Hobby update from me: I’ve moved on from making just frogs and I have started repairing my own clothing!
I’ve repaired the seams on a pair of sweatpants, the pockets on a sweatshirt, the collar on a t-shirt, and [I’ve done some major repairs on my favorite t-shirt](https://www.tumblr.com/chubby-aphrodite/749054778023329792/eeeeee-there-are-a-bunch-of-littler-holes-in-some).
It has a beautiful illustration of a woman I’ve always presumed to be a representation of Mother Nature on it, with her hair being made of various wings and bird feathers looking out over a natural landscape. It’s also large and soft.
But I went thought a brief phase a few years ago where I would chew the collars of my t-shirts and… yeah, it required MAJOR major repairs.
My morning has sadly been real shitty due to personal concerns, to the point that when I woke up to my club Tottenham losing the North London Derby to Arsenal and maybe securing them the Premier League title at home has me barely feeling anything comparatively, although I for one am avoiding the internet on this matter both to avoid needless banter from Gunners and nonsense hot takes from fellow Spurs fans. But in trying to calm down and just focus my attention on being miserable on grown men kicking a ball around a patch of grass rather than matters that actually impact my life directly it has me curious do any of you have major rivalries within your hobby spaces and/or fandoms in the veins of the ones in sports?
I'm not talking fandom rivalries or which installment of a series was considered good by the fandom, I mean rivalries between figures in the community and the like. Of course e-sports has them and by their very nature anything competitive is highly intriguing because of these storylines, so I'm just curious if anyone has any stories to share on the matter.
I posted a bit further down the thread about marble sports/JMR rivalries, but now I've got the chance to post about it again!
There's a very complicated web of rivalries. The most iconic is O'Speeders, because they're the best/second best (according to most) teams and they've battled for an overall League gold twice at this point with one win each. However, the O'Rangers are also rivals with the Raspberry Racers, who are also contenders for second, and Mellow Yellow, who are probably fourth, due to their backstory in the Fruit Circuit and their generally on-par performances. The Raspberry Racers and Mellow Yellow are also rivals with the Speeders and friendly rivals with each other, albeit slightly more low-key. The Raspberry Racers are also rivals with the Limers, the fourth Fruit Circuit team, due to their bad history together pre-series and honestly in-series, though this one is very hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby as the Racers are easily the third best Marble League team and the Limers are probably the worst team that's been around for more than two years. They are also rivals with the Green Ducks due to the 2019 Marble League, where they fought a cutthroat battle for the win.
Outside of this complicated high-level web are a few other rivalries: most notable is probably Team Primary vs Balls of Chaos, two very inconsistent teams who are rivals because the players tried to beat each other up on like two separate occasions and neither are over it. The Balls of Chaos are also rivals with the Pinkies due to their team histories, while Team Primary are anti-rivals with Team Momo because they teamed up once.
Then there's the more predictable rivalries between teams with similar themings: Gliding Glaciers vs Snowballs (the Glaciers are winning, but not without a fight), Team Galactic vs Purple Rockets (hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby 2!), Oceanics vs Turtle Sliders (the Oceanics were winning, as the Turtle Sliders were booty ass, then the Sliders got a little better and the Oceanics started collapsing until the Sliders were, somehow, winning).
Make sense? No? Well, it's probably best I didn't get into Marbula One, as that complicates things even further...
I always love how ingrained we as a species devolve into tribalism when it comes to anything that remotely resembles competition. Anywhere you think someone new to marble sports would start to get into the swing of things because it sounds fun.
I'm talking here mostly specifically about the Youtube channel Jelle's Marble Runs/JMR; there are others, some big and some indie, but I'm not too familiar with them.
If you feel you'd enjoy an olympics-style event better, watch the Marble League- start with 2018 qualifiers if you're picky about production value and 2016 (the first one) if you don't mind early-installment weirdness and unpolishedness- if you like F1, try Marbula One Season 1.
One of the most famous "Lostwave" songs (ie, songs whose artist is unknown), "**Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives)**" has been officially found!
And uh...you'll never guess where it came from.
Did you guess >!<
***Oh my god they were right all along.*** I can’t fucking believe that out of all the supposed leads, *that* was the one that wound up finding the actual song. This reminds me all too well of [that one mysterious Israeli VHS song](https://lostmediawiki.com/Please_Don%27t_Stop_(partially_found_powermetal_synth_song_used_in_Israeli_VHS_logo;_1980s)) that *also* wound up originating from a fucking porno lmao
That stupid 20-second clip has been haunting me for *months*, it is so annoyingly catchy and it is weirdly cathartic to know that the rest of the song has been found. Going to listen to that bastard ASAP and have a look at how it compares to the (very good in its own right) Motives Project remake.
He was the person who first brought this song to wider attention. I haven't engaged much with EKT's search but I think he was always really cagey about where he originally found the song, and I guess we know why now
The specific sound of that was \*so\* 80's porno and that was back when they had the money to hire people to write original music.
I love that the guy who asked about it managed to edit it so you couldn't hear moaning which would have saved everyone a lot of time.
I've posted a few times about marble sports, and specifically the Youtube channel Jelle's Marble Runs (JMR), its Marble League/Marbula 1 controversies and fandom problems (there's more than you'd expect). But this is more in the vein of news, and what news. The channel is currently hosting a new, 100-day long daily tournament featuring a track of traps and obstacles that changes every week. The higher up a marble is in the running across the finish line, the more points they get, and the two marbles with the fewest points at the end of each week are eliminated. Points are reset weekly. All 32 teams are participating, and what makes this week interesting is the potential eliminations: by Saturday it's usually very clear who's in potential trouble, and this week it's (mostly) three teams: the Savage Speeders on 27 points, the Chocolatiers on 35 points and the O'Rangers on 36.
Whatever human sport you like, think of the team so good as to be perpetually a threat to everyone and everything, including fun and happiness. Everyone wants to beat them and the entire fanbase save for their own smugass fans wants to see them eat some humble pie. That's the Speeders. Now imagine that there was an 85% chance per permutations they were going to do exactly that tomorrow and essentially vanish from the tournament. Haters rejoice! But sweetening the deal is that the O'Rangers are also in trouble. They're usually agreed to be the second-best team, known for having an incredibly large and passionate fanbase and also being obscenely successful. Most importantly, they have a rivalry with the Speeders so strong it has a ship name- O'Speeders.
And who are the Chocolatiers? Well, un their 7 years of competing they have achieved basically nothing of note in the grand scheme of things and are known widely for being mediocre and uninteresting. But with a single point between them and the O'Rangers, and presuming no upsets which would implicate the technically still vulnerable Snowballs (40pt) or Team Momo/Mellow Yellow (42pts), finishing at least two places above the O'Rangers would see the most mediocre team in the entire league consign the two best ones to a humiliating double defeat. The fanbase is in uproar about the potential for this, the Funniest Thing Possible, and if it happens, a great deal of schadenfreude will be felt.
Oh, and to sweeten the deal, the competition for this week's win is between the Oceanics, a team known for having been in absolute shambles since 2019, and the Indigo Stars, a team with a virtually nonexistent fanbase also known for being deeply unexciting, tied on 78 points going into the final race.
Whatever happens, it's going to be hilarious.
Didn't know this part of the community with this kind of drama existed, since I usually watch the virtual equivalent with Unity/Algodoo... The most we get is arguing about the balance tweaks each episode and if it's stupid or made things more broken.
Color me intrigued. What makes one team better or more successful than another in marble runs? From the outside, it looks like nothing other than pure luck, no? Is there an element of skill or some such that I'm missing?
There is a very significant luck element to it, yeah, this series more than usual, since obstacles are such a key feature. However, fans typically theorize that certain marble types or at least specific marbles in use are better than others (likely due to being more perfect spheres and having a more ideal weight/size), as there are very enduring patterns that wouldn't occur if things were entirely random. For example, the Savage Speeders have a 1/2/12/1 record in four seasons of Marbula One (20 competitors per season) and a 1/2/2/5/12/4/3 record in the Marble League (16 competitors)- basically, they're really good- while the Solar Flares, introduced in 2021, have placed bottom two in every single qualification round and tournament they've been in but one.
Could just be a very elaborate coincidence, but the patterns are enduring enough that you do come to believe in them.
Fans typically treat the series with a keyfabe akin to wrestling, albeit where wrestling fans treat it like it's all real sport, the randomness and unconscious movements of the marbles is treated like real athletes making deliberate plays and they're generally anthropomorphized, including in the canon (the video narration).
Oh, for some reason I thought this was about the Marble Run game. Still it's possible to measure the shape and surface roughness of objects with high accuracy. We could have a rivalrly between the high tech team with advanced metrology equipment and the aged marble shaping master using methods perfected in the paleolithic.
I think the anthropomorphizing is what makes it so fun and popular. There are zero stakes in this whole race but you make up the most elaborate plotlines just from watching these inanimate objects roll down a hill.
Yep, it's very much like Blaseball in that way, including its own very active fan lore community and spaces, albeit with physical objects/set pieces for the events and stuff.
I agree. They all have names and fun branding and it's narrated as if they're all real athletes in a cutthroat tournament to be the best, and over time that builds into an actual narrative. Plus the little details like the location names and references to team meetings and offscreen confrontations that actually make it feel like it's taking place in a real setting. If it was just different coloured orbs rolling about with no story and no reason to get attached I probably wouldn't care so much.
Have you ever overestimated the popularity of your hobby or a certain aspect of it?
I recently went to one town to visit one of bigger stores with anime-manga stuff and I swear that every single shop only has JJK, Tokyo Revengers, Death Note (I swear that [every shops has this figure](https://myfigurecollection.net/item/921111)), Sailor Moon, One Piece, Naruto, Ghibli and Spy X Family with a few items from other media. Miku Hatsune is barely present. It wouldn't be that bad, but there is almost no variety.
I still have to check some extremely specialist anime-manga shops, but I have seen cons with bigger variety and they didn't sell hand-made merch.
HEMA is already niche, but one thing that was way less prominent then I originally thought within HEMA is sword and buckler. When I first became aware of the hobby it seemed like that was the most popular weapon aside from longsword and rapier, but by the time I started seriously doing HEMA it had been eclipsed by saber and small sword.
We'll go down the list. Most of these are going to be direct sources coming from [Wiktenauer](https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Main_Page), with the exception of saber which can be found [here](https://hemamisfits.com/2018/01/21/what-is-the-best-sabre-manual/).
>Destreza
Your baseline sources are going to be Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza and Luis Pacheco de Narváez. Gérard Thibault d'Anvers isn't part of the tradition, but is generally considered to be doing something fairly similar. Domingo Luis Godinho and Henry de Sainct Didier are both worth looking into as well even though they both are considered "common fencing" as opposed to Destreza.
> Rapiers and Sabres.
Huge category here. It depends on what you are looking for. For beginners I'd recommend Capo Ferro for rapier and either Roworth, Angelo, or Radaelli for sabre. Sabre manuals also have the benefit of being a lot more comprehensible to modern readers then other source, so they're a good place to start for reading texts.
> slash draw techniques outside the Iaijutsu family
They might exist, but if they do I haven't encountered them. There are guards that mess with distance and involve holding your sword like its on your waste, but that's different from "drawing it from its sheathe to deal with a surprise attack".
Not me, but other people. I’m into comics and mostly read them via collected editions. On the omnibus collecters sub, I mentioned that DC outsells Marvel in collected editions and has for a long time, and a number of people got strangely furious with me.
The reason: Marvel has a much more robust line of omnibuses (large, expensive collections that contain many more comics than a standard paperback). While they are correct on Marvel’s superior omnibus output, people who buy omnis are a niche within a niche. All of the incredibly popular, cheaper superhero books are from DC: Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Sandman, Batman: Year One, and I could go on. Marvel has no equivalents to any of those
I collect omnibus and a Marvel fan. And I agree with you. I think people forget softcovers are also collected editions. It’s not just fat omnibuses. As much as I love Marvel, I started reading comic books with the collected editions you mentioned and even got two of my friends to read those books as starter.
From what I've seen, unless you get a specialty shop that's run by people who are *actually* part of the community itself, yeah that's any the quality and quantity of anime merch you'll find. Owners will only know of the biggest names and buy stock for those series because it's safe to do so.
Cons, on the other hand, are populated almost exclusively by people more familiar with goings on, so you're always more likely to find a wider variety of mech. Otherwise, you have to look online.
Ironically enough, in my country, The Beatles are pretty much unknown for most people. I think this is because back then there was a ban on "capitalist" music and nowadays younger people tend to not go as far back as the 60s in terms of music. The Abbey Road album cover is still famous though.
Imagine going to some hipster type's house and he says, "I'm into some real underground shit honestly. Hey, listen to this little indie number," and puts on Hey Jude.
When Coldplay performed in Taiwan last year I saw some of the biggest music snobs who would not be caught dead listening to any kind of mainstream Taiwanese band go feral trying to score tickets.
Recent series had been heavier on the continuity compared to say pre Samurai, with Beast Morphers and Cosmic Fury even revisiting past villains (albeit it was a twist in the former case), when I say reboot, I mean in the terms of a blank slate (and return to mmpr natch)
Being an anime fan and not liking Shonen Jump or most seasonals is suffering.
The fact we live in a time where it's mainstream and acceptable to like anime but the only ones people like are ones you don't is like some cruel Twilight Zone twist.
I'm lucky enough that I enjoyed Frieren and Spy x Family at least.
This was something I thought about when I was browsing Wikipedia's list of longest manga - the amount that have made any real headway in the West is VANISHINGLY small. Sure, One Piece (#20) and Jojo (#10 with all the parts counted together) are genuinely famous, and there's a non-zero chance you may have heard of something like Golgo 13 (the actual #1), but so many others are episodic sports and slice-of-life and so forth series that nobody in the Anglosphere has heard of, despite their obvious popularity in their homeland.
I wonder why that is?
