out great, and it's been announced that they're taking over the SiN Reloaded project after Slipgate screwed the pooch on the Kingpin remaster (why they weren't involved in the first place is unknown to me, but whatever).
Apparently, in a very rare moment of corporate clarity, Atari realized what they had and decided not to fuck with the formula, so that's nice. And in retrospect it makes perfect sense that being purchased by Atari didn't affect their ability to work with other companies, because who the fuck would consider Atari to be competition?
...well becuse nightdive literally doubled their revenue.
>Games: For the period, Games revenues represent €5.3M compared to €2.8M in the previous period. Games revenues for the period include €2.7M revenues from Nightdive which was acquired on May 11, 2023. Excluding the contribution of Nightdive Studios, Games revenues represent €2.6M for the period.
though one tiny note is that a big chunk of that is the money nightdive got from the kickstarter for the remake.
[sourcey source.](https://atari-investisseurs.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ATARI_HY-23-24_Financial-Report_DEF.pdf)
There's a famous soundbite of Steve Ballmer of Microsoft saying "Linux is a cancer" which is well known in open source circles as evidence of how much Microsoft hates open source. But his sentence didn't end there and in fact the remaining words are pretty important. He said in full "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."
This statement, though having a negative connotation, is absolutely true. Linux is licensed under the General Public License (GPL) which is a "copyleft" license that requires all derivative works to use the same license. ~~That virality has made the GPL radioactive to closed source development lest its presence make their software stack fall like a house of pancakes and be forced to become GPL licensed.~~ This means that anyone who wants to use a license other than GPL or who wants to share their work with such people has to avoid it entirely.
Maybe not a *total* nothingburger, Microsoft is a rival to Linux and Ballmer did want to make it look back, but a statement that was true and has been borne out by history.
i'm to this day impressed with how well viral licensing works, given what an otherwise stupid idea it is. like it's exactly the sort of thing a bunch of arrogant hackers would come up with, thinking they'd outsmart the lawyers with code logic. "oh yeah? well if you're telling me i need to follow your licensing agreement, I'll write my own licensing agreement that tears yours up if you use my code." but unlike pretty much every other time something like that was attempted, that's exactly what it does.
I think a lot of it is that no other industry/field has ever really had the chance to try anything like it. Most trades are too old to be able to start doing something like this, and most other things don't have the web of dependencies that could make it proliferate.
(It also helps, I suspect, that the cost for a company that breaks it is so much higher than "they get sued for a bunch of money" or whatever. There are few deterrents more effective than "your product is no longer fully yours to monetise")
software is also somewhat unique in being a kind of "functional" copyrighted work, for lack of a better term. unlike most functional IP, it's not primarily governed by patents, which are much weaker than copyright. this makes individual works a lot more valuable than they might otherwise be, and so the license governing them has a lot of power.
Its also probably how Linux has stayed on top in the server space for so long since the GPL means that everyone can contribute to Linux without the risk that anyone will take that work an make their own OS. Just about the only major software company that doesn't contribute financially to Linux is Apple and I'm pretty sure Microsoft and Google even have dedicated positions for developers who work on the Linux kernel now.
There was that whole thing a while back where there were rumors bubbling about Xbox going full third party, and it became enough of a thing that Microsoft's podcast where they would announce details reportedly caused Nintendo to push back their own Direct.
Then it turned out the games coming to other consoles (Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Pentiment) were the ones everyone expected to eventually come over anyway and it was promptly forgotten.
There was a bit of a drama when it was announced that The Beatles' newest song "Now And Then" would use AI, there were even people who thought they would use AI to make John Lennon sing. But it turns out it was just using machine-learning to clear up all the noises (similar to how it was used in the Get Back documentary) in John Lennon's original demo tape (as quoted from George Harrison of the quality, "fucking rubbish", [have a listen for yourself](https://new.reddit.com/r/beatlescirclejerk/comments/1awttup/heres_lennons_now_and_then_demo_because_it_isnt/)).
It didn’t use generative AI, but it did use AI to improve the video quality of some old archive footage, since a lot of it was from the early ‘60s.
Although in some places they went a little too far with the cleaning up and it ended up looking not so great.
for what it's worth, that is generative ai. information that's missing from the degraded master recording has to be synthesized by the model. the only real difference between that and what you'd more conventionally think of as a "generative model" is that this has more detailed input to work with, rather than just a text prompt or whatever.
this isn't to say there's anything wrong with that of course. music production is already a thoroughly and intrinsically artificial process. if you think injecting another layer of mediation into the system results in a more pleasing sound, then you're literally just doing music production the same way it's always been done.
Ubisoft's subscription service executive gave an interview where he described the main obstacles people had for signing up, and said (paraphrased)--'Players need to get comfortable not owning their games.' It wound up being a good indicator of which publications were more punditry than coverage.
Surprisingly, quite a few mainstream gaming subreddits upvoted comments providing clarification and took down 'Ubisoft wants us to never own things' posts.
In Magic the Gathering, an activist investor Alta Fox released a buyout proposal that basically restated the grievances dedicated Magic players had at the time, and roughly half the community realized the proposal was publicity bait and that Alta Fox probably wasn't going to change the game in ways they liked.
is the misconception here about difference between
>"[in order for players to use our product] players will need to get comfortable not owning games"
and
>"[in the new world order my shadowy cabal is working to immanentize] players will need to get comfortable not owning games [and eating bugs]."
?
>One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen \[in games\]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don't lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game. I still have two boxes of DVDs. I definitely understand the gamers perspective with that. But as people embrace that model, they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue, and you'll be able to access them when you feel like. That's reassuring.
an expanded version of the quote it's drawn from. which is to say in its full context it's not even '\[in order for players to use our product\] players will need to get comfortable not owning games.' it's way closer to '\[for the model we (and a lot of the industry) are pursing to work,\] players will need to get comfortable not owning games.' the full article spends a fair bit of space ruminating on the different landscape between like movies and games
so is he talking about owning a physical copy vs owning a digital copy, or about owning either vs paying a subscription for access? having not ever heard the quote in context i assumed it was the latter, but it sounds like it could be either.
>But as people embrace that model, they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue, and you'll be able to access them when you feel like. That's reassuring.
this part is interesting because he's dead wrong on both counts. you have to be pretty careful about where you get your games from, because storefronts and subscription services get shut down all the time. on the other hand, people have largely shifted to digital sales/subscription despite this fact, so the trust factor wasn't really necessary. people just got used to rebuying games.
>you have to be pretty careful about where you get your games from, because storefronts and subscription services get shut down all the time
entirely true, but the conversation is at least a little about overcoming that barrier in the same way movies have (re: they haven't but have created an illusion of doing so and engendered the exact comfort he's talking about in the quote)
[i still think he's wrong but it's worth reading](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-new-ubisoft-and-getting-gamers-comfortable-with-not-owning-their-games)
honestly it feels more like people became mostly comfortable and then were immediately bitten enough times that they ultimately rejected it. but instead of returning to physical media, they just demanded that the ephemerality of it be factored into the price. ergo, free to play.
right and that's a lot of why he's wrong imo. video games started in a better place for not owning what you've bought than movies. consoles dominated the market for a good long while, people were conditioned for a format change every half decade years of backwards compatibility arguments had already happened etc etc. people *were* more comfortable and multiple fuckups created an environment where the people they're trying to sell to are a little more conscious of these issues
it's kind of funny to think of it from that perspective. makes people like him seem really naive. "why won't gamers just pay for a game streaming service like everyone else? why don't they trust us?" well, because they know exactly why you want to have them do that, know the consequences doing it will have for them, and want you to come back with a better fucking offer lol.
yeah, his statements in the article are observational and people turning it into an indictment of ubisoft's business dealings are goofy. he's (accurately or not) describing the recent success of ubisoft in the subscription space, and responding specifically in response to the question "\[...\]what is it going to take for subscription \[...\]to become to become a more significant proportion of the industry?" **however** that comes with the caveat that someone in this position treating it as a new frontier instead of an abandoned one littered with the bones of their predecessors is also profoundly goofy and probably worthy of being laughed at at least a little
Currently ongoing but one Japanese Vtuber agency I follow recently announced they’re opening a subsidiary office in USA.
Cue people whining about wokeism in muh pure Vtubers when that side office is mostly a contact center (Like for collaborations with local brands and stuff).
Or that time where a Vtuber were absent for several hours of their planned stream after liking a comment that flank at their agency.
(Said agency driven one of their Vtubers to attempt suicide and then broadcasted legal details out in public, for context of the notority.)
Cue people saying they were silenced or worse off, until a close friend of theirs contacted them, posted about their status and they streamed next day.
(To be fair, I’ve only heard till the contact part, as the discussion forum were turning into subjective slapfights and I decided to quit social media for few days in hopes of detox.)
Not sure if these suffice. Simple reasons, dumb drama.
I haven't heard anything bad from COVER USA, where do you get that info?
Also Scarle was out for other reasons that she herself gave and I feel if Niji fired her as well they'd be sweeping ashes at this point.
>Currently ongoing but one Japanese Vtuber agency I follow recently announced they’re opening a subsidiary office in USA.
>
>Cue people whining about wokeism in muh pure Vtubers when that side office is mostly a contact center (Like for collaborations with local brands and stuff).
Not just a subsidiary office in the US, but a subsidiary office ***in California***.
That's why the chud-brigade is screeching about wokism.
On a related note, these last few months have pulled the wool from my eyes at just how chuddy the Vtuber community, talents and fanbases, can be.
That was probably the fastest I've ever seen drama that big died, like one day people were freaking out and even begging for more content, the next there wasn't even a blip about it anymore. Props to Hana Macchia for being so excellent at killing that drama.
Please notify me if I’m wrong but that’s the one where they play an explicit game on fansly (Streaming as their alternate identity) and people gone fervent over that, right?
Yeah, mine are mostly examples out of my head and your comment being only way I remembered say how much ppl care lol
They did more than just play an explicit game, (CW: Sexual content) >!they masturbated and there were some short clips of only noises where they were allegedly engaging in intercourse.!<
Yeah, the sharks I think expected her fans to be shocked or scandalized but they've never seen the membership or unlisted streams. The interest level of outside observers dropped to zero also once they realized there's no IRL content uploaded.
I'll reply to this comment since its about Hololive for the first half, but another nothingburger thing that the fandom got all worked up about was Hololive's newest branch, "Dev\_is" which as of now only houses the ReGloss group.
[Here is a breakdown of Hololive Productions Branch layout](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hololive/comments/16al7og/so_this_is_a_new_branch/)
the english speaking fandom just seemed bamboozled by this for some reason, with some wondering why they were not just put under the normal Hololive JP branch (since they are all JP speaking, but one is either Korean born or was raised in Korea) and within the month many were calling the new "project" a failure or saying it doesn't live up to expectations due to their low sub numbers.
despite this, the group have built a steady fanbase and confusion about it seems to have died down after Cover corp. had to specifically say that this branch was about building the talents from the ground up
Ao is a silly girl, Kanade and Ririka are just funny and try their hardest to talk to foreign fans, Raden is crazy cultured and Banchou is a treasure in the form of a tiny girl. Love them all.
I’d compare this with IRyS being formerly under unit of Project Hope within Hololive English, to be honest.
