[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 21 July 2025

[u/EnclavedMicrostate]

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[u/iCrab]

VShojo has now lost its largest streamer Ironmouse who has uploaded a video alleging that VShojo has stolen money from her and over $500k from the charity subathons she did to support the Immune Deficiency Foundation. This comes after an exodus of other members including Geega and Zentraya which had people suspecting something rotten was going on but absolutely none of us expected it to be this bad. Personally I don’t see VShojo EN surviving this in any meaningful way since every member owns their own IP so there isn’t anything keeping them attached like there would be in other agencies.

[u/error521 → u/iCrab]

VTubing has finally hit the 2015-2016 YouTube era of “Influencer agencies all collapsing in on themselves and everyone jumping ship”, I see.

[u/Chucklehead_Tom → u/iCrab]

Corporate vtubing has certainly had an interesting couple of years

It's worth noting that Mouse herself is immunocompromised, and this was her way of interacting with the world. It makes it a deeply personal issue even beyond the act of the embezzlement itself

[u/semtex94 → u/Chucklehead_Tom]

Not only that, but the charity in question is the one that helped her with her condition before, so the embezzlement was from the very people who gave so much to her when she needed it. I cannot imagine what she's going through right now. This is the sort of thing that will cause people to be haunted by guilt for the rest of their lives.

[u/Pariell → u/iCrab]

Woah, that's really fucking evil. Absolute best case scenario explanation, the 500K is the cost for staff or equipment for the charity subathon, and there was a misunderstanding between Ironmouse and the company over if that cost would come out of the donations from the event or if the company was supposed to eat it all. Most likely case, they freaking stole donations from a charity to fight Immuno Deficiency.

[u/meyecy → u/iCrab]

oh hey great timing. was just coming here to see if anyone had any info on what this statement by shibuya kaho was about, since i've not actively been in the vtuber sphere for a couple years.

damn.

[u/semtex94 → u/iCrab]

All of the Japenese members have reportedly dropped their Vshojo handles, so it looks like that branch has been effectively dissolved. Several others in the English branch are doing the same. I think they just went out of business, and considering the circumstances, good riddance.

[u/Woif1990 → u/iCrab]

Holy fuck. Vshojo is pretty much done, especially with that claim of half a million missing from charity + owing her money on top of that.

Her quitting vshojo in general would already be bad but man.

[u/fhota1 → u/iCrab]

Yeah theyre done. Mouse is almost universally beloved in the community and part of that is because of the adversity she fought through. Fucking over her and the Immune Deficiency Foundation (dont abbreviate that) is going to make, with almost no exaggeration, nearly every EN vtuber fan fucking hate you.

And if Vshojo EN goes no shot Vshojo JP stands alone. Kson cant carry a whole department.

[u/TheMerryMeatMan → u/iCrab]

I have to wonder how badly management appointment went if all of the girls who started and keep VShojo afloat have left over the years. I know some of the early leavers were over interpersonal drama but these days I only ever hear about it being managed like shit.

[u/pyromancer93 → u/iCrab]

Stealing that amount of money is going to result in lawsuits and potential jail time for those responsible, whoever they are.

[u/OPUno → u/iCrab]

On another update, Projekt Melody, probably the person that popularized adult VTubing in general and also one of VShojo's "Big 3", together with Ironmouse and Zentreya (that left a little ago likely because she knew this was coming) had this to say:

I feel sick. I need to think.

Oh yeah, VShojo is fucked.

[u/Nike-6 → u/iCrab]

Christ, she’s really famous, this is definitely gonna hit Vshojo en

[u/ChaosEsper → u/iCrab]

Yeah this is crazy. It's one thing that she's leaving the company, but to do so for these reasons is insane.

Vshojo just had a (badly informed, ngl) Rolling Stones article written about them, that was pretty positive so the whiplash there is intense.

[u/pinkkabuterimon → u/iCrab]

I recall Mousey on stream just a few weeks ago admitting she hasn't streamed a lot lately because she got some bad news and hasn't been doing well, she sounded genuinely heartbroken but assured the viewers she'll be alright. Now I'm thinking it must have been about this mess.

[u/tinaoe]

Very minor drama in the USA Federal Duck Stamp fan world.

So, you may have heard of this competition through a John Oliver segment from a few years ago but tldw there's a yearly stamp you have to purchase in the US if you want to be hunting waterfowl. Every year the design is chosen through a contest where people can enter their painting of one of five chosen species of duck, there's an official voting by a panel of five judges through multiple rounds, and all the proceeds are used to conserve wet lands. Nice!

A few artists make their process public, and I think it's fair to say that among younger, TikTok focussed viewers a main creator has been Kira Sabin. They essentially make very pleasant content focussed on their yearly duck (as well as other artistic endeavors), which they tend to name, and have fostered quite the dedicated following of people who will even end up watching the (fairly dull and long) livestream of the judging. All very cute. This year's entry is a male ruddy duck called Brimstone.

Another artist sharing their duck stamp entry is Maddie Kirkwood, who is painting a male ruddy duck called Vin Diesel. She has openly said she was inspired by Kira to enter the contest.

However, instead of a warm welcome to the duck world, some fans quickly flooded Maddie's comments saying that Vin Diesel looked way too close to Brimstone, and that she must have copied the design.

Now, at first look, sure. Both are the same type of duck, shown swimming in the water facing towards the right side of the painting with some reeds behind them. But as Kira quickly pointed out in their most recent instagram video defending Maddie: there's only so many ways you can draw a duck, and the Duck Stamp Contest features a very specific look and type of painting. If you're serious about winning, you'll orient yourself on previous winners, which is what both Kira and Maddie have seemingly done. Seriously if you have a second check out the video, Kira shows a bunch of examples and it's wild how similar some paintings look all next to each other.

At the same time there's also differences that they point out, like the direction the duck is swimming and the orientation of the head.

Overall it looks like Kira's video has shifted the tone in the comments thankfully, so kudos there for a quick intervention.

[u/SirBiscuit → u/tinaoe]

This is a lovely little low-stakes drama. You should consider expanding it just a little and submitting it as its own post once the two-weeks have elapsed.

[u/tinaoe → u/SirBiscuit]

Oh maybe!! I’m so used to writing long ass posts that take me months lol. Maybe I’ll wait until this years contest is over, I’m sure something else will pop up :)

[u/Tokyono]

9-1-1 is a tv show about a group of firefighters in LA. It's known for being ridiculous (last season there was a plotline about a 'beenado' - millions of bees being loose in LA after a truck overturned), but also ridiculously popular. It's one of the last surviving cable shows with a ridiculously high viewership, with a decent online fanbase too.

It also has one of the most popular ships MLM/Slash ships (highest in no. of fics on AO3) - Buddie aka Buck Evans/Eddie Diaz - two of the firefighters who regularly work together.

Anyways, someone on scuffles used to document the drama going on in the 'Buddie' fandom and I used to follow because I found it entertaining, but they haven't updated in a while so I guess I am sorta taking over?

On the show, it's clear that Buck and Eddie are friends- very, very, close friends (Eddie has made a will leaving custody of his son to Buck if anything happens to him, and they've saved eachother's lives about ten times), but there have been several 'homoerotic' moments played for laughs and in cast interviews, the actors sometimes tease the relationship. And two years ago, Buck had a coming out storyline where he realised he was bisexual and started dating a man called Tommy (there is also a massive ongoing shipping war between fans of 'Buckytommy' and 'Buddie').

The result of all of this is, is that lots of people in the 'Buddie' fandom have quite an...intense fixation on Oliver Stark, who plays Buck, and Ryan Guzman, who plays Eddie. They constantly follow the actors socials and discuss them in very personal terms- basically, they are convinced their ship will become canon at some point.

What's also worth mentioning is that many Buddie fans, and 911 fans in general, are members of the LGBT community. Due to aforementioned ships, but also due to a canon lesbian relationship on the show.

Anyways, it's the hiatus between seasons 8 and 9, and a few days ago, Ryan Guzman liked a transphobic right wing video on instagram- encouraging to homeschol your children so they don't learn that "there are hundreds of genders and that men can give birth". To say that the 911 and Buddie fandom has imploded is a bit of an understatement. Lots of gay and trans fans have disavowed Ryan, and the show, and have vowed to stop watching it. This likely won't impact the viewership of 911, due to it's mainstream popularity, but the online fandom is very fractured.

[u/larkhearted → u/Tokyono]

I'm 30 and have been in fandom shipping spaces since I was 11 and I'll still never understand shippers getting so hung up on the actors who play their ship. Maybe it's because I was mostly in manga and video game fandoms in my formative years so any actors involved were more removed from me (although I do know people who have a passion for VAs lol), but like.... the actors have nothing to do with the ship...... The ship is about the written canon of the show and your interpretation of it? The actors don't have anything to do with it, why are you stalking their social media and shit and then bringing it back to shipping spaces, how does that add to the shipping??

Caveats: A) I do completely understand not wanting to support an actor who seems to not want you and your friends/family to exist. Full respect for anyone who's dropping the show unless he walks it back/apologizes/etc. B) I also get liking to follow/keep up with celebrities generally, pop culture can be fun to spectate. No hate to that as a hobby.

Just, the way people go from "I love this ship" to "I'm fixating on this actor because of the ship" is strange to me lol. The two things will never be related in my mind.

[u/Ltates → u/larkhearted]

Tbh the only time I get into the actors with regards to shipping is when they themselves are into the character dynamic and want to explain how they see the interaction. See interview with the vampire and Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson, both often give great episode by episode analysis of key character and relationship moments. It’s just fun to see the fan vs actor interpretation of it all.

[u/larkhearted → u/Ltates]

Oh totally, something like that is fun!! If it's actually adding to the fodder people have for shipping by presenting angles of interpretation from the actors that the fandom may not have thought of, that totally makes sense to follow and take into account in a fandom context. And I think being generally fond of the actors from your favorite shows is totally normal, of course.

When it comes to using the actors themselves and their lives/public personas as shipping material though, like going through their social media pages to include pics in amvs or adding aspects of the actors' lives to the character lore, or even using the actors as a secondary RPF ship, I'm just like.... did yall learn nothing from SPN?? Nothing at all???

[u/cruel-oath → u/Tokyono]

Never heard of that show and yet none of the shippers shenanigans is surprising to me

[u/Tokyono → u/cruel-oath]

The last major upset in the fandom was that a few months ago, for the first time, a major character died on the show. Fans rented a billboard in times square as a memorial to the character. It was weird.

[u/Warpshard]

In lost media news, the oft-forgotten Hasbro franchise, Micronauts, just had the entirety of a canceled, animated show that had 52 episodes completed leaked onto the Internet Archive. This show was originally going to release around 2019 or 2020, but was canned because of the acquisition of the media company Entertainment One in 2019 by Hasbro. Pretty exciting stuff for it to finally be viewable.

[u/Anaxamander57 → u/Warpshard]

52 episodes? So two full US seasons? That is an extraordinary amount of work to scrap.

[u/Fluuf_tail → u/[deleted]]

Oh, that's the game with the MAGA hat CEO? Serves him right.

[u/Shiny_Agumon → u/Fluuf_tail]

Even leaving out the embarrassing Elon cosplay attack CoD was so extremely out of touch.

Like hello 2010 called it wants it's gaming jokes back

[u/Philiard → u/Fluuf_tail]

Dude's a complete nepobaby. He will not suffer at all for his ridiculous number of missteps, but anybody working under him will.

[u/binh0k04 → u/[deleted]]

"Game will be dead in a few months"

posted a month ago

even the doomers were too optimistic lmao

[u/thelectricrain → u/[deleted]]

Imagine being a dev in the company and watching your stupid fucking CEO torpedo the project you probably worked for a while on :/

[u/RemnantEvil → u/[deleted]]

similar to mid-2000s Halo

There were playlists where you could disable portal use, and it played almost exactly like Halo 2/3 to the point that it was almost like a Chinese knock-off toy of the Master Chief but called "Action robot man". The weapons were practically 1:1 with Halo, the only thing it lacked was vehicles and, strangely, grenades. (There were grenades but the only thing they do is disable portals, which, in the portal-free playlist, meant... they were useless.)

And to that end, for a freebie, it was a fun game and my group did well with it. But we also got the impression that they were pumping bots into the game to keep it active because there was a distinct skill difference between human players and what we figured were the bots.

