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um hobby factoid apparently Ray Bradbury, acclaimed science fiction writer, was a huge Disney Stan.
I recently watched Defunctland's 4 hour video on Disney animatronics and at one point he mentions Ray Bradbury asked Walt to run for mayor of LA because he thought Walt was the only one who could fix the traffic issues there (??). I thought this was funny because I had never even considered them knowing each other, but I moved on.
After that video I got kind of interested in Walt so I looked up a random documentary about him, and who was featured but an absolutely ancient Ray Bradbury. he told a story about how when he was a child he watched the skeleton dance animation so many times that his dad came in and drug him out of the theater.
So this may be common knowledge to Disney or Bradbury fans, but apparently he was a lifelong fan of Disney's! A certified Disney adult back when that was a substantially cooler thing to be.
Now watch Defunctland’s videos about EPCOT — Ray Bradbury was actually involved with it. Worked on the Spaceship Earth exhibit.
Ray bradbury was a weird dude, he was like, super obsessed with himself.
I know that they're meant to be very complete and holistic but why are so many video essays so fucking long
Break them up into parts, or cut out the fluff, please...
Just think of it as a documentary mini-series, because that's really what a lot of them are effectively. The good ones usually have clearly marked chapters and are rather information dense (be it necessary context or the subject going that deep). This one in particular is condensing about 60 years of constant development by a major corporation into one video. Having watched it fully, there wasn't really anything that could meaningfully be cut from it IMO.
i have mixed feelings. i stopped keeping up with youtube video essays when QuintonReviews started making 4-8 hour videos about Disney Channel Original shows lol. apparently a lot of people are all for that, as they like having that stuff run on the background while they do other things, but to me it just felt like the scene was jumping the shark around that point. (although it probably didn't help that as much as i enjoyed some of Quniton's Garfeld vids, i really didn't like his persona enough to desire to hear him talk about children's sitcoms for multiple hours lol)
that said, at least a couple youtuber essayists are good enough writers/editors that they can justify the length. haven't seen that particular Defunctland vid but i think he's one of the few, alongside Jenny Nicholson and Fredrik Knudsen off the top of my head. the long lengths still make it hard to motivate me to keep up with them regularly (not that these types are consistent posters, anyway), but i've never felt like my time was wasted watching their longer vids all the way through.
I enjoyed it. it's just a very broad topic
I mean, the video has chapter breaks in it. You can pause it whenever you want. How is a single 4-hour video any different from a series of shorter videos?
If the video had lots of wasted time or was poorly organized, then that's something you could criticize, but it seems like a weird thing to complain about before even watching it.
Honestly I'm more likely to click on a 30 minute video labelled "part 1/8" than I am a single 4 hour one
Is this just a me thing?
No, but it's a preference and as such it varies. Me, for example, I like long videos because I occasionally need to fill long stretches of time, and I want to set a video and know that's it. If I have six hours, then I know that the six hours video I enjoy will be playing for the whole time. If I have six hours and there's a thirty minutes video I enjoy, I hate having to stop after thirty minutes and try to pick some other thirty minutes video I enjoy fully knowing I will have to repeat this shit again and again and again. And no, "let youtube play videos automatically" is not an answer, because that's how you end up with the same two videos playing constantly on repeat (looking at you, Aircrash Investigations channel) or, worse, having some chud ramble about the Wokes turning our cows gay.
I also do that with audiobooks or books. I could bring a bunch of short stories on my trip, but there's a comfort in knowing that there's at least one thing I don't have to care about in the next eleven hours. I may have to choose what to make for dinner, but I don't have to decide if I should play How Tracy Austin Broke my Heart or White Nights or Bloodchild, 'cause it's Austerlitz all the way
Nah. I'd rather watch half hour videos over hour long ones myself. Hate starting and stopping videos at odd moments and much more prefer to have segments where I can go, "I watched up to part three, I'll dive back in tomorrow for part four."
Defunctland is the only channel I'm okay with doing this.
Yeah, nothing in his videos feel unnecessary to his overall thesis. He's a very polished and snappy writer.
There is a tree in Disneyland’s Frontierland that is dedicated to Bradbury. Every year for Halloween, they hang jack o’ lanterns from it as a recreation of the Halloween Tree from Bradbury’s novel of the same name.
That’s honestly really sweet.
Not for nuthin' but the Disney version of Something Wicked This Way Comes is pretty good and creepy. Part of that curious period when the House of Mouse was doing some real left-field stuff like The Black Hole and Watcher in the Woods. I mean I think they all lost money which is why they stopped doing 'em, but we got a genuinely fascinating array of movies out of it.
An update to the Sufficient Velocity Single-Character Tournament drama: after three competitors withdrew during Round 2's kerfuffle, Round 3 has dropped.
This round is "The Gremlins from the movie of the same name have invaded your town - how does your character stop them?"
While this round's goal does not require your character to have a specific emotional arc, many players are griping that it's a third movie-based round and are wondering if the moderators just got lazy this year.
"how would your character stop the gremlins" sidesteps the way more interesting question of how well your character would follow the instructions for looking after a mogwai.
my character would accidentally shove herself in a blender, and then a microwave, and then stab herself, meaning she would not survive gremlins, next question.
(i might have forgotten the order)
I thought the last prompt was theoretically interesting and well-meaning, even if definitely flawed. It's a neat way to explore a character's general morality AND an interesting constraint to force characters into a situation that they might not normally be built for, (Non-lethal stealth) especially compared to the first round.
This prompt is actually just terrible. It's effectively the SAME PROMPT as the first one; How does character handle movie plot? And, while this may seem a little silly to say, I do not think Gremlins and Die Hard are notably different enough in terms of the threats they pose, aside from Gremlins being possibly less dangerous.
My main gripe with all of these prompts is that the writers just assume everyone's character immediately knows what's going on around them and knows what they have to do. There has to be at least one or two characters involved in this who are in a state of total confusion.
Never seen the movie. Don't know much beyond pop culture osmosis. But doesn't this question presuppose quite a number of things about other peoples characters and worlds? What do solitary characters who live in the middle of nowhere do with this question? What if the character lives on a ship? Does the ship become the town? And I have to assume at least one person has a character that wouldn't stop the Gremlins (if they encounter them) for any of a number of reasons.
And my major issue with the previous prompt was that the Grinch story is a full story (and Christian specific). A much better prompt would be "Gifts are disappearing in {Town your character is in}, write a short story where your character gets involved in the mystery, one way or another. Points given for how well the author incorporates the setting, how prominent the mystery is to the plot, how the problem of the missing the gifts is resolved and bonus points for any references to holiday classics."
The first prompt was just bad. Make it generic "Could your character survive the plot of a blockbuster action movie? Show us."
And why is anyone still participating when the prompts are this bad?
I've seen so many prompts through the years that are like this - either too vague to really do anything with (what if there was a bear?) or so specific like this one (what if gremlins) that it's alienating unless you aren't writing involving a specific character - like if you're allowed to just have a new character and setting each time. But either way "what would your character do if gremlins" is just stupid. Like, what are the options if your character doesn't know what gremlins are? I've never seen the movie either although a second cousin used to call me Gizmo for some reason.
I don't disagree that this prompt is way too limiting and also lazy, and I also haven't seen the movie Gremlins. However, isn't it true that NO character would know what gremlins are (unless they're inserts for that canon)? Even within the movie, the plot has to introduce the creatures to the characters and the audience. It's not any different than saying "What would your character do if encountering cute furry critters with devastating consequences and ulterior motives?" is it? Still a bad prompt.
Honestly, your version of the prompt is a lot better. It gives a larger scope for a setting and more plot branches for characters to go down. A character who would exterminate all creatures causing mischief and mayhem in a city might be delighted to see the same mayhem unfold elsewhere. It's not a great prompt, but it's not a bad one.