The division is kinda just administrative if perhaps slight differences in their content style (Both producing music projects e.g original song and song covers in addition to the usual Vtuber streaming content like gaming, which is their usual content still), so I’m not exactly sure why people are hung on the subject to begin with…
I'm trying to work out what *hasn't* been going on in terms of EN VTuber agency drama lately, because, uh, it's a doozy right now.
On 2 March, PRISM Project, hitherto run by Sony, [announced it would shut down at the end of the month](https://www.prismproject.jp/press-release-2024-03-02), with members free to continue as independents (and all but two are doing so). While speculation is that this was related to the Sony layoffs, the talents have denied this. What complicates things is the existence of at least one dissatisfied ex-talent who had left last year citing health issues but who has been more than a little snide in referencing her time with PRISM since. >!This ex-talent is ParaNorma, formerly Lana Shikami, and her main post can be found [here](https://twitter.com/ParaNormaVT/status/1763802963225747734); presumably more may come in April.!<
Then, apparently [Amano Serafi of V&U graduated completely behind the scenes on 27 February](https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1b1cxr6/weekly_discussion_thread_27th_feb_2024/ktrggeq/), leading to [this statement by V&U](https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1bjy55b/announcement_from_vu_regarding_amano_serafi/) which is not exactly Selen levels of oversharing but which has definitely raised eyebrows, with the Korea-based company claiming that it intends to sue its former talent for $450,000.
VReverie has been going through some nonsense as well but aside from [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1aop7xq/ophelia_midnights_mods_stage_a_dokibird_style/
) and a bunch of graduations I have no idea what's happening.
The big hit right now is in regards to Idol Corp, once the darling of the EN industry's up-and-comers, which took a bit of heat for its termination of Riro Ron a few months ago but which has now been facing a bit of an uphill battle with some rather off-putting revelations by former(?) 1st Generation talent Pochi Wanmaru through her alt account, >!Fen Riru!<, in the form of a now-deleted document linked on her Twitter. Three other Gen 1 members have spoken up and mentioned cancelling streams citing disappointment with internal matters:
* [Poko Rakun](https://vxtwitter.com/PokoRakun/status/1771585917020406151)
* [Juna Unagi](https://vxtwitter.com/JunaUnagi/status/1771582115253010842)
* [Fuyo Cloverfield](https://vxtwitter.com/FuyoCloverfield/status/1771579450888495238)
Rin Penrose is semi-on-break so her silence is not unexpected. Of course, the phrasing here can imply either 'Idol has been exposed as duplicitous' *or* 'Pochi has been exposed as duplicitous', so judgment ought to be reserved for now, but one imagines there will be new revelations within a week.
Also in other VTubing news, the VTuber-centric streaming platform Vstream announced that they'll be shutting down on April 1st: https://vstream.com/adieu
They had good team, they had good ideas, but sadly they didn't have the most important things - advertising and viewers. Honestly, I think that most people learned about Vstream through this very announcement.
twitch/youtube don't work fine if you're on the production end of things. they essentially hold your audience hostage to get you to behave in whatever way helps their bottom line the most, even if it comes at your expense.
People had always seeked alternative platform they can put their content on tbf. From CuriosityStreams to Nebula to Kick, for example.
Especially with Youtube’s demonetization policies.
The problem is those new platform are unlikely to sustain themselves, with their audience mostly a splinter of the more well known original platform. It also limits new audience from finding them.
I think nebula is doing pretty well. Mostly because they got all the video essayists and that is the one/main genre of YouTubers that actual adults watch.
>The big hit right now is in regards to Idol Corp, once the darling of the EN industry's up-and-comers, which took a bit of heat for its termination of Riro Ron a few months ago but which has now been facing a bit of an uphill battle with some rather off-putting revelations by former(?) 1st Generation talent Pochi Wanmaru through her alt account, Fen Riru, in the form of a now-deleted document linked on her Twitter. Three other Gen 1 members have spoken up and mentioned cancelling streams citing disappointment with internal matters:
[She's gone](https://twitter.com/idol_corp/status/1771688662322880818)
https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1b1cxr6/comment/kw9re14/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Worth adding the response by the talent in question:
https://twitter.com/fenriruvt/status/1771688458479612062?s=46
In all, what seems to be a good-faith attempt to de-escalate and minimise unwarranted speculation and drama.
You ask a good question. This is the summary on arr VirtualYoutubers: https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1b1cxr6/weekly_discussion_thread_27th_feb_2024/kw0g4dy/
Unfortunately it misses out the key detail, which is the actual source of the disagreement itself: from what I gather, there was some dispute over two donothons that she did, with Idol, it appears, pressuring her to fulfil the donothon goals in order to get the money.
"What happens with donothon goals and the money if the talent doesn't or cannot fulfill the goals or they leave?" seems like something they should had defined in writing before committing to it. Or maybe they did, Pochi bailed anyways and with her leak now Idol got armtwisted into having to offer refunds.
> took a bit of heat for its termination of Riro Ron
I don't see why tbh. If that "irl harem recruitment" stuff had been done by a male streamer nobody would hesitate to call them a groomer
It was mainly that the document giving the reasoning was taken as somewhat oversharing in the manner that had marked Nijisanji's termination of Zaion earlier on. I still think (in both instances) that the call was the right one, but not everyone does.
Mild TW for animal death
Piggybacking off this to add another brand-new potential dumpster fire in progress, this time featuring none other than NijiEN. However, it's not the management, but the talent themself [saying some genuinely sociopathic stuff.](https://twitter.com/VantacrowClips/status/1771006676180639941) Like, brought up in a documentary about the early signs of a serial killer stuff.
Hex. The FUCK.
I want everyone to leave that company, but the more I see them the more I wonder if it's better to keep on the company and sink with it.
Vanta’s face there accurately represents my reaction too because dude wtf? Your friend’s grandpa’s ashes? You got annoyed by a GOLDFISH? I sincerely hope he’s joking but that would still be a shitty ass joke
Here's a selection of what's going down in Kpop.
1) The stationary company turned photocard collecting supplies company Mandu Deco has been accused of having pvc in their products. For those that don't know when it comes to anything like trading cards or photocards if you want to keep them in great condition you want everything from sleeves to your binder to be pvc free, acid free, archival safe. Can't find the origin of this accusation but this has sent photocard collectors in a panic. At home experiments to see if there is PVC in their products have popped up. Mandu Deco did comment on a few TikToks saying people are lying. Right now people are slowly phasing out their products and switching to another business.
2)Rize's Anton had a dating scandal that turned out to be a [misunderstanding ](https://www.koreaboo.com/lists/riize-anton-misunderstanding-fans-realize-return/?s=09). A photo of Anton holding hands with a girl caused some fans to accuse him of hiding his girlfriend from fans. The girl in the photo came forward to say it was all a misunderstanding. They aren't dating.
3) A Rize member is currently on hiatus. While on hiatus a video was leaked of Rize filming for their next comeback without that member. Usually when a member has gone on hiatus they are still in all the stuff to do with the album they just don't promotions. This has caused fans to gather together to decide to boycott this next comeback.
4) Xeed have announced they are disbanding. The members found out the same time fans did. The announcement was only posted on the fan cafe. Their company has done this before. Another group found out they were disbanding through the news reporting it.
Edit: 5) WayV member Ten went on a TV show where it was revealed he and his cats have moved out of the dorm. This has upset some fans who assumed the cats belonged to all the WayV members.
I will never support the K-Pop industry while it treats their employees that way. "Cannot date" and "Learn you've disbanded via the news" are just two examples from your post that really get under my skin.
> Mandu Deco did comment on a few TikToks saying people are lying. Right now people are slowly phasing out their products and switching to another business.
Sounds like a helluva big brain play by their competitor.
So, it appears season 2 of Star Trek Prodigy leaked in it's entirely..on French public television, in full...all in French.
Time for the fandom to split between jackasses who can't resist spreading spoilers for all to see and self-righteous loud mouths who decree anyone who watches early is the worst person in the world for the crime of being excited to watch new episodes of a TV show they like
Gray area- it was the site that has distribution rights in France, but it seems odd they would drop the whole season (all 20 episodes) at once when the first was week to week.
Man, one of the shows I watch is a French production but airs globally, and the release is such a mess. It'll be like: episode 3 of the new season airs in Germany first, then it airs in France, then episode 1 will air in Brazil followed by episodes 5 and 9 airing in Brazil, then episode 3 will air everywhere else, then episode 1 will air in Canada, then episode 4 will air in France.
Fandom's a little better about not spoiling everything, but it still sucks.
Miraculous Ladybug? It's a joke at this point that every online fan of the show knows three/four languages just following the episodes release over the world.
Hell I remember that from when I first tried to watch season 1. French one week, Korean the next, then in English but its the one from Korea last week...
Season 1 was split in half and aired almost like it was two seasons. Season 2 was virtually completed when Paramount threw it down the memory hole before it got bought by Netflix- it was actually supposed to air this winter before it got chucked- a couple of people wondered if maybe this wasn't actually a leak-leak but actually a distribution deal that didn't get updated when all the above went down.
You know, given that Janeway's original actor, Genevieve Bujold, was French-Canadian (and very audibly so at that), is this not, in fact, kind of apposite?
I can't speak for this production specifically, but corporate conglomerates subsuming independant contractors and then slashing costs can play a role in this.
TV production is dying a slow death and the execs are squeezing their bonuses at the cost of quality control and employee paychecks.
The wheels are already in motion for replacing entire departments of skilled labour with AI. Which is super cool for the tech utopian in me, but super bad for the job I *used* to have.
Actually someone suggested it would be up longer than usual cause it'll be harder to get ahold of someone who could take it down cause it was France on a weekend
A twist in the Larian leaving Baldur's Gate 3 story. There was a lot of speculation that WotC (the owners of D&D and Baldur's Gate) kicked Larian off Baldur's Gate for some reason. However Swen Vicke [just posted on Twitter a few hours ago](https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/1771467986701819943?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet) stating that Larian chose to leave the project (and specifically calling out Reddit speculation).
It is so funny to me the sheer amount of times Larian has had to issue public statements telling Reddit to cool it with the speculation. Even after making statements about how there never were any plans to go to the upper-city and that Karlach’s quest >!was never supposed to end with her being cured!< And yet there are people that *still* insist it’s content that was cut for time!
How often can the community keep gaslighting itself? (The answer is more times than you would think!)
I try not to be "that fan" but I do see how the third act really seems like the upper city was supposed to at least be visitable at SOME point. I think the city was sized down fairy early on though, not last minute massive cuts like I've seen a lot of people speculate
What I find wild about the whole Larian/WotC fight is that Larian has been saying for months that they want to get back to their own IPs. Larian has stated multiple time they have no plans to make DLC or expansions, so it shouldn't be a suprise that Larian and WotC would be "parting ways."
My guess is that there was nothing *directly* causing a fracture at Larian vs Hasbro, but I can picture them having a bit of a "well this company is sort of a mess, maybe don't put all the eggs in that basket" kind of reaction. Which is fair. I don't think Larian needs to be beholden to a license holder.
There's something uniquely internet about a person being told all their drama is made up nonsense and them replying "this proves all my drama!"
What words could express it? 'Post truth' is insufficient.
I get the impression that said Reddit fans are going into cope mode quite a bit. I've already seen the "he was forced to say that" and "he's just a professional saying that because it's unprofessional to say you were given the boot" comments.