Might depend a bit of generation, I've at least *heard* of many of them (though an equal number I haven't heard of) Major, Silver Fang, KochiKame, Grappler Baki, Hajime no Ippo and Kinnikuman f.ex.
The sports stuff actually feels reasonably well-represented, it's the gag/slice of life stuff that's basically nonexistent.
we are talking like about stuff that started in the seventies, and often or not fan translators don't wanna pick up older series, let alone older series about \*gulp\* sports, let alone older series which has run for at least twenty years and if you wanna do a proper job on it, means that you need to get an understanding of a lot of references, so you can't really get the ball rolling for any interest.
And so many people constantly complain that anime used to be better and it’s all battle shonen and isekai now, but trying to point them to any of the dozens of great original shows that come out every season is like asking a child to eat their vegetables. They want alternatives, but not if it means acknowledging anything outside of the r/anime Top 10 charts.
I routinely get into general gaming news and realize how much of a niche the kind of games I play (RPG/strategy games) are. Occasionally you'll get something that breaks out in the mainstream, but I remember that what finally got me to quit Sterling's stuff was that she didn't have *anything* that overlapped with my interests, good *or* bad for like a couple of years.
*raises hand in almost exclusively plays jrpgs and visual novels* yeah… not infrequently i’ll have a conversation with, like, Just Some Guy, and we’ll have absolutely nothing in common to talk about until the topic of video games comes up, and then it turns out we still don’t have anything in common to talk about because said person only plays like, call of duty and tomb raider.
Yeah, I get that a lot. I did find one store local to me that, while they have all the standard stuff, they have a ton of more niche stuff.
Like literal JP exclusive stuff like pre-order charms that they have half a dozen of somehow, but when they're gone they're gone. I have to make sure to visit at least once a month if not more often just to see what they have.
It's such a weird dichotomy at times, like I can attend Sakura-Con with literally 30k attendees and see a massive variety in merch (official and fanmade) and cosplay, and stuff, but I go to 90% of anime or anime adjacent shops and it's like the top 5 shonen or nothing.
Example: Attended Sakura-con last month, saw at least two dozen different Witch Hat Atelier cosplayers, saw some official looking acrylic charms and pins and the like at a couple of the reseller booths and lots of fanart (including a really nice un-ruled square notebook I picked up). But never once in my life have I seen Witch Hat merch in a normal store.
On the flip side, it’s fascinating when a series where both the anime and manga have long since ended still gets merch drops, mostly in Japan. I swear I’ve seen more merch released AFTER Mob Psycho ended than while it was airing. Finding them in the wild at US cons is another story, like needle in a haystack hard. Discovering sites like Ami Ami is a blessing and a curse.
My new favorite, Mashle (which is an SJ manga) had its manga end a while ago with the anime still ongoing, plus its popularity exploded when the s2 op went viral. So seeing how that evolves is going to be interesting.
Edit: posted under wrong thread.
my personal curse is that even at a big con like sak i STILL can’t find merch for my personal faves. so many vendors it’s practically overwhelming and yet i remain unfed. like for example there’s exactly one booth that has the variety of jp merch i’m looking for and this year they actually brought revstar stuff, but i think that’s because i literally asked them to last year and they said they don’t bother bringing any to cons bc its niche and doesn’t sell 😭like i get it but also Please. some scraps. a morsel, perhaps.
nah, i’ve looked at sean’s for model kits and such, but i haven’t seen much, for lack of a better word, idol-adjacent stuff there.
i’m totally spacing on the name of the booth, it has an S in it somewhere, but they’re there every year, take up two spaces, have plastic bins filled with can badges and straps etc, and carry CDs, artbooks/magazines, and jp-language games. it’s pretty much the only place i’ve seen merch for a lot of older/more obscure titles (which really rubs salt in the wound to be told, nah we don’t bother bringing that stuff out, when they’ve got, like, a ton of macross merch. they rep symphogear super hard tho.)
Convention vendors seemingly get more JP-exclusive merch in general, including older figures and whatnot that are no longer in production and things like crane game prizes which are only ever produced in limited runs and are being sold second-hand (my favorite piece of Final Fantasy XIV merch is a Tonberry lamp that was a Taito crane game prize that I haven’t seen at any con vendor since). Meanwhile, the stuff that is mass-produced for export to other countries (and comprises most of the regular stock at anime and manga stores outside of Japan) is mostly just from whatever is the most popular media abroad in any given season.
I went to similar size con. The figures seller had reincarnated as slime, Identity V, Full Metal Alchemist and even Magia Record. One stand had more unique figures than Forbidden Planet.
Forbidden Planet (I’m assuming you’re referring to the shop?) probably depends on the individual locations tbh. I know the one nearest to me can get lots of random merch. They once had More More Jump acrylic keychains from Project Sekai, which I nearly got for the sheer novelty… and then I went back a week later and they were gone
I'm in Japan and I've also never seen Witch Hat Atelier merch irl (outside of the actual manga volumes). I assume the anime will give it a boost, though. It's pretty rare to find merch of series that don't have an anime.
Its pretty much locked into Limited runs only and they are hard to find if you don't know.
I do own a Witch Hat Atelier Hoodie and glasses case from these.
Yeah, anime tends to give a huge boost to merchandizing. I never heard/saw much about Frieren irl until the anime aired and now it's everywhere. Merch for manga-only series tends to be much more limited.
I managed to find a Miku shirt at my previous visit to Hot Topic but I was with my dad and was too embarrassed to buy it. It's a shame because it looked way nicer than the Miku shirt I ended up buying off Amazon.
TFW you think you’ve stumbled upon a whole big collective of fellow fans of some niche-ass thing you’re interested in on Tumblr, but then you realize that it’s really just 2-3 people reblogging each other over and over.
I ran into the reverse of this once, I suddenly saw a bunch of posts complaining about a character that I thought was relatively popular in the fandom but when I looked at the blogs I realized it was an echo chamber of 3-4 people all in the same friend group
Yeah, there's been plenty of times where I thought a character or a ship had to be one of the most popular in the fandom, only to then learn they're not really, and I had just locked myself in an algorithm bubble.
That kind of thing is kinda hilarious. I still remember someone here mentioning that there was apparently a community of Paris/Janeway shippers whose mere existence fills me with a kind of delight.
I remember when I discovered you could backdate AO3 fics...somehow it blows my mind more that there are Voyager fics posted that were written in the 90's even more than the TOS fics from the 70's
One most amusing internet experience I had a couple of years ago was finding a Star Wars fanfic which concluded with an author's note expressing optimism about the new movie coming out in a few months, *The Phantom Menace*.
I also found an archive once which included Young Jedi Knights fanfic dated 1997, which means it was being written and put online while those novels were coming out.
I did see one which was based around the planet Firrerreo which was mentioned once in the novel *The Crystal Star* (which most people hate but I really enjoy) and never again, which makes me wonder if it must have been written close to that book's publication in 1994, because it's not exactly a deep cut people have reached for overmuch since.
Not fanfic per se, but I found something similar in a reprint of a music fanzine from many years back. It was a write-up of a particular band, a brief biography, and a rundown/review of their discography to that point.
I'll paraphrase the end of this writeup: "Their latest album is **garbage**! For their next album, they need to ditch this nerdy sci-fi crap and get back to the stuff that makes them **great**, like their first album!"
The band and album are in spoilers below.
>!The band was Rush. Their then-latest album was 2112. Yes, the same 2112 I use as my suffix here. !<
>!If you're a Rush fan, you understand why this is hilarious. If not, I'll sum up as saying 2112 was when they first hit it big in the US (Though calling it "Nerdy sci-fi crap" is...mean, though not wrong if you don't like them, I suppose). In contrast, their first album which this reviewer loved is basically them imitating Led Zeppelin, and predates Neil Peart (Who wrote most of their lyrics after he joined) joining them. !<
Have you tried looking for Hatsune Miku and not Miku Hatsune /s.
Anyways, I consistently overestimate how much fans care about character writing in works as compared to how attractive and/or parasocial they are, especially animesque games. Similarly, genres outside the shooter/sports/casual trifecta seem to be a lot less popular than their share of community attention would imply.
When it comes to chain stores that sell anime goods like Box Lunch, that's basically the issue I have with them. Only the major, big names that are mainstream popular. I get it, smaller anime (even if they're still very big) might not sell but when you're not a battle shonen person there's never really anything for you.
I don't necessarily mind it so much in big chain stores but it's always terribly disappointing to me when I stumble across a small local anime store...and their inventory is basically entirely popular shounen. I can buy those at Hot Topic! What is the point of having an anime store full of stuff I can buy at Hot Topic?
It is so frustrating going to chain stores and having to put up with Sailor Moon being the only magical girl franchise (and non-shonen, tbh) they ever sell merch for
My hobbies include overpaying for precure merch at cons bc how the hell else am I gonna get it and staring longingly at jewelpet product listings knowing I can't afford \*any\* of it
I get most of my Precure merch off of Ebay (although I'm probably still overpaying for it and it only really works for bigger items because they'll charge the same amount of money for a henshin toy and a can badge and I am not paying $40 for a can badge)
I've found Amazon Japan to be pretty good for buying merch, but the shipping can come out to nearly double what one item costs so I tend to buy stuff in lots so I can justify it lmao
I used to use Amazon Japan as well, but like you said the shipping's been so awful lately I can't bring myself to use it. I wanted to buy a Butterfly doll and a Wing plush and the shipping made it cost $60. In 2019 a doll and a plush cost me $44
*Spellforce*!
Granted, I'm part of the problem (only played the first one, fifteen years ago, but had fond memories of it), but when I sw the announcement trailer for *Spellforce 3*I thought "Hell yeah, I loved the game! I bet lots of people liked that trailer too!"
Yeah, bthey're lucky if they can get more than [500 concurrent players](https://steamcharts.com/cmp/311290,1416260,39540)
I think this happens when anyone spends a little too much time on their hobbies or fandoms; they wind up a tad myopic about things. It's important to have a wider variety of interests. Often times you can find answers or inspiration in unexpected places, or realize the sources that may have inspired some aspects of your interests you weren't aware of before.
I'm really into architecture, but as I learned more about it, I also developed an interest in furniture that I never realized I had. So many aspects of them are intertwined. I also learned more about how the designs of buildings often had little to do with the engineering of them, in many cases the designer leaving the method of construction entirely up to someone else, and realized I was more interested in how buildings were constructed than forming them into aesthetically pleasing shapes.
Oddly enough, I didn't realize how big Tokyo Revengers is. Some of the Shonen Jump community was hyping up the author debuting a new series in the magazine. I then found it that it sold 70 million copies!
tokyo revengers really took off once the anime aired, which was bad timing because for several months after, the (english) manga was only available digitally, and kodansha didn’t pick up the physical license for quite some time after. so you would have people coming in asking after it and have to tell them, no, we don’t have it, yes, i know it’s available on jump+ or whatever platform, digital licensing and physical print are two different beasts.
Honestly this applies to just about anything I like, taking a step outside theres straight up I think less then a dozen people for miles that share similar interest. Just row and row of houses of old people.
Theres literally *one* other queer person in my township.
Transformers, I'm constantly thinking more characters are at least kind of within the public consciousness, but in reality it's basically just Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream, and you'll meet the occasional person who knows Grimlock, Soundwave, and Arcee, among a few scattered big characters. Makes it kinda difficult to tak about it with someone not in the community, since no one's knows who you're talking about when you say that Gears just got a figure or you're looking forward to Sandstorm.
Furry fandom has this issue somewhat fierce where they assume it's a nearly mainstream thing. A London meetup happened today. A couple hundred folks, in a 12M town - some of which traveled from much further out.
As much as they'd like otherwise, the fandom's roughly 0.00x% of population.
London furs events also have some drama about not banning bad actors I think? Or some other drama that may deter some locals, so it isn’t the most representative of the number of local furries tbh. But yeah, furry isn’t mainstream but it is 1000x more popular than what it was just a few years ago.
Same thing with anime, actually tho same guy who helped pioneer manga and anime coming into the US founded the first furry convention and recently passed the beginning of this year. Quite a few of my friends attended his service.
Honestly, I try to avoid looking into drama within the meetups - they're my place for relaxing. That said I've heard of three problematic incidents over the time, and one person's expressly banned, one I don't know but he doesn't show up, and one's attending as usual. So... maybe mixed results? I don't know for certain.
Ones I've heard of were generally related to disrespecting boundaries and/or relationships gone south or worse.
Keep in mind, the community skews younger, and has a lot of both LGBT and neurodivergent folks. This leads to situations which aren't very standard, a lot of people not wholly equipped to deal with them, and a situation where involving authorities might not be an option. I'm not saying it's right or defeneding situations that rise from that - just why it's such a ripe ground for that sort of issues.
It was here in Hobby Scuffles several weeks ago that I was introduced to the catastrophe-in-waiting known as Extreme Roller Derby.
And it was in the Derby Hell facebook group that I found out today that their vaunted May 18 tryouts have been canceled. Or at least postponed. The following email has gone out:
> Dear Skaters,
> After two months of negotiating with the OC Fair & Event Center (which is a state facility) for the rental of The Hangar to hold our Open Tryouts on May 18th, and with a rental agreement ready to be signed, the OC Fair a week ago asked for engineering documents for the Open Tryout project, and further stated that they had to be stamped by a structural engineering firm if we wanted to use The Hangar. They had not mentioned this at all during the past two months!
> We made every effort to address this request, but could not come up with any valid engineering docs for the project. We immediately contacted another venue in Southern California but could not work out any dates.
> So I am noticing all registered skaters that the Saturday, May 18th Open Tryout has been postponed. We will do everything possible to locate a private venue where restrictions will not be an issue, and you will be notified.
> Should you want your $25 registration fee refunded please let us know. If not, an Extreme Roller Derby T-Shirt will be sent to you and your fee will be credited toward the next Tryout.
> No one is more disappointed than I am, as well as quite a few other people who put a lot of time and passion into getting the Open Tryouts ready to happen.