For the last couple of weeks I've been wanting to write a comment about the recent developments in Pokemon Horizons, following on from two Hobby Scuffles threads back. However, I've been preoccupied by things irl and haven't had the energy to try and explain it well to outsiders.
That said, people did ask for some context as to why Friede going to space was a big deal, since that sort of things has happened in the Pokemon universe before. From what I've seen of fan reactions, it's mainly because Horizons is, on the whole, a bit more... grounded, I guess, than the previous anime and has only ever taken things from the Scarlet & Violet games when it needs them (but mostly sticks to its own plot). There are still some fantasy/supernatural elements, but it just felt really out of left field for the series to do. Not that it's an unrealistic thing -- simply, the fandom was not expecting that at all.
While a character did make the comment about Laquium (a mysterious substance that, amongst other things, causes Pokemon to get super strong and go berserk) possibly being from somewhere other than Earth originally, it was never discussed by any characters that space travel was an option, and the main characters, Liko & Roy, were more focused on trying to stop the synthetic production of Laquium by the antagonistic organisation (the Explorers) than anything else.
Though this latest episode we did get an explanation as to where Friede had been for the past year and how he even got to space in the first place (he went to find out information about the Laquium and its origins): he went to Hoenn -- specifically, the Devon Corporation, and met Steven Stone, the Champion (strongest trainer who you battle at the very end of each game) from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and the Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire remakes. This is very notable because Steven is the first character from a game that isn't Scarlet/Violet or Pokemon Legends: Z-A (Emma appears in a few episodes that focus on how Roy and his new friend Ult met) to appear in Horizons, and the first from the previous anime to also show up, but it's unknown if the previous anime and Horizons exist in the same continuity or not and that's whole different can of Wurmple that I don't really want to get into lol.
Also, Friede now has a Starmie that he met while training to be an astronaut because Starmie wanted to go to space with him. Starmie spent most of the time Mega Evolved for no reason other than that, from what I can work out, it's funnier that way (and some subtle Pokemon Legends: Z-A marketing but mostly for the lulz probably).
Forgive me if this is hard to understand for those who aren't watching Horizons. My brain's a bit all over the place at the moment due to dealing with family stuff (I'm not involved, but my mum is indirectly) and I never have any idea how much context I need to give without coming across as condescending.
I feel this is a challenge with writing these posts and threads in general. But my instinct is to think more context is better than less.
Phew, I'm glad it's not just me! It's also hard with a franchise like Pokemon in particular because it's SO HUGE and requires quite a bit of explanation. But at the same time, explaining how the battle system or type matchups work when talking about Horizons in particular feels pointless when it isn't the main focus of something.
I always try and include more context than not. Part of the issue I personally have is the character limit in comments and I don't want to make an overly long, multi-comment explanation of something because I know that most people won't read it -- which is fair lol
When I did a Pokemon drama thread, I began by explaining how it was one of the few video games other than Sonic the Hedgehog to successfully cross over into animated cartoons, which I was worried was overly explaining things considering other people tended to begin their articles with "Pokemon speaks for itself." But I figured, better safe than sorry considering I had to correct another one of my articles after the fact because I didn't explain what queerbaiting was (I wrongly assumed people alread knew).
Yeah I think when doing a proper writeup, it's super important to include all the context possible, even stuff you don't think is necessary to most people. At least Scuffles comments are a bit more casual in that sense.
(Also, funny you linked that thread in particular -- I was one of those people who absolutely loathed May when Advanced first started since I had been a big Misty fan, lol. I didn't care about the girly girl thing, I was just bitter that Misty wasn't around anymore. I think I would like May a bit more these days, but I grew out of it when Advanced started and have never really gone back until a few years ago with the last 11 episodes of Ash's story before getting into Horizons. Maybe I should give it a try one of these days...)
It's generally weird to me to see you guys dislike May just because a different character was gone, granted I understand you were very young at the time. It's strange because May's popularity is literally what convinced the writers to make Misty's departure permanent, as well as what paved the way for new female companions every series that came after.
Honestly I think it was just because I was young and didn't like change, personally speaking. If it means anything, I don't hate May nearly as much anymore and I don't hold any resentment against the writers for it all these years later (yet there are people still mad about the dub replacing the voice actors when The Pokemon Company International took over from 4KIDS, yikes) or anything. Just that at the time I thought she was really annoying -- mostly because, as I said, she wasn't Misty.
You're not wrong. But from what I remember, May was definitely disliked a lot in English fan spaces. Perhaps Japan liked her more? I never kept up with who was popular in Japan back then.
She pretty much became popular very quickly early on. Back then most of the original fanbase had already lost interest in the show during the Johto arc, a lot of people didn't even know Misty had left until we were a year or two into Hoenn already because they weren't keeping up with the show. (and remember back in the early 2000's, a lot of people also weren't online at the time or in pokemon sites/fan spaces, so they didn't hear the news either).
Fair enough though, I was just commenting on the situation back then.
You're all good! Sorry if I sounded too defensive, I wasn't trying to be in the slightest
In a choice between Pokerposting and Timbloposting, the former is generally preferred.
We can scroll past/skim context we already know, but if there’s no context whatsoever then the readers are completely lost (doubly so if this is small drama or niche community involving few people).
For real sometimes the comments in the scuffles thread will be like
"Breaking news in the ARS fandom! Floomo has been jethro'd from the flambee tournament and the Skeezos are NOT happy"
and I always feel kind of like an asshole to just be like "what the fuck are you talking about" but genuinely some people here give like no context and might as well just be leaving their comment in Vietnamese.
Then you ask for context and it's like 'Oh, sorry. Skeezos are what the Howdowners call fans of The Skee-Ball King.' Like okay now I have more questions.
And I know that people can't put, like, the entire history of Pokemon as context in a comment but some of the comments are just gobbledygook for how little context there is.
I did think the Pokemon Horizons comment we're responding to did a pretty good job.
I get you. I know I probably sometimes fall into this trap too. I think part of it is that when you're so inherently familiar with something, you unintentionally forget what people who have no involvement with that something know/don't know. I've been a fan of Pokemon since I was about 5 in the late 90s, for some context, so it's hard for me to divorce myself from Pokemon knowledge and look at the comments I make from the POV of someone who's either A) not familiar with Horizons or B) not familiar with Pokemon at all (or only knows the old stuff, etc).
I do try! But again, I don't want to sound condescending by, like, overexplaining extremely basic concepts. It's a hard balance to achieve, I think.
But I'm glad my comment was easy enough to follow on the whole! I admittedly also wrote it late at night and wasn't sure if it was making much sense.
For april fools I should just start posting about HobbyDrama in the universe (and language) of the Jabberwocky
Some news from the Yume Nikki Fangame (YNFG) sphere - Collective Unconscious (CU), a somewhat recent (released in summer last year, feels a lot newer than that to me...) online-only YNFG, is being removed from a well-known site for browser versions of Yume Nikki and its fangames, YNOProject (also YNO). Quite notable due to CU being created specifically for YNOProject due to the "collective" and multiplayer aspect. According to an announcement in the YNOProject Discord server, the removal is due to disagreements and tension between the CU managers and YNOProject managers (including a doxxing attempt from someone suspected to be in the CU community). CU will be hosted on its own website and is available through its own Discord server, and there is a privately distributed patch available for CU authors to locally run the game. (I will note that since I got most of this information from an announcement in the YNOProject server, it may be slightly biased in their favor, it comes off that way in the announcement. Also, I'm not sure of the extent/differences of the different ways to access CU right now.)
Opinion time, I am not too deep into the YNFG community (I play 2kki on YNO every now and again and I very much enjoy it), and especially not the CU community, but I am surprised to hear this. As I said, CU was specifically designed and developed for YNO with the collaborative and multiplayer aspects in mind. I know that there was some drama around the game at its release due to an author plagiarizing some of their worlds. I'm not sure how much it harmed the reputation of the game - I only really played it around its release and even though I enjoyed it, I found myself gravitating towards Yume 2kki anyways. I am a bit sad to see it go so quickly, but at least it's being preserved in the way it was meant to be played.
