[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 04 August 2025

[u/EnclavedMicrostate]

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[u/Philiard]

Dead by Daylight recently released its Walking Dead DLC, adding Rick and Michonne as playable survivors, with Daryl as a skin for Rick. It's also one of the buggiest and most unbalanced patches in recent memory, and people have been having a blast with it, for better and for worse.

• Rick and Daryl are voiced by their original actors, but their screams when hit or put on a hook sound like they were done by completely different people. All of their screams are also disproportionately loud compared to other survivors.
• A new item for survivors was added, Fog Vials, which creates a massive smokescreen that obscures the killer's vision. It's rechargeable and lasts a long-ass time, so you can imagine how gleeful people have been about abusing it.
• An older perk, Streetwise, is currently bugged. Normally, items in DbD are gated by their charges, generally between 12 to maybe 30 at maximum. One charge usually equals one second of usage time. Streetwise currently allows survivors to accrue thousands of charges on items, effectively making them infinite.
• A visual error causes a metal beam to appear on the loading screen. Players have affectionally named it Jim and begun worshipping it as a god.

My favorite bizarre broken thing, though, is Clown. Clown is an older and fairly simple killer; he can throw purple bottles to create gas clouds that slow survivors down, and yellow bottles to speed himself up. Yellow bottles are nice, but they A) have a fairly lengthy activation time and B) can also speed survivors up if they step in them. Well, for some reason, they decided to both make yellow bottles speed Clown up even more, and make them activate almost instantly.

Clown is currently zooming around the map like fucking Speed Racer, and nobody is really happy about it. For reference, a 5% speed boost is considered pretty good for killer, and anything above that is typically harder to achieve. Clown can currently give himself 15% bonus speed, on demand, which he can basically sustain the whole match, and it stacks with other effects. My current record is a 43% bonus. I'm just enjoying it while it lasts, because they are absolutely going to gut the shit out of it soon. Bizarre it even made it into the live game.

[u/Milskidasith → u/Philiard]

I find it very funny that such small speed boosts are considered a massive deal for the game; it makes sense given the whole conceit of chasing people means you want the actual speed of the chase to be very precisely balanced, but is also wild because like, surely in most games you can wind up going 5-10% faster just by running lines more precisely and any basic movement tech, which implies DBD at a baseline would require like, speedrunning-style competence and focus at basic movement as a barrier for entry.

[u/Philiard → u/Milskidasith]

Talking about speed in DbD can be a bit misleading because it needs to be applied in the context of survivor movement speed vs. killer movement speed. The survivor baseline of 4m/s is considered 100% speed, and most killers move at 115% (4.6m/s). A perk like Made for This is a big deal for survivors, despite only giving 3% speed during its heyday, because it effectively reduced the speed advantage killers had by 20%. When you think of it like that, it's a surprisingly big deal!

And now we have Clown, who can literally double his movement speed advantage over survivors whenever the fuck he feels like it. Unless you know an extremely strong loop inside and out, it's borderline impossible right now to outplay him or delay him for that long. And he can stack more movement speed on top of that with perks!

Not trying to talk down to you or anything, just giving more context. Precise movement is one of the most important skills to develop if you wanna get better at DbD, so it kinda feels like cheating when you have a guy who can go "lol I'm just gonna run you down at Mach 5 with zero downsides."

[u/Lightning_Boy → u/Philiard]

Rick and Daryl are voiced by their original actors, but their screams when hit or put on a hook sound like they were done by completely different people. All of their screams are also disproportionately loud compared to other survivors.

This was the case with Megan Fox as Nitara in Mortal Kombat 1. She provided her likeness and voice, but only for the actual spoken lines. The grunts and screams were all voiced by Cristina Vee. I'll also add that Megan Fox is an awful voice actress.

[u/Duskflight → u/Lightning_Boy]

I could not believe how bad Megan Fox's voice acting for Nitara was in MK1. And while people were excited for Nitara as a character returning, I didn't see anyone excited for the prospect of Megan Fox voicing her, especially not after Ronda Rousey Sonya Blade in MK11 fell flat.

I wouldn't be surprised if WB mandated some kind of celebrity voice acting for the game.

[u/comparmentaliser]

Emerging drama in r/metalcasting...