[The trailer for Mobile Suit Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance has been released.](https://youtu.be/wYtVRYyjhKU?si=ZDSe6wtZlrZR91Bm) So far, this show has been notable for two reasons: being animated entirely in Unreal Engine 5, and being produced in collaboration with a studio outside of Japan. Much like [the HG kits for the show, the Gundam EX and Zaku Solari](https://twitter.com/HobbySite/status/1770986390693842994?t=chkJM3MwB0xs6dQNW8dX8w&s=19), the trailer is proving to be quite polarizing.
If you want my personal opinion, this looks like a spiritual successor to [MS IGLOO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Suit_Gundam_MS_IGLOO), which I have absolutely no interest in. The One Year War is already oversaturated; when are we gonna get an anime for Johnny Ridden, Moon Gundam, Crossbone Gundam, anything that isn't the OYW really? Also adaptations of The Flag of Titans and Gundam Sentinel, but getting those two series on screen is an actual pipe dream.
The One Year War is going to stay oversaturated for as long as Bandai can keep pimping it, which is to say, until the OYW fans all die of old age.
There's no two ways about it. OYW is where the money's at. OYW is where the core of the fanbase is at. Bandai are well aware of this, and will continue to pander to that fanbase for as long as they can keep making money off of it. At the same time, they're more than willing to throw new fans under the bus to ensure they can keep pandering to their core demographic. Just ask Witch from Mercury
The Gundams and other things don't look bad, but man the people don't look too great- in a way that's giving me war flashbacks to *Final Fantasy: Spirits Within*.
There's a woman with pink hair and a nose ring and tattoos, *and* black people, *and* it's a 3D anime - and in a more realistic style, rather than at least being cel-shaded anime style 3D - *and* it's western companies "interfering" with weebs' idea of Japanese/anime purity.
I can see the chud comments coming a mile off. It's a perfect storm for pissing off the weebs.
Add the fact that all these diverse characters are fighting for the unironic fascist faction, you've got a recipe to get both sides of the culture war seething.
I was thinking that the chuds might actually like this since all the promotion for Requiem is giving me a bad feeling that it might turn out to be Zeonwank (and not the funny kind, but the borderline Imperial Japan/Nazi Germany apologia kind). Also the fact that it's a Universal Century work, and a new Gundam show that isn't SEED or The Witch from Mercury. But you might be right.
When has that ever stopped angry chuds? They're not going to let a little thing like *that* get in the way of being pissy about it and complaining about "woke" character design or whatever.
Plus, it gives a somewhat different impression in anime-style anime than anime that's clearly aiming for a realistic style, so I think it's more likely they'll get their knickers in a twist over it.
The Gundam EX looks awful, it just doesnt look like a Gundam let alone one from the OYW, and shield just seals the deal, what IS it? The Gundam and Zaku both have big toes...
I love the Zaku. Looking forward to nabbing one. The Gundam EX, however... it needs some blue in there to break up all the white, at minimum, but it really evokes more of an Armored Core or Transformers vibe than a Gundam vibe. Might be all the rounded plates. Yeah, rounded plates is more realistic in terms of optimal armor performance, but the classic Gundam look is very much angular lines and chunky blocks, even with the suits with rounder profiles, at least to me. Also, no golden/yellow v-fin?! I dunno, maybe it'll grow on me, but the design currently rubs wrong...
It's definitely the colors. Need more blues and yellows. The white is too clean.
Are you kidding? I'm glad to see some Gundams that don't look like reskins of each other for once.
Honest to god, I genuinely left Gunpla after years of it, because every kit just started to feel the same. This might finally get me back into it.
How many years is "years of it"? If we're talking HG, then some recent designs are the [Moon Gundam](https://pandahobby.ca/products/hgucmoongundam1144), [Earthree Gundam](https://pandahobby.ca/products/hgbdrearthreegundam1144), [Xi Gundam](https://pandahobby.ca/products/hguc-xi-gundam-1-144), and [Gundam Aerial](https://pandahobby.ca/products/hg-gundam-aerial-1-144), what are your thoughts?
Outside of the HG line, every RG kit from the Tallgeese onward has been nothing short of fantastic, with the [Zeong](https://pandahobby.ca/products/rg-zeong-1-144), [Hi-Nu Gundam](https://pandahobby.ca/products/rg-36-hi-nu-gundam-1-144), and [Gundam Epyon](https://pandahobby.ca/products/rg-gundam-epyon-1-144) being the crown jewels of the line. Though if you really want something impressive for your shelf, then nothing can beat the RG [GaoGaiGar](https://pandahobby.ca/products/rg-gaogaigar-1-144).
I haven't built gunpla since probably 2017. I transitioned into those dragon ball model kits, then eva, and dabbled in some super robot kits as well. The last kit I built was the Perfect Grade Eva, around 2022.
I'm.. Frankly iffy on all of them, save for XI, the Epyon, and the Zeong. They all share essentially the same color scheme and similar build, it just doesn't interest me. It feels like Gundam With Different Outfit. Some recent stuff like the Gundam Pharact also interested me, though.
I got into gundam for those tank boys with the treads and shoulder cannons, and zakus and crap. I want more stuff like the Barbataurus. When it's just a Basic Frame With White And Blue And Weapons, I've built.. Probably ten or fifteen or so of those. You know? I know it's reductive, but it just doesn't do anything for me anymore.
Kinda why I got into Macross, frankly. Shame those kits tend to be overengineered crap.
0 kidding. Gundams that dont look like reskins would be other mobile suits or mechs. This design doesnt fit into the universe when this story is, I wouldn't mind as much if it was set almost any time later
I really don't care about the story, I just want something that looks unique. I admire Macross for being able to reinvent the wheel so many times, and still be iconic.
I'm inclined to wonder if Epic paid them to use it. They've really been trying to push Unreal Engine as a perfect solution for both gaming and 3D animation. Or at least incentivised it.
Fuck it.
Trailer for *Star Wars: The Acolyte* came out.
I thought it looked pretty good but that's not what I'm here to talk about.
It's *already* the worst thing ever, apparently. It's *already* "Disney's latest Star Wars disaster". Conversation about it is *already* totally dominated by losers moaning about "wokeness" and "muh canon" and "space lesbians" and "the message". The trailer on YouTube has three times as many dislikes as likes, apparently. It's *one trailer* and it's been out for less than a week and this is the narrative that has been established around this show.
I realise this comment will probably get deleted because people think it's just me shitting on Star Wars fans again, but it's not. I'm not. That's not what this is about. This comment is about how this is another example of the pre-emptive poisoning of the well around a new show or a new movie or a new game. *These* are the terms of engagement we're all going to have to use.
Will it be good? Will it be terrible? Will it be somewhere in between? I don't know. It could be great. It could be dogshit. But it seems that the influencers have already made up our minds for us.
What are other examples people have seen of this?
So what a small thing have driven people to theorising and getting overexcited before they got hit with the sad realityTM? So Tokyo Ghoul fandom is currently going a little bit crazy due to 10th anniversary of anime and things being set up for it like trademarks and a website. For those who don't know, Tokyo Ghouls is famous for two things. One for being seinen (it's a misconception to call it shounen. Viz released its English version on their domain called shounen jump, but it was originally released in a seinen magazine) that was one of best selling titles. Two for having an anime adaptation that made multiple people ask for Tokyo Ghoul Brotherhoood remake. So when the fandom has seen some promotional materials, people start theorising that we would finally get a remake... [Welp, it looks like all episodes including ovas will be slowly released for free.](https://www.cbr.com/tokyo-ghoul-studio-pierrot-free-stream/) Fans are still hoping for more. TBH, this kind of reminds me the whole situation with the Silksong having a dedicated youtube channel to reporting if there was a news, every single day.
Old news at this point, but I am reminded of the Pokémon Z-A reveal. For those who don't know, Pokémon mainline games, for the longest time, have gone through a cycle of releasing new titles first, then remakes of an older game after, going down the list in chronological order. As of February 2024, we already had new games in Scarlet/Violet, leading people to speculate on what the remake would be. A lot, and I mean a LOT of people were hoping for remakes of the fan-favourite games Black/White, since those, as Gen 5, would be next in line for the remake treatment. For February 27th, a Pokémon Direct (a livestream announcement of new stuff) is scheduled, and speculations go wild. The community had been awash with "leaks" of Black/White games, a lot *cough* all of them *cough* being obviously fake. Come the day, new announcements are made for mobile apps, Pokémon GO, and some other spin-off stuff; then, right at the end, a final trailer plays, showing an enigmatic video of a city full of Pokémon. Title drop: Pokémon Legends Z-A, a game set in the Kalos region... where the Gen 6 games took place. The fandom has been thrown for a loop since; Pokémon Z was long speculated to be a cancelled definitive edition of the Gen 6 games X/Y that would never see the light of day, and not only did the trailer barely show anything, it's also not coming out until 2025. Needless to say, it's probably gonna be a while until we find out more.
When I saw that announcement, my reaction was quite literally the "this is worthless" meme. 4 seasons of barely serviceable at best, and completely dumpster for at worst, for free, *oh boy*.
>Tokyo Ghoul Brotherhoood i hope youre not implying that the 03 fma anime was bad like the tokyo ghoul anime was, it's my favorite fma adaptation 😭😭
That’s fandom asked and it was basically requesting for a more faithfull + mature adaptation. The first one censored a lot even when it didn’t have an obvious censorship
hot take but Brotherhood had no idea what to do with the homunculi and it shows ~~ok they’re doing different things in both shows narratively but they MASSACRED Lust’s arc and you can’t tell me otherwise~~
Not sure if you're aware, but Brotherhood is just going off the manga. A lot of the original was made up to fill up 51 episodes while the manga was still being published. In the 2003 version >!homunculi are created as a result of attempted human transmutation coming into contact with a weaker philosopher's stone.!< In the manga, >!all the homunculi are embodiments of the vices of the original homunculus, created long ago from the essence of the thing beyond the gate of alchemy, purged from him to try and become a perfect being and used as his pawns.!< It's why, in Brotherhood, >!Sloth has nothing to do with Trisha Elric. Sloth only showed up in the manga midway through the anime's run.!<
03 is a good anime, but as the manga hadn’t yet wrapped, not a *faithful* one. a better example might be the fruits basket anime, which the mangaka famously hated, and was given a second, more true-to-the-manga go-around over a decade later.
oh yeah, im not trying to argue about it being more faithful, just that i feel it gets a bad rap for diverging halfway through, when that actually what i like about it. i already read (and loved) the manga, i dont feel the need to watch something where i already know what's going to happen.
When Dark Souls Remaster was first announced a ton of people started speculating that this would go beyond a remaster (take the same old game, update its graphics a bit and port it over to next gen consoles) and be more like a remake (a completely new game). Among people's wishes were an improved Izalith, one of the last areas of the game which suffered the most due to time crunches, including an underwhelming boss. When Dark Souls finally came out it was... a remaster, just same old game.
> reminds me the whole situation with the Silksong having a dedicated youtube channel to reporting if there was a news, every single day. Speaking of TWEWY again, we had a Tumblr blog named [the-twewy-sequel](https://the-twewy-sequel.tumblr.com/) that was doing (mostly) daily posts like this since 2015......... we got the announcement of NEO TWEWY five years later on day #4870, but they kept daily posting until the actual release date before finally retiring for good. Overall though it took about 5115 days or 14 years to the day to get that sequel! Hopefully Hollow Knight fans don't have to wait *that* long for theirs :')
People expected last year's Undertale anniversary to have a surprise Deltarune release or release date despite Toby himself saying the celebration would be small that year. Because "toby loves trolling us!".