G. Willow Wilson, the award-winning comics and prose writer (best known for creating the Muslim teen hero Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel), says that HobbyDrama is her favorite subreddit. That's neat. I wonder if she saw my write-up on the time Marvel tried to run a cross-promotion with a weapons manufacturer.
Also, this was a reply in longer thread about some potential drama that I do not have the knowledge to comment on.
It's so weird knowing that we, like, exist in the consciousness of the wider world. Though TBH this is a pretty good sub to have as your favorite all things considered.
I'm not fully awake so I read the name as Kamala Harris...
Her power is summoning coconut trees to fall out of🚨🚨🚨CONTAINMENT BREACH🚨🚨🚨
i hope no celeb or anyone of note has ever seen any of my tiny scuffle write ups here. like i got jumpscared once in a group chat by linking up one of my write ups and someone telling me it would be up my alley lmao.
I do think it's kind of an interesting problem in that if want to collaborate with anything that is high tech air or space stuff they're almost certainly also doing stuff for the military, at least indirectly. (to some extent this also used to be true for car manufacturers)
OK MAJOR UPDATE FROM MY PREVIOUS COMMENT IN REGARDS TO THE ROBOT COMBAT EVENT HAPPENING IN ABU DHABI RIGHT NOW
SERIOUS INCIDENT HAPPEN. IT'S MORE CLEARER IN VIDEO (which I don't know how to send here) BUT A MAJOR BREACH JUST HAPPENED.
So you saw in my previous comment I replied that the previous incident had forced rescheduling, so some fights were postponed, and are being done around right now when I'm typing this (although that might end). So far, 2 fights had happened, both of which happened without incident (Besides Monsoon beaching itself the same way it did in it's last fight.... ouch)
Now, next fight. Ignition from the team behind Eruption, current and last Robot Wars Champion vs Godspeed, from an Indian team who competed in Bitva Robotov, a Russian event.
Fight was going well enough...... and then A fucking panel broke right in front of the face of one of the drivers.
It was not a small hole.
From what I'm gathering, the glass walls are double layered, 20mm and 15mm with an air gap. This only broke the inner layer. CORRECTION: THE WALLS ARE TRIPLE LAYERED. THIS HAS BEEN CORRECTED BY AN EVENT ORGANIZER
This is a MAJOR breach.
They clearly knew the risks from the previous incident. They made sure there were as little people as possible in the area, so no audience, only 3 people per team and a few refs and other important people. Everyone who was in there near the arena was also in protective boxes in case an incident did occur.
Update: So while writing this I've read about an update. The event will pull through. No one was hurt. It's all being handled professionally. Besides the arena stuff, from what I hear behind the scenes the vibes are still good.
I really fucking feel like the event organizers are going for that Contractor's neck, the ones who made the arena that is. Literally all of the incidents from this event are being stemmed by whoever made this arena, oh fuck they're getting their asses chewed out in court if they're getting sued.
Oh yeah someone mentioned that the live stream got an extra 30 minutes added to the estimated length in the website, from 120:00 to 150:00.
Another update: Ok so another fight just happened after the previously mentioned incident. Another breach occurred this time to the ceiling. A piece of debris was hit into the ceiling, breaking said ceiling.
ANOTHER UPDATE 6:35PM GMT+8: Came back from the break and we've had ANOTHER breach. 3rd fight in a row, 3rd breach in a row. 4th Breach overall.
The NHRL standard is 2 layers with a sizeable airgap. Anytime a gouge in the glass occurs, the fight fully stops and the glass is replaced if it's measured to be larger than I think 1". If it's small enough, the fight will continue and the walls replaced if the hole increases in size.
The Robogames one was different in that they only had 1 layer on the ceiling. And a bot was thrown directly into it and knocked them loose, exposing a huge hole in the top. The other breach at the event also was horrible in that the robot was able to stab THRU the gap between panels and at drivers.
Having the inner glass of a 3 walled arena break means it's working as intended. It's absorbing the force and breaking the first panel vs it hit multiple panels or effect the superstructure.
As long as they stay on top of replacing damaged panels, I'd feel safe with their box design. Seems like they opted for thinner lexan sheets that they can replace fast vs thicker ones that will last longer.
Wait, was only the inner one broken? I agree, that is a nothing burger. You have two-three for a reason; I've even seen compilations of NHRL inner wall breaks.
Triple layered acrylic with small gaps between layers seems entirely appropriate? That first layer is sacrificial.
Ideally you'd want it so that None of the layers are weak, and that they are Polycarbonate, Not Acryllic. Highest I've heard is that the outer layer is 3/8 inch thick. For context, the Battlebox in Battlebots is made up of multiple layers glued together of thick Polycarb panels and there has not been a single breach. No debris shot at it or 250lb robot thrown at it as broken a panel or breached through anything further than the surface and shattered anything.
Because not only is safety the priority, you know have to take the time to clean up and patch that hole for safety reasons, and the fact that the 120 minute planned stream turned to 200 minutes tells you that timewise, that was not an ideal setup.
And even with the 3 layer thin polycarb that they have, after the first breach they decided to keep whoever is near the box in ANOTHER layer in another box.
I'm 99% certain the Battlebox has had the same kind of "breach" (inner layer breaking but no actual breach) once or twice. IIRC one was when Poison Arrow sent SOW Whyachicoptering into the wall, can't remember if there was another but there might have been.
Just the inner layer breaking is fine, provided they replace it. That's what it's for. The Robogames breaches were real, as in metal was fully exiting the arena - entirely different situation.
Was it SOW v Poison Arrow or SOW v End Game you’re thinking of? I know for a fact that the latter did breach the inner wall but I can’t remember for the latter, but that also more of a “inner” protective wall that was hit and not the actual cage.
And yeah looking back I may have overreacted a bit on using the term ‘breach’ here, but maybe that’s just the “Jesus Christ this is the 3rd panel they’ve broken in a row and the 4th of 5 panels they’re breaking this event, which as someone who was watching live was not an enjoyable thing to experience due to the delays needed to repair it.
Also yes if you were counting I mentioned a 5th ‘breach’ in this comment, well that’s because a 5th fucking incident occurred, this time during the 3rd place playoffs, and it was the most destructive seeing as it shattered a whole panel layer. But at least NO Injuries injuries occurred….. unlike a certain other Games of Robos……
I was going to point out how warship armor and bulletproof glass are designed but the Battlebots system you describe is also the same concept. The energy spent in breaking the first layer encountered makes it much harder to break the next layer. When you talk about how that only "breaching the surface" that's the same thing you're describing with these. The first layer breaks and everything else is fine.
Presumably they're using panels that aren't glued together so that they can easily replace just that first layer, which also restores the view. For "off the shelf" products while the glue is mainly for ease of use. The protection comes from the panes not being able to propagate cracks between each other. Of course if the game is continuing after these hits without replacement that's really bad.
Yup. For Battlebots, I believe the Battlebots box was designed for TV producers and investors and commercial insurance in mind: no breaches ever: extreme safety margin + very very expensive panels that are rarely replaced. Breaches look bad to the public (see the above) which is why the over engineering of this solution is worth the hefty price tag for these specialty laminated polycarbonate sheets.
For smaller events that need to built and tear down their boxes, they're designed to have cheaper and easier to replace parts. Hence why they go for multiple layers of strong, but expendable protection vs 1 monolithic critical composite layer.
Can you please put the images on a host us poor British people can use because Imgur blocked us for needing wank licences?
Nothing to do with that. Imgur blocked the UK because [they violated the GDPR for years and the ICO finally told them to knock it off or pay a fine. They don't want to pay the fine, and they don't want to stop collecting data they legally aren't allowed to in the UK, so they decided to just block all requests that look like they're coming from the UK.