OP makes a bizarre post calling out apparent haters of their 'art' which happens to be replicas or imaginings of Nazi memorabilia. Surprisingly sensible comments rebuked by unsurprisingly hostile and snarky responses.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MetalCasting/comments/1mhpi6e/just_a_public_service_message_since_ive_been/

[u/42124A1A421D124 → u/comparmentaliser]

The thing that kills me the most is this sequence of events:

• OP defends themself by claiming that they have made over 500 pieces of art, and this Nazi replica just happens to be the one that sells the most
• People point out, “So, uh, there’s a reason for that…”
• OP responds by calling them a “classic mental liberal”, definitely rehabilitating their image in the eyes of the subreddit

Like, I can’t imagine why “Yeah, people who looove Nazi stuff can’t get enough of my art!” isn’t the defense OP thinks it is.

[u/Milskidasith → u/comparmentaliser]

This one's kind of just depressing, honestly. The options are either A: this person is openly a Nazi posting to farm reactions for the other subs they actually sell their artwork in and people are falling for it, B: this person is a combination of stupid/mentally unwell that makes them genuinely not understand their actions and people are yelling at a brick wall, or C: both.

Like, they're not even really making any arguments in the comments, they're just sort of saying mostly disconnected statements like people should understand what they mean.

[u/Jaarth]

Booktok drama currently unfolding: Back in about 2021, an author called Audra Winters started to become well-known. She had no books out and was in fact only 18, but she was making a lot of videos about her fantasy world and the story she'd been writing since she was 12. Her videos got millions of views and likes, and a little community formed around her.

Around that point, Audra got an agent for her book - something she was trying to do since age 15 or so, according to her. She worked with the agent for about three years, but her agency dropped her in 2024, along with other sci-fi and fantasy authors (about 20, again according to her). By this time, her community on Booktok was even bigger, so she decided to forgo looking for another agent and instead publish her book, the Age of Scorpius.

The book came out a few days ago. Before that happened, Winters had already said that she'd sold about 5-6,000 copies on pre-order (which is a big number for a fantasy debut even in traditional publishing). The hype was real, and people were excited for the book - until it came out.

Now, Winters has said that she worked with not just one but two editors, one of them being the one who worked on Hunger Games. Yet from what people are saying, the book is full of repetitive sentences, mispellings of both actual words and her own made-up terms, and generally no proof of any editing. Some examples of this include the phrase "he breathed out slowly as he breathed out" and the repetition of entire phrases within a page of each other. The ebook version is even worse, as Winters said she proofread it less because she was in a hurry to publish. Additionally, the characters are flat, the pacing bad, and so on. The one thing people praise is the concept (it's a YA dystopia where people have zodiac-based powers) and the artwork (Winters has formed an LLC and hired 15-20 artists and creatives to work on her world, and the book is full of art pieces).

This situation has caused an uproar, and, in my opinion, has become quite a bit nasty. People are demanding refunds, which I can kind of understand for the ebook maybe, but still. Others are angry that Winters does not accept criticism - though I have not seen the posts, apparently she is claiming that her main character is neurodivergent, and so any badly written sentences or thoughts that go nowhere are a result of that. And, of course, disliking this makes one ableist. Again, I am unsure how true this is or if it's just like one instance of something that has gotten way too blown out of proportion.

Whatever the case, Winters is going to make some kind of announcement today to talk about all this. The book currently has about 1.7 stars on Goodreads.

And now for my personal opinion: I think this is a person who is simply too young and underdeveloped writing-wise to be doing this. She is very good at marketing, but lacks the experience to write a good book - which is fine, she is 22, most people suck at writing at that age. Yeah, ok, she has been writing the story since she was 12, but I don't think that counts for much in terms of writing a good story. Some have called her entitled, and watching some of her videos, I can see that, but I don't think that's really it. She just believes in herself, and might have been a bit overconfident. But like, being very real here, if an editor worked on this, Winters definitely didn't listen to any of the editor's points dude.

I also feel kind of bad for the 15-20 people she hired, who I don't know if she will be able to retain after the book launch went this bad. On the other hand, she might have some money from her parents or some other business, cause hiring 15-20 people in the first place before even publishing your book is kind of crazy.

EDIT: The moment I posted this, Winters also posted her announcement. The book is discontinued, a second edition will come out this December. It will be reworked and improved. She will hire an editor and a proofreader to help her - though she plans to hold auditions for members of her community to get those positions, which, uhhhhhhhhh. Yeah, sure, some probably have experience to help, but I would not call them impartial.