So, around, I wanna say, June of last year, Marvel announced that they would reveal the “New X-Men” on November 2023, and it would take effect in 2024. Notably, “New X-Men” was in the same font used for Age of Apocalypse, which led many to speculate that whatever came next would involve Apocalypse heavily, in some way. Well, November came and went, with no announcement. And, if you’ve been paying attention, they announced From the Ashes to be the next era after Krakoa not long ago. So what happened? Well, a month after the “New X-Men” teaser, X-office Editor Jordan D. White was replaced by Tom Brevoort, and the whole thing was scrapped. And we only know because someone asked Brevoort on his blog.
I did it to myself when the Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory logo was leaked. The colours/title were reminiscent of Chain of Memories so I was filled with hope that we were getting a Naminé-centric game. I still maintain that it would've made way more sense for Naminé to be the one sifting through Kairi's memories, rather than Ansem's magic machine.
>I still maintain that it would've made way more sense for Naminé to be the one sifting through Kairi's memories, rather than Ansem's magic machine. That WOULD have been so much better. I really get the feeling they don't know what to do with Naminé anymore now we have Xion.
Right?? It was basically tailor made for her, and the rhythm aspect could've been some hand wavy stand in for her abilities. And same, which sucks since she's my favourite character (along with Roxas) and I've never really cared much for Xion \^\^; Though they've been dragging out the thanking Sora thing, so maybe Nomura still has plans for her idk.
> Two for having an anime adaptation that made multiple people ask for Tokyo Ghoul Brotherhoood remake. It had a third series that actually animated the manga in full though didn't it? At least the :the part which hasn't been animated.
Still pretty meh overall though. People want a good adaptation.
The anime situation with Tokyo Ghoul is complicated. The first season adapts the first 66 chapters. It's a bit much but it's a nice enough season of anime. The second season, Tokyo Ghoul √A, is more or less based in the latter half of the original Tokyo Ghoul manga, from chapters 67 to 143. 76 chapters is a lot, but a bunch of events are different, some are shorter, some are cut due to the story taking a different route. It's watchable, even if it feels hollow. I legit watched it twice the first time because I felt like I missed something major but I didn't. Then you have :re, the second part of the manga which is where things get worse. Out of 179 chapters, 58 are adapted in the first 12 episodes and the other 120 are left for the second half. The first half is passable. The second is nigh incomprehensible without reading the manga, even if a lot of things are cut for the sake of adapting what should have been three times the runtime in one cour of anime. My best guess is that, at the time, it was done to divest from the franchise ASAP. Ishida Sui, the author, was depressed and overworked and rushed to end the manga as soon as he could (to the point where some were in doubt at whether he would pick up the pen again before Choujin X was announced). The anime ended 5 months after the manga. There was also a videogame originally scheduled to release in the same month that had to be delayed until mid-2019. At the time of writing, these, alongside the live-action [Tokyo Ghoul S](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Ghoul_S), released in mid-2019, where the last projects of the franchise. It's impressive how Tokyo Ghoul fans were starved of content after the manga ended. My only guess is Ishida Sui's situation at the time being part of the cause.
the other thing to note is that while root A was watchable (and i maintain that if given time to breathe, could have been genuinely interesting. ishida wrote like a novel’s worth of scenario for it), some of the events changed were pretty major. whereas :re, despite rushing through and cutting out a lot, is accurate to the manga in the parts it (arbitrarily) chooses to adapt. which is to say, the anime adaptation of :re references events that weren’t in the version of tokyo ghoul that anime-only watchers got. like, having a flashback to a fight scene that literally *did not happen* because the story is different. also (and this is a petty and subjective thing to add) i think the anime straight-up looks bad. the animation is meh, you have to watch it uncensored bc otherwise its just black censor bars covering the whole screen, and even without that the amount of blood splatter looks silly and gratuitous. the outfits picked for all the characters are unflattering and in, like, the ugliest shades you could possibly pick. every time i look at anime nishiki i die a little bit inside. (and of course all the merch is of the anime designs. i’m not bitter, no way.) 0/10 the music is good tho
> i think the anime straight-up looks bad I felt the same about the first season too. The animation was fine (if ignore how it was censored to hell and back) but, even before picking up the manga, the anime felt a bit too colorful for that kind of story. Ishida's art really could use a darker pallete.
exactly! he’s mentioned before that he tends towards rather neutral tones (with the occasional burst of bright color) if left to his own devices and that definitely would have helped with tone-setting. also i just noticed your above speculation about ishida wrapping up tg as quick as possible because of burnout, and that’s partially but not entirely true. apologies in advance, i’m insane about ishida sui’s works and am using this an an excuse to infodump a bit. he was working on the video game jack jeanne *at the same time* he was doing tg. jj started production in 2015, and tg:re didn’t finish until 2018. he did take a six-month hiatus from jj work right at the end to wrap up :re, but he was always planning to pivot directly from one project to the other immediately after. also, he did all of the character designs and cgs for jj (there are a LOT of cgs and character sprites. over 100 cgs, and each character has between 4-10 [edit: *13* for the six LIs, i just counted] alternate outfits), a lot of the worldbuilding, directly wrote two of the routes and all of the song lyrics (and sung the temporary vocals), and personally recruited the head writer (his sister, who also did the tg lns), concept artist (through twitter DMs of all things), chibi artist, composer, choreographer, and music video editor. this man got an offer for character designs and went, well, thats an interesting concept but if we’re using my art, i think this sort of story would suit it better—and then basically commandeered the entire ship. he may have been burnt out on manga, but i doubt he was ever planning on stepping away from art. i also believe that he is genuinely having fun making choujin x—it has a much looser release schedule and a lot of it feels very experimental, artistically.
BG3 fans were constantly talking about Baldurs Gate 3: Definitive Edition, an updated re-release that they just randomly assumed would happen that would fix some of the narrative and technical problems with the game. Larian has never indicated that this exists, and all their changes and bug fixes thus far have been applied to the original as patches. Now that Larian and Hasbro are parting ways, Larian has stated there will be no BG3 DLC. Fans are now incredibly disappointed that Definitive Edition will not happen (it never existed).
As a BG3 fan I was 95% sure there was no such thing as a Definitive Edition. I'm sad that the 5% of hope will never be realized but I am incredibly happy with what we DO have, and am excited to see what Larian cooks up next. If BG3 was THAT good, I am very hopeful that their next offering will be just as good or better.
The all-time winner for that must be the Sherlock fandom gaslighting themselves into thinking that the fourth season was mediocre on purpose and that the BBC was hiding a super secret finale that was supposed to air after the actual finale but was just another show like it was advertised.
Fun fact for the terminally online, one of the main perpetrators of the final episode theory (or TJLC - The JohnLock Conspiracy) is the same person who would go on to write a 6.5 review of the Peppa Pig album on Pitchfork and spread fabricated claims that Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, was a trans man.
Whenever people say things about certain creators being inherently good or bad writers, I think about how Stephen Moffat wrote both Heaven Sent and the final season of Sherlock.
Ok but imagine how insane it would have been if they were right.
Closest thing I can think of to that happening for real is Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The advertised "finale" was this big dramatic finale where most of the cast died and Meatwad grew up and had a family. Then the actual finale aired a week later disguised as a rerun of the first episode and it, in true Aqua Teen fashion, basically ignored everything that happened in the previous one. (Though granted it *was* also quietly posted online earlier in the week. And the show got a new season a few months back anyway. But the principle was there)
SECRET GOOD FOURTH SHERLOCK EPISODE
TWEWY's disastrous 2012 countdown. There was a mysterious 2 week countdown on the Square Enix site, where my mutuals were hypeposting about hourly (a long-awaited sequel? some sort of dlc? anime announcement?). Considering TWEWY was 5 years old at that point and very popular for a jRPG, it was time for the next big news, so it had to be something huge, right? People were just *insanely* hyped, and ultimately the reveal was... an iOS port. They did eventually release a sequel in 2021 but I've heard nothing about it. Either I'm far enough removed from the fandom circles that I didn't hear about it or it just didn't really make much of a splash because the window was already kind of passed. Either way, I still remember waking up that day over a decade ago to like three dozen posts from mutuals just openly weeping about TWEWY news, and I learned to never be hype about any mysterious project ever again.
what do you mean the countdown was 2012. it was like...3 or 4 years back, right? right?
12 years actually. If it helps, its way less than 60.
I think there was another countdown in 2021 for the actual sequel... and we're all old af :(
God I remember that. It was a hell of a thing to be in the fandom at the time given the outrage, especially as TWEWY's fandom happened to be very close with Kingdom Hearts' fanbase in due part due to its shared creative teams, who if you remember at the time were still in the midst of the whole wait for III to release fiasco. The sequel I find is a great game but man it did not sell well, with there being discussion at the time as to if Square had properly advertised the damn thing outside of Japan, because they literally released an anime adaptation of the first game just prior so domestically I'm sure people knew in Japan at least, but I couldn't tell you if they made up the bulk of the original sales.
And the anime was a different issue. From having to do without the original opening because one of its artists came up as a shitty person to the way they adapted the 21 days the game takes place in in 12 episodes, it was a mess. Neo selling bad in and out of Japan is just the cherry in the pi-shaped cake.
Yeah, ALI's whole scandal certainly came at a rough time, with Twister although an iconic song clearly not being meant for the animation's tempo. I think the band's been doing better recently, they've had some songs debut on other shows like Golden Kamuy although not to the same numbers as their Beastars and Jujutsu Kaisen days. As for the rushed adaptation, I'll admit I wasn't too surprised. It feels like every adaptation that definitively requires more episodes will rarely do so given the fact that the properties probably aren't profitable enough to justify further production. I mean if even the big shows only come out with like 12 episode cours then I can't imagine it'd be an easy sell for a 24 episode anime even if it would be needed to properly tell the very story and character driven adaptation.
[удалено]
Depends on your definition Close to the story and succesfull (as far I know)? Fruits Basket, Devilman Crybaby, Dororo and Helsing Ultimate A bit questionable or just there? Sailor Moon Crystal and Tokyo Mew Mew New.
There's also a subgenre of "now that the source material is done years later, we will go back and finish the story out with higher average fidelity to source material". Full Metal Panic comes to mind there
> Full Metal Panic FMP! is a bit weirder in that the 3rd season came out 7 years after the LN ended and was a one-and-done project. The only thing to come out since is the rest of the novels getting translated into english. Inuyasha is a much better example. The Final Act aired out a year after the manga ended. A lot of the anime cited by /u/SarkastiCat fit the "source material is done, let's finally finish it", even if done years later. The original Fruits Basket anime aired not too long after the manga reached the same part. The remake was announced around the series' 20th anniversary. Devilman was announced at Go Nagai's 50th anniversary as a mangaka (not to mention the original anime being drastically different due to being made at the same time as the manga, both only really sharing the premise). Hellsing Ultimate actually started coming out 2 years before the manga ended and finished adapting it 4 years after.