They're hoping to use the recent censorship law as a cover, because a lot of people seem to be assuming that's the reason without actually looking it up. It is, unfortunately, working.
Also, get a VPN.
I have one! Imgur blocks it.
I've been using Imgur as my host omg
uhh
so for now here's the link to the stream which has all the incidents.
Breaches happen in:
40:41
1:55:58 (look at the very top)
2:34:12
Can be seen more easily in the replays but those are when the incidents happen live.
Holy shit. Glad to hear no one was hurt as of yet at least.
Are the fight still proceeding today? I think you’ve said the bots are like heavy blade equipped ≈200 or more pounds machine running at glass shattering speed.
So fights are still happening. yes breaches have happened, but no one is injured. Almost every instance of an arena breach has just been to an inner layer of a 3-layered piece of "polycarbonate", which means that no debris has breached outside of the arena. If there would be a breach (ideally there'd NOT be), this is the kind you'd want, an inner layer that absorbs the impact before it could ever reach outside.
So "today's" fights are going to be both 1. yesterday's scheduled fights that were postponed due to a previous breach, and 2. the actual scheduled fights for today to finish the 16 bot bracket. They did the first one around 4-5 hours ago, and in about 4 hours the 2nd fights will happen + any other fights that might happen (Exhibits, other scheduled matches, etc).
After this, the competition will be over, and everyone can rest knowing that they got payed well, they had fun, no one got hurt, and that they know that their robots are definitely capable of doing some damage.
Yes, these are 250lbs / 113kg of Metal and Electronics being flung around and hitting with tip speeds of up to 250mph weapons (For spinners) with metals made to both endure those hits and deliver them. Especially for events with Spinners, you HAVE to have an arena that's capable of enduring the hits these bots can deliver, even smaller weight classes are dangerous.
And just for fun, a little addendum, the original plan for this 2nd batch of fights was 120 minutes. Due to the delays brought in by the 3 breaches that happened today (4th if you include Monsoon fucking up the top layer of the floor but that wasn't really a safety risk so it's not AS major of a breach), it went up to 200 minutes. I was planning to finish the stream them prepare dinner but now I had to prepare dinner AS the stream was happening.
Your discord links will expire in 24 hours
Ok so little update
it looks like another breach just happened, this time to the ceiling again.
That didn't take long. Around 50 minutes to repair and then it took around 5 minutes for another breach to happen.
Looks like I'll be needing to Imgur A LOT of Images.
I'll try to upload them to imgur asap but rn it seems like the stream is back and I'm currently watching. Next match has 2 Big vertical spinners and 1 of them was enough to breach the arena
Rex Garrod is spinning in his grave.
So uh... Dan and Phil's Phantasy calendar had a misprint. It was full of Lindsey Graham campaign ads.
Well Dan and Phil also famously hid their sexualities for years so I can see the connection
This is a truly hilarious subtweet.
I can totally see how this becomes a collectors item for a very particular kind of person.
There truly is a niche for everyone!
the phlore goes crazy 😩😭
How the hell does a misprint like that even happen?!
I'm really far from being a tech savy guy.
I work in print. Odds are good at that the stack of political stuff was printed, rejected for some reason (wrong version or printer flaws that left marks on the printing), and the stack was set aside in a way that made it unclear if it was new/unused paper or not. You get a calendar order in for some nice fellas, you throw in what you think is a stack of unused paper, and it gets all the way through printing, trimming, finishing, etc with no one flipping a sheet over because it's otherwise a very unremarkable run.
The factory making the calendar was probably also printing those campaign ads and something accidentally got switched around
Switched...what if the lindsey graham campaign ads end up full of Dan/Phil
Oof damn
Related but I just had the making of the calendar pop up into my recommendations few days ago. Go check it out if you want some behind scenes stuff.
Hey yall, if you remembered my previous comment about A new Heavyweight Robot Combat event happening in UAE, you'd know about said event and the controversy's regarding the event being basically a new way to sportswash.
Now no immediate other major controversy has spawned (besides Jasper vs Monsoon but that's because people are salty with how the fight ended, but that's how it goes in these kinds of fights), but there has been some incidents in regards to 2 competitors, but not because what they did was controversial, more unfortunate.
TR4, from the same team behind TR2 from the Reboot Series of Robot Wars, vs Golden Fury, an Indian bot who while didn't qualify for Battlebots, ended up competing in Russian RC event, Bitva Robotov, with ok success.
Now these 2 were suppose to fight 3 fucking times and all 3 of them ended in some unfortunate ways.
First time: TR4 had electrical issues so the fight was postponed to a later time.
Second time: before the fight even started, Golden Fury immediately drove forward uncontrollably, then burst into flames. Fight postponed to tomorrow.
Third time: fight happens as normal..... Until the arena got breached due to shrapnel aaaand the rest of the day's fights were cancelled.
I've heard rumblings that the contractor did not build the arena to specifications (aka use glass that does not fucking suck) but for now the solutions for future filming is to replace he panel and add extra layers in polycarb glass, and to even remove the spectators for now. Necessary, but unfortunate.
Because the LAST THING YOU WANT IN A ROBOT COMBAT EVENT, ESPECIALLY FOR HEAVY WEIGHTS, IS THE ARENA TO BE BREACHED AND SOMEONE TO BE HIT WITH SHRAPNEL. THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE, AND THAT INCIDENT WAS IN 2014. AND A SIMILAR INCIDENT HAPPENED IN 2023, luckily not to a similar force, BUT THE FACT THAT IS HAPPENED AT ALL IS HORRIFYING AND DISAPPOINTING.
Thank God the organizers of the event, Robotslive the guys behind Apollo and the Robots Live! Heavy weight events in the UK, are the ones organizing the event and are the ones who called for the event to be on hold till the arena gets fully armored up for next time.
(Did I mention the arena apparently wasn't finished till <24 hours before the event started? Bit of a red flag)
An update from Robotic Death Company, one of the competitors:
While obviously scheduling wise it's not ideal, safety wise it's the best option, and Safety. First.
What a lot of people don't realize is just how much energy is in these bots. A 3 lb bot can take off a finger, 12 can take a hand, 30 can take a arm, and a full heavyweight 250lb can turn your body to red mist. They are DANGEROUS. You cannot cheap out on the safety gear for this sport. It's just that panel of lexan between you and 250lbs of hardened steel going hundreds of RPM.
I was lucky enough to watch a taping live when Battlebots was still filming in Long Beach. Minotaur's drum spinner made your lungs feel like they were vibrating when it spun up. It was insane.
My fursuit maker friend actually got traded the remains of a battle used motor by team blackjack at a furrycon for some fursuit making supplies lol. It looked like someone took a bite out of the side of the motor, layers of metal and wire wrapping just fully sliced thru like it was nothing. The 1/2" diam shaft bent perfectly at 90 deg.
Now imagine if a bot breached the box.
Here's a video of a tiny NHRL bot destroying some plexiglass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-CM7XTEOkc
Well, that's a fucking mood right there.
It realized the futility of its existence and took the easy way out.
I'm asking it here because I have a deep dread of any official subreddits - any other Fire Emblem Heroes players finding the Tempest Trials bosses ludicrously overpowered?
Some explanations for non-players: Fire Emblem Heroes is a mobile strategy/gacha game based on Nintendo's turn-based strategy franchise Fire Emblem, where the main gimmick is being able to use characters from across the breadth of the franchise. Tempest Trials is a recurring event where you take one team through multiple battles in a row, with their HP carrying over from one map to the next.
In the last two Tempest Trials events, I've found it nearly impossible to damage the event boss. In the most recent, I took a team of Level 40s through the Level 20 tier and still got wiped. My PVP team still lost members - again, to the Level 20 tier.