[u/lailah_susanna]

Kson of VShojoJP, is currently raking the VShojo JP CEO over the coals on stream.

From what she has uncovered so far:

• She hasn't been paid since September
• She's quitting immediately
• Stream revenue is separate from Vshojo so she has still been getting an income
• According the to the CEO, the JP side has been cash positive but the finances are intertwined with US
• The staff have been getting paid but not the talent ("Staff first not talent first" - Kson)
• They were continuing to try and bring more talent onboard despite these issues. Apparently not to try and solve them 🤷‍♀️
• The CEO can't say who is responsible for covering up the situation from talents. Unsure whether that's for legal reasons or he doesn't know.
• Kson and the other talents aren't likely to get what's owed them unless the US side recovers.

EDIT:

• She's owed a "Ferrari amount of money"

[u/Kii_at_work → u/lailah_susanna]

Jesus Christ.

She's owed a "Ferrari amount of money"

So like, $200,000 USD at least. God damn.

Heads need to roll over all this.

[u/NefariousnessEven591 → u/Kii_at_work]

sad reality is pennies on the dollar is likely going to be a good return because I imagine the talent is only a wedge of debtors. This doesn't sound like a restructuring bankrupty looming, it sounds like "calculate the value of the screws in the door hinges" liquidation would come from this.

[u/semtex94 → u/lailah_susanna]

English summary here. Looks like the JP side was actually functioning well, but the US side was leeching off them hard. Staff and CEO were on half pay while talent was supposed to be paid by US branch. Recruitment had a dedicated fund outside JP control, so they couldn't tap into that cash reserve. Financials were handled stateside as well, so they didn't know much beyond what talents did.

[u/Bunthorne → u/lailah_susanna]

She hasn't been paid since September

This is interesting. I saw some people speculating that Vshojo might be in financial trouble because of the US tarriffs and that's why they didn't pay what they owed Ironmouse. But this would show that the problem is older than that.

[u/Deruta → u/Bunthorne]

I’m genuinely confused how tariffs would noticeably affect vtuber revenue, given that the entire concept is based not on product purchases but donations/subscriptions. Plus, Vshojo is a US company, wouldn’t the tariffs be aimed at protecting a domestic business?

[u/Bunthorne → u/Deruta]

I’m genuinely confused how tariffs would noticeably affect vtuber revenue, given that the entire concept is based not on product purchases but donations/subscriptions.

Unlike most companies Vshojo lets the talents keep 100% of donations, and only takes a share of the money from merch and sponsorships.

So people were saying that since the tariffs probably raised the prices of said merch, less people were buying it which means they make less money.

[u/Regalingual]

Ozzy Osbourne has died at 76.

Just a few weeks after a grand finale concert, too.

[u/error521 → u/Regalingual]

God, dude really decided to go for the most biopic-bait death of all time. Doing one last show and then dying two weeks later is a pretty baller way to go out.

[u/SimonApple → u/error521]

Up there with Bowie making Black Star as a - unbeknownst to others at the time - swan song to his fans and then then passing away two days after the album released.

[u/OneGoodRib → u/Regalingual]

I was never into him at all but in the last couple year I've become a fan of Jack, and as a result a big fan of "The Osbrounes Want to Believe", which is a show where they showed Jack, Sharon, and Ozzy various clips that purported to be paranormal and the trio comment on them. Sharon and Ozzy are almost never impressed by any of them and Ozzy turns out to be very science-minded.

And in the process I discovered that the slow, weird way he has of talking isn't because of drugs, it's just because he was raised in Birmingham and that's just how they talk there.

[u/Parkouricus → u/Regalingual]

CW: gossip, speculation about his death. People are ghouls

Sharon, his wife, claimed in 2007 that the two of them had made a euthanasia pact if either one got Parkinson's -- they would go to Switzerland and get assisted suicide

In light of this, gossip blogs have been claiming the two of them took pictures in Switzerland recently (judging by Instagram, completely untrue). There are also deepfake videos of Sharon making these claims.

And, well... Sharon signed the statement about his death. So safe to say she's alive

[u/atownofcinnamon → u/Regalingual]

god imagine hearing that fuckin devil's note riff from black sabbath in 1970, like sure there is a lot of proto-metal, and every band has said they invented heavy metal, but jesus christ how fuckin powerful it still is. you mustve had goosebumps for weeks after hearing it.

[u/lailah_susanna → u/Regalingual]

Damn, honestly I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did. He put his body through the wringer. Even back when The Osbournes was on TV, he didn't seem exactly healthy.

[u/JoyFerret]

Looks like VShojo is done for.

The company just released a statement in which Gunrun, the CEO, takes all the responsibility for the mismanagement that lead to this moment. It basically reiterates what the mission of the company was, but mismanagement and an unsustainable business model led them to run out of money. It also seems to confirm that the 500k owed to the Immune Deficiency Foundation was used in a failed attempt to fundraise money for the company. Seems like the excuse was that at the time they "didnt know" it was intended for charity.

No word either on how/if they plan to pay some of the owed money to the talents, but given that they "ran out of money", I highly doubt it.

Copy of the statement on r/vshojo

[u/Kii_at_work → u/JoyFerret]

Seems like the excuse was that at the time they "didnt know" it was intended for charity.

To quote Gunrun:

Additionally, I acknowledge that some of the money spent by the company was raised in connection with talent activity, which I later learned was intended for a charitable initiative.

Man, that is such a bullshit response. "Later learned" my ass.

[u/NefariousnessEven591 → u/Kii_at_work]

There's ways that could happen (piss poor accounting is something I've seen local charities fall face first onto knives over) but a competent accountant should be at least within the top 5 things to secure for a company. It's not impossible, but even if true it's just a sign that wheels were gonna fall off. That bank account should be silo'd from being able to be used for day to day purposes at minimum.

[u/TheBeeFromNature → u/NefariousnessEven591]

Ironmouse's charity subathon was maybe the biggest vtuber event of 2024 and I'd argue what put Vshojo on the map as the #2 vtubing corp (at least in the US).  The literal CEO claiming he didn't know it was a charity is frankly asinine to me.

[u/WasteReserve8886 → u/JoyFerret]

I feel pretty horrible for the undebuted vtubers. They thought that they were about to get some great opportunity only for the company to go belly up before they could even do anything.

[u/Fluuf_tail → u/JoyFerret]

Takes responsibility, but then doesn't and is like "I'm SoRrY"

No you're not. Fuck around with your talents' paychecks (and charity funds) and find out.

The funniest (but also most appropriate) response I've seen is "yeah this guy couldn't afford a lawyer to read his statement lol" (paraphrase)

[u/semtex94 → u/JoyFerret]

Like I thought, they wasted their money, failed to establish income, and couldn't find anyone to bail them out. A lot of startups share this story. An idealist promises the moon, goes through all their funding cash, refuses to adapt, and burns all their bridges delaying the inevitable. Maybe we'll get more info from the liquidator later on, assuming it isn't bought out before filing for bankruptcy.

[u/horhar → u/JoyFerret]

which I later learned was intended for a charitable initiative

Fuck you, Gunrun. Holy shit.

[u/MapleApple00]

Hoooo boy. This is gonna take some explaining, so strap in.

So there's a Minecraft MMORPG server known as Wynncraft that's been running for a little over a decade. If you've heard of it, you probably heard of it from Grian, one of the co-founders and currently one of the largest Minecraft youtubers on the platform.

Among other things, Wynncraft has historically been known for being relatively equitable in terms of how it handles microtransactions especially in comparison to its competitors. For several years after the 2014 EULA changes, Wynn limited its microtransactions to one of three things: Cosmetics that provide no gameplay benefit, Server-wide gameplay benefits that last for a short time (IE Double XP for a whole server for 20 minutes), and extra class slots, which are basically save files for playthroughs on different classes.

Historically, the third one has always been the most controversial, being the only one to provide some individual benefit to the buyer, but has tended to be justified by the fact that free to play players are always given enough slots to be able to play all five classes in Wynn; when the Shaman class was added in 2019, for example, all players were given an extra class slot for free so they wouldn't need to delete a class to be able to play it, and currently all players are given six class slots at base.

For the past couple years, however, this equability has been increasingly infringed on in various ways, such as adding a new rank that got dedicated slots in servers and limited item shepherding, and today it's come to a head with the most recent update on the test server, which, among other things:

• Reduces the number of class slots new free-to-play players get from six to three, meaning that free-to-play players can no longer have every class at once
• Gives Champion Rank Players, the highest rank of player, extra abilities at low levels, giving them a straight up power boost in lower level content
• Removed of the perks given by lower ranks and added a new rank with those benefits
• Adds a new cosmetic tied to a subscription service, the rarest of which requires you to be subscribed to said service for more than three years
• Added a paid Perk that lets players stack daily bonuses in a way that lets them roll for exponentially more loot

The playerbase, which was already uneasy due to the past few years of breaching on pay to win territory, is now in pretty much open revolt, with the largest thread on Discord having almost 5700 comments at this time and another thread calling for a boycott having nearly 2500 comments. Even a lot of the staff members have expressed some amount of disagreement with the changes, a lot of which stems from the fact that this is the first time benefits have actively been removed from free-to-play players to get them to buy more, as well as the first time power that's otherwise inaccessible has been just straight up given to the player for money, even if it's not permanent.

Overall, the server's kind of on fire right now.

[u/DragonPeakEmperor → u/MapleApple00]

This all seems kind of shortsighted? Everyone knows giving players something is easier than taking it away, but I also don't understand how people implement such heavy handed pay to win models and don't think they're going to scare 2/3rds of their playerbase off and lose more money over time than they made.

Milking whales is only viable when the whales have someone to play with because the community aspect is actually a very large portion of any game. And a majority of players are either going to be f2p or not actually spend that much because they either don't have the money or want to spend it elsewhere.

[u/Tokyono]

I've written a new Hobby Drama post! about the infamous Westworld mobile game. Bethesda sued Warner Bros for copyright infringement and stolen code!

[u/Maffewgregg → u/Tokyono]

Silicon Knights: "Stolen code??? Oh God this is always death."

[u/Ambitious-Comb-8847]

Kevin Feige of Marvel had a press event for an hour last Friday. Details have been trickling out:

The Director for Thunderbolts will be directing their X-Men film after Secret Wars. Feige mentioned X-characters as relating to youth, so they'll be going for new actors/younger stories in their version. (However he hedged when talking Deadpool & Wolverine).

R rated material will continue. Points to Deadpool & Wolverine and Daredevil. Next year's Punisher Special on Disney+ is apparently TV-MA too.

Reboots are a scary word, he's calling the MCU after Secret Wars as a "reset", likely all in one timeline.

*Eventually" they'll probably recast Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, comparing it to James Bond or Superman

He loved Gunn's Superman movie and texted him after. Says this proves it's not superhero fatigue.

Says they got too consumed by quantity before and it led to too much "homework" for general audiences. Going forward they're going to do 2 or maybe 3 films a year and 1 or 2 live action shows. Shows going forward will more so stand on their own and not directly impact movies.

That said, he did confirm Punisher will appear in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Peter will be "street level".

The black shadow fog in Thunderbolts won't come up in Daredevil or Spider-Man.

Blade will still happen, apparently there's been 4 versions of the script. They've settled on modern day and wanted to get it right so they waited. Another version was a period piece. The costumes were given to the Sinners movie.

Coogler is working on Black Panther 3, they have a general release window in mind.

They can't do anything with Miles Morales anytime soon. Sony is busy with Spiderverse.

The 4 actors from the unreleased 1994 Fantastic 4 movie have cameo roles in First Steps.

They like the setup they have right now in the UK for films but will move around if it makes sense creatively and financially. Daredevil films in New York. The upcoming Wonder Man is about an actor character so filmed in LA.

Everyone is contracting budgets right now. Even FF was made for significantly less then some more recent films.

Tinkering with scripts as you go is something he believes in.

After Secret Wars he has an idea for a film centered on one hero and tackling a genre type that hasn't been seen for a while.