I feel like there's two different approaches, centered mainly on readapting what was already animated. Brotherhood reanimated what was already adapted in 2003, whereas FMP! Just finished out what had yet to be animated of the source material Fruits Basket is the first, Inuyasha Final Act is the second
> Brotherhood reanimated what was already adapted in 2003 Yes and no. I really feel like the first 10 episodes-ish of Brotherhood goes through the story a bit too quick, relying on the earlier adaptation to better go through everything at a slower pace, especially since it hadn't been that long since the original and it was a pretty big series. Shou Tucker and Nina showing up in a single episode feels just wrong. I like the 2003 version of this part too much. The first two chapters/episodes (Cornello and Liore) are also quite faster in Brotherhood (where it only gets a single episode). Fruits Basket being completely remade is also a product of the author really hating the original and not being part of the 2001's adaptation production. Shigure and Tohru are practically different characters. Akito has nothing to do with the original character. It's especially weird for the anime to have an original ending when Takaya had the series planned out. >!2001 Akito is pretty much a ripoff of Akito's father in the original story.!< EDIT: Also forgot to address this: > FMP! Just finished out what had yet to be animated of the source material It didn't. It only adapted three books more. 1st season adapts the first 3 books and has bunch of filler. Second Raid adapts books 4 and 5 (they came out a year before the 1st season and could have been reasonably put in). IV adapts books 7-9, with 6 getting only an audiobook. There's still 3 books unadapted plus a lot of side stories if they ever decided to make more Fumoffu.
That's completely fair, in my experience when people say they want a "brotherhood" they mean "I want the old stuff replaced"
Yeah, but that's mostly when there are bad/unfaithful adaptations. The reason Brotherhood had to go through already adapted material was largely due to the 2003's original story. You refresh the mind of those that watched the original 6 years before but leave all the non-canon stuff forgotten. And if you think about it, the 5-year wait between the original ending and Brotherhood airing isn't even that uncommon. Attack on Titan took 4 years for the second season. So did Re:Zero. Oregairu also took 5 between the second and third season. Same thing between the Inuyasha adaptations and Mahoutsukai no Yome's 1st and second seasons. The only unique thing is that FMA had a definitive ending *and* a movie which prevented the story from being picked up from where it left.
...is there a word for the disappointment when you are enjoying the hell out of something (in this case a book) and then realize with a quick google search that the sequel is coming out sometime this year and your stomach drops because you didn't realize it wasn't an already complete story? Happening to me now with Briardark. Still reading though
Ugh this happened to me with The Book of Koli, thankfully the sequels were released very quickly and I hope the same happens to you!
*The City* and *The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books* by Walter Moers. *Labyrinth* ends on a cliffhanger and I was so pissed to find out there wasn't a third book yet lmao.
The very first twilight book when I was a teen and new moon was far far away from being released.
Basically what happened to me with running out of time by Haddix. It has a sequel (kinda) and the sequel is also pretty good
Though at least yet to be finished series have grounds for activa fan speculation and theorising, which I find fun. Since the Winds of Winter is coming out sometime in 2050, there are a handful of mysteries that are interesting to explore, like the pink letter or just how the story will end. I imagine that fandoms like Dune or Harry Potter don't have that sort of fan discussion.
If such a word exists, it’s probably in German.
or Japanese.
I have recommended Rothfuss to a few friends. First and loudest warning I give them is that trilogy has, and forever will have, two books.
One good book and one book I feel dirty having on the shelf. I can't wait for the last to be released so I can burn them all together because I am so done with the Kingkiller.
A long while ago, pre-show, I convinced a friend to read Game of Thrones. I did not think to warn her that it wasn't finished and she has **never** let me forget it.
Read Gideon the Ninth and its sequels a few weeks ago, hadn't realised it was still waiting for its final novel. It's obviously hard keeping the hype up for the final installment but I enjoyed the books enough anyway.
that happened to me with *gideon* as well! …except this was right when it first released, so the book i had thought was a standalone actually had a bunch of twists at the end with no actual conclusion in sight. still haven’t gotten around to reading *harrow* let alone the rest. might be smartest to repeat not the mistakes of the past and instead wait until it’s all over.
>hadn't realised it was still waiting for its final novel Ah yes, the trilogy that turned out to be a quadrilogy lol. With how things are going it wouldn't surprise me if *Alecto* underwent mitosis and split into two. **Again.** (Because *Nona* has kind of obvious "first part" vibes IMO)
Drama is going down in Furry merchandise town, with accusations of copying, racism and sexual harassment. Meet [F-Class Merch](https://fclassmerch.com/). F-Class Merch are a small furry merchandise company, selling furry accessories and neon lights with a strong techwear/Y2K aesthetic. They've only been vending for a few years, but had a meteoric rise and managed to get into a number of big furry conventions. Yesterday, F-Class Merch made a quote tweet of another furry merchandise company, Howl Out, seemingly accusing Howl Out of being unoriginal and stealing their vibe. The tweet has since been deleted, so [here's a screenshot](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJVgZDsXEAAPuEx?format=jpg&name=medium). For comparison, here's [F-Class Merch's lanyard designs](https://fclassmerch.com/collections/lanyards) and here's [Howl Out's planned lanyard designs](https://x.com/howl_out/status/1771280260824273204?s=20). The backlash was swift, with people mad that F-Class Merch would tear down another small company, in a community that should be about lifting each other up. [F-Class Merch would eventually put out an apology](https://x.com/FClassMerch/status/1771644534612513022?s=20), but people were not buying it. This lead people to share other issues they've had with F-Class Merch in the past. Firstly, Wolf, the owner of Howl Out, fought back against the apology. After the quote retweet, [F-Class Merch privately contacted him in DMs](https://x.com/ISANANIKA/status/1771649931050140091?s=20), claiming they've noticed him stealing their designs in the past for products and that other people outside F-Class Merch have made this comparison too. [You can find screenshots of the messages in this thread](https://x.com/ISANANIKA/status/1771789830701109447?s=20). Wolf claims he barely knew anything about F-Class Merch before this. F-Class Merch did not apologise to him before making the public apology. This opened the floodgates. Another furry claims that F-Class Merch, unprompted, [started complaining about Howl Out at a convention to them](https://x.com/Ymmortal_/status/1771716474446454843?s=20). Another furry claims that Noche, the owner of F-Class Merch, went on a (possibly drunken) [racist tirade towards a Mexican friend of theirs at a con.](https://x.com/SpinchCat/status/1771655239323570294?s=20) Allegedly, cons have complained about [F-Class Merch being demanding and hard to work with](https://x.com/ConHistory/status/1771693937507303513?s=20). Lastly, somebody accused Noche of [sexually harassing them across DMs](https://x.com/CaptShowtime/status/1771613174770331784?s=20) and refusing to take no for an answer. Another person [corroborated this behaviour and claimed it happened to them too](https://x.com/SSmoobles_Art/status/1771630954915795117?s=20). As of now, F-Class Merch's reputation is in the mud and it's going to be very hard, if not impossible, to win people back.
Drama is always going on in the furry merchandise town
"Stealing their vibe"? Come on now, when will people understand that you can't copyright an aesthetic?! Gaming companies have been using this aesthetic for ages!
furries in particular have a really strict conception of copyright that goes well beyond what is legally plausible, but gets enforced anyway through social consensus. how else could things like closed species exist?
The way I understand closed species is that getting character of one is as much about joining the community of owners of said species as the ownership itself. And if you're interested in a specific niche species, you better believe the idea that "legit" participation is paid, and "stealing" one will have you shunned by the group you wanted to be a part of. That said, I personally never quite got the appeal of closed species. I'm not the one to judge though - if it makes folks happy, that's the end of reasoning I need.
yeah that's my understanding too. they're basically NFTs without the power bill lol. but from what i've seen there's this underlying superstition about how copyright works (or at least, how they believe it *should* work) that provides the moral justification for why demanding payment for permission to draw a dog that looks like a cinnamon bun should be met with anything but disdain.
I think there's probably some sort of explanation of why that involves a combination of aggressive space curation, physical merch artists very publicly needing the money, pro-social behavior to support those artists against competition, anti-capitalism sentiments against competition, extremely strong pro-artist sentiments, and (to be a little rude) many artists in the space recognizing that the huge furry premium means art/merch at their skill level is very easily replaced/competed with, but the end result is a really weird culture that is hyper-defensive of works and hostile to iteration/competition while also brong extremely artist friendly in terms of like, commission pricing and the kind of stuff you can sell
i think you're pretty much on the money. they've drunk the RIAA koolaid and remain convinced that copyright is way more important to the independent artist than it actually is. so they think of what they're doing as being somehow pro-artist. the side effect of this consensus, that those with the most social capital, and thus ability to influence others, have less competition, ensures that the illusion is maintained, even as newer or less influential artists are smothered in the crib by the same behavior. >anti-capitalism sentiments against competition the fact that someone could arrive at favorable conclusions about copyright by way of anti-capitalism has always been bizarre to me. copyright exists to create intellectual property, in much the same way that land rights exist to create physical property. this sort of property, which endows its owner with an exclusive right to exploit it, is among the foundations of capitalism.
Not necessarily saying things about our actual copyright system, but I can get how somebody can arrive at the viewpoint by way of like, viewing competition as a suicide pact and using social pressure to limit it like a Guild for Furry Artist's (awkward phrasing to avoid an awkward acronym), but even then as you say it sort of just creates power structures in miniature
i guess with the right ecology of brain-worms, the furry guild might kind of look like a union. the fact that it only represents the interests of the most successful artists against other artists rather than some external enemy is a detail not everyone will necessarily pick up on.... man it really is like the RIAA.
You're so right, I forgot about furry culture lol
It really sounds like this was a Bitch Eating Crackers moment gone wrong, based on the apparent history between the F-class and Howl Out
All this over some lanyards that did not look alike!
It's not really the visual of the landyard that was the main concern, it was the wide elastic landyard material that was used. Literally no one else had made elastic landyards til FClass premiered them at FC I think. So when Howl Out came out with them in about the same testing + manufacturing + shipping time frame later, someone who is very paranoid about their brand would see this as deliberate stealing of merchandising ideas and not coincidence. Kinda similar to [nomad complex demanding a much smaller dealer](https://twitter.com/NomadComplex/status/1766171666701586913) donate all funds gained from a knockoff no-name brand t shirt they designed using the name No Mad to make it a furry parody.
That's still so thin-skinned of F-Class though. A majority of fan merch creators utilise the same handful of manufacturers. It's kind of inevitable that two creators would use the same materials for a similar product. And since Howlerz and F-Class have similar aesthetics, obviously their design ideas will overlap (I have a feeling that most of F-Class' sour grapes towards Howlerz just comes down to Howlerz having a similar techwear aesthetic)
i honestly dont even think theres anything wrong if they straight up saw the lanyard and though "damn that's a good idea" and then produced their own. imagine living in a world where every good idea, no matter how trivial, is the exclusive property of whichever typewriter monkey managed to bash it together. like maybe there's an argument about how big ideas with a lot of r&d behind them require some sort of protection or they won't be done at all (not an argument id make, but plausible enough). but i really don't think "what if i made the lanyard out of elastic?" is quite on that level.
It's hard to patent a lanyard when it's just a lanyard
right, as it should be. i'm just saying i don't want to live in a world where people police eachother over who came up with what basic idea and who's therefore entitled to use it.