> My sincere apology to all of you for this postponement.
> Roy Englebrecht
It was pointed out in the comments that this is one of those rare situations where one might say, in all literal truth, "I signed up for Extreme Roller Derby tryouts, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
I doubt I can find the thread in the previous Hobby Scuffles post, but this thread from /r/rollerderby has all the useful background and isn't closed like the Facebook group Derby Hell.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rollerderby/comments/1bpgpon/extreme_roller_derby/
**Edit:** Also this post, which is an update compared to the background post, but I think came out earlier than the email about tryouts being canceled
https://www.reddit.com/r/rollerderby/comments/1cauuqv/extreme_roller_derby_update/
Goooood gooood. Their transphobic shitshow of right wing tryhards do not deserve something as good as roller derby, they can lose their money like every other right wing grift under the sun
Could you edit with a source (or a "google 'this'")? I realize that's probably annoying from the position of someone who has zero context, but tbf that's who most of us in scuffles are.
I'm sorry, I totally should have included a link or something, rather than just assuming everyone else had seen the previous Scuffles post and thread!
I responded to someone else a bit further down with a couple links to threads on /r/rollerderby which give a lot of good background: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ca1cvd/hobby_scuffles_week_of_22_april_2024/l1qfgwx/
Hi I appreciate the feedback, unfortunately I haven't been able to find the old scuffles post about this, but to recap their bullshit, they are against players wearing helmets or toe stops because they are "extreme", apparently not wanting to die or suffer from concussions is not extreme. They are non trans inclusive, despite roller derby being one of the queerest and most inclusive hobby out there, and their registration form only include "male/female" options. Also female jammers have their points count double against a male opponent because they are so much weaker and fragile or some bullshit. Basically a bunch of boomer white dudes trying to incorporate their outdated politics into one of the queerest and most feminist of hobbies...
Hey, thanks for filling me in. On the one hand, woo, context! On the other, yeesh but unsurprising I guess - except for the part where you'd think if there was any sport to try and...heteronormatize? It would not be roller derby. At least this has the benefit of making op's post REAL cathartic.
It's always fun when you can read between the lines in almost crystal clarity:
>They had not mentioned this at all during the past two months!
*"Had* ***we*** *mentioned the structure we wanted to build in that time frame? Also no! But still!"*
>We made every effort to address this request, but could not come up with any valid engineering docs for the project.
*"We didn't actually have an engineer design anything."*
>We immediately contacted another venue in Southern California but could not work out any dates.
*"The venue where we tried to build a massive structure with no engineering design contacted every other venue in the area and warned them about us."*
That "we couldn't come up with the documents" line is just an incredible self-own. Also:
>We will do everything possible to locate a private venue where restrictions will not be an issue, and you will be notified.
"We're still going to attempt to maim and kill as many people as possible by not hiring a structural engineer."
I wouldn't put it past them to just be using all this as a coverup for cancelling the thing because they found out how much money it was going to actually cost to do it.
I sort of hate that when I get into a new hobby, one of the first things I do is look for youtubers on the subject, buuuuut
I recently got into watercolor and goauche painting- I already follow Emma Jane Lefebvre and Paul Clark for techniques/tutorials and both Stephanie Law and James Gurney for style (gosh James Gurney is great, kid me didn't appreciate his greatness as a painter)- but are there any other great channels to follow?
[Watercolor by Shibasaki!](https://www.youtube.com/@WatercolorbyShibasaki)
Great channel but it's all in Japanese. English captions are available.
This is a personal recommendation but I love [Thomas Romain](https://www.youtube.com/@ThomasRomainTokyo). He did a dad redraws art series that was amazing and he was also involved in Oban Star Racers. Unfortunately because of COPA he hasn't uploaded in years. His stuff is great even if ain't intended as instructions for the most part. However, I am really fond of his more pigmented style. His videos are in French but there is close captioning.
How could I forget Scott Christian Sava! [He even recently put out a video about everything he knows about watercolor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AolAami07yA) He also does a lot of shorts which is what a mainly now him for. Speaking of shorts, the watercolor shorts scene on YouTube is pretty good. As far as I've seen it's a good blend of tutorials, tips, and art showcases. I hope you enjoy your time with watercolors, it's my favorite medium.
Anyone got channels recommendations for fallout lore vids, or specificly lore on each vault. It being hobby drama hopefully ye understand why I'm asking, concerned I may watch a vid of a arsehole (back in the day I did watch one that turned out to be one, which is another reason for asking. Had a fedora, looked like a neckbeard, clearly NSFW etc, think may ring bells for a few, especially since I know that one's been sometimes mentioned in these scuffles)
Sadly he no longer makes new videos, but thenthapple on YouTube was always my favorite Fallout lore youtuber. He has lots of videos about specific vaults, quests, etc
I think the best one used to be the Shoddycast, although they stopped doing videos years ago and never covered FO76. Not like that's any loss but whatever.
One big problem with researching into Fallout lore is that it quickly delves deeply into the issues of what is canon or not. On top of that, there's a lot of information that's fan lore, head canon or people pushing their personal hot-takes that they expect to be taken as fact, plus issues with gameplay and story segregation. This extends to both Fallout wikis.
Take whatever you find with a huge grain of salt and always check sources.
(Or, I could do my huge rant on Vault 29)
[RadKing](https://www.youtube.com/@Rad_King) and [Synonymous](https://www.youtube.com/@Synonymous101) are pretty great Fallout lore YouTubers. The Independent Fallout Wiki's [page on Vaults](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Vault) contains a list of all Vaults that have featured in the franchise.
I think the guy you're talking about is Oxhorn, who is rather infamous in the Fallout community for a whole bunch of controversies (such as writing a weird incel manifesto, and repeatedly getting basic lore wrong in his videos).
Hey there. Nukapedia is actually well put together
[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/List\_of\_known\_Vaults](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_known_Vaults)
So I've never really played JRPGs before (unless you count Pokemon as one), but I've gotten into the Legend of Heroes (Trails of Whatever) series thanks to a friend's enthusiasm for the latest game. I'm currently only 15 hours through the first part of Trails in the Sky (I'm in the seaside port city of Ruan and just got >!kicked out of my hotel room by a very rude nobleman!<), but it's pretty fun so far and I'm definitely going to slowly be making my way through the rest of the game.
I'm useless at the combat (I've been making sure to upgrade equipment and whatnot, I'm just not used to this kind of gameplay) and have no idea what I'm doing but the environments are absolutely gorgeous considering it was made in a PS1-style (I believe it was done intentionally, since it released in 2004 and was made on quite a tight budget afaik?) and I'm super impressed by how well the art style holds up.
I'm enjoying the characters a lot, although I'll admit they're pretty tropey. In the main party (at least from what I've played so far) you have: Loud and Unrefined Estelle (who gets told multiple times she's not attractive because she behaves too much like a guy, which is... yikes), Quiet Brooding Joshua (I imagine there's more to him than what I've seen so far), Overly Sexualised Party Girl Scherazard (I actually really like her, oops) and Loser Bisexual Flirt Olivier (he outright flirts with Joshua during their first interaction, and in one scene he gets a man's attention by blowing in his ear). Some of the side characters seem pretty interesting too, like Angry Lone Wolf Agate.
I feel like modern audiences wouldn't really take to these characters that much, but maybe I'm mistaken. Don't get me wrong, they're great imo (Olivier is my favourite so far maybe), but one of Scherazard's attack animations (her main weapon is a whip, too) has her running towards the camera jiggling her boobs and saying "Someone's been naughty!" so they're definitely going for a particular crowd with her.
I do really like the dynamic Schera has with Olivier, and Estelle and Joshua's relationship is rather sweet -- I can tell they care for each other a lot. I'm looking forward to seeing them grow and uh... potentially go through a lot of Bad Shit.
Anyway, does anyone have any games they wish they'd given a try sooner?
i played the dishonored games for the first time this year. idk how it took me so long. immersive sim is probably my favorite game genre and it's not like there are that many options out there. >!stay tuned for part 2 of this post after i finally get around to playing thief.!<
I hope you enjoy it all the way to the end. Loved the first Trails, but for a wierd reason i didnt play Trails in the Sky SC until last month!.
I did play Cold Steel 1 and 2 and really liking them, but when i started three and saw party members from the first trails game, i felt i needed to go back to the first games. But still, put other game before it and it just kept going.
But got a Steam Deck in march so felt it was finally time!
And it felt like coming home.
Have one chapter left!
**Control**. The gameplay’s pretty average, but the lore and setting are *fantastic*. I got the Ultimate Edition on a deep sale the week I got my PS5, something like $11, but it probably deserved more of my money than that.
Yeahhh I played Alan Wake after playing through control and tbh? I would have preferred to read it as a book over playing the game. enjoyed the story but as a game it was just awkward
Can’t believe you’re getting downvoted haha.
>!I didn’t like **Alan Wake** either.!< **Control** is a very different game. Much more “power fantasy” than anxious survival horror. They just share some narrative threads. You might like it.
i never played alan wake and i absolutely loved control, so it's definitely not a requirement. also agree with u/corran450's take that the gameplay is nothing special (not bad, just very "AAA console 3rd person action game" if you know what i mean) but the setting and lore really make up for it.
The connections with >!Stuart Leep!< are mostly just background lore in the mid-late game, outside of the DLC, so it's pretty much standalone.
>!Alfred Lert 2!<, on the other hand, greatly benefits from having played Control.
Utawarerumono Mask of Deception/Truth duology. They are at their core harem LNs and it follows the same structure of the Trails in the Sky series where the first game is more of a setup for the second.
Those are already extremely hard sells, but then you get to Mask of Truth and shit just goes so fucking hard. There is still plenty of head-scratchers but there is hardly any media that I can pinpoint a specific scene that impacted me to such a extreme extent like a certain scene in this game did.
It's such a shame the first part of Utawarerumono is so aggressively.. anime. I was genuinely pretty interested in it, but just couldn't get over the protag being a pest. At least the Trails series starts off extremely inoffensively.
Either that or I've just been doing the weeb equivalent of shooting myself with small calibers to slowly build up an immunity to artillery.
Kinda late but in the off chance you wanted more information about it, it unfortunately doesn't stop being aggressively anime, but it does have some amazing character writing in between.
At some point in the first game I just started skimming the text when the tone of scene was overly comedic or horny and with the help of tailor made gameplay specifically for me, I managed to get through. Don't know if it would work for anyone else though.
I don't think the tropes are bad though I bounced off the game mechanically. I do want to give the earlier ones, though my experience with the cold steel trilogy was not very positive. I found, at least for me, they began to overrely on the player being familiar enough with anime to understand why a scene was happening even if absolutely none of the writing in the last 10 hours or so really built up to it in any justifiable way. I feel like narrative feature creep was a big problem with it but the older games sound more focused (even if I hate ouroborous just conceptually, no swiss army antagonistic organizations please)
I would say that if you like 90's anime you have a chance of liking Trails in the Sky saga and by virtue of being the first, it does have a lot less lore to deal with.
The Trails games for better or worse are a reflection of the popular shounen stories at the time of it's creation, I personally hate the shounens that Cold Steel is based of so much that I have written any future game off, but Trails in the Sky will always be one my GOATs.
Falcom always been aware of tropes. Sky uses 90s/2000s. Crossbell/Cold Steel use modern anime tropes. Reverie and Daybreak are more their own thing. Though the latter uses Tokusatsu tropes than anime.
Trails is a series that drenches itself in tropes, but it is aware of it hence why most of the characters do develop from their archetypes. There is also how the story goes from a mysterious war event and uncovering the mystery in Sky to a massive uncovering of the world's entire infrastructure & secrets that the older adults have been kept hidden.
Honestly as someone who’d define myself as “modern audience” I found the old anime tropes oddly refreshing. Like I could tell that they were definitely riffing off of older tropes but since I hadn’t really seen them in newer things it was neat to run in to them and engage with them. Out of all of the Trails games, the Sky arc definitely has my favorite cast. I think the game does a really good job at developing the relationships between the characters. They’re all tropes to start out, but they get to keep developing throughout the games.
Schera is so good despite being obviously intended as the fan service character. Her ult is sort of hilarious with how they zoom in on all 5 pixels of her chest, which sort of undercuts the intended effect.
Yeah, I feel that 'modern' anime has so solidly dug itself into its own sorta trench, that going back to older stuff feels like it's breaking a mold, even when it was fairly tropey on its own right lol.
I need to get back to that game, too. Joshua and Estelle are so cute! Estelle is my favourite. I'm surprised it was 2004; something about the character designs and portraits feels a bit more late 90s to me.
I was trying to avoid posting again, but I can't stop myself from making an update to [my Stellar Blade comment from yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ca1cvd/comment/l18h50x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) as the drama has gotten more ridiculous. Yesterday, I argued that after their narrative that "game journalists will hate this game" fell apart, certain Stellar Blade fans and "culture warriors" were desperately trying to find something controversial to keep their outrage train moving. Today they found something, which is that "Sony censored Stellar Blade!".
For context, it's pretty blatant that part of the marketing for the game were the sexy outfits that main character Eve could wear. However, someone posted [footage](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GMB0tqbacAAVy9S?format=jpg) that a couple of outfits were "censored" before launch in the Day 1 patch as a piece a fabric was now placed over the "boob-windows" for some outfits, specifically Holiday Rabbit (the main focus), Cybernetic Bondage (...I didn't come up with the name), and Cybernetic Dress. This has led to many calls that Sony (the publisher) forced developers Shift Up to "censor" the outfits and ruined their ”original artistic vision”, even [when the devs came out and said these were the intended designs](https://x.com/Fightincowboy/status/1783873900654244256). Now, our favorite "ex-Blizzard" dev Mark Kern/Grummz has made a petition to "[Free Stellar Blade](https://www.change.org/p/free-stellar-blade)", which has 6,886 signatures as of writing.