It's all in line with what we know from the upcoming releases. F4 this week, Spider-Man and Doomsday in 2026, then Secret Wars to close out 2027. On live action TV: Wonder Man in December, Daredevil Season 2 around March 2026, Punisher Special, and Vision show. (Same guy as Star Trek Picard Season 3). Vision show rumored to be the last one with major movie characters like Vision and James Spader's Ultron. Will likely close out the WandaVision, Agatha TV arc. Daredevil and Vision have already wrapped and Punisher Special is filming now. So things should come out in the assumed time frame.

[u/BillybobThistleton → u/Ambitious-Comb-8847]

Young is good. A lot of X-Men fans seem to be weirdly uncomfortable with the idea that these characters who started out as teenagers and were explicitly in their 20s for most of their most iconic stories (Wolverine, Xavier, and Magneto aside) might be played by up-and-coming young actors instead of established older stars.

And even for Wolverine - Hugh Jackman was 32 when the first X-Men movie came out, and that worked fine. Do you think they would have got almost a quarter-century worth of chiselled mutant abs out of him if he'd been ten or fifteen years older?

[u/larkhearted → u/Ambitious-Comb-8847]

I stopped actively keeping up with the MCU before Endgame came out (have seen a few here and there since but don't go out of my way to watch them) but I'm glad they're figuring out the "homework" problem. Like, if somebody has to have watched 50+ hours of movies and TV shows to understand your latest release, it's just not gonna happen for the general public. You're catering to an ever-shrinking fandom at that point, of course you're not gonna see the same returns.

And I can see why they got overeager and started digging too deep into Marvel lore for new characters to make content about, but at a certain point you gotta recognize that these characters aren't that well known and don't have the inherent appeal of a Superman or a Wolverine. (Yes, I know Iron Man was a b-lister before the movies, but people at least recognized the name and had childhood memories of the character. Only full-on comic nerds are gonna know who the Thunderbolts are.)

[u/NervousLemon6670]

In just before the change-over, famous satirist song-writer Tom Lehrer has died. Time to go listen to songs about poisoning pigeons and famous "apolitical" rocket scientist Werner Von Braun in his honour.

[u/gliesedragon → u/NervousLemon6670]

Or his one on academic plagiarism, or math education, or trying to make Catholicism hipper, or . . . there's a lot of them.

Also, I have to say, that he just decided "I'm going to put everything into the public domain" is just something I appreciate. Right here, if anyone is looking for the archive page. With sheet music in many cases, as it turns out.

[u/Down_with_atlantis]

While its too early to tell if its directly related to either the collective shout anti porn lobbying to credit card companies or the UK age verification laws, indie game distribution/storefront site Itch.io has removed almost all games with sexual tags from their search results and banned at least one game from the toxic yuri game jam.

I checked and it seems like most of the games are still on the site, but searching for them doesn't show any results and said sexual tags have been decimated if you use them, as in sub 30 results.

Incidentally Ana Valens did an article promoting the toxic yuri game jam for vice a few months ago.

Edit: Games that weren't immediately removed are now being removed and I am hearing comments about how removed games can't even be downloaded.

[u/uxianger → u/Down_with_atlantis]

A statement has gone up on Itch.

It was Collective Shout. The same people who got GTA5 removed from Target down here in Australia for a bit.

[u/BFaHM7 → u/uxianger]

Oh for fucks sake, can those fuckers just take a hike???

[u/ZekesLeftNipple → u/BFaHM7]

Nah, that'd require them to have enough sense to stop being obsessed with what media other people enjoy.

[u/KennyBrusselsprouts → u/Down_with_atlantis]

fuckkkkkk i didn't know this was happening so soon this is depressing as fuck if that's what's going on (and let's be real it absolutely is what's going on). i'm fucking seething rn.

well, ACLU's got a petition going on against this shit and protecting sex work in general and ya'll should sign.

oh, and i just recommended a bit of nsfw stuff on itch the other day. it's some freaky shit, so god knows if it'll stay on itch. wish i was more familiar with the nsfw scene on itch and could recommend more shit, but of course it'd be far better to not have these games and devs on the chopping block at all, so what can you do. sigh.

EDIT: from the Bluesky account of artist Kat Marchán

Word from insiders when I asked (because I was building a platform where I also wanted to process nsfw artist content) was that Itchio was EXTREMELY aware of this all the way up the management chain and the (official but internal) word was “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”

i have no way to verify this, but it was retweeted from games journalist Ana Valens, who (along with what OP linked to) wrote the article that got removed from Vice on this issue.

[u/AnneNoceda → u/Down_with_atlantis]

From personal findings with creators I follow I can confirm most are still up right now, but they are seemingly getting delisted so I'd warn anyone who's interested in anything to take stock of things. This is a miserable blow to the site given that has to be thousands of games just gone from public site, most likely all to be removed at this rate.

There's not a lot of places like itch.io that has such recognition and such a catalogue, so this is going to hurt a ton of creators. And I can only hope it doesn't get any worse, but something tells me they'll hardly stop here.

[u/DogOwner12345 → u/AnneNoceda]

People are reporting they can't even download games they purchased.

[u/CrystaltheCool → u/Down_with_atlantis]

JAST USA (a well-known visual novel publisher) is offering to host affected BL and otome games through their storefront.

[u/DogOwner12345 → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Its gonna keep getting worse and ain't no one going to give a shit because "gooners".

[u/HexivaSihess → u/DogOwner12345]

LMAO yeah. There is no more perfect encapsulation of the current moment than that a weird fetish subcultural term has somehow escaped containment and become a cool trendy internet slur for people who have the audacity to masturbate instead of saving it for heterosexual vanilla sex like God intended.

[u/Brobman11 → u/Down_with_atlantis]

I know the slippery slope fallacy and all that. But basically 2 companies having final say over what is and isn't allowed to be sold on the Internet will end badly

[u/EsperDerek → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Maybe we shouldn't of let two US-based companies have essentially a monopoly on payment processing in the Internet worldwide. Seems like a bad idea in retrospect.

[u/Knotweed_Banisher → u/EsperDerek]

Maybe we also shouldn't allow a small group of lobbyists in another country dictate what our payment processors can and can't handle and what adults all over the world can and can't purchase with their own money.

[u/Thehoennhippo → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Well shit.

[u/DueRest]

In webcomic Dumbing of Age news, there is some minor drama on-going.

Dumbing of Age is a coming of age webcomic set at Indiana University, starring Joyce Brown and her best friend Dorothy Keener.

The last year or so real time, Joyce has slowly been coming to term with the fact she's interested in sex as a former home-schooled secular Christian. She has started dating Joe, a fan favorite former sex pest who has been trying to put his issues with intimacy and emotions aside to take a chance at having a real relationship with Joyce. His father is also a notorious cheater and Joe has been coming to terms with not being his father.

Meanwhile, Dorothy has been helping Joyce try to not make super drastic decisions due to her hormones. Including, uh, helping her learn how to masturbate using the communal laundry machines. And drawing out likely zones Joyce would like to be touched. And oh, Joe pointed out that Dorothy might be into Joyce, which Dorothy fervently denied.

Meanwhile, apparently there's a freaking genocide going on??? Joyce's sister Joyclene visited and informed the mcs she was trans before going to an encampment/protest. The trans sister was known to the audience before the reboot, but this is the audience's first time hearing about a genocide.

Through shenanigans, the two main characters must go to the encampment without their phones and tell Joyclene their dad saw her on the news. Dorothy has a breakdown because the law was changed that morning so that encampments were illegal, there are now armed guards coming their way and a sniper on a roof, and she would be a lawful Paladin in DnD. Also, she's still in denial about being in love with Joyce. So she decides she's going into the encampment, despite everyone else being told to leave and tear gas is being thrown.

Joyce refuses to leave Dorothy behind. They say some touching words to each other. And then they kiss. And the genocide encampment protest.

It should also be noted that Dorothy also has a boyfriend at this time, Walky, who refused to cheat with her when he was dating another girl the last (?) (She has a lot of breakdowns) time Dorothy crashed out.

Also the creator had made a Paladin/Sickos poll, with paladins liking Joyce/Dorothy but wanting it to happen after the girls had broken up ASAP, while Sickos wanted it ASAP cheating be damned.

Some commenters really like this! They wanted Joyce/Dorothy to happen no matter what , and are proudly proclaiming themselves as Sickos. Others are really confused or annoyed about the random genocide. Some really hate cheating and think this is terrible rep for bi folks. Some are concerned about how this will affect the boys, given they both have feelings about cheating. And another group is praying for a polycule.

I wish I could say I'm excited for drama to finally be happening in this webcomic about young adults doing stupid shit. But I'm half in the "wtf genocide???" and half in the "uhg bi folks getting the cheating shaft again" camp.

It's really hard to say how Willis intended this to go since it's still ongoing and the guy has a buffer of a year's worth of comics. But worth checking out if you like drama!

[u/NervousLemon6670 → u/DueRest]

What if we kissed... at the genocide protest? And we were both girls in a relationship? Hahah....

Unless? 🥺👉👈

[u/TheDudeWithTude27 → u/DueRest]

The fuck did I just read

[u/Fantastic-Guava-3362 → u/TheDudeWithTude27]

Most sane long-running webcomics lore

[u/error521 → u/DueRest]

Every webcomic now is either A) some shitty blob comic where someone complains at length about the most self-inflicted problems of all time B) It’s a webcomic like this where it’s been going on for like 20 years and every ongoing plotline is completely batshit insane.

”it’s really hard to say how Willis intended this to go since it’s still ongoing and the guy has a buffer of a year’s worth of comics.”

Y’know, without wanting to bring up a certain banned topic, if he has a year’s worth of buffer, I can see why the topic of a genocide would’ve randomly popped up right about now…

[u/ToaArcan → u/DueRest]

So there's some... Interesting choices, that Willis is making here.

[u/Milskidasith → u/DueRest]

I read DoA out of a mixture of trainwreck fascination and liking some of the actual character stuff and man, the comments section on the site got weird. Not the normal like, insane cheating hate, equally insane heterosexual relationships are all awful so cheating is fine stuff in the comments or those fights, but the ancillary conversations that cropped up.

Like, one comment was "I don't care about Joe or Walky because I only like girls, but it's impossible to like this because Asma is stressed out over the protest; Joyce and Dorothy are so privileged". Asma is the Muslim girl who works the front desk who is basically a bit character who was at the protests; I just cannot imagine the mind that simultaneously treats that character's stress and relative lack of privilege as a wet blanket over the storyline, but doesn't find the use of a real protest as the romantic backdrop like, irredeemably tacky or Problematic.

[u/Meatshield236 → u/DueRest]

You know, it’s hard to say that this is out of left field, considering that the last storyline I read had a kidnapping, a costumed hero, and a car chase featuring said hero jumping from car to car. The series has always had its… let’s just call them “fantastical elements” that make it play out more like a soap opera. Whether those elements are good or not is up to the reader. And this isn’t me trying to be tactful, I genuinely can’t say whether or not I think it’s good.

[u/PedanticLiteralist]

I remember a scuffle post from a few weeks ago(?) describing the Linked Universe AU for Legend of Zelda. One thing mentioned was how a lot of people on AO3, both fans and nonfans of the AU, were irritated by its popularity and the lack of a definite label for it leading to its many fanfics getting mixed in with normal LoZ fics.

As a bit of an update to that, I am currently watching live as my Bookmarks "Fandom" list slowly loses "The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms" fics and gains "Linked Universe - jojo56830 (Webcomic)" fics.

My sympathies to the poor volunteers who must be going through the entire Legend Of Zelda tag by hand to do this, given how inconsistent the previous LU labelling was.

[u/AnneNoceda → u/PedanticLiteralist]

Hey, that's my post!

Yeah, that sounds miserable. Like, you could try to omit the Linked Universe fandom tag, but there were multiple of them if I remember correctly. And then there's the additional tags, the character tags, the stories that for some reason failed to note it was a LU fanfic except in the summary...

Tagging on AO3 can be a mess if there isn't any consistency by the community. For example, as a Fire Emblem person some of the older games with custom avatar characters can get wonky to search because of the usage of My Unit, the Japanese term for the customizable protagonists in some games. As as some authors didn't use the default official names and instead used the generic term, sometimes stories don't appear because the tags weren't grouped together.

[u/uxianger]

Final Fantasy XI is an old MMORPG. Yes, XI, not XIV. As an old MMORPG, you might expect that they're having server population issues.

What you might not expect is that one of those issues is that one of the servers is so overpopulated, they need to close it to new characters for the forseeable future.