Am I just on the short end of the stick due to power creep and my refusal to invest real money into the game, or is this a drama in the making?
Vanitas has actually in some ways been easier to deal with than some of the other TT bosses imo, mainly because she's an armor (so only 1mov), melee, no distant counter, and only middling at dealing damage on initiation (playing on level 30). She still deletes my bonus units, though - TTs would probably suck a lot more for me if I hadn't pulled a legendary black knight when he released that I slap on every TT team.
I haven’t had any trouble with Vanitas, but tbf I have had Brave M!Byleth on my team for the sp boost. I have found in the past when taking less optimal teams through the trials, even on lower difficulties they’ll just fall apart at the boss.
Vanitas? Yeah, she’s definitely harder than the last few Tempest Trials bosses (mostly due to being the first character to bring conditionless effects on her weapon with +25 True Damage and -10 Damage in combat). I think, given all December units have this effect, surprisingly including refines for this update, IS is trying to streamline weapons to make them easier to understand.
Vanitas has Twin Magic Save so she’ll trigger [Save] on any magic attacks so you’ll want to use a physical attacker instead to defeat her.
What is your team if you don’t mind me asking? I’ve been running Anniversary Duo Marth, Fallen Male Alear, Brave Redux Ike and Attuned Ivy as my bonus unit, and have been able to auto the hardest difficulty
I haven't even tried the TT this time around yet. I love running a Thracia/Genealogy team, and uh. Well. Tea Finn-Tea Nanna-Finn!Leif-Plumeria isn't exactly cutting it damage wise anymore :(
Might have to bust out Ares-Legendary Deirdre-Thorr-Plumeria for the aoe because I've had low luck with E!Sigurd and like his art the least of the Sigurds.
Idk if you used your free pick already but Brave Eik is pretty good. My team right now is Rearmed Alfred (bonus), Chosen Alfonse, Valentine's Edelgard, Brave Eik and they consistently clear it on auto
It's been kinda annoying ya. For the team I'm using it takes about 6 turns to finish the last map (would go quicker if I only used one bonus unit and brought someone that is a good match to Vantis but I'm being weird on purpose). I imagine if I used auto battle they would all die like turn one lol.
No but…. I use a lot of modern ranged magic Units in my TT+ team (S!Gullveig last month and N!Gullveig and W!Ivy this month). I think my Arena core would probably struggle because everyone’s a physical attacker (2 with outdated prfs).
I... haven't... I got lucky and got Uma Lyn while I was trying to get. someone else I forget who on her rerun and she just deletes the boss on auto battle. I'm sure chosen alfonse will equally be able to handle her (and he's free).
I haven't had troubles, but that's bc I came back specifically for the new Alfonse, got him to +4, and he's been demolishing everything without breaking a sweat. I did try a run without him, and none of my trainees were able to scratch the boss.
So, a day ending in -y for Fire Emblem Powercreep ig
Some drama happened in the book community surrounding the mafia romance series Sinners Anonymous. Before we get into the main drama, something you should know is that fans are already not on good terms with the author, Somme Sketcher, due to how she handled the fourth entry, Sinners Atone. The book was delayed several times over the course of three years, and when it finally came out, fans found it really disappointing, as it was significantly shorter than the previous entries and a lot of the book was spent retelling events from the first three books but from a different character's perspective.
So Somme's reputation isn't great, but since it's the holiday season, she decided to start selling a Sinners Anonymous Advent Calendar. Since its contents were supposed to be a mystery, Somme didn't give many details about what was in the calendar, but she assured buyers that it would be a premium experience. Her advent calendar wouldn't have generic stuff like stickers or bookmarks. According to her, the advent calendar would be filled with "gifts you can wear, play, build, and read" and said that this calendar was a passion project for her and her team. The calendar was sold for 55 British Pounds (or about 73 USD), but because the majority of her fans are in the US and EU, most people ended up paying over 100 USD for the calendar because of international shipping and handling fees. Due to how much they paid for it and how much Somme was hyping it up, people were expecting good things from the advent calendar, but when it finally got sent out to people, the contents left a lot to be desired.
Some highlights from the advent calendar include:
A tiny plastic heart charm with the letter W on it. The W is supposed to be for a character named Wren, but if you weren't told that, you'd have no way of knowing that this was supposed to be from Sinners Anonymous.
A pair of white socks with the names of two characters from the book haphazardly printed on with cheap vinyl, which will absolutely get destroyed after just one trip through the wash.
One, count 'em, ONE, sparkly band-aid.
A Christmas tree ornament that doesn't even come with a hook or string to hang the ornament on your tree with
A scratch ticket for a giveaway hosted by Somme. Airpods were advertised as a potential prize, but most people just got a 10% off coupon for the Divine Collective online store, where you could already get a 10% off coupon to the site by just signing up with a phone number. (Also, because you, to my knowledge, need to buy a calendar to enter this giveaway, Somme might have violated UK gambling laws)
A bootleg NanoBlocks set to build a bird.
A QR code for a Sinners Anonymous short story, that when scanned, didn't actually take you anywhere. Apparently you needed to wait for the day corresponding to its spot on the calendar to gain access to it, but this was never mentioned prior to people complaining about it.
And if it wasn't obvious already, most of the stuff from this advent calendar are just repackaged items from Temu and AliExpress that Somme "customized" by slapping a cheap sticker onto them.
Suffice to say, people were not happy about spending over 100 bucks on what was essentially a bunch of lousy party favors. Somme claimed that the advent calendar wouldn't have cheap, generic crap in it, only for it to be filled with cheap, generic crap. In fact, some buyers even said that would've preferred an advent calendar with just stickers and bookmarks, because at least they'd actually get some use out of those things, as opposed to the junk they got, which is probably only a few weeks away from winding up in a landfill.
When these people went to Somme's Facebook group to complain about the low quality of the calendar, Somme's personal advisor made a post saying that the Facebook group was Somme's safe space and that people should be mindful of what they post, which a lot of people felt was her PA trying to guilt trip people into not criticizing the calendar, because none of the posts there were attacking Somme as a person, just complaining about the calendar she was selling. Comments were turned off on social media posts Somme made about the calendar, and her PA also allegedly deleted posts on Somme's Facebook group complaining about the calendar. People did try emailing Somme to tell her that the contents of the advent calendar were not as advertised and that they wanted their money back, but were informed that Somme and her team were on holiday leave and wouldn't get back to them until the new year. A few people did get replies, but it just a copy pasted email which admitted that some stuff from the calendar was generic, but claimed it was fine because there was some personalized stuff in there too.
Seems Somme herself won't respond to this scandal until 2026, and it's definitely going to take a lot to repair the trust she lost from this debacle. It'll definitely take more than a single sparkly band-aid.
Edit: I forgot to mention that I got a lot of this info from the YouTuber Laura Rae Says, so check out her video if you want more details
Okay, a Facebook group can either be a safe space for you personally or it can be a business space where you promote your products en masse, it can't be both. You gotta pick one, bro.
Just want to add on that this video is worth a watch in particular! I find some of Laura's videos middling because they're basically just her reading out drama to us (great for listening to while wrapping presents/sewing though), but this one she specifically goes and finds most of the exact same items on Temu/AliExpress so she can give a proper estimate of how much the items in the box cost. It's...shockingly little.
I’m kind of impressed at the sheer gall of making “anything unflattering will be deleted” into a therapeutic assertion.
Funny how I found this with the video open in the background lmao
That's so absurdly scummy that I actually laughed.
Same, a flipping bandaid? I'm dying over here 💀
Sidetrack but why the heck are so many people naming their OCs and booktok protags Wren lately?
It's a trendy name in general, my wife is pregnant with a girl and several people have suggested Wren as a name. It fits into the single-syllable nature-inspired kinda-unisex girl name trend that's been around for ~2 years.