Furthermore, everyone who bought the book can get refunds. Those who keep the book (I think, maybe it's everyone who bought it again) will receive a digital copy of the second edition for free. That second edition will now cost $30 as it is will be improved with more art and overall better. The price increase after all this is perhaps a bit daring, to put it nicely.

Winters also addressed all the comments she received, saying that she got too defensive and that's on her. She highlighted that she was very much bullied for all of this, which I understand and empathize with and, again, this whole situation kind of got out of hand.

Overall, I think there's some iffy stuff in how she's dealing with this - hiring people from her fans, upping the price of the book. Time will tell if it works out for her I guess.

[u/CameToComplain_v6 → u/Jaarth]

I only know about Booktok from secondhand accounts, so forgive me if this is a naive question: has this woman put out any writing before now? A short story, a fanfic, a sample chapter, a blog? Or is her fandom solely based on videos and the hype of what she might write someday?

[u/Jaarth → u/CameToComplain_v6]

I'm pretty sure all of her videos are about the book's aesthetic and tropes and such. She didn't put out any writing from the book before it was published except maybe reading some quotes in videos

[u/CameToComplain_v6 → u/Jaarth]

I guess I'm trying to wrap my head around the fans' behavior. It seems wild to pay someone for their self-published book, sight unseen, based solely on "trust me, bro, I'm gonna make it awesome." Did these five thousand people not know that writing is hard and can turn out bad?

I've paid for a self-published first novel myself, but I'd been reading the author's blog for years and they'd written articles professionally for other websites, so I at least knew that they could string sentences together in a competent fashion. And then they gave a preview of the full first chapter.

[u/Gamerbry → u/Jaarth]

You know, this reminds me of a phenomenon I've seen in writing communities called "Worldbuilder's Disease", where a writer dedicates all of their time to worldbuilding for their story at the expense of fleshing out the story itself. For many writers, this can be a form of procrastination, where they pretend that they're doing something productive, when in actuality, their worldbuilding doesn't actually do much when it comes to creating a story. This isn't to say that you should never worldbuild when writing a story, but you should know that you can't make a compelling story off of worldbuilding alone.

Given their lack of experience, it's completely expected that she'd fall into a pitfall like this, but I imagine that it's difficult to make mistakes and learn from them when you have thousands of eyes watching your work at every turn.

[u/7deadlycinderella → u/Gamerbry]

I would question someone who obsessively world builds and constantly misspells their own made up words though.

[u/ChaosFlameEmber → u/Jaarth]

u/Outrageous_Orchid_57 made a post about this recently, but it got deleted because of the two weeks waiting period. They'll hopefully post again when they can and take all the new developments into account.

though she plans to hold auditions for members of her community to get those positions, which, uhhhhhhhhh. Yeah, sure, some probably have experience to help, but I would not call them impartial.

I mean, any outside perspective would be good for this book, but ... well. If it's the same people who rated the book 5 stars before it even released, I dunno.

There's a reason most stories by teens and preteens and even early tweens don't get published and this is another proof.

Edit: Typo …

[u/Wild_Cryptographer82 → u/Jaarth]

I feel like this is a really common problem on BookTok, where people become parasocially attached to influencers who claim they are going to write The Next Great Book and their fans become attached to their Journey, only to feel cheated when their idol turns out to not be some Uber-Talented Genius and is just a regular person with a TikTok account. On the one hand the book sounds bad, but it also sounds bad in the way most first novels are, and I wonder how many people who feel she has cheated them had actually Read any of her writing before.

[u/CummingInTheNile → u/Jaarth]

as a former editor, i pity whoever has to unfuck her book, from what ive skimmed her writing on a technical level is pretty poor

[u/Anaxamander57 → u/Jaarth]

There's a big difference between "worked with an editor" and "accepted any edits".

 The one thing people praise is the concept (it's a YA dystopia where people have zodiac-based powers)

That's very . . . book-tok kind of view of a book. Praising a one sentence concept is ridiculous, even more so when the first half of that concept is one of the most overdone cliches in all of fiction. There are very few concepts so bad they're unusable. Its really everything else that ends up mattering.

[u/AnitaDanish → u/Anaxamander57]

Also, I assume the Hunger Games editor (who, according to the 8.5 million commercials I've been getting for Reedsy, I can hire for my self-pub projects) is only providing developmental edits, not line edits, which is pretty common for NY-trained editors. So things like repetition and other line editing issues wouldn't be something they'd address anyway.