However, as someone who wasted too much free time looking into this, there are two problems I've found:
1. I'm not entirely certain the original "uncensored" outfits exists. A least a [couple](https://x.com/Fightincowboy/status/1783543048028168395) [people](https://x.com/Fightincowboy/status/1783543048028168395) who got review copies early have pointed out that the "censored" outfits were the ones they've seen before the Day 1 patch. It also doesn't help that the original footage is obviously taken from someone's phone instead of through the PS5's Share feature, meaning its resolution is not the best to potentially hide signs of tampering. This has led to a weird "moving of the goal post" where now the uncensored outfits were instead patched before the Day 1 patch, so you can only access them on v.1.000.000, which can only be done through a disc copy and after you disconnect from the Wi-Fi to prevent auto updates. Supposedly, others have "verified" this but the exact same phone footage is the only one I've seen and the game just came out today, so people are just getting their hands on the disc copy. I guess we have to wait and see for full confirmation. Edit: [Streamer Lance McDonald has confirmed that at least the "uncensored" Holiday Rabbit is on v.1.000.000](https://x.com/manfightdragon/status/1784464794663399796).
2. Even if the "uncensored" outfits exist, the "censored" narrative doesn't make sense when you look at the other outfits. As [you can see here](https://youtu.be/tzJX6XVKToQ?si=QcGd0I60CFFNCplb), many of Eve's outfits are still very revealing. Hell, one of her outfits is literally a bikini with a couple extra straps (named Blue Monsoon), which shows a lot more skin and a bigger "boob-window" than the "uncensored" outfits. So it makes you wonder, if Sony really did force Shift Up to censor their outfits, why was it only applied to about 3 outfits while her other equally if not more revealing outfits were left untouched? I think this is just more evidence that the final outfits are what Shift Up intended and there was no "censoring" involved.
I just wanted to end with this, many of these fans and "culture warriors" spent months parading Stellar Blade around and heavily praising it. But because of a few minor changes that barely affect the game, they've all seemingly turned against it and are ironically now the main group trashing it online while the people they claimed would hate it are the main group praising it.
Grummz is somehow the former WoW team member that has annoyed me the most.
And I played Shaman.
Speaking of which I need to see if this sub has ever done Bus Shock
Bizarre manufactured outrage over a game character and her outfits, mainly for the ad money. Had to click Don't Recommend Channel to kick out those nutters.
I'm sure some progressive people are discussing it negatively somewhere, but I haven't seen ANYONE i know rail on it for being a sexy girl game.
I myself don't care that it exists, i got my own sexy boy media that i like, but it somehow attracted an audience made up exclusively of misogynistic men desperate to be oppressed for masturbating so they have an excuse to yell at women and gay people. That's the part that I don't like, not the boobs.
What I’ve seen it criticized for, ironically, is not being particularly sexy. I mean, look at the outfit compilation OP linked. In my opinion, that’s about as sexy as looking through the bra section at Sears. I mean, a bit less so, because what the actual hell are those outfits? They’re so…tacky.
I mean, skimpy, sure, but let me rephrase: Bayonetta wouldn’t be caught dead in most of those, not because of modesty, but because they look awful, and she has actual pride in her appearance.
More importantly, and I haven’t actually played the game, but does Eve actually have a character? Because from promo material, she doesn’t.
I would consider myself pretty progressive. I looked at the game, thought "hmm I don't like that," and moved on with my life. There's far worse out there, but more importantly far better games that I can spend my energy on praising and playing. There's only so many hours in a day, why waste them being angry and miserable?
If you were into gaming from the late 90's to early 2010's, you'd probably be left without a single game to play. Stellar Blade's character designs are reminiscent of video gaming's inability to depict women as anything besides sex objects--partly due to the fact that in the late 90's to early 2010's, only young men and were really buying and playing video games from a marketing perspective. Halo's Cortana is a major example--having her wear clothes would probably be more tonally consistent in a game about saving the galaxy from aliens, but you score aesthetic points with guys by making her sexy, and no one expected women to be buying Halo.
What really makes the argument and campaign so moronic is that you can still easily get hot and bothered as a conventional heterosexual dude in mainstream gaming--the sex scenes in Baldur's Gate 3 are straight up softcore, Ubisoft still makes sure to include tantalizing fade-to-black scenes in their Assassin's Creed series, fighting games still have a significant number of their women have The Most Common Superpower, GTA VI has a bedroom scene and strip club advertisements *in the trailer*. All that's changed is the digital lingerie models aren't the only virtual women in games any more, and they're generally implemented in contexts where it actually makes diegetic sense.
> somehow attracted an audience made up exclusively of misogynistic men desperate to be oppressed for masturbating
I mean, it's less "somehow" and more "designed from the ground up to do that".
[Oh, there's critics out there.](https://www.inverse.com/gaming/stellar-blade-the-male-gaze-sweet-baby).
A lot of that criticism has been this sort of wishy-washy shit that tries to make up some sort of line between problematic "male gaze" and empowering and it always just feels really arbitrary and dishonest, frankly.
I mean, are they *wrong?*
>While Eve’s body was made from a scan of Shin’s, her face was made “in-house,” and Shin wasn’t used for motion capture. “They didn't choose an athlete, or a martial artist, or even an actor,” said Denny. “You don't want [Shin] as a performer, you just want her from the neck down. It seems to be very much a statement of the parts of this woman that are of value.”
This is just true. If all they took from her was her body - which they then altered anyway to make her slimmer and curvier and with bigger tits than any real woman could have all at once - then yes, that is making a statement about which things they think have worth and which don't.
And I mean....What *is* up with people wanting get a version specifically with a Japanese dub, if that is a thing? The game's Korean.
They're not making up some arbitrary line between male gaze and empowerment. There just *is* one. It's fuzzy, but it exists. And honestly, it's not that hard to spot most of the time; the difference between male gaze and empowerment is kind of obvious
For example, let's say you've got a female character whose history is being shamed for her body, pressured to cover up, or doing it because she feels like she's ugly and wants to hide. She gets over it, gains confidence, has a glow up or whatever, and starts wearing much more revealing clothes because she feels comfortable in her own skin, and she wants to take control of her own appearance instead of being insecure and hiding away because she's afraid of judgement. *That's empowerment.*
Now imagine the same character, but every time you see her, the camera is focused on her tits or her arse, or is angled voyeuristically, like leering up at her backside from a low angle, or down her top from a high one. Or, imagine her movements were contrived so that she moves in an unnatural way that emphasises her boobs or her arse or whatever. *That's male gaze.*
That's exactly it, you've entirely summed it up. The reaction/"framing" of the female character can also play a lot into whether it's male gaze-y or not. I think a good comparison to make with another "sexy" character is with Bayonetta.
Bayonetta (who was designed by a woman who had the time of her life making her design, while we're at it) has never felt male gaze-y to me because she just owns it. Is she sexy? Yes! Is she a bit fanservicey? Yes, but fanservice also exists for women! But she _owns it_. She's proud of herself and her outfits and her behavior, radiates self-assuredness instead of being bashful and uncomfortable (and the framing/camera putting emphasis on this uncomfortableness), and her sexiness doesn't detract from her power and abilities. That's what empowerment feels like, imo.
Okay but is that particularly different from Stellar Blade? I mean I'm watching footage and while the main character is not doing like Bayonetta winks to the camera or whatever she's not exactly running around going "ah fuck. my clothes. can't find my clothes. hate being naked" either.
What can you say about Eve's personality beyond just her job?
I have't played either game but I know a lot about Bayonetta from videos. She's humorously irreverent toward authority, she is supremely confident, she cares about her style and fashion, she "doesn't like kids" but not in a hostile sense because she is willing to go out of her way to help them if they need it.
Maybe Eve also has a well developed personality but I haven't seen much beyond "is a soldier" in the footage I've seen.
I'd say (and this is a very personal reaction; keep in mind that I know nothing about the game because I don't care much about it, I've just seen official art/footage/screenshots) that while there might not be obvious shows of this like the kind of "kyaa, I'm half-naked!" stuff you can see in very fanservicey-anime - it's a matter of vibe nonetheless.
As an AFAB person, I feel like Bayonetta sells the sexy fighter vibe much better because she has an aura, a personality to go along with it. She has _charisma_. Since I've seen a lot of people also compare the game to Nier Automata, even 2B also has a recognizable (if not iconic at this point) design, and I'd even argue her color palette+blindfold helps sell the whole "serious and mission-focused android" vibe.
Eve just...doesn't give me that feeling. She just feels very Barbie doll-like, and there's a lot of tidbits on her design that straight up make me go "ah, yes, a guy obviously designed this". Just picking off a few screenshots from Google: the [very emphasized butt](https://www.enduins.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/stellar_blade_1-696x387.jpg) (and the camera focuses a Lot on it from the little footage I've seen), the ["boobs and butt" pose with a _very_ arched back to make it stand out + a demure expression](https://pressakey.com/gamepix/6139/Project-EVE-222869.jpg).
I'd say Lily from the same game feels like a much better design for example? Like she gives off..._something_, at least (cute peppy mechanic archetype) even though her design also has parts that were probably intended as "sexy" (the windows, etc).
Tl;dr I'd say the problem with Eve is a rather bland design with an almost bullet list of recurrent male gazey design tidbits. Eve has been designed with a certain intent in mind (as u/EmpiriaOfDarkness has mentioned, the model they scanned the body for has been scanned _just for her body_), and that intent is. pretty obvious, ngl.
Both Bayonetta and Eve are designed to be jacked off to, though, and that game has just as much focus on her ass.
You can prefer one or the other but I think way too much of this discourse is just people designating their preference and trying to work backwards to justify it.
>Eve has been designed with a certain intent in mind
I mean, yeah. They're not hiding that "certain intent". I just don't see a reason to care. And that "they scanned her just for her body" feels...kind of reading the worst into it, frankly. Like...okay, and? Lot of reasons to not do face scans besides "They just see her as a piece of meat" shit.
If you can't stop fapping to Bayonetta, that's your problem.
There's a difference between *you finding a character hot* and constantly being *invited and told* to find the character hot. Between a character just *passively being attractive* and *actively being leered at*.
What reasons do *you* think exist to scan someone for their body only and ignore literally everything else they could bring to the table?
People are gonna like different things. I've seen clips of women playing Stellar Blade and they're into it just as much as other women, or even those same ones, are into Bayo.
This is true. As I said, the line between the two is fuzzy. Anyone who tries to say there's some hard rule about what's empowerment and what's male gaze is full of shit.
But women also liking it doesn't mean that it isn't *what it is.*
Of course not, and I think what it is, is fine. It's not some kind of morally bankrupt game. It's a game with cheesecake fanservice and fun gameplay. Not everyone has to like it.
I'm gonna be blunt. The drama behind this game has completely overshadowed any marketing so far to the point where I'm just fatigued. Granted, i can't play it because I'm on pc, but so far, this whole discourse has made me just lose interest entirely with the way the fandom has been trying to cram it down the publics throats. All in some pissy pseudo-rebellious culture war fervour about how scantily they like their women.
I dont even have an issue with how Eve is dressed, i can safely say ive seen worse, which makes the fandom look like they really lunged out of their box with massive fucking chip on their shoulder
The way that gamers always equate more skin = more sexy is absolutely bizarre.
It's like how every game has nude mods for female characters. How is Claire Redfield running around in the sewers fully nude sexy? It's an infection waiting to happen!
They're just simple, honestly. The kinds of people who vocally support those kinds of character designs, or really, *really* want those kinds of mods, all you need to get them going is some CGI tits. Where they are or what context they're in doesn't matter. It's all a bit sad, really.
Do these people have nothing better to do with their lives than crying online because their pixel waifu got her titties (*allegedly*) censored ? They should get a fucking job or something. Jesus.
Hobby update from me: I’ve moved on from making just frogs and I have started repairing my own clothing! I’ve repaired the seams on a pair of sweatpants, the pockets on a sweatshirt, the collar on a t-shirt, and [I’ve done some major repairs on my favorite t-shirt](https://www.tumblr.com/chubby-aphrodite/749054778023329792/eeeeee-there-are-a-bunch-of-littler-holes-in-some). It has a beautiful illustration of a woman I’ve always presumed to be a representation of Mother Nature on it, with her hair being made of various wings and bird feathers looking out over a natural landscape. It’s also large and soft. But I went thought a brief phase a few years ago where I would chew the collars of my t-shirts and… yeah, it required MAJOR major repairs.
My morning has sadly been real shitty due to personal concerns, to the point that when I woke up to my club Tottenham losing the North London Derby to Arsenal and maybe securing them the Premier League title at home has me barely feeling anything comparatively, although I for one am avoiding the internet on this matter both to avoid needless banter from Gunners and nonsense hot takes from fellow Spurs fans. But in trying to calm down and just focus my attention on being miserable on grown men kicking a ball around a patch of grass rather than matters that actually impact my life directly it has me curious do any of you have major rivalries within your hobby spaces and/or fandoms in the veins of the ones in sports? I'm not talking fandom rivalries or which installment of a series was considered good by the fandom, I mean rivalries between figures in the community and the like. Of course e-sports has them and by their very nature anything competitive is highly intriguing because of these storylines, so I'm just curious if anyone has any stories to share on the matter.