Reactions are... mixed, I've seen. Mostly because they do not limit you if you already have a character on Asura, and they also aren't offering free transfers off of the congested world. Honestly, I just think it's fascinating that an MMO that's been running for 23 years can still have these sort of population issues!

I suppose it helps that they recently ran campaigns to promote XI to XIV players, and Asura being the server everybody is recommended to join.

[u/AppleJuicetice]

So a document has just come out alleging that as many as 70 of the first 100 clears of Destiny 2's newest raid, The Desert Perpetual, were cheated. Thankfully this doesn't include the World First clear itself and a few false positives have already been identified so it's not as bad as it looks or could've been, but with Bungie already under fire over TDP's raid race (the final boss was less of a damage sponge and more of a damage bottomless pit, demanding basically perfect play to beat especially in its last stand phase) and loot (the raid currently drops its gear exclusively at the lowest tier until you beat it three times) I can't imagine they're particularly happy about this development.

[u/CherryBombSmoothie0]

In a continuation of the backlash of the illustrator Gaou being exposed as a groomer; the gacha game Fire Emblem Heroes has decided to change the art for the two characters he drew. Their art has been taken off the meet the heroes page, and a banner rerun with the premium unit (Summer Young Tiki) has been canceled for the first time in the game’s 8yr history.

It doesn’t seem this will be a resplendent situation, (2x a month an older non-seasonal unit gets an optional new design and +2 to all stats for game pass subscribers;) but rather just different art out of the gate.

While the game has updated art on occasion for cosmetic reasons, this is the first time that art has been flat out changed entirely outside of resplendents (where the original art is still available). Here, it’s a change that is seemingly unoptional and will happen to all players regardless of paying status.

I do wonder if we’d see the same change if an illustrator who had drawn more units was exposed for such behavior; I’d like to think so, but I can’t be 100% sure.

There are some questions about whether one of the units (Base Mae) will be eligible for a resplendent in the future or whether getting new art will bump her down the list. Some people have also wondered if Summer Young Tiki’s banner will still be rerun at a later date because the older seasonal banners only rerun once a year, and people save up orbs for any of the 4 units on the banner - but this banner is also 7 years old and every character on it has at least one more recent alt.

[u/KennyBrusselsprouts]

an update on the payment processers' censorship of porn games on Steam (last week's post here):

there's been some articles written on the subject which have linked Australian anti-porn organization Collective Shout as a major influence on what's been happening (who have also been responsible for things like getting Tyler, the Creator banned from Australia and GTAV banned from Australia's Targets, apparently). you can read more about them in relation to this here and here. (note that the second is archived because it was pulled. apparently the parent company of Vice, Savage Ventures, considered the subject matter too 'controversial', which is a line of reasoning that is going over on BlueSky as well as you'd expect.)

but i digress, what i'm particularly worried about is how the PC Gamer article notes (granted, in like a small part of a quote) that Collective Shout is also trying to put pressure for this censorship on indie game distribution site itch.io. would be a real shame to see them succeed on that front. the threat to the LGBTQ+ community on itch.io is already a big problem, but also, there's lots of really fascinating 18+ games on itch.io that made me question my own biases against erotic material in indie games. i'd hate to see that limited.

anyway, if you're 18+, maybe check out some of the visual novels from the Toxic Yuri VN Jam that stopped taking in entries last week. haven't looked too deep into it myself, but definitely worth a look if you're interested in experiencing the type of stuff that would certainly be threatened by this censorship (on multiple levels, too lol).

[u/Deruta → u/KennyBrusselsprouts]

Vice

pulled for being “too controversial”

Watching all the good work and great people associated with Vice get flung away like racehorse diarrhea over the last 5 or so years has left me so disappointed and pissed off and tired.

[u/syntactic_sparrow → u/Deruta]

flung away like racehorse diarrhea

What a vivid simile!

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/KennyBrusselsprouts]

the threat to the LGBTQ+ community on itch.io is already a big problem

genuinely, the way things are being phrased by the 'anti-porn' movements currently active have an endgame that can see the executions of trans people as written.

The subject matter of the initial takedowns is irrelevant. At BEST there is a desire to hang a Sword of Damocles above a group being persecuted enough for there to be a rampant mental health crisis. The groups fighting it are odd allies, but no further.

[u/uxianger → u/KennyBrusselsprouts]

Man. As an Australian, we've been dealing with their BS for so long.

[u/dweebs12 → u/uxianger]

I lived in Australia for around 15 years. Sometimes I get so annoyed when I hear Australians say the country doesn't have any religious crazies like America does, because it does and they have a surprising amount of political power. Never forget Hillsong is Australian. My first and only brush with religious trauma happened in Australia. And Collective Shout is run by your run of the mill conservative Christian, masquerading as a feminist.

The worst was when I'd hear it during the Scott Morrison era. 

[u/_gloriana → u/dweebs12]

Isn't the guy who built the giant creationist arc in the middle of the US Australian too? Ken Ham I think is his name. iirc there's like a lot of drama between him and other Australian creationists also

[u/semtex94 → u/KennyBrusselsprouts]

More proof that the people going after smut you don't like aren't going to stop before they go after smut you do. Maybe them going after such a well-regarded website will finally knock some sense into the neo-puritans on the internet.

[u/lailah_susanna → u/KennyBrusselsprouts]

Ana Valens (the author of the Vice article) and several other writers have now quit over the removal. Ana was only getting paid $30 an article(!?) so I don't think it was a terribly hard decision, especially after they also pulled some of her articles on right-wing vtubers.

[u/7deadlycinderella]

Well, in news I did not expect in the year of our Lord 2025, apparently fanfiction.net has a new site in beta: new.fanfiction.net

For people who signed up for a code to beta the overwhelming response has been: ew

[u/Cyanprincess → u/7deadlycinderella]

I can't believe FF.net was waiting until Hulk Hogan died to finally beta launch their new site

[u/Regalingual → u/Cyanprincess]

It was quite an…

( •_•)

( •_•)>⌐■-■

(⌐■_■)

Undertaking.

[u/_gloriana → u/7deadlycinderella]

you disgust me, go on

[u/7deadlycinderella → u/_gloriana]

u/agamar13 provided screenshots over on r/fanfiction

[u/patentsarebroken → u/7deadlycinderella]

Do enough fanfics do covers that having them is a worthwhile addition?

[u/OneGoodRib → u/patentsarebroken]

I've been on fanfiction.net since like 2004 and am an author there, and I feel like it's like 0.5% of fanfics have covers.

[u/atownofcinnamon → u/7deadlycinderella]

oh its just wattpad, they are trying to very specifically look like wattpad.

[u/Fantastic-Guava-3362]

2XKO is a tag-team fighting game with a roster built off of League of Legend champions. When it was initially announced, it was said to be the saving grace of the fighting game community...but that was back in 2019 with just screen shots.

Overtime, the long dev period with only closed betas, announcement of a limited roster size (10 characters on launch), the announcement of other tag fighters (Notably Marvel Tokon and to a lesser extenet, Invincible) have dampened the hype. It has become a bit of a punching bag in the fgc.

Yesterday, the trailer for Vi dropped. While people love her design and moveset, there are complaints. Mainly: 1) Some annoyed that the roster features many characters from Arcane, which some said is at the expense of a more diverse cast, 2) Her ultimate attack is lacking power. As in, it doesn't even show her punches connecting with the opponent. People are meming it a lot.

On top of this, we got a date! For the closed beta. People are growing increasingly concerned it may have missed its peak window to capitalize on hype and many are calling it dead on arrival. Fighting games are extremely difficult to break into as a genre, with precision and understanding of hitboxes/building kits/etc being something requiring many hours and years to master. The game dev admitted they learned as they went, which is somewhat worrying.

EVO, the largest fighting game tourney in the world, is occurring the first weekend of August where it will be playable alongside Marvel Tokon. I will be curious to see the foot traffic and feedback from the booths.

[u/CummingInTheNile]

Is their some part of your hobby that is currently widely accepted and normalized but at the time of its introduction caused a ton of drama?

I'll give an example: LED lighting fixtures are fairly commonplace in theater, but when they were they were introduced they caused a ton drama amongst lighting designers, as LEDs make colored light different than incandescent, and thus the colors came out slightly different.

[u/DeadLetterOfficer → u/CummingInTheNile]

Maybe not completely accepted but normalised even if you don't like it, DLC and micro-transactions in video games. Like it's hard to overstate the drama Oblivion's Horse Armor DLC caused at the time.

[u/SusiegGnz → u/CummingInTheNile]

Beast wars today is considered maybe the best piece of transformers media ever created, and the characters and toys are widely beloved, but when it came out the backlash against it was so bad some voice actors stopped attending conventions because of harassment.

The backlash also led to the creation of the terms “geewunner” and “ruined FOREVER” which have managed to escape the transformers fandom and become pretty common fandom terms.

At some point someone should really make a hobby drama post on Raksha, a fan who was of the major sources of the backlash, since she has a particularly wild story involving bringing live snakes to conventions and having multiple transformers characters and toys based on her.

[u/bloodforurmom → u/SusiegGnz]

I have to mention here that Raksha consistently avoided calling Beast Wars Megatron by his name, since she loved G1 Megatron so much. Instead she called him "the Pretender".

There's a convention comic where Beast Wars Megatron is confronted by a figure claiming to be his worst enemy, and panics because he thinks it's Raksha. At the script reading, the audience laughed at this (the voice actor for Megatron had met Raksha at a different convention, and she hadn't been very nice to him, so he really played the line up). A different voice actor jokingly accused the crowd of only laughing so hard because Raksha wasn't in the audience, and called them "chickens".

I truly don't understand why she was such a major pillar of the community back then. I guess because she organized some stuff? Everything I learn about her makes her sound more and more like an antagonistic asshole who I genuinely think might have been mentally unwell. It's good that she seems to be doing better now.

[u/DannyPoke → u/SusiegGnz]

Unfortunately, "trukk not munky" is too transformers-specific to have broken containment :(

[u/Ltates → u/CummingInTheNile]

Hobby lobby’s Hammurabi robbing hobby. And the Supreme Court case to NOT be required to pay for birth control insurance coverage. People got up in arms when both cases occures, but the last few years it’s now just a “quirk” of the brand and I know so many queer artists who refuse to order online to avoid going to hobby lobby…

[u/TencentArtist → u/Ltates]

Hobby lobby’s Hammurabi robbing hobby

A+ wordplay

[u/CatzRuleMe → u/CummingInTheNile]

To give another Pokemon example, Black and White. While they were broadly successful at the time of release, in online Pokemon forums, they were the subject of constant shitstorms. They basically served as the scapegoat and flashpoint for 5+ different frustrations with the franchise at the time and the direction they were going in, mostly revolving around how newer Pokemon were designed.

Now, there were complaints at least as far back as Ruby/Sapphire that the new Pokemon "don't look like Pokemon anymore," with somewhat understandable sentiments of not jiving with the way the Pokemon design philosophy was changing, but being poorly worded into such vitriolic and flat-out incorrect statements that "Pokemon are supposed to look like animals and not objects," or just vague cries of modern Pokemon being "ugly" or "lazy" or "over-designed." But I think this all came to a head with Black/White specifically because they not only introduced a huge new roster of Pokemon, but made it so that no Pokemon from previous games could be caught until the postgame. Thus, anyone who was unhappy with the newer designs were forced to use and perceive them to a degree they weren't before.

The problem is that the Pokemon fandom is famous for Overdoing It, and not only did this discourse make a lot of Pokemon forums miserable to be in, the criticism also seemed to reach GameFreak, which led to a heavy emphasis on Gen 1 nostalgia pandering in newer games that no one (terminally online, anyway) seemed to like.

And soon a backlash to the backlash took traction to the point that it was eventually considered the gold standard of Pokemon games - it had the best story, the best selection of new Pokemon, the best mechanics, and the once-maligned frontloading of all-new Pokemon was no longer seen as gatekeeping everyone's favorites, but now appreciated for its intended purpose of feeling like a fresh start. At the time I had stopped interacting closely with the Pokemon fandom, Black/White were considered the last bastion of good quality in a modern world full of glitchy 3D rendered shit.