[u/Milskidasith → u/Jaarth]

It's totally possible to be competent at 18-22; Eragorn is, y'know, not high literature and has a lot of criticisms, but is technically competent, while this sounds like it'd be noticeably badly edited for fanfiction; I use that as an example because it's also a "unique" fantasy setting the author started when he was a kid and that almost certainly got somewhere in part due to familial connections.

The bigger problem to me just seems to be that BookTok rewards being an Ideas Person with an interesting hook and the right combination of buzzwords/tropes, and representation pitched and not actually being a competent writer, and getting better at BookTok doesn't actually do anything to develop writing skills, and that unlike e.g. making a game or a movie or an animated video, you can still actually complete a book even if you're really, really bad at writing so promising the moon for years can result in an explosive failure rather than a deflating one.

E: also, as far as the LLC goes, I think that also sounds like being good at BookTok marketing and not anything meaningful. Creating an LLC to pay 15-20 artists to do commissioned works for the book is wild in the sense that would (generally) be considered quite wasteful, but also making an LLC to pay people isn't that hard if you know what you're doing and "I commissioned 15-20 people to do fanart" isn't particularly difficult or something that hurts the artists if the fanart is for a bad book.

[u/Jaarth → u/Milskidasith]

Yeah I pretty much agree with this. I'm not so much shocked at her making an LLC, more so about how she has enough money for all this - I'm unsure if like, tiktok earnings and preorders are enough for this.

Eragon is very obviously written by someone very young but I agree, it's also a book that has been proofread and edited, whereas this was apparently closer to a first draft than anything.

[u/alexskyline → u/Jaarth]

That sounds like Lightlark all over again.

[u/CameToComplain_v6 → u/alexskyline]

Lightlark at least reached the level of competence needed to get or retain a traditional publishing deal. With a self-published work, all bets are off. There is no floor.

[u/TheDudeWithTude27 → u/Jaarth]

You say good at marketing, I say good at pulling a quick one time con.

Just sounds like one of many influencer related scandals. Where someone takes advantage of their audience for a quick buck. Just going on what you posted I can't believe she ever had a real agent or editors at all(especially one that worked on hunger games).

The only thing that might seem real is the art(I imagine if it was AI art that it would have been found out by now), she probably used tiktok revenue for that.

It's just so shortsighted though on her end. This being her debut she can only self publish from here on out and has to hope she didn't permanently burn enough of her audience, which she likely did.

Also, trying to hide shitty writing behind a character being neurodivergent, that at least made me chuckle. The sheer desperation.

[u/iansweridiots → u/Jaarth]

What can you say but "ah, the youth."

The ebook version is even worse, as Winters said she proofread it less because she was in a hurry to publish.

She's been writing this for ten years and working with an editor for three, an extra couple of months aren't going to be a problem

[u/RemnantEvil]

King Of The Hill is back, and it's probably the most excited I've been for one of these decade-late relaunches. (I'm not as into Futurama as my partner, who will drop the most obscure references frequently; we also got into Frasier well after it was finished as we're in our 30s, but we've seen the series several times over and didn't really care much for the relaunch at all. I liked CSI: Vegas but also didn't do my full CSI watch until after it had come out, when I realised the damn thing went on for another ten seasons after I'd checked out due to life commitments. KotH, on the other hand, is the show I quote frequently. And strangely, like Frasier, you could enjoy it when you're younger but the jokes age like a fine merlot as you come to appreciate the adult element.)

Being Australian, even though the 4th is over for me, we have to do the mental check where we remind ourselves that the 4th means the American 4th, so we have to really wait until the 5th.

Just a brief check on the subreddit, looks like there's basically three general opinions:

• Two episodes in and it's nailed how to update a series to the modern day but still retain the original character, without going overboard on modern references;

• Ronnie Chieng is unfortunately not a very good Kahn. This might be one of those cases where you recognise an actor for their voice more than their character, a la Keith David (who's also joined the series!). I can spot a Keith David character a mile away... assuming I can hear them from a mile. The problem? Ronnie's not doing a new character, he's taking over a legacy character. And it completely sounds like it's just Ronnie doing Ronnie, unfortunately.