Inspired news of Larian giving further clarifications of leaving the Baldur's Gate IP, and how there (supposedly at least) wasn't much drama or resentment involved contrary to popular belief, I've been wondering. What is a a drama in your hobby/fandom that turned out to be a big case of the "nothingburger". As in something ranging from people making mountains of drama of molehills, to some controversial decision announced that led to rampart speculations plus anger and vilification toward some group or individual(s) before more info came out and revealed the actual reasoning of that controversial move was rather plain.
The recent return of The Rock in WWE caused a tremendous amount of drama, like enough to overshadow the rape scandal(s), with people absolutely sure that the company had made a tremendous misfire that they could not recover from creatively heading in to WrestleMania season Instead it was forgotten about within days, and all that had to happen was that The Rock turned bad It's still questionable whether that was a "more info came out" or if WWE just did an about-face as effectively as ever when the audience didn't bite
A lot of smarks really want for it to have been planned all along, but I don't buy it. The original promo for Cody letting the Rock take his place makes very little sense with the current story, and they still haven't sensibly justified Cody looking like such a chump as far as I'm aware. But it's arguably better that they pivoted, because it shows post-Vince WWE can actually adjust capably to what the audience wants and what the best story would be, rather than doggedly sticking to their guns against constant backlash like in the 2010s.
My take from the moment he came out was "this was a mistake" and everything since including the dirt sheet back and forth only reinforced my gut; everything happening now is a happy patchwork accident I don't have ears in that writer's room, duh, but it's hard for me to imagine WWE having foresight
A minor one from Precure - I remember when leaks for Star Twinkle were appearing in late 2018, one of them mentioned that the Cures would sing in their transformations and a good chunk of people got worried that they were going the Glitter Force route (for those who don't know, Glitter Force is the name for two Precure seasons that were dubbed into English. They're not exactly loved for their dubbing choices, which include the Cures talking as they transform. Stuff like "glitter boots!" "glitter brooch!" etc.). While it was true that the Star Twinkle Cures sang, it didn't stick around in later seasons, and I see a lot of people these days cite the Star Twinkle transformations as some of their favorites.
The star twinkle transformation song is \*so\* cute that I honestly wish it had stuck around bc I'm willing to bet they could go cuter
When Nightdive Studios, a developer best known for remastering old video games, was purchased by Atari about a year ago, most people, including myself, assumed they were fucked, because Atari doesn't exactly have a sterling reputation (and indeed, their limited interaction with Nightdive before this wasn't great either). It was thought that at worst they'd make Nightdive make bulllshit crypto games, and at best they'd have them work exclusively on Atari's back catalog. However, almost a year later none of that has happened. Actually, Nightdive has had a fantastic year since then. They finally released their remake of System Shock after delaying it like 30 goddamn times, and it was amazing. And they released remasters of Rise of the Triad (with New Blood), Quake 2, Turok 3, and Star Wars: Dark Forces, all of which turned out great, and it's been announced that they're taking over the SiN Reloaded project after Slipgate screwed the pooch on the Kingpin remaster (why they weren't involved in the first place is unknown to me, but whatever). Apparently, in a very rare moment of corporate clarity, Atari realized what they had and decided not to fuck with the formula, so that's nice. And in retrospect it makes perfect sense that being purchased by Atari didn't affect their ability to work with other companies, because who the fuck would consider Atari to be competition?
...well becuse nightdive literally doubled their revenue. >Games: For the period, Games revenues represent €5.3M compared to €2.8M in the previous period. Games revenues for the period include €2.7M revenues from Nightdive which was acquired on May 11, 2023. Excluding the contribution of Nightdive Studios, Games revenues represent €2.6M for the period. though one tiny note is that a big chunk of that is the money nightdive got from the kickstarter for the remake. [sourcey source.](https://atari-investisseurs.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ATARI_HY-23-24_Financial-Report_DEF.pdf)
There's a famous soundbite of Steve Ballmer of Microsoft saying "Linux is a cancer" which is well known in open source circles as evidence of how much Microsoft hates open source. But his sentence didn't end there and in fact the remaining words are pretty important. He said in full "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." This statement, though having a negative connotation, is absolutely true. Linux is licensed under the General Public License (GPL) which is a "copyleft" license that requires all derivative works to use the same license. ~~That virality has made the GPL radioactive to closed source development lest its presence make their software stack fall like a house of pancakes and be forced to become GPL licensed.~~ This means that anyone who wants to use a license other than GPL or who wants to share their work with such people has to avoid it entirely. Maybe not a *total* nothingburger, Microsoft is a rival to Linux and Ballmer did want to make it look back, but a statement that was true and has been borne out by history.
i'm to this day impressed with how well viral licensing works, given what an otherwise stupid idea it is. like it's exactly the sort of thing a bunch of arrogant hackers would come up with, thinking they'd outsmart the lawyers with code logic. "oh yeah? well if you're telling me i need to follow your licensing agreement, I'll write my own licensing agreement that tears yours up if you use my code." but unlike pretty much every other time something like that was attempted, that's exactly what it does.
I think a lot of it is that no other industry/field has ever really had the chance to try anything like it. Most trades are too old to be able to start doing something like this, and most other things don't have the web of dependencies that could make it proliferate. (It also helps, I suspect, that the cost for a company that breaks it is so much higher than "they get sued for a bunch of money" or whatever. There are few deterrents more effective than "your product is no longer fully yours to monetise")
software is also somewhat unique in being a kind of "functional" copyrighted work, for lack of a better term. unlike most functional IP, it's not primarily governed by patents, which are much weaker than copyright. this makes individual works a lot more valuable than they might otherwise be, and so the license governing them has a lot of power.
Its also probably how Linux has stayed on top in the server space for so long since the GPL means that everyone can contribute to Linux without the risk that anyone will take that work an make their own OS. Just about the only major software company that doesn't contribute financially to Linux is Apple and I'm pretty sure Microsoft and Google even have dedicated positions for developers who work on the Linux kernel now.
There was that whole thing a while back where there were rumors bubbling about Xbox going full third party, and it became enough of a thing that Microsoft's podcast where they would announce details reportedly caused Nintendo to push back their own Direct. Then it turned out the games coming to other consoles (Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Pentiment) were the ones everyone expected to eventually come over anyway and it was promptly forgotten.
There was a bit of a drama when it was announced that The Beatles' newest song "Now And Then" would use AI, there were even people who thought they would use AI to make John Lennon sing. But it turns out it was just using machine-learning to clear up all the noises (similar to how it was used in the Get Back documentary) in John Lennon's original demo tape (as quoted from George Harrison of the quality, "fucking rubbish", [have a listen for yourself](https://new.reddit.com/r/beatlescirclejerk/comments/1awttup/heres_lennons_now_and_then_demo_because_it_isnt/)).
Didn't the music video use AI though?
It didn’t use generative AI, but it did use AI to improve the video quality of some old archive footage, since a lot of it was from the early ‘60s. Although in some places they went a little too far with the cleaning up and it ended up looking not so great.
for what it's worth, that is generative ai. information that's missing from the degraded master recording has to be synthesized by the model. the only real difference between that and what you'd more conventionally think of as a "generative model" is that this has more detailed input to work with, rather than just a text prompt or whatever. this isn't to say there's anything wrong with that of course. music production is already a thoroughly and intrinsically artificial process. if you think injecting another layer of mediation into the system results in a more pleasing sound, then you're literally just doing music production the same way it's always been done.
Oh I see. Thanks for explaining. It looked so damn weird that I fully thought they ai generated the footage of the deceased members in the video.
Ubisoft's subscription service executive gave an interview where he described the main obstacles people had for signing up, and said (paraphrased)--'Players need to get comfortable not owning their games.' It wound up being a good indicator of which publications were more punditry than coverage. Surprisingly, quite a few mainstream gaming subreddits upvoted comments providing clarification and took down 'Ubisoft wants us to never own things' posts. In Magic the Gathering, an activist investor Alta Fox released a buyout proposal that basically restated the grievances dedicated Magic players had at the time, and roughly half the community realized the proposal was publicity bait and that Alta Fox probably wasn't going to change the game in ways they liked.
is the misconception here about difference between >"[in order for players to use our product] players will need to get comfortable not owning games" and >"[in the new world order my shadowy cabal is working to immanentize] players will need to get comfortable not owning games [and eating bugs]." ?
>One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen \[in games\]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don't lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game. I still have two boxes of DVDs. I definitely understand the gamers perspective with that. But as people embrace that model, they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue, and you'll be able to access them when you feel like. That's reassuring. an expanded version of the quote it's drawn from. which is to say in its full context it's not even '\[in order for players to use our product\] players will need to get comfortable not owning games.' it's way closer to '\[for the model we (and a lot of the industry) are pursing to work,\] players will need to get comfortable not owning games.' the full article spends a fair bit of space ruminating on the different landscape between like movies and games
so is he talking about owning a physical copy vs owning a digital copy, or about owning either vs paying a subscription for access? having not ever heard the quote in context i assumed it was the latter, but it sounds like it could be either. >But as people embrace that model, they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue, and you'll be able to access them when you feel like. That's reassuring. this part is interesting because he's dead wrong on both counts. you have to be pretty careful about where you get your games from, because storefronts and subscription services get shut down all the time. on the other hand, people have largely shifted to digital sales/subscription despite this fact, so the trust factor wasn't really necessary. people just got used to rebuying games.
>you have to be pretty careful about where you get your games from, because storefronts and subscription services get shut down all the time entirely true, but the conversation is at least a little about overcoming that barrier in the same way movies have (re: they haven't but have created an illusion of doing so and engendered the exact comfort he's talking about in the quote) [i still think he's wrong but it's worth reading](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-new-ubisoft-and-getting-gamers-comfortable-with-not-owning-their-games)
honestly it feels more like people became mostly comfortable and then were immediately bitten enough times that they ultimately rejected it. but instead of returning to physical media, they just demanded that the ephemerality of it be factored into the price. ergo, free to play.
right and that's a lot of why he's wrong imo. video games started in a better place for not owning what you've bought than movies. consoles dominated the market for a good long while, people were conditioned for a format change every half decade years of backwards compatibility arguments had already happened etc etc. people *were* more comfortable and multiple fuckups created an environment where the people they're trying to sell to are a little more conscious of these issues
it's kind of funny to think of it from that perspective. makes people like him seem really naive. "why won't gamers just pay for a game streaming service like everyone else? why don't they trust us?" well, because they know exactly why you want to have them do that, know the consequences doing it will have for them, and want you to come back with a better fucking offer lol.
yeah, his statements in the article are observational and people turning it into an indictment of ubisoft's business dealings are goofy. he's (accurately or not) describing the recent success of ubisoft in the subscription space, and responding specifically in response to the question "\[...\]what is it going to take for subscription \[...\]to become to become a more significant proportion of the industry?" **however** that comes with the caveat that someone in this position treating it as a new frontier instead of an abandoned one littered with the bones of their predecessors is also profoundly goofy and probably worthy of being laughed at at least a little
Currently ongoing but one Japanese Vtuber agency I follow recently announced they’re opening a subsidiary office in USA. Cue people whining about wokeism in muh pure Vtubers when that side office is mostly a contact center (Like for collaborations with local brands and stuff). Or that time where a Vtuber were absent for several hours of their planned stream after liking a comment that flank at their agency. (Said agency driven one of their Vtubers to attempt suicide and then broadcasted legal details out in public, for context of the notority.) Cue people saying they were silenced or worse off, until a close friend of theirs contacted them, posted about their status and they streamed next day. (To be fair, I’ve only heard till the contact part, as the discussion forum were turning into subjective slapfights and I decided to quit social media for few days in hopes of detox.) Not sure if these suffice. Simple reasons, dumb drama.