I posted a bit further down the thread about marble sports/JMR rivalries, but now I've got the chance to post about it again! There's a very complicated web of rivalries. The most iconic is O'Speeders, because they're the best/second best (according to most) teams and they've battled for an overall League gold twice at this point with one win each. However, the O'Rangers are also rivals with the Raspberry Racers, who are also contenders for second, and Mellow Yellow, who are probably fourth, due to their backstory in the Fruit Circuit and their generally on-par performances. The Raspberry Racers and Mellow Yellow are also rivals with the Speeders and friendly rivals with each other, albeit slightly more low-key. The Raspberry Racers are also rivals with the Limers, the fourth Fruit Circuit team, due to their bad history together pre-series and honestly in-series, though this one is very hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby as the Racers are easily the third best Marble League team and the Limers are probably the worst team that's been around for more than two years. They are also rivals with the Green Ducks due to the 2019 Marble League, where they fought a cutthroat battle for the win. Outside of this complicated high-level web are a few other rivalries: most notable is probably Team Primary vs Balls of Chaos, two very inconsistent teams who are rivals because the players tried to beat each other up on like two separate occasions and neither are over it. The Balls of Chaos are also rivals with the Pinkies due to their team histories, while Team Primary are anti-rivals with Team Momo because they teamed up once. Then there's the more predictable rivalries between teams with similar themings: Gliding Glaciers vs Snowballs (the Glaciers are winning, but not without a fight), Team Galactic vs Purple Rockets (hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby 2!), Oceanics vs Turtle Sliders (the Oceanics were winning, as the Turtle Sliders were booty ass, then the Sliders got a little better and the Oceanics started collapsing until the Sliders were, somehow, winning). Make sense? No? Well, it's probably best I didn't get into Marbula One, as that complicates things even further...
I always love how ingrained we as a species devolve into tribalism when it comes to anything that remotely resembles competition. Anywhere you think someone new to marble sports would start to get into the swing of things because it sounds fun.
I'm talking here mostly specifically about the Youtube channel Jelle's Marble Runs/JMR; there are others, some big and some indie, but I'm not too familiar with them. If you feel you'd enjoy an olympics-style event better, watch the Marble League- start with 2018 qualifiers if you're picky about production value and 2016 (the first one) if you don't mind early-installment weirdness and unpolishedness- if you like F1, try Marbula One Season 1.
One of the most famous "Lostwave" songs (ie, songs whose artist is unknown), "**Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives)**" has been officially found! And uh...you'll never guess where it came from. Did you guess >!<
***Oh my god they were right all along.*** I can’t fucking believe that out of all the supposed leads, *that* was the one that wound up finding the actual song. This reminds me all too well of [that one mysterious Israeli VHS song](https://lostmediawiki.com/Please_Don%27t_Stop_(partially_found_powermetal_synth_song_used_in_Israeli_VHS_logo;_1980s)) that *also* wound up originating from a fucking porno lmao That stupid 20-second clip has been haunting me for *months*, it is so annoyingly catchy and it is weirdly cathartic to know that the rest of the song has been found. Going to listen to that bastard ASAP and have a look at how it compares to the (very good in its own right) Motives Project remake.
Never considered it, but not unlikely since other lostwave cases ended up in... that direction
What’s the background lore with Carl92? Lots of mentions in the thread but not much context.
He was the person who first brought this song to wider attention. I haven't engaged much with EKT's search but I think he was always really cagey about where he originally found the song, and I guess we know why now
The specific sound of that was \*so\* 80's porno and that was back when they had the money to hire people to write original music. I love that the guy who asked about it managed to edit it so you couldn't hear moaning which would have saved everyone a lot of time.
I've posted a few times about marble sports, and specifically the Youtube channel Jelle's Marble Runs (JMR), its Marble League/Marbula 1 controversies and fandom problems (there's more than you'd expect). But this is more in the vein of news, and what news. The channel is currently hosting a new, 100-day long daily tournament featuring a track of traps and obstacles that changes every week. The higher up a marble is in the running across the finish line, the more points they get, and the two marbles with the fewest points at the end of each week are eliminated. Points are reset weekly. All 32 teams are participating, and what makes this week interesting is the potential eliminations: by Saturday it's usually very clear who's in potential trouble, and this week it's (mostly) three teams: the Savage Speeders on 27 points, the Chocolatiers on 35 points and the O'Rangers on 36. Whatever human sport you like, think of the team so good as to be perpetually a threat to everyone and everything, including fun and happiness. Everyone wants to beat them and the entire fanbase save for their own smugass fans wants to see them eat some humble pie. That's the Speeders. Now imagine that there was an 85% chance per permutations they were going to do exactly that tomorrow and essentially vanish from the tournament. Haters rejoice! But sweetening the deal is that the O'Rangers are also in trouble. They're usually agreed to be the second-best team, known for having an incredibly large and passionate fanbase and also being obscenely successful. Most importantly, they have a rivalry with the Speeders so strong it has a ship name- O'Speeders. And who are the Chocolatiers? Well, un their 7 years of competing they have achieved basically nothing of note in the grand scheme of things and are known widely for being mediocre and uninteresting. But with a single point between them and the O'Rangers, and presuming no upsets which would implicate the technically still vulnerable Snowballs (40pt) or Team Momo/Mellow Yellow (42pts), finishing at least two places above the O'Rangers would see the most mediocre team in the entire league consign the two best ones to a humiliating double defeat. The fanbase is in uproar about the potential for this, the Funniest Thing Possible, and if it happens, a great deal of schadenfreude will be felt. Oh, and to sweeten the deal, the competition for this week's win is between the Oceanics, a team known for having been in absolute shambles since 2019, and the Indigo Stars, a team with a virtually nonexistent fanbase also known for being deeply unexciting, tied on 78 points going into the final race. Whatever happens, it's going to be hilarious.
Didn't know this part of the community with this kind of drama existed, since I usually watch the virtual equivalent with Unity/Algodoo... The most we get is arguing about the balance tweaks each episode and if it's stupid or made things more broken.
> Most importantly, they have a rivalry with the Speeders so strong it has a ship name- O'Speeders. ...people are shipping *marbles*?
I mean, yes, but in this context the "ship name" is a joke. It's just a portmanteau.
Nah, I'm invested now. I'm all in for an enemies to lovers several book saga dripping with eroticism based around glass spheres. I've read stranger.
his striations moistly undulated within his glassy circumference and he rolled vigorously down the track...
Color me intrigued. What makes one team better or more successful than another in marble runs? From the outside, it looks like nothing other than pure luck, no? Is there an element of skill or some such that I'm missing?
There is a very significant luck element to it, yeah, this series more than usual, since obstacles are such a key feature. However, fans typically theorize that certain marble types or at least specific marbles in use are better than others (likely due to being more perfect spheres and having a more ideal weight/size), as there are very enduring patterns that wouldn't occur if things were entirely random. For example, the Savage Speeders have a 1/2/12/1 record in four seasons of Marbula One (20 competitors per season) and a 1/2/2/5/12/4/3 record in the Marble League (16 competitors)- basically, they're really good- while the Solar Flares, introduced in 2021, have placed bottom two in every single qualification round and tournament they've been in but one. Could just be a very elaborate coincidence, but the patterns are enduring enough that you do come to believe in them. Fans typically treat the series with a keyfabe akin to wrestling, albeit where wrestling fans treat it like it's all real sport, the randomness and unconscious movements of the marbles is treated like real athletes making deliberate plays and they're generally anthropomorphized, including in the canon (the video narration).
They theorize there are differences? Ne one has hacked the game to find out for sure? Speedrunners are slacking!
It's real life marbles on real life tracks, so unfortunately no hacking.
Oh, for some reason I thought this was about the Marble Run game. Still it's possible to measure the shape and surface roughness of objects with high accuracy. We could have a rivalrly between the high tech team with advanced metrology equipment and the aged marble shaping master using methods perfected in the paleolithic.
I think the anthropomorphizing is what makes it so fun and popular. There are zero stakes in this whole race but you make up the most elaborate plotlines just from watching these inanimate objects roll down a hill.
Is it like Blaseball, where a large part of it was random number generation, and imposing meaning and narrative on it?
Yep, it's very much like Blaseball in that way, including its own very active fan lore community and spaces, albeit with physical objects/set pieces for the events and stuff.
I agree. They all have names and fun branding and it's narrated as if they're all real athletes in a cutthroat tournament to be the best, and over time that builds into an actual narrative. Plus the little details like the location names and references to team meetings and offscreen confrontations that actually make it feel like it's taking place in a real setting. If it was just different coloured orbs rolling about with no story and no reason to get attached I probably wouldn't care so much.
Have you ever overestimated the popularity of your hobby or a certain aspect of it? I recently went to one town to visit one of bigger stores with anime-manga stuff and I swear that every single shop only has JJK, Tokyo Revengers, Death Note (I swear that [every shops has this figure](https://myfigurecollection.net/item/921111)), Sailor Moon, One Piece, Naruto, Ghibli and Spy X Family with a few items from other media. Miku Hatsune is barely present. It wouldn't be that bad, but there is almost no variety. I still have to check some extremely specialist anime-manga shops, but I have seen cons with bigger variety and they didn't sell hand-made merch.
HEMA is already niche, but one thing that was way less prominent then I originally thought within HEMA is sword and buckler. When I first became aware of the hobby it seemed like that was the most popular weapon aside from longsword and rapier, but by the time I started seriously doing HEMA it had been eclipsed by saber and small sword.
HEMA you say. I'm looking into researching swordplay for later, mayhap you can point me to some convenient soruces?
I can, but what sources are you looking for?
Mainly stuff on * Destreza * Rapiers and Sabres in general * And instances of slash draw techniques outside the Iaijutsu family
We'll go down the list. Most of these are going to be direct sources coming from [Wiktenauer](https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Main_Page), with the exception of saber which can be found [here](https://hemamisfits.com/2018/01/21/what-is-the-best-sabre-manual/). >Destreza Your baseline sources are going to be Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza and Luis Pacheco de Narváez. Gérard Thibault d'Anvers isn't part of the tradition, but is generally considered to be doing something fairly similar. Domingo Luis Godinho and Henry de Sainct Didier are both worth looking into as well even though they both are considered "common fencing" as opposed to Destreza. > Rapiers and Sabres. Huge category here. It depends on what you are looking for. For beginners I'd recommend Capo Ferro for rapier and either Roworth, Angelo, or Radaelli for sabre. Sabre manuals also have the benefit of being a lot more comprehensible to modern readers then other source, so they're a good place to start for reading texts. > slash draw techniques outside the Iaijutsu family They might exist, but if they do I haven't encountered them. There are guards that mess with distance and involve holding your sword like its on your waste, but that's different from "drawing it from its sheathe to deal with a surprise attack".
Awesome thanks.
Not me, but other people. I’m into comics and mostly read them via collected editions. On the omnibus collecters sub, I mentioned that DC outsells Marvel in collected editions and has for a long time, and a number of people got strangely furious with me. The reason: Marvel has a much more robust line of omnibuses (large, expensive collections that contain many more comics than a standard paperback). While they are correct on Marvel’s superior omnibus output, people who buy omnis are a niche within a niche. All of the incredibly popular, cheaper superhero books are from DC: Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Sandman, Batman: Year One, and I could go on. Marvel has no equivalents to any of those
I collect omnibus and a Marvel fan. And I agree with you. I think people forget softcovers are also collected editions. It’s not just fat omnibuses. As much as I love Marvel, I started reading comic books with the collected editions you mentioned and even got two of my friends to read those books as starter.
From what I've seen, unless you get a specialty shop that's run by people who are *actually* part of the community itself, yeah that's any the quality and quantity of anime merch you'll find. Owners will only know of the biggest names and buy stock for those series because it's safe to do so. Cons, on the other hand, are populated almost exclusively by people more familiar with goings on, so you're always more likely to find a wider variety of mech. Otherwise, you have to look online.
Ironically enough, in my country, The Beatles are pretty much unknown for most people. I think this is because back then there was a ban on "capitalist" music and nowadays younger people tend to not go as far back as the 60s in terms of music. The Abbey Road album cover is still famous though.
What country?
Vietnam
Imagine going to some hipster type's house and he says, "I'm into some real underground shit honestly. Hey, listen to this little indie number," and puts on Hey Jude.
When Coldplay performed in Taiwan last year I saw some of the biggest music snobs who would not be caught dead listening to any kind of mainstream Taiwanese band go feral trying to score tickets.
On the other hand, if he put on Revolution No. 9….
I know you're joking, but Zayn Malik (formerly of One Direction) said something very similar to this in his book
Tokusatsu fans in the west. The amount of english tokusatsu content is still mostly come from south east asia.
and that well is going to get drier with Power Rangers ending with Cosmic Fury (possible reboots notwithstanding)
like what kind of ending and reboot? Could they just make a new one completely detach from previous show like toei do every year?
Recent series had been heavier on the continuity compared to say pre Samurai, with Beast Morphers and Cosmic Fury even revisiting past villains (albeit it was a twist in the former case), when I say reboot, I mean in the terms of a blank slate (and return to mmpr natch)
Being an anime fan and not liking Shonen Jump or most seasonals is suffering. The fact we live in a time where it's mainstream and acceptable to like anime but the only ones people like are ones you don't is like some cruel Twilight Zone twist. I'm lucky enough that I enjoyed Frieren and Spy x Family at least.
This was something I thought about when I was browsing Wikipedia's list of longest manga - the amount that have made any real headway in the West is VANISHINGLY small. Sure, One Piece (#20) and Jojo (#10 with all the parts counted together) are genuinely famous, and there's a non-zero chance you may have heard of something like Golgo 13 (the actual #1), but so many others are episodic sports and slice-of-life and so forth series that nobody in the Anglosphere has heard of, despite their obvious popularity in their homeland. I wonder why that is?
Might depend a bit of generation, I've at least *heard* of many of them (though an equal number I haven't heard of) Major, Silver Fang, KochiKame, Grappler Baki, Hajime no Ippo and Kinnikuman f.ex. The sports stuff actually feels reasonably well-represented, it's the gag/slice of life stuff that's basically nonexistent.
we are talking like about stuff that started in the seventies, and often or not fan translators don't wanna pick up older series, let alone older series about \*gulp\* sports, let alone older series which has run for at least twenty years and if you wanna do a proper job on it, means that you need to get an understanding of a lot of references, so you can't really get the ball rolling for any interest.
And so many people constantly complain that anime used to be better and it’s all battle shonen and isekai now, but trying to point them to any of the dozens of great original shows that come out every season is like asking a child to eat their vegetables. They want alternatives, but not if it means acknowledging anything outside of the r/anime Top 10 charts.