The first book I finished this year had a protag named Wren and it was a godawful book! Without revealing too much, imagine if the book was called "Cooking with Chicken" and the first 95% of the book is about cleaning windows and the only chicken recipe in it is just boiling chicken breast.
I guess we're at the right time for people who grew up with Alien: Resurrection to be published booktok authors.
The only book I remember with a Wren was Peter Straub's Floating Dragon from 1982, and that's a male character.
My half-joking response to "Why are so many characters named Wren nowadays?" was going to be "Phantasy Star III[1] is finally getting the Star Wars Prequel-esque reappraisal it deserves!" But there too, Wren) is a male character. So I have no idea!
[1]PSIII was and remains the black sheep of the first four Phantasy Star games. My own opinion on it is summed up as "I love the game it wants to be". It actually has a lot of neat ideas and setup for things it sadly doesn't follow through on, at least in the US version. But once I got the idea of "What a Phantasy Star is 'supposed to be' presentation-wise out of my had and gave it an honest shot on its own merits, I enjoyed it regardless. It's not as good as IV (Very little is), and I'd argue it's also not as good as 1 because I'm a dungeon-crawler sicko, but it's probably better than II just because the dungeons aren't fuck-you huge and the battles are a lot more gentle.
Maybe they're just fans of small, insectivorous passerines?
T. Kingfisher has a Wren in her Paladin series, but then she likely is a fan of small, insectivorous passerines.
Check out r/sleepywrens if you aren't aware of it already!
I mean, who isn't?
I am. There's been a pacific wren hanging around my yard lately and they have so much personality in such a tiny package. Would recommend.
Tell him i love him.
Just ran into him. Genuinely kinda hope my neighbours heard me say 'a stranger on the internet loves you' to no one.
Hold on the little notepad thingy - is that a knockoff col-o-ring? Weird thing to have in an advent calendar lol. Also I used to work at a print shop and Christ some of those things are like, the sort of bargain bin cheapo shit we'd sell to people who just wanted something funny for a single party and we're trying to use up leftover inventory
(A col-o-ring is a brand of fountain pen ink swatch cards for displaying different ink types. It's make out of decent quality thick paper and it's on a binder ring so you can shuffle your samples around. Kinda a weird niche thing to throw in)
The notepad does have a custom cover, which reads "Sinners Anonymous. The hotline is busy, write your sins down instead". So I think that Somme wanted to have a notebook/notepad for the advent calendar, and just bought the cheapest thing she found on Temu to fulfill that purpose. The first page also has the author's signature on it, I'm assuming to fulfill her promise of the advent calendar containing autographed merch.
Maybe it’s easier to say when the actual advent calendar items are complete dogshit (a single bandaid? really??) and it’s not being both advertised and sold as “premium” but if it’s for a book series, why wouldn’t you just go with more general bookmarks and stickers? Like, I feel like an audience of readers like that would actually enjoy having bookmarks of their favorite books and characters on rather than some cheap socks that have some character names lazily printed on in equally cheap print. The only one of these advent calendar items that actually makes sense is the short story.
The short story is interesting, because there are some authors that do short story advent calendars, where you buy it online and then get a new story emailed to you every day leading up to Christmas. I think Somme's readers would love getting to see more content in the Sinners Anonymous universe and doing the advent calendar this way would've saved Somme the headache of ordering, packaging, and shipping out physical goods. But I have a feeling she might not have been able to commit herself to writing 12 whole mini-stories for this, if the amount of feet dragging she did with Sinners Atone is anything to go off of.
David Walliams — major children’s author in the UK, as well as comedian best known for Little Britain and all-purpose celebrity — dropped by his publisher HarperCollins over harassment of their female employees: https://archive.is/CMVqu
Are sexual harassment and CP the only crimes that celebrities know about or something? You never hear about a beloved author secretly owning a ton of exotic pets
It’s always the ones you most suspect…
We're past "the ones you most suspect" and full in "I'm pretty sure he did something like this already, if history isn't repeating here it sure rhymes"
I thought this kind of stuff had been known about for like decades? I'm always surprised to see him on British panel shows because of it.
He has a super-injunction on himself, so papers have not been able to report any incidents that have happened. The Guardian have been trying for years to no avail.
Unsurprising. Even besides the contents of his comedy, there have been loud whispers about him being a creep for years.
Given the sheer amount of iffy-to-yikes material in Little Britain, color me unsurprised.
Having never heard of David Walliams, reading his Wikipedia page has been my "Dead Dove, Don't Eat" moment of the day
Was curious what you meant, so I had a gander at it.
Oh.
Oh my days that section just keeps going and going
Didn't something else come out about him a few years back?
(looks at wiki)
Oh dear god.
Least surprising news of the day?
I think something is about to break about Walliams and part of this is the publisher getting ahead of it
He's in the Epstein files?
I remember when everything about Russell Brand came out last year or the year before and it was all very "there's something bad about someone big coming out soon", loads of people assumed it was going to be either Brand or Walliams.
Yeah, it's got to be big - he's enormously successful as an author. (Or at least as the name on the cover.) He's sold 60 million books.
Alright, American here who only knows of Walliams through Little Britain and his panel show appearances…I’m trying to figure out how anyone decided to sign this guy as a children’s book author to begin with? He doesn’t scream “child-friendly comedian” to me. Have I missed something?
According to the UK publishing industry celebrities just automatically have the ability to write children’s books.
(The books having a Roald Dahl-esque ‘naughty’ style probably also helped to position them.)
As an American in the children’s book industry, there’s long been a kind of diluted Dahl mild kookiness that goes over well in the UK but not in the U.S. Walliams is the most successful practitioner, but not the first or the only, especially among celebrity authors.
Britslop…
Oh, perfect.
Rumour is that the books are ghost written. There are people who claim to have seen copies of his first book with a different authors name on it
I forget who it was that said once the author's name is bigger than the title it doesn't matter who wrote the book.
Like I think James Patterson hasn't written anything in ages? His co-authors do the actual writing and his name sells the books. The few Patterson books I've read are among the worst pieces of writing I've ever encountered (including amatuer erotica) but he does credit the ghost writers so I give him respect for that.
There's no way they aren't lmao. Every time I *blink* a new one of his books shows up on the shelves at work.
If true, that makes sense.
Tragic news out of North Carolina. Former NASCAR driver Greg Biffle and his family (wife Cristina, daughter Emma and son Ryder) have passed away in an airplane crash. Also killed were fellow NASCAR community member Craig Wadsworth, as well as the pilot Dennis Dutton and his son Jack. Source
Biffle was a renowned racer for many years in NASCAR. He won Rookie of the Year as well as the championship in both of the lower-tier series (the Trucks series and the at-the-time-named Busch series), in 1998/2000 and 2001/2002. He quickly became a championship contender in the top-level Cup series for Roush Racing, driving his iconic #16 car to a runner-up finish in 2005, a 3rd place in 2008 and a 5th place in 2012. Outside of that, he might be most well-known racing-wise for winning the season finale at Homestead-Miami three years in a row from 2004-2006. He retired in 2016 after a steady decline in Roush Racing's equipment capabilities, but came back for part-time starts in the years after, including a feel-good win in a return to the Trucks series at Texas, and a short Cup endeavour with NY Racing in 2022 including one last start in the Daytona 500, where his best finish was two 3rd places in 2010 and 2012.
Outside of racing, Biffle became well-known for starring in videos on YouTuber Cleetus McFarland's channel (real name Garrett Mitchell). He helped Cleetus get his first starts in real-life NASCAR racing. Biffle and his family were actually on their way to visit Cleetus on the fateful flight. Biffle also earned renown for flying emergency supplies into regions of the southern US hit by Hurricane Helene last year, in his personal helicopter, also helping to make a couple rescues in the very early days. He also said he would do the same for Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa, though I can't find any articles stating whether or not he was actually able to fly all the way out there.