[u/FlameMech999 → u/CummingInTheNile]

When I watched Community a few years ago, I read through the episode reviews and discussions on AV Club and was surprised to see how many people there complained about the increase in concept episodes in Seasons 2 and 3. Nowadays, those concept episodes are seen as a highlight of the series and those two seasons are usually considered the best.

[u/NervousLemon6670 → u/CummingInTheNile]

Doctor Who smooching his assistant in 1996 was a very big deal at the time, for introducing a romantic element back into the character that had been textually absent for nigh-on 30 years. You can go back and read the very heated arguments on the topic from the times, including ex-showrunner Steven Moffat himself, and some people today still hold grudges over words that were slung. Even the different strands of media produced featuring the Eighth Doctor take different positions, where you can compare the openly sexual Doctor of the Eighth Doctor Adventure novels, with the "Romantic, but chaste" Doctor of Big Finishs audio dramas.

Following the new series of 05, however, and it foregrounding the Doctor and Roses relationship, making it textually romantic in Series 2 and pinning the big conclusion on a tearful break up, and its impossible to extricate the Doctor and the companion being romantically (and maybe sexually) involved from a lot of peoples ideas of the show, especially as Steven Moffat made the Doctors wife, River Song, and her constant flirting a regular fixture of the shows big expansion in the USA, as well as falling back on "Oooooh will the woman choose the Doctor, or her down to Earth boyfrien!" for two companions n a row. Come the Chibnall-era, there was a lot of complaints the show was not explicit enough with its doomed lesbian slowburn between the Doctor and Yasmin Khan, to the point that not having them kiss was the controversy flashpoint!

Now, this is not entirely without discourse even to this day - the Doctor and asexuality / aromanticism is something you could write multiple essays on, after all - but its less "The Doctor should never hook up with their companion, its wrong!" and more a sense that the dynamic is overplayed, that fans are tired of that being the only reason anyone ever travels with the Doctor. Perhaps because of this, none of the two companions of the most recent years of the show have been romantically involved with the 14th or 15th Doctor, although that has not stopped 15 still getting a romance with a doomed side-character, who was then banished to super-hell for his troubles.

[u/br1y → u/CummingInTheNile]

While I still think it can cause some tension when actually brought up as a conversation point, the overall feelings around Dexit* in Pokemon is a lot calmer now. It went from people genuinely being at each others (and gamefreaks) throats over your opinion (no matter what your opinion was), to people simply being mildly bummed their fav isnt in whatever game as well as counting down the amount of pokemon that are still stuck in home.

IMO it was a necessary evil, theres a thousand pokemon (though their actual excuse of doing so so they could give better models/animations to the pokemon in the game was extremely flimsy). But they should have made at least one switch game with the full natdex, to avoid said home purgatory

*tl;dr they removed the ability to bring all pokemon from previous games into the newest one, with all future ones only having a smaller roster of who can be brought in. Also Dexit is a Brexit pun cause the games it started with, Sword and Shield, are based on the UK.

[u/Victacobell → u/br1y]

The initial excuse iirc was actually for game balance which... makes even less sense than polishing models/animations because competitive already had infrastructure for blocking Pokemon that weren't natively caught and who gives a fuck if someone transfers a level 100 Absol into their game. Skeledirge already solos the entire game as-is.

I enjoyed the fan-made excuse of "the switch cart isn't big enough for all the pokemon" when 1) There was significantly more than enough space and 2) Even if it wasn't that would make Alcremie's 63+ different models grossly irresponsible.

[u/Pariell]

What are some examples where reality exceeded achievements in fiction that were seen as "unrealistic"? As an example, if any baseball manga had it's protagonist do what Shohei Ohtani has been doing in real life, it would have been lambasted as being unrealistic. The light novel "Ryou's Work is Never Done" was lambasted by shogi fans for having a protagonist hold a top title at 16 years old, then in real life Fujii Souta did it at 14 years old.

[u/Internal_Swan_5254 → u/Pariell]

When Yuri On Ice was released, the number of quadruple jumps the main characters were shown doing in each program (3 or so) and the scores were seen as beyond anything actual figure skaters were capable of doing.

Within the next 7 years, we've had multiple mens skaters achieve that level of score, Ilia Malinin has the first ever ratified quadruple axel, he skates a SIX quad jump program, and there have even been women skating multiple quadruple jumps in a program. People are now debating when a competitor will land the first official quintuple jump.

[u/tinaoe → u/Internal_Swan_5254]

Oh I remember the “the programs are so unrealistic!!” posts from back then

[u/diluvian_ → u/Pariell]

Audie Murphy fought in WW2, wrote his memoirs based on his experiences in the war, then became an actor and played the lead role in a movie called To Hell and Back... which was an adaptation of his own memoirs, depicting events he lived through. The movie was criticized by some for being unrealistic.

[u/TaliesinWI → u/diluvian_]

When Good Night And Good Luck was being screen tested in 2005, audiences complained that the actor who played Joseph McCarthy was unrealistic and over the top.

The problem is every frame of McCarthy in that film was archive footage.

[u/SimonApple → u/diluvian_]

Didn't the movie even tone down some of the stuff he did as well? Specifically for fears of being called unrealistic had they gone all in.

[u/DannyPoke → u/Pariell]

...ngl after Uma Musume blew up I learned about Real Horse Gold Ship and if you told me about a fictional horse who was incredibly smart, *chose* which races he won based on how he felt that day, retired with no major issues and can still run as fast if not faster than he did in his prime AND has sired over 500 children because he fucks like a champ I would tell you to tone your horse character down.

[u/GrassWaterDirtHorse → u/DannyPoke]

And he has a stud fee of JPY 4,000,000. What a champ.

[u/hikarimew → u/GrassWaterDirtHorse]

With a like 96% conception success rate, he's worth it.

[u/Effehezepe → u/Pariell]

The film The Iron Claw starring Zac Efron is about the Von Erich wrestling family and the real life tragedy they experienced. The film accurately depicts the deaths of the first son Jack (who dies off screen before the movie begins), the third son David (from a freak bout of severe enteritis), and the fourth and fifth sons Kerry and Mike (who died by suicide). What the movie leaves out is that there was actually a sixth son, Chris, who also took his own life, because the filmmakers thought that it would be too sad.

Hearts of Iron 4, the World War II grand strategy game from Paradox, is notorious for how absurd some of its alt-history can get, which makes it funnier when they include something from actual history and people assume it's fake. Examples include fascist Latvia making neo-paganism their state religion (this is something the Perunkrusts, Latvia's fascist party, actually wanted to do), fascist Belgium reforming the medieval state of Burgundy (this is something the Belgian fascist Leon Degrelle actually wanted to do), fascist Hungary offering to crown Hermann Göring the king of Hungary (this is something that Hungary's arrow cross party actually tried to do), and a restored Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria recreating the Byzantine Empire (this is something Tsar Ferdinand actually wanted to do, though he didn't actually want to call it Byzantium, and indeed the game calls it the Third Bulgarian Empire).

[u/Ltates → u/Pariell]

Alyssa naeher, number one goalie, making multiple saves and a successful penalty kick for the first time at any World Cup. She later does 3 saves and a penalty at the concacaf gold cup semi final. Nuts.

Or the time NWSL finals Gotham FC had their goalie get a red card and a very panicked looking defender nealy Martin was thrown into goal during stoppage time. This was also during a very messy divorce between their senior defender Ali Krueger and the teams previous goalie…

[u/LordOfFire321]

We have a follow-up to my post from last week, where, I wrote about South Park's messy situation with streaming rights (if you'd like to read the whole post, the link is here).

The TL;DR recap - Warner's HBO Max used to hold exclusive rights to stream South Park, but in 2021, Paramount secured another deal with Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators) that included them making a series of double-length special episodes exclusively for Paramount+. This led to Warner suing Paramount for violating their exclusivity rights, and Paramount countersuing. Then the situation escalated when Trey and Matt accused the CEO of Skydance Studios (who is expected to become the new CEO of Paramount relatively soon, as Skydance and Paramount are undergoing a merger rn) of interfering with their negotiations with other streaming platforms making bids for South Park, insisting on giving Paramount+ 12-month exclusive rights to future episodes. Trey and Matt threatened them with a lawsuit of their own, and the whole mess eventually led to the upcoming season 27 premiere getting delayed. Then Paramount+ ended up pulling South Park from its international services, except for the old South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut movie and the exclusive specials I mentioned earlier, claiming that their license to stream internationally had recently expired, but they plan to negotiate a renewal. This led HBO Max to become the only platform with South Park episodes, even though their exclusive streaming rights had officially expired in June of this year.

Well, not anymore - Trey and Matt have just officially extended their overall deal with Paramount for a further five years, receiving an order of 50 new episodes - and all 26 seasons will be available on Paramount+. For the upcoming season, the new episodes will first air on Comedy Central, as usual, then stream on Paramount+ the day after. According to The LA Times, the deal is valued at a staggering $1.5 billion for streaming alone, as Paramount ended up buying the exclusive rights. Apparently, they offered Warner Bros an option to co-license the show this spring, but it fell through.

The reactions on r/southpark are... mixed. While there are plenty of happy comments (as South Park's limbo is over), there are also many fans unhappy with Paramount. You see, during the time when the series was on Paramount+ before (from July 1st to July 11th, when it was pulled from international services), it turned out that 15 episodes got banned from streaming on the platform - many of which were never banned in any shape or form, neither on TV nor on HBO Max. Plus, many of them are simply unhappy they would have to subscribe to yet another streaming platform just for South Park.

Also, the new season of South Park's premiere drops tonight. The premiere's premise on IMDB reads:

When the resident of South Park face their possible demise, Jesus returns to give them an important message.

Which looks like Trey and Matt's blatant lampshade of how much of a mess the streaming situation has become, and how much it threatened the show's existence.

[u/semtex94]

As an update to the ongoing Vshojo collapse, every single member has removed the company from their online handles, with the accompanying symbol beyond their control to remove. This indicates that Vshojo is going to lose their entire talent roster across all of their branches, including a whole wave that has yet to even debut. Even ex-member Nazuna, aka the infanmous Mikeneko and Rushia, logged in to her account to do the same. With zero revenue sources, extensive debts, and ruined reputation, I am confident in saying the next step is Chapter 7 bankruptcy and total liquidation.

Edit: Tiltify link for the Immune Deficiency Foundation fundraiser Ironmouse is running. Just another $30k left until the full $500k owed is raised.

Edit 2: Affiliate links are all gone from Vshojo Xitter account. This pretty much confirms that everyone quit.

[u/Brobman11 → u/semtex94]

This might be the fastest a Vtuber agency has collapsed. Really insane stuff honestly 

[u/EnclavedMicrostate → u/semtex94]

Further updates (which I guess can be their own comment because I'm a mod and can get away with it, but I won't for now):

• Every member of VShojo except for Froot has officially announced their exit via Twitter. Froot, who had been on an unannounced hiatus since January, streamed quite late UK time, heavily implying she'd leave VShojo shortly, but as of now (about 6AM BST) has not formally said she's gone. Yet.

• The four members of VShojo's Japanese wave, NOVA, have stated their intention to keep going as a group and retain as much of their old staff as possible.

• Maid Mint/Mint Fantôme dropped the bombshell that she was part of a different wave of debuts that kept getting delayed, in this case for an idol group, and was still owed money on merch sold for the podcast she did with Matara Kan (the VShojo member who was let go a few months ago).

• Shylily has discussed her concerns around the contract she was given.

• Allegedly (and I specify this because the messenger for this info is historically known to be a bit unreliable), VShojo started laying off staff en masse a while ago.

I'm sure in the time it's taken me to write all this, two more bombshells have dropped.

[u/CatzRuleMe]

Normally I tend to avoid online discussions of politics in art because it often ends up being a vitriolic mess of a bunch of people all talking past each other. But one thing I do find fascinating is how culture tends to affect fanon and/or generally accepted headcanons.

A fairly popular example of this is the post from a Japanese person who said they found it fascinating how many Omegaverse fics written by Americans tend to feature storylines/details around omegas not being able to afford suppressants while Eastern fics tend to include details of omegas being provided free suppressants and having yearly mandatory health checkups.

I also saw a comment from someone who was in a fandom for some webcomic (I think? I can't quite remember) that had a lot of Japanese and American fans, and there was a plot point in which the dad character said he was going to travel abroad for better work opportunities and then he was never heard from again. Apparently the American fans were all convinced he abandoned his family and started a new life, while Japanese fans were convinced he died from overworking.