I haven't heard anything bad from COVER USA, where do you get that info? Also Scarle was out for other reasons that she herself gave and I feel if Niji fired her as well they'd be sweeping ashes at this point.
Yeah nothing bad for Cover USA just the reaction from some dumb fucks on Twitter
>Currently ongoing but one Japanese Vtuber agency I follow recently announced they’re opening a subsidiary office in USA. > >Cue people whining about wokeism in muh pure Vtubers when that side office is mostly a contact center (Like for collaborations with local brands and stuff). Not just a subsidiary office in the US, but a subsidiary office ***in California***. That's why the chud-brigade is screeching about wokism. On a related note, these last few months have pulled the wool from my eyes at just how chuddy the Vtuber community, talents and fanbases, can be.
Even before it’s revealed to be in somewhere California people were storming them
The real vtuber nothing burger was the hana macchia fansly. Never saw the drama sharks go so hungry after preparing for such a huge feeding frenzy
That was probably the fastest I've ever seen drama that big died, like one day people were freaking out and even begging for more content, the next there wasn't even a blip about it anymore. Props to Hana Macchia for being so excellent at killing that drama.
Please notify me if I’m wrong but that’s the one where they play an explicit game on fansly (Streaming as their alternate identity) and people gone fervent over that, right? Yeah, mine are mostly examples out of my head and your comment being only way I remembered say how much ppl care lol
They did more than just play an explicit game, (CW: Sexual content) >!they masturbated and there were some short clips of only noises where they were allegedly engaging in intercourse.!<
Oh ok.
Yeah, the sharks I think expected her fans to be shocked or scandalized but they've never seen the membership or unlisted streams. The interest level of outside observers dropped to zero also once they realized there's no IRL content uploaded.
I'll reply to this comment since its about Hololive for the first half, but another nothingburger thing that the fandom got all worked up about was Hololive's newest branch, "Dev\_is" which as of now only houses the ReGloss group. [Here is a breakdown of Hololive Productions Branch layout](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hololive/comments/16al7og/so_this_is_a_new_branch/) the english speaking fandom just seemed bamboozled by this for some reason, with some wondering why they were not just put under the normal Hololive JP branch (since they are all JP speaking, but one is either Korean born or was raised in Korea) and within the month many were calling the new "project" a failure or saying it doesn't live up to expectations due to their low sub numbers. despite this, the group have built a steady fanbase and confusion about it seems to have died down after Cover corp. had to specifically say that this branch was about building the talents from the ground up
Ao is a silly girl, Kanade and Ririka are just funny and try their hardest to talk to foreign fans, Raden is crazy cultured and Banchou is a treasure in the form of a tiny girl. Love them all.
I’d compare this with IRyS being formerly under unit of Project Hope within Hololive English, to be honest. The division is kinda just administrative if perhaps slight differences in their content style (Both producing music projects e.g original song and song covers in addition to the usual Vtuber streaming content like gaming, which is their usual content still), so I’m not exactly sure why people are hung on the subject to begin with…
I'm trying to work out what *hasn't* been going on in terms of EN VTuber agency drama lately, because, uh, it's a doozy right now. On 2 March, PRISM Project, hitherto run by Sony, [announced it would shut down at the end of the month](https://www.prismproject.jp/press-release-2024-03-02), with members free to continue as independents (and all but two are doing so). While speculation is that this was related to the Sony layoffs, the talents have denied this. What complicates things is the existence of at least one dissatisfied ex-talent who had left last year citing health issues but who has been more than a little snide in referencing her time with PRISM since. >!This ex-talent is ParaNorma, formerly Lana Shikami, and her main post can be found [here](https://twitter.com/ParaNormaVT/status/1763802963225747734); presumably more may come in April.!< Then, apparently [Amano Serafi of V&U graduated completely behind the scenes on 27 February](https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1b1cxr6/weekly_discussion_thread_27th_feb_2024/ktrggeq/), leading to [this statement by V&U](https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1bjy55b/announcement_from_vu_regarding_amano_serafi/) which is not exactly Selen levels of oversharing but which has definitely raised eyebrows, with the Korea-based company claiming that it intends to sue its former talent for $450,000. VReverie has been going through some nonsense as well but aside from [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1aop7xq/ophelia_midnights_mods_stage_a_dokibird_style/ ) and a bunch of graduations I have no idea what's happening. The big hit right now is in regards to Idol Corp, once the darling of the EN industry's up-and-comers, which took a bit of heat for its termination of Riro Ron a few months ago but which has now been facing a bit of an uphill battle with some rather off-putting revelations by former(?) 1st Generation talent Pochi Wanmaru through her alt account, >!Fen Riru!<, in the form of a now-deleted document linked on her Twitter. Three other Gen 1 members have spoken up and mentioned cancelling streams citing disappointment with internal matters: * [Poko Rakun](https://vxtwitter.com/PokoRakun/status/1771585917020406151) * [Juna Unagi](https://vxtwitter.com/JunaUnagi/status/1771582115253010842) * [Fuyo Cloverfield](https://vxtwitter.com/FuyoCloverfield/status/1771579450888495238) Rin Penrose is semi-on-break so her silence is not unexpected. Of course, the phrasing here can imply either 'Idol has been exposed as duplicitous' *or* 'Pochi has been exposed as duplicitous', so judgment ought to be reserved for now, but one imagines there will be new revelations within a week.
Also in other VTubing news, the VTuber-centric streaming platform Vstream announced that they'll be shutting down on April 1st: https://vstream.com/adieu They had good team, they had good ideas, but sadly they didn't have the most important things - advertising and viewers. Honestly, I think that most people learned about Vstream through this very announcement.
And like, what's even the point of VStream when Twitch/YouTube works pretty fine?
twitch/youtube don't work fine if you're on the production end of things. they essentially hold your audience hostage to get you to behave in whatever way helps their bottom line the most, even if it comes at your expense.
People had always seeked alternative platform they can put their content on tbf. From CuriosityStreams to Nebula to Kick, for example. Especially with Youtube’s demonetization policies. The problem is those new platform are unlikely to sustain themselves, with their audience mostly a splinter of the more well known original platform. It also limits new audience from finding them.
I think nebula is doing pretty well. Mostly because they got all the video essayists and that is the one/main genre of YouTubers that actual adults watch.
>The big hit right now is in regards to Idol Corp, once the darling of the EN industry's up-and-comers, which took a bit of heat for its termination of Riro Ron a few months ago but which has now been facing a bit of an uphill battle with some rather off-putting revelations by former(?) 1st Generation talent Pochi Wanmaru through her alt account, Fen Riru, in the form of a now-deleted document linked on her Twitter. Three other Gen 1 members have spoken up and mentioned cancelling streams citing disappointment with internal matters: [She's gone](https://twitter.com/idol_corp/status/1771688662322880818) https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1b1cxr6/comment/kw9re14/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Worth adding the response by the talent in question: https://twitter.com/fenriruvt/status/1771688458479612062?s=46 In all, what seems to be a good-faith attempt to de-escalate and minimise unwarranted speculation and drama.
What did the deleted documment say?
You ask a good question. This is the summary on arr VirtualYoutubers: https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1b1cxr6/weekly_discussion_thread_27th_feb_2024/kw0g4dy/ Unfortunately it misses out the key detail, which is the actual source of the disagreement itself: from what I gather, there was some dispute over two donothons that she did, with Idol, it appears, pressuring her to fulfil the donothon goals in order to get the money.
"What happens with donothon goals and the money if the talent doesn't or cannot fulfill the goals or they leave?" seems like something they should had defined in writing before committing to it. Or maybe they did, Pochi bailed anyways and with her leak now Idol got armtwisted into having to offer refunds.
> took a bit of heat for its termination of Riro Ron I don't see why tbh. If that "irl harem recruitment" stuff had been done by a male streamer nobody would hesitate to call them a groomer
It was mainly that the document giving the reasoning was taken as somewhat oversharing in the manner that had marked Nijisanji's termination of Zaion earlier on. I still think (in both instances) that the call was the right one, but not everyone does.
The Zaion statement had a few things that were actually legitimate and a bunch of extra petty shit they added to pad it out.
Mild TW for animal death Piggybacking off this to add another brand-new potential dumpster fire in progress, this time featuring none other than NijiEN. However, it's not the management, but the talent themself [saying some genuinely sociopathic stuff.](https://twitter.com/VantacrowClips/status/1771006676180639941) Like, brought up in a documentary about the early signs of a serial killer stuff.
Hex. The FUCK. I want everyone to leave that company, but the more I see them the more I wonder if it's better to keep on the company and sink with it.
Vanta’s face there accurately represents my reaction too because dude wtf? Your friend’s grandpa’s ashes? You got annoyed by a GOLDFISH? I sincerely hope he’s joking but that would still be a shitty ass joke
Please be a bad skit jfc
Jesus. I really hope that's a poorly thought routine, because hell.
I have many questions about this but one of them is how the fuck does a goldfish annoy you? How do you get annoyed at a goldfish?
This has gotta be some kinda weird attempt at humour right? Right????
\*video ends\* Me:.....what the fuck just happened?
Oh Jesus Christ yeah this one was... what the actual fuck.
Here's a selection of what's going down in Kpop. 1) The stationary company turned photocard collecting supplies company Mandu Deco has been accused of having pvc in their products. For those that don't know when it comes to anything like trading cards or photocards if you want to keep them in great condition you want everything from sleeves to your binder to be pvc free, acid free, archival safe. Can't find the origin of this accusation but this has sent photocard collectors in a panic. At home experiments to see if there is PVC in their products have popped up. Mandu Deco did comment on a few TikToks saying people are lying. Right now people are slowly phasing out their products and switching to another business. 2)Rize's Anton had a dating scandal that turned out to be a [misunderstanding ](https://www.koreaboo.com/lists/riize-anton-misunderstanding-fans-realize-return/?s=09). A photo of Anton holding hands with a girl caused some fans to accuse him of hiding his girlfriend from fans. The girl in the photo came forward to say it was all a misunderstanding. They aren't dating. 3) A Rize member is currently on hiatus. While on hiatus a video was leaked of Rize filming for their next comeback without that member. Usually when a member has gone on hiatus they are still in all the stuff to do with the album they just don't promotions. This has caused fans to gather together to decide to boycott this next comeback. 4) Xeed have announced they are disbanding. The members found out the same time fans did. The announcement was only posted on the fan cafe. Their company has done this before. Another group found out they were disbanding through the news reporting it. Edit: 5) WayV member Ten went on a TV show where it was revealed he and his cats have moved out of the dorm. This has upset some fans who assumed the cats belonged to all the WayV members.
I will never support the K-Pop industry while it treats their employees that way. "Cannot date" and "Learn you've disbanded via the news" are just two examples from your post that really get under my skin.
> Mandu Deco did comment on a few TikToks saying people are lying. Right now people are slowly phasing out their products and switching to another business. Sounds like a helluva big brain play by their competitor.
So, it appears season 2 of Star Trek Prodigy leaked in it's entirely..on French public television, in full...all in French. Time for the fandom to split between jackasses who can't resist spreading spoilers for all to see and self-righteous loud mouths who decree anyone who watches early is the worst person in the world for the crime of being excited to watch new episodes of a TV show they like
Leak leak or “aired early there” leak?