Personally, the early years I started watching NASCAR in seemed to never sync up with Biffle's best. I followed closely from 2009-2011, then from 2016 onwards. Biffle finished 7th, 6th and 16th in those three formative years, with only two out of his 19 career wins coming in that stretch. Then, when I caught his retirement year he unfortunately only finished 23rd in points. Still, I knew of him as a capable racer with an iconic 3M paint scheme, as they sponsored him for most of his career. Coincidentally, just weeks ago Roush Racing uncovered this footage of him making a cool save in a car sponsored by the Wii!
r/NASCAR has been hit with an onslaught of remembrances to a fan-favourite driver, even if he did go under the radar sometimes. There's been some jokes about how he ran #69 in the SRX series and embraced the #StiffforBiff meme that ran around the sub years ago. Already there's been quotes of mourning for Greg and his family from Cleetus, old team owner Jack Roush, as well as former teammates Kurt Busch, Mark Martin and David Ragan have been trickling out in the past day. Would also like to mention Kenny Wallace and Michael Waltrip making sure that their friend Craig doesn't get forgotten. Won't comment on the cause of the accident until the formal investigation's complete, but would also like to pay respects to the pilot and co-pilot in this time; just like the Biffles having to come to grips with losing an entire arm of their extended family, I can't imagine how terrible it is to lose a father and son duo in one fell swoop.
Rest in peace to Greg and to all seven who passed away in the accident. You will all be sorely missed by those who have been touched by your presence.
So I hope we‘re all doing well for the new week, after all we must get back to NEW MUSIC FRIDAY! So what have been hearing this week? Someone you like drop a single? Buy a limited edition copy of an album? Check out some random underground artist? Share it all here and now!
I've been getting deep into the discography of the kpop group NMIXX, their sound somehow just fits what my taste in music is.
I have a combination of new-to-me music, something seasonal and a rare/semi-lost media search to share:
The other day I heard a song called Christmas at the Donut Shop on the radio in a store and really enjoyed its silly charm, sadly the linked video with all the cartoony sound effects is the only upload I could find, and the song isn't in the listed disography of either credited performer. At least one seems to still be actively updating his website and social media, so I might see if he's will to put the original somewhere people can listen to it
Due to skate story I have been listening to blood cultures and making my partners listen to blood cultures all week
I finally got around to watching the music video for Hiroyuki Sawano's COLORs and it's kind of taken over my brain. The art style, the world design, the character designs, the apocalypse yuri vibes, the song itself (and, as a transfemme, the iconic shot at 0:32...) It's all just perfect, I can think of exactly two other music videos that tick my boxes this perfectly: Porter Robinson's Shelter and Enter Shikari's Redshift—and both of these are 9-10 years old so yeah, this one's a keeper.
My youtube feed decided to give me every Xfactor audition imaginable so my new music is having the "ah-ah-aaaaah-aAaah" part from Michael Jackson's Earth Song stuck in my head.
Also I like that there's an Australian judge on American version and an American judge on the Australian version. Or was at some point.
And a British judge on the American version, except she was fired because Americans could not understand her accent whatsoever (Geordie from Newcastle). They had to subtitle her when the show aired.
My partner played Skate Story (great game!) this past week and we fell in love with the band who do the music for the game, Blood Cultures. Here's the full album. My fave songs are Emptyland sand It's Hostile (one of the boss tracks!)
Oh hey same story. I’ve been most into where the city can’t see
I bought distant cowboy's debut album on bandcamp randomly but i don't love it. I later found out he was on tiktok which to me explains more. I thought it was nice cello related ambient music but not the best by far and certainly not a sonic landscape of wyoming. It felt like it was lacking something and i kept comparing it to Arctic by Eldbjorg Hemsing, which is a custom written full orchestra depiction of the arctic landscape and much more descriptive. Distant cowboy's album kind of reminded me of things that sound good on tiktok but don't stretch.
In my eyes personally there's a distinct divide between songs that came up on tiktok vs songs from everywhere else and it's that tiktok songs are more plain/unimaginative and sounds good in little bursts.
I highly recommend Arctic by Eldbjorg Hemsing though. I've listened to it several times since and each track is awesome.
Well, the final set of raid fights for FF14 came out this week… and with it, a few new boss fight tracks.
Including a surprise collaboration with Tom Morello and Beartooth, EVERYTHING BURNS.
Saturday was present opening day for the vinyl collectors secret Santa I took part in. I got 9 Red Songs by Chris TT. It's not bad, but there's something about his voice I don't like.
The most gifted album was the Sunliners eponymous album, so i had to listen to that as well. I really enjoyed that one
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Hello, your comment has been removed for the following reason:
Don’t be vague, and include context.
NOOOOO! NOT AGAIN!!!!
Ive seen post like These with over 100k likes this is just proof that the Hetalia Fandom is rising from the dead ever again and it is bad
Also I've been seen comment like "hetalia metioned" on a random video about countries that have never connection to that fandom
Is this what the Belmont family felt like the first time Dracula came back?
'strewth
Minor drama that happened in the Blue Archive community.
An influencer event was announced with the newest update. Players could watch streams of the game for a certain time to earn in-game rewards.
The problem? The people they picked to do the streams: Gigguk, CDawg, Zentraya and Ironmouse.
A stink was raised because players thought they would just be tourists or bring tourist players (people who play a game for some time then aband it), and because none of them have shown interest in the past or were hostile towards it or the playerbase (particularly CDawg).
Two days later the campaign was officially cancelled. Two camps formed, the first one celebrating that the publisher avoided a potential PR nightmare, and the second one calling out the first one for not realizing the purpose of the campaign was to attract new players who may had not heard of the game before. Regardless, both seem to agree the publisher showed integrity by listening to the player base.
Every single problem in the Blue Archive community is self inflicted and deserved. I honestly have no idea why the community is the way it is. Like, on the grand scale of things, the game isn't even that horny. Compared to the heavy hitters like Azur Lane, GFL, Nikke, or Brown Dust 2, Blue Archive is relatively tame. Hell, even games like ZZZ or Wuthering Waves I'd consider hornier than Blue Archive. And it's not like Blue Archive uniquely has diddy lolicon content; most of the previously mentioned games have their fair share of them too. Hell, Blue Archive's biggest claim to gooner fame were with bunnygirl costumes for Karin and Asuna, who are like the oldest looking characters in the cast.
I really don't know why the community is so epstein coded. The majority of the fanservice is with the older characters. The story is fairly tame and on the grand scale of things not very horny (even for like summer events where you'd expect it to be extremely gooner bait). And yet so much of the community are unabashed lolicons, especially compared to other gooner gachas. It's actually kind of baffling.
However I will say that this event was ill planned and doomed to fail from the beginning, mainly for the fact that Blue Archive (and many other gachas) tend to promote themselves in the worst way possible: giving streamers a boosted account and telling them to read the current event story without any context. If this streamer thing did go through, I think there would've been even harder backlash from both sides.
My uneducated guess: The porn.
Not all doujins are NSFW, so is not a 100% accurate number, but numbers for the convention Comiket, largest in Japan, are a close aproximation of what is currently popular in porn fanart.
Blue Archive, as mentioned, has been at the top or near it for around 3 years (Comiket conventions are every 6 months), and a lot of that porn skews lolicon, so that's a massive incentive for the community to lean that way.
Man, I've seen some of the character designs for Azur Lane and like, Blue Archive has to have like hardcore lolicon if it's supposed to be worse than being able to look at CGs of bikini-clad lolis that are in teasy poses.
That's the thing the commenter is getting at, the game itself isn't really worse. Makes it all the more baffling
I suspect it really is a nazi bar problem. The other games might pandr to that crowd but for whatever reason Blue Archive put up a sign that said "lolicons welcome" and thus they aggregated there.