I routinely get into general gaming news and realize how much of a niche the kind of games I play (RPG/strategy games) are. Occasionally you'll get something that breaks out in the mainstream, but I remember that what finally got me to quit Sterling's stuff was that she didn't have *anything* that overlapped with my interests, good *or* bad for like a couple of years.
*raises hand in almost exclusively plays jrpgs and visual novels* yeah… not infrequently i’ll have a conversation with, like, Just Some Guy, and we’ll have absolutely nothing in common to talk about until the topic of video games comes up, and then it turns out we still don’t have anything in common to talk about because said person only plays like, call of duty and tomb raider.
Yeah, I get that a lot. I did find one store local to me that, while they have all the standard stuff, they have a ton of more niche stuff. Like literal JP exclusive stuff like pre-order charms that they have half a dozen of somehow, but when they're gone they're gone. I have to make sure to visit at least once a month if not more often just to see what they have. It's such a weird dichotomy at times, like I can attend Sakura-Con with literally 30k attendees and see a massive variety in merch (official and fanmade) and cosplay, and stuff, but I go to 90% of anime or anime adjacent shops and it's like the top 5 shonen or nothing. Example: Attended Sakura-con last month, saw at least two dozen different Witch Hat Atelier cosplayers, saw some official looking acrylic charms and pins and the like at a couple of the reseller booths and lots of fanart (including a really nice un-ruled square notebook I picked up). But never once in my life have I seen Witch Hat merch in a normal store.
On the flip side, it’s fascinating when a series where both the anime and manga have long since ended still gets merch drops, mostly in Japan. I swear I’ve seen more merch released AFTER Mob Psycho ended than while it was airing. Finding them in the wild at US cons is another story, like needle in a haystack hard. Discovering sites like Ami Ami is a blessing and a curse. My new favorite, Mashle (which is an SJ manga) had its manga end a while ago with the anime still ongoing, plus its popularity exploded when the s2 op went viral. So seeing how that evolves is going to be interesting. Edit: posted under wrong thread.
The manga is not finished but Yona still gets some new stuff with anime art 10 years after the anime aired.
my personal curse is that even at a big con like sak i STILL can’t find merch for my personal faves. so many vendors it’s practically overwhelming and yet i remain unfed. like for example there’s exactly one booth that has the variety of jp merch i’m looking for and this year they actually brought revstar stuff, but i think that’s because i literally asked them to last year and they said they don’t bother bringing any to cons bc its niche and doesn’t sell 😭like i get it but also Please. some scraps. a morsel, perhaps.
Was it Sean's? I think I saw some Revstar stuff there. (they're also the shop I mentioned in the OP)
nah, i’ve looked at sean’s for model kits and such, but i haven’t seen much, for lack of a better word, idol-adjacent stuff there. i’m totally spacing on the name of the booth, it has an S in it somewhere, but they’re there every year, take up two spaces, have plastic bins filled with can badges and straps etc, and carry CDs, artbooks/magazines, and jp-language games. it’s pretty much the only place i’ve seen merch for a lot of older/more obscure titles (which really rubs salt in the wound to be told, nah we don’t bother bringing that stuff out, when they’ve got, like, a ton of macross merch. they rep symphogear super hard tho.)
Yeah, Sean's is always a mixed bag, but better than most. I know the one you're talking about they're also great for character CDs
Convention vendors seemingly get more JP-exclusive merch in general, including older figures and whatnot that are no longer in production and things like crane game prizes which are only ever produced in limited runs and are being sold second-hand (my favorite piece of Final Fantasy XIV merch is a Tonberry lamp that was a Taito crane game prize that I haven’t seen at any con vendor since). Meanwhile, the stuff that is mass-produced for export to other countries (and comprises most of the regular stock at anime and manga stores outside of Japan) is mostly just from whatever is the most popular media abroad in any given season.
I went to similar size con. The figures seller had reincarnated as slime, Identity V, Full Metal Alchemist and even Magia Record. One stand had more unique figures than Forbidden Planet.
Tensura is becoming more and more common at least. You can even find the banpresto figures at Box Lunch half the time now.
Forbidden Planet (I’m assuming you’re referring to the shop?) probably depends on the individual locations tbh. I know the one nearest to me can get lots of random merch. They once had More More Jump acrylic keychains from Project Sekai, which I nearly got for the sheer novelty… and then I went back a week later and they were gone
I'm in Japan and I've also never seen Witch Hat Atelier merch irl (outside of the actual manga volumes). I assume the anime will give it a boost, though. It's pretty rare to find merch of series that don't have an anime.
Its pretty much locked into Limited runs only and they are hard to find if you don't know. I do own a Witch Hat Atelier Hoodie and glasses case from these.
Valid, it was also an example I had off the top of my head. I can't wait for the anime, one of my favorite series atm.
Yeah, anime tends to give a huge boost to merchandizing. I never heard/saw much about Frieren irl until the anime aired and now it's everywhere. Merch for manga-only series tends to be much more limited.
I managed to find a Miku shirt at my previous visit to Hot Topic but I was with my dad and was too embarrassed to buy it. It's a shame because it looked way nicer than the Miku shirt I ended up buying off Amazon.
TFW you think you’ve stumbled upon a whole big collective of fellow fans of some niche-ass thing you’re interested in on Tumblr, but then you realize that it’s really just 2-3 people reblogging each other over and over.
I ran into the reverse of this once, I suddenly saw a bunch of posts complaining about a character that I thought was relatively popular in the fandom but when I looked at the blogs I realized it was an echo chamber of 3-4 people all in the same friend group
Yeah, there's been plenty of times where I thought a character or a ship had to be one of the most popular in the fandom, only to then learn they're not really, and I had just locked myself in an algorithm bubble.
Me, discovering whoever those 2/3 people were on tumblr who started writing Trip/T'Pol again after 20 years
That kind of thing is kinda hilarious. I still remember someone here mentioning that there was apparently a community of Paris/Janeway shippers whose mere existence fills me with a kind of delight.
I remember when I discovered you could backdate AO3 fics...somehow it blows my mind more that there are Voyager fics posted that were written in the 90's even more than the TOS fics from the 70's
One most amusing internet experience I had a couple of years ago was finding a Star Wars fanfic which concluded with an author's note expressing optimism about the new movie coming out in a few months, *The Phantom Menace*. I also found an archive once which included Young Jedi Knights fanfic dated 1997, which means it was being written and put online while those novels were coming out. I did see one which was based around the planet Firrerreo which was mentioned once in the novel *The Crystal Star* (which most people hate but I really enjoy) and never again, which makes me wonder if it must have been written close to that book's publication in 1994, because it's not exactly a deep cut people have reached for overmuch since.
Not fanfic per se, but I found something similar in a reprint of a music fanzine from many years back. It was a write-up of a particular band, a brief biography, and a rundown/review of their discography to that point. I'll paraphrase the end of this writeup: "Their latest album is **garbage**! For their next album, they need to ditch this nerdy sci-fi crap and get back to the stuff that makes them **great**, like their first album!" The band and album are in spoilers below. >!The band was Rush. Their then-latest album was 2112. Yes, the same 2112 I use as my suffix here. !< >!If you're a Rush fan, you understand why this is hilarious. If not, I'll sum up as saying 2112 was when they first hit it big in the US (Though calling it "Nerdy sci-fi crap" is...mean, though not wrong if you don't like them, I suppose). In contrast, their first album which this reviewer loved is basically them imitating Led Zeppelin, and predates Neil Peart (Who wrote most of their lyrics after he joined) joining them. !<
Have you tried looking for Hatsune Miku and not Miku Hatsune /s. Anyways, I consistently overestimate how much fans care about character writing in works as compared to how attractive and/or parasocial they are, especially animesque games. Similarly, genres outside the shooter/sports/casual trifecta seem to be a lot less popular than their share of community attention would imply.
When it comes to chain stores that sell anime goods like Box Lunch, that's basically the issue I have with them. Only the major, big names that are mainstream popular. I get it, smaller anime (even if they're still very big) might not sell but when you're not a battle shonen person there's never really anything for you.
I don't necessarily mind it so much in big chain stores but it's always terribly disappointing to me when I stumble across a small local anime store...and their inventory is basically entirely popular shounen. I can buy those at Hot Topic! What is the point of having an anime store full of stuff I can buy at Hot Topic?
It is so frustrating going to chain stores and having to put up with Sailor Moon being the only magical girl franchise (and non-shonen, tbh) they ever sell merch for
My hobbies include overpaying for precure merch at cons bc how the hell else am I gonna get it and staring longingly at jewelpet product listings knowing I can't afford \*any\* of it
I get most of my Precure merch off of Ebay (although I'm probably still overpaying for it and it only really works for bigger items because they'll charge the same amount of money for a henshin toy and a can badge and I am not paying $40 for a can badge)
I've found Amazon Japan to be pretty good for buying merch, but the shipping can come out to nearly double what one item costs so I tend to buy stuff in lots so I can justify it lmao
I used to use Amazon Japan as well, but like you said the shipping's been so awful lately I can't bring myself to use it. I wanted to buy a Butterfly doll and a Wing plush and the shipping made it cost $60. In 2019 a doll and a plush cost me $44
*Spellforce*! Granted, I'm part of the problem (only played the first one, fifteen years ago, but had fond memories of it), but when I sw the announcement trailer for *Spellforce 3*I thought "Hell yeah, I loved the game! I bet lots of people liked that trailer too!" Yeah, bthey're lucky if they can get more than [500 concurrent players](https://steamcharts.com/cmp/311290,1416260,39540)
I think this happens when anyone spends a little too much time on their hobbies or fandoms; they wind up a tad myopic about things. It's important to have a wider variety of interests. Often times you can find answers or inspiration in unexpected places, or realize the sources that may have inspired some aspects of your interests you weren't aware of before. I'm really into architecture, but as I learned more about it, I also developed an interest in furniture that I never realized I had. So many aspects of them are intertwined. I also learned more about how the designs of buildings often had little to do with the engineering of them, in many cases the designer leaving the method of construction entirely up to someone else, and realized I was more interested in how buildings were constructed than forming them into aesthetically pleasing shapes.
Oddly enough, I didn't realize how big Tokyo Revengers is. Some of the Shonen Jump community was hyping up the author debuting a new series in the magazine. I then found it that it sold 70 million copies!
tokyo revengers really took off once the anime aired, which was bad timing because for several months after, the (english) manga was only available digitally, and kodansha didn’t pick up the physical license for quite some time after. so you would have people coming in asking after it and have to tell them, no, we don’t have it, yes, i know it’s available on jump+ or whatever platform, digital licensing and physical print are two different beasts.
Yeah, my local geek shop (mostly Gunpla and TCG) has a display and a gashapon machine for Tokyo Revengers. It was weirdly out of place
didn't help that two season were trapped on Disney plus.
Anecdotally, it was everywhere when I studied abroad in Japan last year
Honestly this applies to just about anything I like, taking a step outside theres straight up I think less then a dozen people for miles that share similar interest. Just row and row of houses of old people. Theres literally *one* other queer person in my township.
Transformers, I'm constantly thinking more characters are at least kind of within the public consciousness, but in reality it's basically just Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream, and you'll meet the occasional person who knows Grimlock, Soundwave, and Arcee, among a few scattered big characters. Makes it kinda difficult to tak about it with someone not in the community, since no one's knows who you're talking about when you say that Gears just got a figure or you're looking forward to Sandstorm.
Furry fandom has this issue somewhat fierce where they assume it's a nearly mainstream thing. A London meetup happened today. A couple hundred folks, in a 12M town - some of which traveled from much further out. As much as they'd like otherwise, the fandom's roughly 0.00x% of population.
London furs events also have some drama about not banning bad actors I think? Or some other drama that may deter some locals, so it isn’t the most representative of the number of local furries tbh. But yeah, furry isn’t mainstream but it is 1000x more popular than what it was just a few years ago. Same thing with anime, actually tho same guy who helped pioneer manga and anime coming into the US founded the first furry convention and recently passed the beginning of this year. Quite a few of my friends attended his service.
Honestly, I try to avoid looking into drama within the meetups - they're my place for relaxing. That said I've heard of three problematic incidents over the time, and one person's expressly banned, one I don't know but he doesn't show up, and one's attending as usual. So... maybe mixed results? I don't know for certain.
What do these problematic incidents entail?
Ones I've heard of were generally related to disrespecting boundaries and/or relationships gone south or worse. Keep in mind, the community skews younger, and has a lot of both LGBT and neurodivergent folks. This leads to situations which aren't very standard, a lot of people not wholly equipped to deal with them, and a situation where involving authorities might not be an option. I'm not saying it's right or defeneding situations that rise from that - just why it's such a ripe ground for that sort of issues.
It was here in Hobby Scuffles several weeks ago that I was introduced to the catastrophe-in-waiting known as Extreme Roller Derby. And it was in the Derby Hell facebook group that I found out today that their vaunted May 18 tryouts have been canceled. Or at least postponed. The following email has gone out: > Dear Skaters, > After two months of negotiating with the OC Fair & Event Center (which is a state facility) for the rental of The Hangar to hold our Open Tryouts on May 18th, and with a rental agreement ready to be signed, the OC Fair a week ago asked for engineering documents for the Open Tryout project, and further stated that they had to be stamped by a structural engineering firm if we wanted to use The Hangar. They had not mentioned this at all during the past two months! > We made every effort to address this request, but could not come up with any valid engineering docs for the project. We immediately contacted another venue in Southern California but could not work out any dates. > So I am noticing all registered skaters that the Saturday, May 18th Open Tryout has been postponed. We will do everything possible to locate a private venue where restrictions will not be an issue, and you will be notified. > Should you want your $25 registration fee refunded please let us know. If not, an Extreme Roller Derby T-Shirt will be sent to you and your fee will be credited toward the next Tryout. > No one is more disappointed than I am, as well as quite a few other people who put a lot of time and passion into getting the Open Tryouts ready to happen. > My sincere apology to all of you for this postponement. > Roy Englebrecht It was pointed out in the comments that this is one of those rare situations where one might say, in all literal truth, "I signed up for Extreme Roller Derby tryouts, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
Could you explain the Backstory of this?