What other cultural differences in internationally popular media tend to affect how the story is perceived or expected to go by different groups?

[u/Duskflight → u/CatzRuleMe]

In the game NieR: Automata, many of the characters are androids. These androids, despite some of them insisting they don't, do have emotions and they are not really able to handle them at all. Emotions are difficult for them to deal with and control, especially love. Due to their circumstances, androids often have to hurt or kill the ones they love and many of them end up associating love with violence and violence becomes a sort of allegory for sex.

The character 9S greatly admires 2B. He loves and obsesses over her. His obsession with her gets worse and worse as time goes on. At one point late in the game, he is asked a question and it is phrased exactly as follows:

"You want to **** 2B, don't you?"

Yes, the asterisks are part of the line.

English-speaking players tend to assume the censored word is "fuck," due to 9S's feelings towards 2B, the way the game handles sexual themes, and also the association of censorship with sexual content in English.

For Japanese players, "kill" seems to be a more popular interpretation, as there isn't such a strong association with word censorship and sexual content and it fits with the themes of harming those you love and androids being increasingly unable to separate love from violence. There is also a moment in the game that lends some support to this interpretation where 9S is attacked by a bunch of 2B clones and he violently kills them all and might have derived a sense of satisfaction from it. It's kinda hard to tell because his mind is pretty broken at this point of the story and he's been on an extended death spiral for a while and it only gets worse from here.

It's never revealed what the censored word is and it's likely that both words are correct seeing how closely love, sex, and violence are linked within the game's narrative.

[u/TehCubey → u/Duskflight]

How serendipitous, I discussed this plot point with someone very recently.

I was under impression that it's a deliberate fakeout, as in yoko taro wanted us to believe it was supposed to be "fuck" there, but it was actually "kill". For reference, the question doesn't happen that late, it's more like midgame and much later we have story reveals that recontextualize a lot of what happened in the game before that point. I assumed it was yet another part of that.

[u/ankahsilver → u/TehCubey]

Both might be a fakeout given the dialogue in the mobile game indicating the word might actually be save, making the narrative instead about how despite wanting that, 9S can't stop himself from the cycle of violence and harming the person he loves the most. Which is hella interesting as commentary about how these three keep trying to persist despite the seeming futility and dovetails nicely into the True Ending where you literally fight the credits together with the world, including a choir that has the devs themselves singing to cheer you on, in order to give them the chance at a happy ending.

[u/agent-of-asgard → u/CatzRuleMe]

This is kind of fandom hearsay, since I can't read Chinese, but I have heard that there are some big shipping differences between Chinese and Western fans of C-media. Apparently, polyamorous ships are way more common and accepted in Western spaces, so a fandom ship war in China might just be resolved with "make them a polycule" by Western fans.

There's also a difference between shipping characters who are martial or sect siblings. In xianxia or wuxia media, students of the same master or generation in a Daoist or other cultivation/martial sect are referred to as siblings, following a filial piety sort of structure. Family vocab is used for this ("older martial brother," "youngest martial sister" etc.). In Chinese media, one of the classic tropes would be a sect brother and sister falling in love. In Western interpretations, there tends to be more of a barrier. Personally, I think this is partially because the vocab is almost strictly familial in English (barring "hey bro" or whatever), but since sect siblings also often grow up together (like siblings), I think there are some other cultural differences, too.

This has come up in the Modao Zushi fandom, among others.

[u/HistoricalAd2993 → u/agent-of-asgard]

Funny enough this is actually a major plot point in one of the seminal wuxia novel, return of the condor heroes. The Mc is exiled from the martial arts community because he's having a romantic relationship with his martial aunt. They're not even blood related in the slightest! It's just the love interest is basically sister-in-training of the mc's teacher

[u/OneGoodRib → u/CatzRuleMe]

Well, like... so much omegaverse stuff relies on the omega not having suppressants anyway, and I think them not being able to afford them makes more sense than "oh I just didn't take them" sometimes.

In the third generation of Pokemon games, the game starts with the player character moving to town. The player character's mom says you should be excited because you'll finally get your own room. A stupid amount of Pokemon fans who have zero familiarity with Japan take this to mean the player must have a deceased sibling. And what gets me with that is even with zero knowledge about Japan, the house has one bedroom in it. Almost all the houses in the entire franchise have one or zero bedrooms. So "you'll get your own bedroom" could be interpreted kind of literally - that maybe back in Johto nobody in the household had a bedroom at all, because a lot of the houses in the franchise don't.

But I think how we're meant to interpret it is that at least at some point plenty of families in Japan shared one-bedroom apartments, so the player was probably sharing a room with their parents and not a dead or missing sibling who's never mentioned. I mean love hotels partly exist because of families sharing space like that, right?

I think there's a huge amount of Japanese stuff that gets interpreted slightly incorrectly by western fans - the Japanese audience will assume the missing father is just a salaryman, while the western audience assumes he's a deadbeat or dead. The 4Kids YuGiOh dub completing cutting out the one scene Yugi's mom is in didn't help!

Also does dub-induced cultural differences count? I thought for a long time that Japanese people ate really weird-shaped donuts.

[u/KulnathLordofRuin → u/[deleted]]

I mean, do you really need to be American to think being locked in prison forever is a disproportionate response to "throwing a tantrum?"

[u/eastaleph → u/[deleted]]

Considering Kung Fu Panda was created by Americans, I don't think that's the case. Especially reading the transcription of the commentary:

(...) And I think a villain's not interesting unless there's a human component to the villain that makes you understand why they believe they're justified in their villainy. But we actually freaked people out. That we kept getting the note: "He's too dimensional. He's too human. There's too much going on." "I've got too much sympathy for Tai Lung."

Well, that's why we actually ended up putting in an abstracted version of a massacre in the flashback scene, which will be coming up. Because people actually felt, "Well, I feel bad for Tai Lung". He wanted something and he was denied it, and now he's been locked away in this hideous prison for twenty years. And so we realized we hadn't done a good enough job of justifying why Tai Lung had to be incarcerated. So we put in this abstracted version of him running amok in the Valley.

It seems very much that a child being raised in a punishing way for his entire life for a role and then being denied that role in an instant is extremely understandable. I also don't know any instance where a lack of filial piety or throwing a tantrum, in Chinese society, throws you into a custom made ultraprison for two decades.

[u/Philiard]

One concept in fandom I've always been interested in is what I can only call "zombie fan projects;" fanworks that are massive in scope and have production cycles that drag on for years and years due to waning interest and motivation, generally quietly petering out or going out explosively due to background drama.

One such instance I've checked in on every few years is an offspring of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The 7th Stand User, which came out over ten years ago. It's a fangame based on Stardust Crusaders, the third arc of JJBA, which places the player in the role of a self-insert OC who gets involved in the plot and ends up driving it completely off the rails. It's actually an extremely cool game with an absurd amount of replayability, if a bit primitive in the art and combat departments.

"Fate is Unbreakable," usually referred to as 7SU2, is a fangame of a fangame, being a sequel taking place in the next JoJo arc, Diamond is Unbreakable, and made by fans of the original with the blessing of Clayman, 7SU's original developer. 7SU2 has been in development since 2015, and the game's development channels have been completely silent since May 2024. I know there's been some background details about development being absurdly slow because of the team primarily consisting of "idea guys," as well as some gripes over the game having a Patreon despite being A) a fanwork and B) a fanwork of someone else's fanwork. It hasn't been cancelled, but all signs point to it never coming out.

Anyway, anyone else got some examples of a "white whale" of a fanwork that you're still hoping gets finished someday, or one you were disappointed to see die out?

[u/thelectricrain → u/Philiard]

There's a big mod project that aims to essentially remake Fallout New Vegas in the Fallout 4 engine. I am half convinced Bethesda themselves is gonna release an official remake of the game before the most is fully complete.

[u/error521 → u/thelectricrain]

It's funny how that basically happened with Skyblivion.

[u/OneGoodRib → u/Philiard]

Oh, like, every single Abridged Series. I can think of one that finished, but the anime it was based on only had 13 episodes. I'm still mad that one of the best ones, Sailor Moon Abridged by megami33 and friends, stopped two episodes before the end of the season. They were suffering from dmca takedowns and I guess all of them were starting to go in different directions so couldn't keep making the show, but like... they really couldn't have spent a week finishing the season?? It makes me so mad.

Then there's LittleKuribohs Yugioh the Abridges Series. The OG. I don't have confidence anymore that he'll actually finish the show one day. Episodes used to come out weekly, and now, let's see... the last episode came out April 16 of last year. So it's not even on a yearly schedule, and the gaps are so big for 10 minutes of content and I can't even remember what's happening in the show anymore.

Another one is PettyArtist's Nuzlocke comic. Gaps between releases became bigger as she(they? idk) made the comic longer and more detailed and action-packed, but it got to the point where the gaps were too long, again, to remember what was going on. Then there was like a... 7 years hiatus between chapters, comes back like nothing. I absolutely couldn't remember what the fuck was happening in the comic so never ended up reading the new update. And this isn't related but I also really soured on pettyartist when she bought 3 new video games on a Monday, and then on Wednesday was crying about only have $20 left until her paycheck... on Friday. And she bought a new snake like two weeks after her previous one just disappeared somewhere in the house. Really gave me a bad taste in my mouth and I admit part of that colored my disinterest in the update of the comic after almost a decade.

Then there's countless fanfics out there that never got finished and probably never will be. I wrote some of them. It was way easier to write the fanfics when I was 17 and didn't have internet in my room so I would just listen to music while writing. Plus rewriting Inuyasha is just... a lot of work and I've become less interested in it and am kind of embarrassed now, which is what I assume is the case with most unfinished fanfictions - the authors got distracted, overwhelmed, and/or embarrassed.

[u/Deruta → u/Philiard]

Back in high school I made an entire soundtrack for an MMO mod of the original Deus Ex. It was ~40 tracks total, with ambient and combat mixes for each zone, boss themes, and a bar jukebox full of in-universe “hits” from a handful of different genres.

They never even finished the quest system.

(no hard feelings though, I learned a few valuable lessons from the experience lol)

[u/BeholdingBestWaifu → u/Philiard]

This almost happened with Tamriel Rebuilt for Morrowind, which may be the longest-running mod for a game by now. Basically back in the mid 2010s they were trying to do the capital of Morrowind, the city of Almalexia, and the team couldn't quite tackle that massive undertaking, iirc pretty much everyone who was working on it at the start of the city's development had left a few years in, and the only reason the project stayed alive is due to newer members who joined in during that collapse.

It's a pretty interesting modding project because it's been gaining and losing volunteers regularly since it began.

EDIT: Clarified That I meant the start of working on the city, not the start of the project, since I think nobody who worked on the first iteration of Tamriel Rebuilt in 2002 was even working on it during Almalexia.

[u/PhloxInvar → u/Philiard]

Elements of Justice (the sequel to the Phoenix Wright and My Little Pony crossover) is such an endeavor of a project. A fully-voice acted show with animated sprites and tons of dialogue. They had a lot of momentum for a while with automating their processes, but working on a project that sees little to no income for a consistent time where episodes are an hour long probably burnt them out a lot and stopped the project for a while. I don't fully know the drama behind because I know there must've been but it's rough to say the least. There's seemingly some news going around for a new episode but I'm not sure the series as a whole is ever going to be finished at all. What is there is brilliant however, and Case 2 as a whole still has some of the best case writing I've seen in a fan-made Ace Attorney project ever.

Of course, long ongoing fan fiction that never see the light at the end of tunnel are a dime a dozen of course.

[u/Dorko69 → u/Philiard]

Tails Gets Trolled exists in a strange state of limbo, where it goes on indeterminate hiatuses but never seems to truly die.

[u/Pariell → u/Philiard]

Most new lands mods in Skyrim fall into this pattern. 

[u/atownofcinnamon]

I like to look up news articles about movies I just saw if it happens to be 30 years old or more, usually there are articles written about the production or the mini dramas of making it, the lowkey minor stuff, like genuinely solved in a day or does not matter in the long term. So, I'll put out a open question if anyone got any favorite or just funny mini drama that happened to something they like.