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Great, now explain the emphatic, implicitly homophobic hatred for any pairing other than M!Sensei x student. Bonus points for not throwing Mihoyo fans under the bus.
just don't bother lol
Is there though? I admit I am quite new in the community, and I have personally never, ever seen such hatred on reddit specifically.
There are a lot of arts that gets posted that features Fem Sensei x Student pairings, or even student x student pairings, though they are quite infrequent. But I have never seen hatred you speak of.
On the official sub, the mods had to clamp down on it due to how bad it got. I personally had some fanfics I wrote "featured" in a post there, in which the comments were full of people circlejerking about how obviously Male Sensei x Student was the only real pairing. The character design reveal for the anime, as posted in r/anime, was full of gloating about "owning the Hoyo fans" with a milquetoast male design. Offsite, I have personally reported multiple openly hateful comments against artists making student x student art. Another comment in this thread pointed out someone got flamed for defending F/F pairings even existing on the Steam forums. I've been playing since Day 1 and have an account to match, so you know that I'm not an outsider making judgements.
Well, that fucking sucks, honestly. I don't doubt what you're saying is true. And it's honestly idiotic that it's even happened.
I just think that's recently there's nowhere near as much hate for that kind of stuff as it may have been in the past.
Especially Fem. Sensei art is quite popular on the main sub, iirc. I would say that people who are vocally against yuri pairings and art are a minority nowadays.
I am speaking from my personal experience since I joined the community last year, obviously.
Like I said, mods clamped down on it, maybe two years ago? I applaud them for their efforts, seems like they're making real progress.
No one's forcing you to interact with this community either. It's pretty obvious you're here because you're trawling keywords on Reddit to find these posts, considering you've almost never posted here. You know "tourist" goes both ways?
Also, you know that it's incredibly easy to look at hidden post histories on Reddit?
I mean, yes, I am here to argue with people. It's a hobby of mine you know. Almost like some sort of drama hobby, or something. Whatever.
I am here to make points you did not adress, instead resorting to ad hominems.
My post history has nothing to do with points I make, right? It just makes you look like a creep that checks out other people's private things to address their own business instead of what they say.
The point of this thread/sub is to post about and document drama involving hobbies. Not argue about them. Never seen a guy miss this point so badly. How do you do, fellow HobbyDrama-ists? lmao
Yeah alright mate, I knew you would start throwing 'ad hominem' around. BA is not throwing 'slight' hints of studentxteacher stuff. It's one of their main selling points.
Also, literally make an alt for R18 stuff like we all used to do. Nothing you post on the internet is private.
Why are you here trying to defend/explain the community then? Let's not pretend you aren't a part of it.
Come on now, be real here. All drama includes intense arguments. No exceptions. Sure, this is not the point of the sub. But arguing is the point of drama, you know?
Because that's literally what you did. Why do you call me out on calling you out on things that you specifically did?
Yes it is. And people who don't like that can go and do something else instead of interacting with the community or the game.
I don't care, really. I hid my profile from people who are dumb enough to harass others for things they like. Also, once again, what I like or what I post has literally nothing to do with what we're currently arguing.
I said that already. I like arguing with people online. Surely, my time could not be more uselessly spent, but I find it's fun.
If you looked at the other posts in this sub you would notice that there’s very little arguing going on here, only documenting old ones (specifically old, if the drama is too fresh we’re not allowed to post it)…
This is the worst thing to happen to Blue Archive players since they shut down Epstein Island
This entire incident is entirely about CDawgVA, he made a big part of his brand being The Normal Guy Against Lolicon, then took a sponsorship for Blue Archive, the lolicon gacha game.
Of course there was a shitshow. Of course it made him look like a sellout. Of course the community that is invested on it threw a fit. This outcome was entirely predictable, though two days is impressive speed.
Kinda wild that it's a differential.
Back in the day, anime fans hated characters like Konata's father and Kimura, but guess we're at a point we're they can be the relatable audience stand-ins they were always meant to be!
That seems like a pretty wild revision of history when it comes to those characters, and the acceptance of underage perving in the 2000s. Kimura was well-regarded enough that him saying "My waifu" has become a long-standing anime term, and most of the in-series portrayal of Konata's dad was definitely "Isn't it cool that Konata has a parent that shares her otaku hobbies?"
Konata's dad was always kind of more mixed in reception than that. Like, yes, there was that, but it wasn't exactly uncommon for people to read it as "...wait this guy blatantly wants to fuck his daughter" and be very, very grossed out by that.
Lucky Star was kind of a weird one because it was very perfectly positioned to hit an audience of people who were not prepared to get thrown neck-deep into JPN otaku culture like that.
Let's be honest, it's just the same now. The "hahaha this character is paedophile haha isn't it funny" bit is still in a tonne of anime, with both male and female characters representing that trope.
And the audience largely loves it; just look at the amount of fans going to bat for Mushoku Tensei not on the basis of any artistic merit but brushing it off with "it's fiction" or some excuse about how ackshually the character is technically a child at the time, etc etc. If anything, those kinds of people only seem to complain when it's a female paedo character, like the one in Dragon Maid, but ignore it or justify it when it's the other way around.
Anime in general has a huge problem with being oversexualised, and strongly still pushes sexualisation of minors. It also seems to attract a culture where acceptance of, and enjoyment of, those things is treated as being "cultured" and encouraged.
I will note with Mushoku Tensei, it's... not exactly portraying the protagonist as positively as you may assume for all of that. It's kind of got a similar vibe to the early seasons of BoJack Horseman in that the protagonist is a very bluntly terrible person who, if the show lands for you, you want to see be better.
I think it's basically running into the problem that made the showrunners of BoJack panic and hard-pivot the show's messaging to "no, being better doesn't exist, if you're terrible you will always be terrible and should just isolate yourself from society to mitigate harm." If you make this kind of show, there will always be similarly terrible people who see themselves in the protagonist and miss the part where the whole point is seeing him suck less and less.
Does he, though. I confess that I watched first season (both cours) and he never seems to have much commeupance or punishment and he didn't show much signs of ceasing to sexually harass girls. The most we see is the story giving him an opportunity to be a good guy, a hero in a fantasy world, and people let his flaws slide.
Sure, he might threaten to sexually assault a seasick Eris but he's trying to be a hero. Oh he's depressed, oh he's holding onto Roxy's stolen panties. He's trapped and can't escape, but he bonds with Zanoba over their love of lewd figurines. It's a tonal mess that never really addresses his sexual habits negatively.
I know that he ends up marrying all of them at the end of the novels, so I'd really like to know how the story stops to get him to redeem himself, specifically adressing his sexual assault and/or grooming of most of the women he interacted with.
I watched about the same amount you did, and I frankly mostly agree. It didn't really land for me; I'm mostly just saying I'm inclined to be charitable to people it did hit for because I can see what the show's trying to do and it's mostly just not doing it very well.
The way it frames his behavior is pretty bluntly gross and unsettling, in a "the narrative agrees with us this is fucking terrible and is saying PLEASE DON'T BE LIKE THIS GUY" way. The setup makes it clear that this is the core tension of the story, and... well, if they don't address that by the end, what the shit was the point of the whole exercise. The problem is mostly that it spends way too much time wheel-spinning in the "look at this absolute shitstain of a human being lmao" part and way too little time actually having him eat his necessary dose of shit for it.
If it seriously ends with him just marrying a bunch of women he sexually assaulted over the course of the story, I am suddenly a lot less inclined to be charitable to it because holy shit.
I think we're expecintg the narrative to address a different set of flaws. Rudeus is meant to go from a hikkikomori loser into a respectable hero.
His sexual behaviour, however unsettling, is not part of the redemption story Mushoku Tensei tries to portray. To quote a Japanese conservative writer:
And it has always been the case, and it just makes too much money for it to change, and, as seen, is near impossible to make a living related to this industry without eventually having to compromise on the point. Consumers just make bubbles of what they are comfortable with.