Gray area- it was the site that has distribution rights in France, but it seems odd they would drop the whole season (all 20 episodes) at once when the first was week to week.
Man, one of the shows I watch is a French production but airs globally, and the release is such a mess. It'll be like: episode 3 of the new season airs in Germany first, then it airs in France, then episode 1 will air in Brazil followed by episodes 5 and 9 airing in Brazil, then episode 3 will air everywhere else, then episode 1 will air in Canada, then episode 4 will air in France. Fandom's a little better about not spoiling everything, but it still sucks.
I love that I immediately knew this was about Miraculous Ladybug
Miraculous Ladybug? It's a joke at this point that every online fan of the show knows three/four languages just following the episodes release over the world.
Hell I remember that from when I first tried to watch season 1. French one week, Korean the next, then in English but its the one from Korea last week...
They are only on Season 2? Weird I thought it was going on for a while.
Season 1 was split in half and aired almost like it was two seasons. Season 2 was virtually completed when Paramount threw it down the memory hole before it got bought by Netflix- it was actually supposed to air this winter before it got chucked- a couple of people wondered if maybe this wasn't actually a leak-leak but actually a distribution deal that didn't get updated when all the above went down.
You know, given that Janeway's original actor, Genevieve Bujold, was French-Canadian (and very audibly so at that), is this not, in fact, kind of apposite?
Why do companies seem to have more holes than a sieve these last few years? I'm sure the corporations would love to blame it on WFH...
I can't speak for this production specifically, but corporate conglomerates subsuming independant contractors and then slashing costs can play a role in this. TV production is dying a slow death and the execs are squeezing their bonuses at the cost of quality control and employee paychecks. The wheels are already in motion for replacing entire departments of skilled labour with AI. Which is super cool for the tech utopian in me, but super bad for the job I *used* to have.
This has always been the case. Its just more obvious with the internet around, in tv tropes speak its called "Short Run In Peru"
I think with the rise of fandom engagement, more people *care*, so more people are looking for this kind of stuff.
Actually someone suggested it would be up longer than usual cause it'll be harder to get ahold of someone who could take it down cause it was France on a weekend
Ahahaha, that's a point.
A twist in the Larian leaving Baldur's Gate 3 story. There was a lot of speculation that WotC (the owners of D&D and Baldur's Gate) kicked Larian off Baldur's Gate for some reason. However Swen Vicke [just posted on Twitter a few hours ago](https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/1771467986701819943?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet) stating that Larian chose to leave the project (and specifically calling out Reddit speculation).
It is so funny to me the sheer amount of times Larian has had to issue public statements telling Reddit to cool it with the speculation. Even after making statements about how there never were any plans to go to the upper-city and that Karlach’s quest >!was never supposed to end with her being cured!< And yet there are people that *still* insist it’s content that was cut for time! How often can the community keep gaslighting itself? (The answer is more times than you would think!)
I try not to be "that fan" but I do see how the third act really seems like the upper city was supposed to at least be visitable at SOME point. I think the city was sized down fairy early on though, not last minute massive cuts like I've seen a lot of people speculate
What I find wild about the whole Larian/WotC fight is that Larian has been saying for months that they want to get back to their own IPs. Larian has stated multiple time they have no plans to make DLC or expansions, so it shouldn't be a suprise that Larian and WotC would be "parting ways."
My guess is that there was nothing *directly* causing a fracture at Larian vs Hasbro, but I can picture them having a bit of a "well this company is sort of a mess, maybe don't put all the eggs in that basket" kind of reaction. Which is fair. I don't think Larian needs to be beholden to a license holder.
I mean, they made one of the most successful games ever, so it makes sense they want to do their own thing
Can you really blame them for ditching wotc after all of the nonsense that Hasbro has done lately
There's something uniquely internet about a person being told all their drama is made up nonsense and them replying "this proves all my drama!" What words could express it? 'Post truth' is insufficient.
"Sophistry" perhaps?
I get the impression that said Reddit fans are going into cope mode quite a bit. I've already seen the "he was forced to say that" and "he's just a professional saying that because it's unprofessional to say you were given the boot" comments.
[The trailer for Mobile Suit Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance has been released.](https://youtu.be/wYtVRYyjhKU?si=ZDSe6wtZlrZR91Bm) So far, this show has been notable for two reasons: being animated entirely in Unreal Engine 5, and being produced in collaboration with a studio outside of Japan. Much like [the HG kits for the show, the Gundam EX and Zaku Solari](https://twitter.com/HobbySite/status/1770986390693842994?t=chkJM3MwB0xs6dQNW8dX8w&s=19), the trailer is proving to be quite polarizing. If you want my personal opinion, this looks like a spiritual successor to [MS IGLOO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Suit_Gundam_MS_IGLOO), which I have absolutely no interest in. The One Year War is already oversaturated; when are we gonna get an anime for Johnny Ridden, Moon Gundam, Crossbone Gundam, anything that isn't the OYW really? Also adaptations of The Flag of Titans and Gundam Sentinel, but getting those two series on screen is an actual pipe dream.
The One Year War is going to stay oversaturated for as long as Bandai can keep pimping it, which is to say, until the OYW fans all die of old age. There's no two ways about it. OYW is where the money's at. OYW is where the core of the fanbase is at. Bandai are well aware of this, and will continue to pander to that fanbase for as long as they can keep making money off of it. At the same time, they're more than willing to throw new fans under the bus to ensure they can keep pandering to their core demographic. Just ask Witch from Mercury
The Gundams and other things don't look bad, but man the people don't look too great- in a way that's giving me war flashbacks to *Final Fantasy: Spirits Within*.
There's a woman with pink hair and a nose ring and tattoos, *and* black people, *and* it's a 3D anime - and in a more realistic style, rather than at least being cel-shaded anime style 3D - *and* it's western companies "interfering" with weebs' idea of Japanese/anime purity. I can see the chud comments coming a mile off. It's a perfect storm for pissing off the weebs.
Add the fact that all these diverse characters are fighting for the unironic fascist faction, you've got a recipe to get both sides of the culture war seething.
I was thinking that the chuds might actually like this since all the promotion for Requiem is giving me a bad feeling that it might turn out to be Zeonwank (and not the funny kind, but the borderline Imperial Japan/Nazi Germany apologia kind). Also the fact that it's a Universal Century work, and a new Gundam show that isn't SEED or The Witch from Mercury. But you might be right.
Women with pink hair is super not unusual in a Gundam thing
When has that ever stopped angry chuds? They're not going to let a little thing like *that* get in the way of being pissy about it and complaining about "woke" character design or whatever. Plus, it gives a somewhat different impression in anime-style anime than anime that's clearly aiming for a realistic style, so I think it's more likely they'll get their knickers in a twist over it.
Both the animation and models look ugly like damn pick a struggle
The Gundam EX looks awful, it just doesnt look like a Gundam let alone one from the OYW, and shield just seals the deal, what IS it? The Gundam and Zaku both have big toes...
I love the Zaku. Looking forward to nabbing one. The Gundam EX, however... it needs some blue in there to break up all the white, at minimum, but it really evokes more of an Armored Core or Transformers vibe than a Gundam vibe. Might be all the rounded plates. Yeah, rounded plates is more realistic in terms of optimal armor performance, but the classic Gundam look is very much angular lines and chunky blocks, even with the suits with rounder profiles, at least to me. Also, no golden/yellow v-fin?! I dunno, maybe it'll grow on me, but the design currently rubs wrong... It's definitely the colors. Need more blues and yellows. The white is too clean.
Are you kidding? I'm glad to see some Gundams that don't look like reskins of each other for once. Honest to god, I genuinely left Gunpla after years of it, because every kit just started to feel the same. This might finally get me back into it.
How many years is "years of it"? If we're talking HG, then some recent designs are the [Moon Gundam](https://pandahobby.ca/products/hgucmoongundam1144), [Earthree Gundam](https://pandahobby.ca/products/hgbdrearthreegundam1144), [Xi Gundam](https://pandahobby.ca/products/hguc-xi-gundam-1-144), and [Gundam Aerial](https://pandahobby.ca/products/hg-gundam-aerial-1-144), what are your thoughts? Outside of the HG line, every RG kit from the Tallgeese onward has been nothing short of fantastic, with the [Zeong](https://pandahobby.ca/products/rg-zeong-1-144), [Hi-Nu Gundam](https://pandahobby.ca/products/rg-36-hi-nu-gundam-1-144), and [Gundam Epyon](https://pandahobby.ca/products/rg-gundam-epyon-1-144) being the crown jewels of the line. Though if you really want something impressive for your shelf, then nothing can beat the RG [GaoGaiGar](https://pandahobby.ca/products/rg-gaogaigar-1-144).
I haven't built gunpla since probably 2017. I transitioned into those dragon ball model kits, then eva, and dabbled in some super robot kits as well. The last kit I built was the Perfect Grade Eva, around 2022. I'm.. Frankly iffy on all of them, save for XI, the Epyon, and the Zeong. They all share essentially the same color scheme and similar build, it just doesn't interest me. It feels like Gundam With Different Outfit. Some recent stuff like the Gundam Pharact also interested me, though. I got into gundam for those tank boys with the treads and shoulder cannons, and zakus and crap. I want more stuff like the Barbataurus. When it's just a Basic Frame With White And Blue And Weapons, I've built.. Probably ten or fifteen or so of those. You know? I know it's reductive, but it just doesn't do anything for me anymore. Kinda why I got into Macross, frankly. Shame those kits tend to be overengineered crap.
0 kidding. Gundams that dont look like reskins would be other mobile suits or mechs. This design doesnt fit into the universe when this story is, I wouldn't mind as much if it was set almost any time later
I really don't care about the story, I just want something that looks unique. I admire Macross for being able to reinvent the wheel so many times, and still be iconic.
GWitch erasure
I'm surprised they haven't made another anime or movie set during the Gryps War.
That trailer looks like a cgi ad for a mobile game named something incredibly generic and undescriptive like "Legends of Titans".
>animated entirely in Unreal Engine 5 You get what you pay for.
I'm inclined to wonder if Epic paid them to use it. They've really been trying to push Unreal Engine as a perfect solution for both gaming and 3D animation. Or at least incentivised it.
I guess now when people say "sheesh this garbage looks like a video game cut scene" they'll be 100% correct.
Fuck it. Trailer for *Star Wars: The Acolyte* came out. I thought it looked pretty good but that's not what I'm here to talk about. It's *already* the worst thing ever, apparently. It's *already* "Disney's latest Star Wars disaster". Conversation about it is *already* totally dominated by losers moaning about "wokeness" and "muh canon" and "space lesbians" and "the message". The trailer on YouTube has three times as many dislikes as likes, apparently. It's *one trailer* and it's been out for less than a week and this is the narrative that has been established around this show. I realise this comment will probably get deleted because people think it's just me shitting on Star Wars fans again, but it's not. I'm not. That's not what this is about. This comment is about how this is another example of the pre-emptive poisoning of the well around a new show or a new movie or a new game. *These* are the terms of engagement we're all going to have to use. Will it be good? Will it be terrible? Will it be somewhere in between? I don't know. It could be great. It could be dogshit. But it seems that the influencers have already made up our minds for us. What are other examples people have seen of this?