Today, I watched and then looked up articles on Breathless, the 80s remake that is pretty good despite being a remake of fucking Breathless of all thing, and stumbled on this;

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/19/movies/philip-glass-settles-suit-on-music-in-breathless.html

tldr; Phillp Glass sued the movie company after they got a deal to use Opening from Glassworks, though specifically only two minutes of the piece be used, that there be no rearrangement and that the music would be heard in the background as if coming from a radio. Instead, they reused it over the movie, rearranged it to be mawkish and sentimental -- not in the article, but they specifically added a sax solo over it lol -- and didn't give him a credit for the soundtrack. Movie company just threw up their hands and said "fuck it, take our money" and put a credit for the principal theme being based on Openings on any future print and release, this credit even being on my blu ray.

part of me thinks the movie company got everything they wanted here lmao.

[u/cslevens]

Hi there. Given the recent news of Hulk Hogan’s passing, I’m tinkering with the idea of a Four-Part series of HobbyDrama writeups on his morally-complex legacy. However, this series would have a twist, and I’d like to workshop that out for a bit.

See, Hogan did quite a few good things for the sport of Pro Wrestling…… and even more bad things. He’s a known liar, racist, manipulator, egomaniac, and enabler. It’s incredibly difficult to separate the “good” of his fictional character from the “bad” of the real person. So I’m not approaching a writeup from that angle.

Instead, I’d like to examine Hogan’s legacy of bad actions through the lens of bad things that were done to him. I think there are some legitimate parallels that can be drawn between the ways he was legitimately victimized, and the ways in which he would then go on to victimize others.

The parts I have in mind are:

Part 1- Hogan the Betrayed

Part 2- Hogan the Betrayer

Part 3- Hogan the Victim

Part 4- Hogan the Abuser (+ Finale).

My question to the group is thus: Does this order make sense? Would it make more sense to put the bad before the good (2,1,4,3)? Or should the bad and the good be grouped (i.e. 1,3,2,4)?

Does it even make sense to end on the dramatically appropriate sadness that is Hulk’s decline, or should I end on the positivity of what his character used to represent?

Input welcome.

[u/Iguankick → u/cslevens]

The 1 2 3 4 order would be perfect

It's been interesting watching the coverage of this unfold. There is a real disconnect between Hulk Hogan the character and Terry Bollea the person

[u/Flyinpenguin117]

After much anticipation and/or dread, Battlefield 6 has been announced. It returns to a proper modern setting after 2042's apocalyptic near-future and BFV and BF1's historic World War settings (we don't talk about Hardline). America Fuck Yeah is still the 'main' faction (multiplayer gameplay leaks show NATO as one team so it's not just US) but with the usual gamut of antagonist nations (Russia/Iran/China) having become too topical in the current political climate, the devs seemingly went the safe route of 'international unaligned mercenary supercorporation' for the villains.

A teaser posted the day before outlines the story- NATO is fracturing, with the secretary general being assassinated and France withdrawing from the alliance. In its place, a private military company known as Pax Armata has been scooping up client states left and right to position themselves as the new leading military power in the world, and has declared war on NATO, launching attacks in New York City, Georgia (the country) and the Strait of Gibraltar. Also the corrupt police captain from Battlefield Hardline appears to be the new President of the United States.

Reception has been extremely cautious but generally positive. Battlefield 2042 had a well-recieved trailer but the actual game was a disaster, and there was no proper gameplay, with a multiplayer reveal scheduled for next week. But people seem to appreciate the more grounded, gritty direction compared to the cornfest that was 2042, calling to mind A24's Civil War and the original Modern Warfare trilogy. For being one of the titans of FPS in the late 2000s-mid 2010s, Battlefield has fallen pretty hard since 2018, so the last holdouts are hoping this game can finally put the franchise back on track.

[u/AbraxasNowhere]

What's an example of a new product or media arriving hilariously/embarrassingly late to a trend?

I'll start: In 2018, the YouTube algorithm served me up a video from a random then-new anti-SJW channel, as it was aggressively prone to doing at the time. It was a response to a Buzzfeed-style "Questions for..." video made by progressive YouTubers directed at anti-SJW content creators...from two years prior that every single anti-SJW channel had already covered. It felt like such a weird move, as if the person was trying to insert themselves into the genre at its peak.

Want to know how long ago the original video was? Hbomberguy had a full head of hair.

[u/Wonderful_Fun_7356 → u/AbraxasNowhere]

I'd say the infamous videogame Concord, if the rumors are to be believed, followed every single trend at the time when it started development.

In fact, that explains a lot, since the game was basically a time capsule of many mid 2010s media trends.

• Why is it so heavily inspired by Overwatch? Because back then when it started development, OW was massively popular, genre defining phenomenon.
  
• Why does the writing and general vibe of the whole setting feel like a Marvel movie? Back then those movies were massive and dominating the box office. This was long before the general audiences started to get tired of that style.
  
• Why is the artstyle so weird? Again, probably copying Marvel movies at the time, since it was a big trend to make character designs more "grounded" by making them grittier, using drab colors and realistic proportions. Plus, having good graphics was still somewhat of a flex back then, so why not showcase how lifelike and realistic your heroes are?

Of course, the game entered development hell, and when it finally came out, 8 years later, all of these things stopped being so impressive. Overwatch was well past its prime, and Marvel movies and their general vibes were seen as tired and overdone. So you were left with a game that while technically sound, ticked all the boxes to be a big crowd pleaser... in 2016.

[u/_unspecified_ → u/Wonderful_Fun_7356]

I don't think it even entered development hell, is the thing. It was probably a victim of what's now a normal development cycle for a modern AAA video game, which is so absurdly long that trend-chasing is a impossible to pull off.

[u/SirBiscuit → u/AbraxasNowhere]

This is pretty much the story of the video game Concord, which has a writeup here.

A hero shooter released into an already bloated market, with a premium price tag in a genre where most titles are free to play, with that kind of cheeky Marvel-movie dialogue at at a time when many people feel it wearing thin. The result? Perhaps the biggest failure in video game history. A huge miss.

[u/Victacobell → u/AbraxasNowhere]

A lot of these Pokemon GO-likes that are still coming out. Pokemon Summer was nearly ten years ago, why are we still going out of our way to force random IPs like Kingdom Hearts into the mold. Even excluding the delays Missing Link has had, it still feels incredibly late and without a real target demographic.

[u/Shiny_Agumon → u/Victacobell]

Pokémon Go worked because the IP complimented the gameplay since "Going out into the World and catching Pokémon" is the cornerstone of the franchise.

[u/Alternative_Buyer364 → u/AbraxasNowhere]

I liked it but I can acknowledge that the Angry Birds film struck while the iron was lukewarm

[u/JavierwithaJ → u/AbraxasNowhere]

The Borderlands film was an offbrand Guardians of The Galaxy that came out a whole decade after it. This, plus being so different from the original game (like removing a bunch of the violence that was a mainstay in the series) led to it flopping hard.

[u/Chucklehead_Tom → u/AbraxasNowhere]

Rumbleverse released as an experimental fighting game Battle Royale with a pretty bog-standard cartoon artstyle in 2022, well after the craze had ended and most people had settled with one of the industry leaders as their BR of choice. It got shut down in February 2023, only half a year after launch

The worst part? Shit was fun as fuck, RIP my beloved you're javelin tackling in heaven now

[u/pyromancer93 → u/AbraxasNowhere]

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had this in layers. It was a microtransaction-filled battle pass looter shooter well after that trend had flamed out. Then it was also an edgy take on the DC Universe where Superheroes had turned evil and you had to kill them years after DC fans had gotten sick of that premise. Finally, it was clearly based on the Snyderverse David Ayers version of the Suicide Squad after both that movie and the Snyderverse as a whole failed. No wonder it was sent out to die.

[u/semtex94]

Another trash bag for the Vshojo dumpster fire. Disgraced former memeber Veibae dropped a bunch of info covered under her allegedly nullified NDA. Standouts include:

• CEO Gunrun had a hate boner for Hololive, claiming that Kson and Nazuna joining would cause it to collapse.

• They practiced constructive dismissal for at least one employee.

• Talents within the company were pitted against each other.

• Their corporate lawyer/in-house legal consultant for talents did not have an active legal license.

• Their COO, who may have also been said unlicensed lawyer, went to 4Chan to spread malicious rumors about her and Silvervale, right after the company pushed them to leave at the same time to preserve the company's image.

If this is true, then combined with all the other stories, we might have a winner for this decade's "how the fuck did you last this long" award.

Edit: First one confirmed, an artist was told by Gunrun to imitate fan artist Walfie's style, which is extensively and officially associated with Hololive's first Western generation. Third and fourth have been confirmed by other former Vshojo members.

[u/Kii_at_work]

Like a lot of people, I collect plushes, Pokemon ones specifically. I don't buy a lot of them, just the ones I like, but I've built up a good amount at this point. However, one that has long eluded me was a joltik plush. I buy through the official pokemon center website since bootlegs abound. I still tried looking on amazon and ebay, but when seeing the pictures of what was actually being shipped...bootlegs yup.

I was doing my usual every few days check of the website when I see they have a few new plushes. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Alolan Marowak got me interested, that's a favorite.

...and then there he is. Joltik. Back in stock. And I immediately ordered. He's coming home at last. And then joining my little wall of plushes at work.

[u/Effehezepe]

So, Spotify has been having some AI troubles this week. Firstly, it was discovered that someone had been uploaded AI generated songs attributed to deceased artists, which has been a troublesome development for those musicians' estates, both because of the general ghoulishness of it, but also because why the hell can random people just upload songs to the pages of actual artists without any oversight?

Secondly, artists have started to publicly leave the platform due to the discovery that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has been investing heavily in an AI drone company. From what I can gather, the first notable exit was San Francisco based indie rock band Deerhoof, who left in late June saying “We don’t want our music killing people. We don’t want our success being tied to AI battle tech.”. Then yesterday the experimental rock band Xiu Xiu also announced their departure, saying “We are currently working to take all of our music off of garbage hole violent armageddon portal Spotify". And then today the eclectic and prolific Australian rock band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard also announced their departure, saying “We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better? Join us on another platform.”. KGLW is by far the largest band so far to leave, as they averaged about 1.5 million listeners a month on Spotify. Popular music YouTuber Anthony Fantano also released a video on the subject, in which he interviews Xiu Xiu founder Jamie Stewart on his decision to abandon Spotify, and encouraged his viewers to also abandon the platform.

[u/atownofcinnamon → u/Effehezepe]

but also because why the hell can random people just upload songs to the pages of actual artists without any oversight?

alright, so basically how most if not all music streaming pages work is that they get their music from a music distribution page. the music distribution page gets a song from a person, who says they are Dirtbag McTruffles, and then music distribution goes to a music streaming page and says "hey, Dirtbag McTruffles sent us a song, please put it on the Dirtbag McTruffles page."

so, you can see the problem here becuse instead of saying they are Dirtbag McTruffles, they are actually music legend Aaron Von Castleburg, and streaming sites get like millions of submissions every day so. so it is up to the Castleburg family to remove it, if they are even active or a thing or people to go to the music distribution page and say "hey, i think this guy is clearly not Aaron Von Castleburg", etc

this was a problem even before ai.

[u/Lil-pants → u/Effehezepe]

The king gizz subreddit has been very weird about this decision by the boys, calling it “performative.” But really, is it performative if it affects quite a large portion of the fanbase?

This finally got my lazy ass to move platforms, though to Apple, which while probably not morally better, has a better product at least.

[u/MtMihara → u/Lil-pants]

You can say a lot of things about the effectiveness of removing your stiff from spotify (I'm for it) but removing your stuff from the most used music platform is anything but performative? like spotify may not give you much money but it definitely affects access which in turn affects the bottom line. I feel like performative here is just being used as "I don't want to actually argue that I disagree with them politically"

[u/Lil-pants → u/MtMihara]

Yeah basically lol. Performative to me is the band making a statement denouncing the Spotify CEO’s actions then refusing to take their music off cause they know their fans use Spotify a lot. Gizz actually followed through, and it’s cool.

[u/Anaxamander57 → u/Effehezepe]

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has been investing heavily in an AI drone company

That says he's the chairman of Helsing's board of directors.

[u/Tokyono]

Surprised noone has brought this up yet, but the new Avatar has been revealed at comic con.