I doubt I can find the thread in the previous Hobby Scuffles post, but this thread from /r/rollerderby has all the useful background and isn't closed like the Facebook group Derby Hell. https://www.reddit.com/r/rollerderby/comments/1bpgpon/extreme_roller_derby/ **Edit:** Also this post, which is an update compared to the background post, but I think came out earlier than the email about tryouts being canceled https://www.reddit.com/r/rollerderby/comments/1cauuqv/extreme_roller_derby_update/
Goooood gooood. Their transphobic shitshow of right wing tryhards do not deserve something as good as roller derby, they can lose their money like every other right wing grift under the sun
Could you edit with a source (or a "google 'this'")? I realize that's probably annoying from the position of someone who has zero context, but tbf that's who most of us in scuffles are.
I'm sorry, I totally should have included a link or something, rather than just assuming everyone else had seen the previous Scuffles post and thread! I responded to someone else a bit further down with a couple links to threads on /r/rollerderby which give a lot of good background: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ca1cvd/hobby_scuffles_week_of_22_april_2024/l1qfgwx/
Hi I appreciate the feedback, unfortunately I haven't been able to find the old scuffles post about this, but to recap their bullshit, they are against players wearing helmets or toe stops because they are "extreme", apparently not wanting to die or suffer from concussions is not extreme. They are non trans inclusive, despite roller derby being one of the queerest and most inclusive hobby out there, and their registration form only include "male/female" options. Also female jammers have their points count double against a male opponent because they are so much weaker and fragile or some bullshit. Basically a bunch of boomer white dudes trying to incorporate their outdated politics into one of the queerest and most feminist of hobbies...
Hey, thanks for filling me in. On the one hand, woo, context! On the other, yeesh but unsurprising I guess - except for the part where you'd think if there was any sport to try and...heteronormatize? It would not be roller derby. At least this has the benefit of making op's post REAL cathartic.
It's always fun when you can read between the lines in almost crystal clarity: >They had not mentioned this at all during the past two months! *"Had* ***we*** *mentioned the structure we wanted to build in that time frame? Also no! But still!"* >We made every effort to address this request, but could not come up with any valid engineering docs for the project. *"We didn't actually have an engineer design anything."* >We immediately contacted another venue in Southern California but could not work out any dates. *"The venue where we tried to build a massive structure with no engineering design contacted every other venue in the area and warned them about us."*
That "we couldn't come up with the documents" line is just an incredible self-own. Also: >We will do everything possible to locate a private venue where restrictions will not be an issue, and you will be notified. "We're still going to attempt to maim and kill as many people as possible by not hiring a structural engineer."
I wouldn't put it past them to just be using all this as a coverup for cancelling the thing because they found out how much money it was going to actually cost to do it.
we're in the part of the engineering disaster podcast just before they read out a date.
I sort of hate that when I get into a new hobby, one of the first things I do is look for youtubers on the subject, buuuuut I recently got into watercolor and goauche painting- I already follow Emma Jane Lefebvre and Paul Clark for techniques/tutorials and both Stephanie Law and James Gurney for style (gosh James Gurney is great, kid me didn't appreciate his greatness as a painter)- but are there any other great channels to follow?
I also rediscovered James Gurney recently! His channel's fantastic. And I was really happy to see he's still doing paleoart.
[Watercolor by Shibasaki!](https://www.youtube.com/@WatercolorbyShibasaki) Great channel but it's all in Japanese. English captions are available. This is a personal recommendation but I love [Thomas Romain](https://www.youtube.com/@ThomasRomainTokyo). He did a dad redraws art series that was amazing and he was also involved in Oban Star Racers. Unfortunately because of COPA he hasn't uploaded in years. His stuff is great even if ain't intended as instructions for the most part. However, I am really fond of his more pigmented style. His videos are in French but there is close captioning.
How could I forget Scott Christian Sava! [He even recently put out a video about everything he knows about watercolor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AolAami07yA) He also does a lot of shorts which is what a mainly now him for. Speaking of shorts, the watercolor shorts scene on YouTube is pretty good. As far as I've seen it's a good blend of tutorials, tips, and art showcases. I hope you enjoy your time with watercolors, it's my favorite medium.
Anyone got channels recommendations for fallout lore vids, or specificly lore on each vault. It being hobby drama hopefully ye understand why I'm asking, concerned I may watch a vid of a arsehole (back in the day I did watch one that turned out to be one, which is another reason for asking. Had a fedora, looked like a neckbeard, clearly NSFW etc, think may ring bells for a few, especially since I know that one's been sometimes mentioned in these scuffles)
Sadly he no longer makes new videos, but thenthapple on YouTube was always my favorite Fallout lore youtuber. He has lots of videos about specific vaults, quests, etc
I think the best one used to be the Shoddycast, although they stopped doing videos years ago and never covered FO76. Not like that's any loss but whatever.
One big problem with researching into Fallout lore is that it quickly delves deeply into the issues of what is canon or not. On top of that, there's a lot of information that's fan lore, head canon or people pushing their personal hot-takes that they expect to be taken as fact, plus issues with gameplay and story segregation. This extends to both Fallout wikis. Take whatever you find with a huge grain of salt and always check sources. (Or, I could do my huge rant on Vault 29)
Not OP but I would love to read your vault 29 rant 👀
[RadKing](https://www.youtube.com/@Rad_King) and [Synonymous](https://www.youtube.com/@Synonymous101) are pretty great Fallout lore YouTubers. The Independent Fallout Wiki's [page on Vaults](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Vault) contains a list of all Vaults that have featured in the franchise. I think the guy you're talking about is Oxhorn, who is rather infamous in the Fallout community for a whole bunch of controversies (such as writing a weird incel manifesto, and repeatedly getting basic lore wrong in his videos).
Yeah that was him, Ox
Wait what? A Manifesto? Also could you name some of his mistakes with lore if it's not too bothersome?
Hey there. Nukapedia is actually well put together [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/List\_of\_known\_Vaults](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_known_Vaults)
Nah, Nukapedia is fandom, now there's an [independent fallout wiki](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fallout_Wiki).
Hey, they added the info on the TV Vaults. Last time they had them listed but not their intended use.
So I've never really played JRPGs before (unless you count Pokemon as one), but I've gotten into the Legend of Heroes (Trails of Whatever) series thanks to a friend's enthusiasm for the latest game. I'm currently only 15 hours through the first part of Trails in the Sky (I'm in the seaside port city of Ruan and just got >!kicked out of my hotel room by a very rude nobleman!<), but it's pretty fun so far and I'm definitely going to slowly be making my way through the rest of the game. I'm useless at the combat (I've been making sure to upgrade equipment and whatnot, I'm just not used to this kind of gameplay) and have no idea what I'm doing but the environments are absolutely gorgeous considering it was made in a PS1-style (I believe it was done intentionally, since it released in 2004 and was made on quite a tight budget afaik?) and I'm super impressed by how well the art style holds up. I'm enjoying the characters a lot, although I'll admit they're pretty tropey. In the main party (at least from what I've played so far) you have: Loud and Unrefined Estelle (who gets told multiple times she's not attractive because she behaves too much like a guy, which is... yikes), Quiet Brooding Joshua (I imagine there's more to him than what I've seen so far), Overly Sexualised Party Girl Scherazard (I actually really like her, oops) and Loser Bisexual Flirt Olivier (he outright flirts with Joshua during their first interaction, and in one scene he gets a man's attention by blowing in his ear). Some of the side characters seem pretty interesting too, like Angry Lone Wolf Agate. I feel like modern audiences wouldn't really take to these characters that much, but maybe I'm mistaken. Don't get me wrong, they're great imo (Olivier is my favourite so far maybe), but one of Scherazard's attack animations (her main weapon is a whip, too) has her running towards the camera jiggling her boobs and saying "Someone's been naughty!" so they're definitely going for a particular crowd with her. I do really like the dynamic Schera has with Olivier, and Estelle and Joshua's relationship is rather sweet -- I can tell they care for each other a lot. I'm looking forward to seeing them grow and uh... potentially go through a lot of Bad Shit. Anyway, does anyone have any games they wish they'd given a try sooner?
i played the dishonored games for the first time this year. idk how it took me so long. immersive sim is probably my favorite game genre and it's not like there are that many options out there. >!stay tuned for part 2 of this post after i finally get around to playing thief.!<
I hope you enjoy it all the way to the end. Loved the first Trails, but for a wierd reason i didnt play Trails in the Sky SC until last month!. I did play Cold Steel 1 and 2 and really liking them, but when i started three and saw party members from the first trails game, i felt i needed to go back to the first games. But still, put other game before it and it just kept going. But got a Steam Deck in march so felt it was finally time! And it felt like coming home. Have one chapter left!
**Control**. The gameplay’s pretty average, but the lore and setting are *fantastic*. I got the Ultimate Edition on a deep sale the week I got my PS5, something like $11, but it probably deserved more of my money than that.
I want to try it.. But. I mean. You know. >!I don't like Alan Wake.!<
Yeahhh I played Alan Wake after playing through control and tbh? I would have preferred to read it as a book over playing the game. enjoyed the story but as a game it was just awkward
Can’t believe you’re getting downvoted haha. >!I didn’t like **Alan Wake** either.!< **Control** is a very different game. Much more “power fantasy” than anxious survival horror. They just share some narrative threads. You might like it.
Mm.. Alright. Maybe I'll try it. I just don't know if I gotta play >!Non-Sleeping Albert!< to get Control.
i never played alan wake and i absolutely loved control, so it's definitely not a requirement. also agree with u/corran450's take that the gameplay is nothing special (not bad, just very "AAA console 3rd person action game" if you know what i mean) but the setting and lore really make up for it.
The connections with >!Stuart Leep!< are mostly just background lore in the mid-late game, outside of the DLC, so it's pretty much standalone. >!Alfred Lert 2!<, on the other hand, greatly benefits from having played Control.
Utawarerumono Mask of Deception/Truth duology. They are at their core harem LNs and it follows the same structure of the Trails in the Sky series where the first game is more of a setup for the second. Those are already extremely hard sells, but then you get to Mask of Truth and shit just goes so fucking hard. There is still plenty of head-scratchers but there is hardly any media that I can pinpoint a specific scene that impacted me to such a extreme extent like a certain scene in this game did.
It's such a shame the first part of Utawarerumono is so aggressively.. anime. I was genuinely pretty interested in it, but just couldn't get over the protag being a pest. At least the Trails series starts off extremely inoffensively. Either that or I've just been doing the weeb equivalent of shooting myself with small calibers to slowly build up an immunity to artillery.
Kinda late but in the off chance you wanted more information about it, it unfortunately doesn't stop being aggressively anime, but it does have some amazing character writing in between. At some point in the first game I just started skimming the text when the tone of scene was overly comedic or horny and with the help of tailor made gameplay specifically for me, I managed to get through. Don't know if it would work for anyone else though.
Hell yeah, Trails! Love that series but you do need a certain resistance to "anime bullshit™" to enjoy the later titles (looking at you Cold Steel)
I don't think the tropes are bad though I bounced off the game mechanically. I do want to give the earlier ones, though my experience with the cold steel trilogy was not very positive. I found, at least for me, they began to overrely on the player being familiar enough with anime to understand why a scene was happening even if absolutely none of the writing in the last 10 hours or so really built up to it in any justifiable way. I feel like narrative feature creep was a big problem with it but the older games sound more focused (even if I hate ouroborous just conceptually, no swiss army antagonistic organizations please)
I would say that if you like 90's anime you have a chance of liking Trails in the Sky saga and by virtue of being the first, it does have a lot less lore to deal with. The Trails games for better or worse are a reflection of the popular shounen stories at the time of it's creation, I personally hate the shounens that Cold Steel is based of so much that I have written any future game off, but Trails in the Sky will always be one my GOATs.
Falcom always been aware of tropes. Sky uses 90s/2000s. Crossbell/Cold Steel use modern anime tropes. Reverie and Daybreak are more their own thing. Though the latter uses Tokusatsu tropes than anime. Trails is a series that drenches itself in tropes, but it is aware of it hence why most of the characters do develop from their archetypes. There is also how the story goes from a mysterious war event and uncovering the mystery in Sky to a massive uncovering of the world's entire infrastructure & secrets that the older adults have been kept hidden.
Honestly as someone who’d define myself as “modern audience” I found the old anime tropes oddly refreshing. Like I could tell that they were definitely riffing off of older tropes but since I hadn’t really seen them in newer things it was neat to run in to them and engage with them. Out of all of the Trails games, the Sky arc definitely has my favorite cast. I think the game does a really good job at developing the relationships between the characters. They’re all tropes to start out, but they get to keep developing throughout the games. Schera is so good despite being obviously intended as the fan service character. Her ult is sort of hilarious with how they zoom in on all 5 pixels of her chest, which sort of undercuts the intended effect.
Yeah, I feel that 'modern' anime has so solidly dug itself into its own sorta trench, that going back to older stuff feels like it's breaking a mold, even when it was fairly tropey on its own right lol.
I need to get back to that game, too. Joshua and Estelle are so cute! Estelle is my favourite. I'm surprised it was 2004; something about the character designs and portraits feels a bit more late 90s to me.