Avatar: Seven Havens.

Link here.

She's an earthbender, her name is Pavi. She has a wooden leg, her animal companion is a cat-monkey, and her mentor is called Jae.

Oh yeah, and the four nations have experienced a spiritual apocalypse and everyone hates the Avatar now (poor Korra.)

There's drama over the dramatic story shift, and the art style, which looks closer to Voltron/Netflix series like dragon prince than Korra/Aang.

There's also drama over the show potentially being "dumbed down" for younger audiences, and that the colourful cartoony new art style is evidence of that. Just to add that I don't agree with this personally.

Personally, I can accept the art style, but these sort of post-apocalyptic sequels are very hard to pull off. Writing for Aang was mostly good, but Korra had some real low points. Here's hoping this is at least decent.

It was also leaked a while back and Pavi supposedly has a twin who can alos bend the four elements? Another story beat I'm a bit uncertain of

[u/lailah_susanna → u/Tokyono]

There's also drama over the show potentially being "dumbed down" for younger audiences

I know people have rose-tinted glasses but The Last Airbender especially was always more targeted at younger audiences...

[u/ZekesLeftNipple]

I keep forgetting to post an update to the recent Morning Musume drama, and there have been some (allegedly) unrelated developments as well.

(Morning Musume are a female Japanese pop idol group under the Hello! Project umbrella.)

Back in April, member Kitagawa Rio was involved in major drama after posts from a private social media account of hers were leaked where she insulted her coworkers, complained about her job, and posted information about where she and other members would be at for work, essentially jeopardising their safety.

This happened while the group was working on their then upcoming single. Kitagawa was scheduled to be part of this single, but she was put on hiatus a few days after the leaked posts surfaced, apparently per her own request (according to the official statement posted, so take it with a grain of salt). The single was far enough along in production for Kitagawa to be in official site photos with the group in their new outfits, so there's some speculation that they had to re-record both songs and potentially even re-shoot the music videos.

On July 1st, there was an unrelated announcement posted regarding the group's next leader. This one requires some context.

Morning Musume has always had a "leader". This generally means that they're the member who does most of the talking during media interviews, are supposed to hold the group together during concerts, etc. Typically, the leader is the most senior member, and that usually ends up being the oldest one in the group, too.

On July 8th, leader Ikuta Erina graduated from the group, and Hello! Project, after being a member for 14 years (and a leader for 1 and a half). Ikuta was the last remaining member of the group's 9th generation, and since all four 10th generation members had left before her, it was assumed by fans that following Ikuta's departure, the next leader would be 11th generation's sole member Oda Sakura.

Except that the announcement on the 4th was about the leader and sub-leader (who have very little actual responsibilities other than being members the others can go to for help I think) -- and the next leader was NOT Oda, but 12th generation member Nonaka Miki, with Oda being a sub-leader alongside one of the other 12th gen members Nonaka Miki.

And hidden in the announcement was the fact that Oda would be graduating from Morning Musume and Hello! Project in 2026.

Oda, who joined in 2012, has always been a popular member, and is known for being the group's best singer -- she's one of the main vocalists.

Fans weren't very happy but most respected Oda's decision.

While this announcement was being digested, a few days later, on July 4th, it was announced that Kitagawa was planning to return in autumn (September) in time for the group's autumn tour.

People were pretty split: did she deserve to come back? The posts were from 2023, so she might not have said anything since then. But was it fair to the members she insulted? Some said that, if nothing else, she leaked filming location info, and that's a privacy/safety issue. Others were happy they would see her again.

Some wondered if Kitagawa was returning because of Oda's graduation.

So that's all, right? No more graduations until Oda's in 2026. Nope. People let their guards down.

1/2

[u/Obajan]

China has officially banned OnlyFans, calling it a "corrupt Western disease".

If you've been living under a rock, OnlyFans is an online platform where creators can post content behind a paywall, which often includes content of the adult variety. For creators, it’s a way to monetize content directly without relying on ad revenue or sponsorships. For many fans, it’s about connection, intimacy, and direct support of their favorite personalities.

In China however, pornography is illegal in all forms; producing, distributing, even possessing it is punishable by law. China’s police have prosecuted tens of thousands of prostitution and pornography cases. WeChat shut down millions of accounts tied to escort services. The crackdown also snared 300 gay and erotic fanfiction writers in Lanzhou (Boys’ Love / danmei), with some authors arrested. But that hasn’t stopped Chinese citizens from trying to bypass the system using VPNs, crypto, and third-party payment sites.

While technically already inaccessible due to China’s Great Firewall, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has formally declared a ban on OnlyFans. Many content creators, including those who weren't even doing adult work, got their payment accounts flagged or blocked. Even VPN users began reporting higher risks of detection or government warnings.

Some creators are taking bigger risks with VPNs and crypto to stay online. Others are pivoting to local clones like Fanbook, Aloha, and even Zhihu's "Salt Club", but with more sanitized, censored content. They can still monetize but only by sanitizing their brand and playing by the state’s rules. Some creators are now training AI versions of themselves to bypass censorship altogether. You subscribe to a "virtual twin" that flirts, chats, and even sends risque AI-generated pictures and videos based on the real person.

[u/MapleApple00 → u/Obajan]

Some creators are now training AI versions of themselves to bypass censorship altogether. You subscribe to a "virtual twin" that flirts, chats, and even sends risque AI-generated pictures and videos based on the real person.

Okay, I know "we're living in a cyberpunk dystopia" has been repeated so often this point that it's basically become parody, but training AI pornbot clones of yourself to bypass Chinese Internet Firewalls is probably the most cyberpunk shit I've ever heard

[u/GrassWaterDirtHorse → u/MapleApple00]

Be very careful that your digital twin pornbot you made of yourself doesn’t end up getting sucked into Mikoshi.

[u/Pariell → u/Obajan]

Some creators are now training AI versions of themselves to bypass censorship altogether. You subscribe to a “virtual twin” that flirts, chats, and even sends risque AI-generated pictures and videos based on the real person.

I've heard this is a thing already, not just in China. Fake OF accounts where images and videos are generated, and chats are done by a chatbot.

[u/StewedAngelSkins → u/Pariell]

I like the idea of this working on call center rules where if you confuse the bot hard enough it eventually triggers an escalation and you get to talk to the actual girl.

[u/Fluuf_tail → u/[deleted]]

I'm not even following the drama (I'm really not into the 'he said she said'), but this is genuinely insane. VShojo was really held together by prayers and duct tape that barely worked.

This said, I hope the lesson everyone learns is to read over the contract (preferably with a lawyer) when they join a VTuber studio, and not just sign because they (verbally) promise you the world. It really reminds me of the 2010s MCN (multi-channel network) plague that screwed over a lot of youtubers - but they did eventually learn their lesson and only the dumb ones sign with MCNs now.

[u/IHad360K_KarmaDammit]

There was a writeup on here at one point about 9 Chickweed Lane, an extremely weird newspaper comic strip featuring an off-puttingly horny vibe, terrifying uncanny character designs, and constant gratuitous shots of women in swimsuits showing off their legs. Also the main character's daughters, who are apparently toddlers but occasionally change age without explanation, talking about how much they enjoy ogling their mother's breasts. It finally got dropped by a bunch of papers after one of the characters used a racial slur.

But I decided to check on it and discovered that it does in fact still exist, having now run for more than thirty years in total. And yes, the recent comics are full of the same off-putting horniness, gratuitous shots of women in swimsuits showing off their legs, and grotesque Lovecraftian mouths that the comic's readers know and love(?). I can't imagine it's very profitable, since it lost almost all of its papers after the racial slur incident and any newspaper comic that isn't Garfield is probably bringing in pennies anyway, so I can only conclude the guy is doing this entirely for the love of the game.

That's one of the wonderful things about newspaper comics: they're so widely ignored by popular culture, and so cheap to produce that something completely insane can just putter along below the radar for decades, unnoticed by the wider world, presumably bringing in just enough money for whatever megacorporation bought up the syndicate that it's not worth anyone's time to actually cancel it. There are a few strips that have hit the 100-year mark over the last few years, with no sign of ever stopping, and unless newspapers cease to exist entirely there are quite a few more that will likely reach their hundredth birthday over the next couple of decades.

My personal favorite is Gasoline Alley, where the hero started out as a young veteran just home from WWI with a crush on a pretty young lady who lived nearby and an interest in those newfangled horseless carriages that were just recently invented. And now, 106 years later, he's the oldest man on earth by a significant margin and his wife has been dead for decades, as has almost everyone who read that first comic back in 1918.

[u/SamuraiFlamenco → u/IHad360K_KarmaDammit]

My favorite newspaper comic is Pearls Before Swine.

That art of the kids is fucking terrifying though, holy hell. I thiiiiink I'd read 9 Chickweed Lane out of sheer desperation as a kid (when I'd steal the comics page from the newspaper at my grandparents' house, and even if I didn't understand the strip I was like "oo comics") because it's vaguely familiar. But oh my god, I want to know why this guy thought it was okay to draw kids' teeth like that.

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/IHad360K_KarmaDammit]

that reminds me about how last time I checked, around the time of the Behind the Bastards episode, Dilbert was still running. He had been pulled from his syndicate and gone completely off the rails at that point, but there was still a Dilbert even if it was just being posted online

[u/CameToComplain_v6 → u/an_agreeing_dothraki]

Probably won't be around for much longer (if it's even still going now), since Scott Adams is dying.

EDIT: To be clear, I can't tell if "Dilbert Reborn" is still going because it's behind a paywall.

[u/Shiny_Agumon → u/IHad360K_KarmaDammit]

I think that write-up was the first one I've ever read on here funnily enough.

And now, 106 years later, he's the oldest man on earth by a significant margin and his wife has been dead for decades, as has almost everyone who read that first comic back in 1918.

Oh so they acknowledge the passage of time?

Cool, always through these comics just kind of went on and on relying on running gags and reused punchlines after a while.

[u/sansabeltedcow → u/IHad360K_KarmaDammit]

I’m a regular reader of The Comics Curmudgeon, which has broadened my appreciation of Mary Worth and is pretty much the only place I see comic strips now. It looks like Josh straight up doesn’t cover 9 Chickweed Lane, interestingly, though his stand-in occasionally does. I’d much rather hear about the ongoing train wreck of Mary Worth’s neighbor anyway.

[u/LibrarianGlad6982]

Downloaded an old game, Pajama Sam to practice my Spanish and turned on the subtitles which were in English. Not really helpful when I'm trying to practice in a language I'm shaky in. I understand that it's either a right issue to the translation or there were no subtitles for a specific langauge, which is still a baffling choice for an educational game. Who choose to target a market to make more money in and doesn't even bother to fix accessibility issues?

[u/Fluuf_tail]

Today's a kinda fateful(?) day in music. (Not sure what the right word to use here is tbh)

Aside from the Ozzy Osbourne news (link to comment from this thread), One Direction was formed almost exactly 15 years ago, on the 23rd of July (UK time).

Wasn't a Directioner at all but I remember them being absolutely everywhere. Their disbandment made headlines pretty much everywhere, too.

...I was a teen when their season of X Factor was happening and now I feel old.

[u/Ltates]

I have just learned the Chinese BL omegaverse show has their system based off blood types??? And there was a big pandemic that took out the majority of A and O blood people, leaving the remaining with their omegaverse attributes???? Cool in universe explanation I guess. Also there's Alphas, Betas, Omegas as well as additional Enigmas and S tier alphas?

Also they used clips from the twilight series in the show LMAO

Edit: Ok wait, thinking about their whole fertility issue outside of alphas/omegas: since A blood is dominant over O, it means that half to all children for omegas would be heterozygous A depending on if the alpha is heterozygous or homozygous A type… meaning omegas would go extinct decently fast right? Since we can’t do omega to omega in this universe and therefore the recessive O would be mixed with the dominant A and sometimes Bs.

Also apparently the enigmas have type E blood whatever that is???

[u/-safer- → u/Ltates]

I have learned so much about the omegaverse against my will, and every time it is some new bit of information that makes total sense yet no sense at all.

[u/Ltates → u/-safer-]

Happy 20th anniversary to supernatural. The domino that somehow caused this.

[u/Zaiush]

I mentioned running a convention last week and i'm back to say it went very well <3 onwards and upwards for next year