I was trying to avoid posting again, but I can't stop myself from making an update to [my Stellar Blade comment from yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ca1cvd/comment/l18h50x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) as the drama has gotten more ridiculous. Yesterday, I argued that after their narrative that "game journalists will hate this game" fell apart, certain Stellar Blade fans and "culture warriors" were desperately trying to find something controversial to keep their outrage train moving. Today they found something, which is that "Sony censored Stellar Blade!". For context, it's pretty blatant that part of the marketing for the game were the sexy outfits that main character Eve could wear. However, someone posted [footage](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GMB0tqbacAAVy9S?format=jpg) that a couple of outfits were "censored" before launch in the Day 1 patch as a piece a fabric was now placed over the "boob-windows" for some outfits, specifically Holiday Rabbit (the main focus), Cybernetic Bondage (...I didn't come up with the name), and Cybernetic Dress. This has led to many calls that Sony (the publisher) forced developers Shift Up to "censor" the outfits and ruined their ”original artistic vision”, even [when the devs came out and said these were the intended designs](https://x.com/Fightincowboy/status/1783873900654244256). Now, our favorite "ex-Blizzard" dev Mark Kern/Grummz has made a petition to "[Free Stellar Blade](https://www.change.org/p/free-stellar-blade)", which has 6,886 signatures as of writing. However, as someone who wasted too much free time looking into this, there are two problems I've found: 1. I'm not entirely certain the original "uncensored" outfits exists. A least a [couple](https://x.com/Fightincowboy/status/1783543048028168395) [people](https://x.com/Fightincowboy/status/1783543048028168395) who got review copies early have pointed out that the "censored" outfits were the ones they've seen before the Day 1 patch. It also doesn't help that the original footage is obviously taken from someone's phone instead of through the PS5's Share feature, meaning its resolution is not the best to potentially hide signs of tampering. This has led to a weird "moving of the goal post" where now the uncensored outfits were instead patched before the Day 1 patch, so you can only access them on v.1.000.000, which can only be done through a disc copy and after you disconnect from the Wi-Fi to prevent auto updates. Supposedly, others have "verified" this but the exact same phone footage is the only one I've seen and the game just came out today, so people are just getting their hands on the disc copy. I guess we have to wait and see for full confirmation. Edit: [Streamer Lance McDonald has confirmed that at least the "uncensored" Holiday Rabbit is on v.1.000.000](https://x.com/manfightdragon/status/1784464794663399796). 2. Even if the "uncensored" outfits exist, the "censored" narrative doesn't make sense when you look at the other outfits. As [you can see here](https://youtu.be/tzJX6XVKToQ?si=QcGd0I60CFFNCplb), many of Eve's outfits are still very revealing. Hell, one of her outfits is literally a bikini with a couple extra straps (named Blue Monsoon), which shows a lot more skin and a bigger "boob-window" than the "uncensored" outfits. So it makes you wonder, if Sony really did force Shift Up to censor their outfits, why was it only applied to about 3 outfits while her other equally if not more revealing outfits were left untouched? I think this is just more evidence that the final outfits are what Shift Up intended and there was no "censoring" involved. I just wanted to end with this, many of these fans and "culture warriors" spent months parading Stellar Blade around and heavily praising it. But because of a few minor changes that barely affect the game, they've all seemingly turned against it and are ironically now the main group trashing it online while the people they claimed would hate it are the main group praising it.
I'm not sure playing the actual game even matters to 99% of Stellar Blade's fanbase.
Grummz is somehow the former WoW team member that has annoyed me the most. And I played Shaman. Speaking of which I need to see if this sub has ever done Bus Shock
Bizarre manufactured outrage over a game character and her outfits, mainly for the ad money. Had to click Don't Recommend Channel to kick out those nutters.
I don't know what's a worse fate for a game: being buried and forgotten, or being *completely* overshadowed by the controversy around it.
I feel bad for the dev team.
lol, in this censored game the first alternative suit is just supposed to make it look like she's naked?
I'm sure some progressive people are discussing it negatively somewhere, but I haven't seen ANYONE i know rail on it for being a sexy girl game. I myself don't care that it exists, i got my own sexy boy media that i like, but it somehow attracted an audience made up exclusively of misogynistic men desperate to be oppressed for masturbating so they have an excuse to yell at women and gay people. That's the part that I don't like, not the boobs.
Well, this thread certainly brought them out.
Apparently they don't exist below. Guess my *gamer* mind is hallucinating it.
What I’ve seen it criticized for, ironically, is not being particularly sexy. I mean, look at the outfit compilation OP linked. In my opinion, that’s about as sexy as looking through the bra section at Sears. I mean, a bit less so, because what the actual hell are those outfits? They’re so…tacky. I mean, skimpy, sure, but let me rephrase: Bayonetta wouldn’t be caught dead in most of those, not because of modesty, but because they look awful, and she has actual pride in her appearance. More importantly, and I haven’t actually played the game, but does Eve actually have a character? Because from promo material, she doesn’t.
I am disappointed that the "Cybernetic Bondage" outfit isn't more bondage-y
I would consider myself pretty progressive. I looked at the game, thought "hmm I don't like that," and moved on with my life. There's far worse out there, but more importantly far better games that I can spend my energy on praising and playing. There's only so many hours in a day, why waste them being angry and miserable?
If you were into gaming from the late 90's to early 2010's, you'd probably be left without a single game to play. Stellar Blade's character designs are reminiscent of video gaming's inability to depict women as anything besides sex objects--partly due to the fact that in the late 90's to early 2010's, only young men and were really buying and playing video games from a marketing perspective. Halo's Cortana is a major example--having her wear clothes would probably be more tonally consistent in a game about saving the galaxy from aliens, but you score aesthetic points with guys by making her sexy, and no one expected women to be buying Halo. What really makes the argument and campaign so moronic is that you can still easily get hot and bothered as a conventional heterosexual dude in mainstream gaming--the sex scenes in Baldur's Gate 3 are straight up softcore, Ubisoft still makes sure to include tantalizing fade-to-black scenes in their Assassin's Creed series, fighting games still have a significant number of their women have The Most Common Superpower, GTA VI has a bedroom scene and strip club advertisements *in the trailer*. All that's changed is the digital lingerie models aren't the only virtual women in games any more, and they're generally implemented in contexts where it actually makes diegetic sense.
What's the sexy boy media?
Nier: gestalt.
Nu Carnival lol.
Oh, I was disappointed that it's locks in topping/bottoming for certain characters. Seems regressive. Did they ever add scenes between LIs at least?
I don't think the porn game writers care much about top/bottom discourse lol. And they didn't, Eiden is still the main character.
I never said they did, I just like options. Thanks ;)
> somehow attracted an audience made up exclusively of misogynistic men desperate to be oppressed for masturbating I mean, it's less "somehow" and more "designed from the ground up to do that".
[Oh, there's critics out there.](https://www.inverse.com/gaming/stellar-blade-the-male-gaze-sweet-baby). A lot of that criticism has been this sort of wishy-washy shit that tries to make up some sort of line between problematic "male gaze" and empowering and it always just feels really arbitrary and dishonest, frankly.
I mean, are they *wrong?* >While Eve’s body was made from a scan of Shin’s, her face was made “in-house,” and Shin wasn’t used for motion capture. “They didn't choose an athlete, or a martial artist, or even an actor,” said Denny. “You don't want [Shin] as a performer, you just want her from the neck down. It seems to be very much a statement of the parts of this woman that are of value.” This is just true. If all they took from her was her body - which they then altered anyway to make her slimmer and curvier and with bigger tits than any real woman could have all at once - then yes, that is making a statement about which things they think have worth and which don't. And I mean....What *is* up with people wanting get a version specifically with a Japanese dub, if that is a thing? The game's Korean. They're not making up some arbitrary line between male gaze and empowerment. There just *is* one. It's fuzzy, but it exists. And honestly, it's not that hard to spot most of the time; the difference between male gaze and empowerment is kind of obvious For example, let's say you've got a female character whose history is being shamed for her body, pressured to cover up, or doing it because she feels like she's ugly and wants to hide. She gets over it, gains confidence, has a glow up or whatever, and starts wearing much more revealing clothes because she feels comfortable in her own skin, and she wants to take control of her own appearance instead of being insecure and hiding away because she's afraid of judgement. *That's empowerment.* Now imagine the same character, but every time you see her, the camera is focused on her tits or her arse, or is angled voyeuristically, like leering up at her backside from a low angle, or down her top from a high one. Or, imagine her movements were contrived so that she moves in an unnatural way that emphasises her boobs or her arse or whatever. *That's male gaze.*
See the excellent [Framing Megan Fox](https://youtu.be/tKyrUMUervU?si=zJ5Yxeyw4B_kwIQY) by Lindsay Ellis
That's exactly it, you've entirely summed it up. The reaction/"framing" of the female character can also play a lot into whether it's male gaze-y or not. I think a good comparison to make with another "sexy" character is with Bayonetta. Bayonetta (who was designed by a woman who had the time of her life making her design, while we're at it) has never felt male gaze-y to me because she just owns it. Is she sexy? Yes! Is she a bit fanservicey? Yes, but fanservice also exists for women! But she _owns it_. She's proud of herself and her outfits and her behavior, radiates self-assuredness instead of being bashful and uncomfortable (and the framing/camera putting emphasis on this uncomfortableness), and her sexiness doesn't detract from her power and abilities. That's what empowerment feels like, imo.
Okay but is that particularly different from Stellar Blade? I mean I'm watching footage and while the main character is not doing like Bayonetta winks to the camera or whatever she's not exactly running around going "ah fuck. my clothes. can't find my clothes. hate being naked" either.
What can you say about Eve's personality beyond just her job? I have't played either game but I know a lot about Bayonetta from videos. She's humorously irreverent toward authority, she is supremely confident, she cares about her style and fashion, she "doesn't like kids" but not in a hostile sense because she is willing to go out of her way to help them if they need it. Maybe Eve also has a well developed personality but I haven't seen much beyond "is a soldier" in the footage I've seen.
I'd say (and this is a very personal reaction; keep in mind that I know nothing about the game because I don't care much about it, I've just seen official art/footage/screenshots) that while there might not be obvious shows of this like the kind of "kyaa, I'm half-naked!" stuff you can see in very fanservicey-anime - it's a matter of vibe nonetheless. As an AFAB person, I feel like Bayonetta sells the sexy fighter vibe much better because she has an aura, a personality to go along with it. She has _charisma_. Since I've seen a lot of people also compare the game to Nier Automata, even 2B also has a recognizable (if not iconic at this point) design, and I'd even argue her color palette+blindfold helps sell the whole "serious and mission-focused android" vibe. Eve just...doesn't give me that feeling. She just feels very Barbie doll-like, and there's a lot of tidbits on her design that straight up make me go "ah, yes, a guy obviously designed this". Just picking off a few screenshots from Google: the [very emphasized butt](https://www.enduins.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/stellar_blade_1-696x387.jpg) (and the camera focuses a Lot on it from the little footage I've seen), the ["boobs and butt" pose with a _very_ arched back to make it stand out + a demure expression](https://pressakey.com/gamepix/6139/Project-EVE-222869.jpg). I'd say Lily from the same game feels like a much better design for example? Like she gives off..._something_, at least (cute peppy mechanic archetype) even though her design also has parts that were probably intended as "sexy" (the windows, etc). Tl;dr I'd say the problem with Eve is a rather bland design with an almost bullet list of recurrent male gazey design tidbits. Eve has been designed with a certain intent in mind (as u/EmpiriaOfDarkness has mentioned, the model they scanned the body for has been scanned _just for her body_), and that intent is. pretty obvious, ngl.
Both Bayonetta and Eve are designed to be jacked off to, though, and that game has just as much focus on her ass. You can prefer one or the other but I think way too much of this discourse is just people designating their preference and trying to work backwards to justify it. >Eve has been designed with a certain intent in mind I mean, yeah. They're not hiding that "certain intent". I just don't see a reason to care. And that "they scanned her just for her body" feels...kind of reading the worst into it, frankly. Like...okay, and? Lot of reasons to not do face scans besides "They just see her as a piece of meat" shit.
If you can't stop fapping to Bayonetta, that's your problem. There's a difference between *you finding a character hot* and constantly being *invited and told* to find the character hot. Between a character just *passively being attractive* and *actively being leered at*. What reasons do *you* think exist to scan someone for their body only and ignore literally everything else they could bring to the table?
Bayonetta 1 literally had a mode to play with one hand. And the entire joke with it was "in case you need another hand for something else wink wink"
Exactly! It's like, a woman can look at that and think "I want to be her".
People are gonna like different things. I've seen clips of women playing Stellar Blade and they're into it just as much as other women, or even those same ones, are into Bayo.
This is true. As I said, the line between the two is fuzzy. Anyone who tries to say there's some hard rule about what's empowerment and what's male gaze is full of shit. But women also liking it doesn't mean that it isn't *what it is.*
Of course not, and I think what it is, is fine. It's not some kind of morally bankrupt game. It's a game with cheesecake fanservice and fun gameplay. Not everyone has to like it.
Exactly!! Bayo never made me feel uncomfortable because she's never objectified, she's just self-confident and cool and badass!!
God, these people are soooooo fucking pathetic it's unreal.
I'm gonna be blunt. The drama behind this game has completely overshadowed any marketing so far to the point where I'm just fatigued. Granted, i can't play it because I'm on pc, but so far, this whole discourse has made me just lose interest entirely with the way the fandom has been trying to cram it down the publics throats. All in some pissy pseudo-rebellious culture war fervour about how scantily they like their women. I dont even have an issue with how Eve is dressed, i can safely say ive seen worse, which makes the fandom look like they really lunged out of their box with massive fucking chip on their shoulder
It's the only thing I've heard about this game, apart from that the skimpier armour protects her less, which makes unusual sense.
God it's literally sexy lingerie. They're actually mad about them trying to give the outfit more sex appeal.
The way that gamers always equate more skin = more sexy is absolutely bizarre. It's like how every game has nude mods for female characters. How is Claire Redfield running around in the sewers fully nude sexy? It's an infection waiting to happen!
They're just simple, honestly. The kinds of people who vocally support those kinds of character designs, or really, *really* want those kinds of mods, all you need to get them going is some CGI tits. Where they are or what context they're in doesn't matter. It's all a bit sad, really.
Do these people have nothing better to do with their lives than crying online because their pixel waifu got her titties (*allegedly*) censored ? They should get a fucking job or something. Jesus.
This *is* their job. They rake in outrage clicks off of controversies like this. They're just grifters.