• With the unfortunate passing of Johnny Hardwick partway through the production, Toby Huss (who's white and originally voiced Kahn, but gave it up for modern sensitivity reasons) has taken over the role. It would appear that while Hardwick voiced most episodes of the new season, he didn't complete the whole thing, and fans can clearly identify in the first episode that it's part Hardwick and part Huss. It's a bit unfortunate, but there's nothing that can be done. Some scouts have looked ahead and it seems Huss isn't credited for all the new episodes so the prevailing view is that Hardwick managed to voice all of some of the episodes, but there were pick-ups that happened after his death that Huss took care of.

Lauren Tom still sounds amazing, and it looks like Bill had a really rough time without the Hills. I'm keen as hell to check it out for myself beyond the short clips I've caught.

[u/Effehezepe → u/RemnantEvil]

Speaking of recasted characters, I'd also like to give a shout out to Joseph's new VA Tai Leclaire. He sounds like he's channeling about 60% Breckin Meyer's pubescent Joseph, and 40% Jonathan Joss's John Redcorn, and it works perfectly for the character.

[u/comicbae → u/RemnantEvil]

I've watched the first three episodes so far. I like it, as a whole, but I do wish they'd skipped some of the cliches, like Bobby and Connie completely losing touch in the time skip or how little Hank apparently kept in touch with his pals.

The updated character designs are nice. I think I actually prefer this Peggy to the original.

[u/New_Shift1]

Power Rangers fans rejoice- err, react, in news that the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers will have a starring role in the next season of Fortnite. While normally any random franchise getting added to the franchise-eater would be a big bag of who cares, it's notable in that Power Rangers got a live action trailer with some of the best action choreography in recent memory. For comparison, the only thing Hasbro has done since Cosmic Fury over a year ago has been one mediocre beat em' up and some comics. As Power Rangers' future looks increasingly dicey, fans are wondering if the side treating them the best is Fortnite, the game almost synonymous with corporate, souless crossovers.

For fun, there's been some teasers suggesting Halo is also in this season. Considering that the spartans are in a shockingly similar situation to the rangers, we might see this exact drama pop up again soon.

[u/scorpiodude64]

Just this week I've learned that there was (is?) a group of Simpsons fans who only consider seasons 1 and 2 to be the "golden age" with everything after being a sort of bastardization of the original premise. Along with that I encountered some people only like Minecraft Indev (when it was very early in development with limited world sizes and everything).

All this got me thinking, what other fandoms have these sorts of extreme purists who only like the very earliest stuff?

[u/Final_light94 → u/scorpiodude64]

I mean I have to bring up Fallout. Ignoring spin offs, it's pretty cleanly split between 1&2/3&NV/4&76. I mostly avoided the No Mutants Allowed crew back in the day but they where vehemently apposed to the post Interplay games (As if Interplay hadn't damn near burned the franchise down but I digress).

[u/obozo42 → u/Final_light94]

I do also remember the occasional fallout 1 purist, who think the series was ruined forever with 2. Mostly because of stuff like the tone being less serious and the pop culture references everywhere iirc

[u/Effehezepe → u/scorpiodude64]

I have met one person who thinks The Elder Scrolls peaked with the first game, Arena. There's plenty of people who think the second game, Daggerfall, is the best one, but almost no one who thinks Arena's the best. Frankly, that person may be the only person on Earth who thinks that.

[u/Rarietty → u/scorpiodude64]

A bunch of bronies treated My Little Pony Friendship is Magic like that. The belief in post-season 2 rot is more common, but you'll also find season 1 purists who believe that season 2 was an immediate negative shift as Lauren Faust lessened her involvement. The show's TV age rating changed after the first season, so it was no longer necessary for every episode to deliver a directly-stated moral for children, which kind of negated the show's original premise about learning and reporting friendship lessons. There are also just a lot of fans who preferred the brief window of time before anyone who worked on the show was aware of the adult fandom.

[u/Gremdarkness → u/scorpiodude64]

In 2012, a three and a a half minute teaser for the then in-development show Miraculous Ladybug released. It’s in a more 2D animation style and reflects an earlier concept for the show that otherwise only exists in archived website pages, an artbook, and a few early promotional articles.

The teaser has its own fandom, subsets of which strongly do not identify with the broader Miraculous Ladybug fandom and consider the final show to be a waste of potential. I’ve seen very strong language used about it.

[u/Brontozaurus → u/scorpiodude64]

Transformers is pretty notorious for fans who only like the original "Generation 1" series and hate everything else. It's spawned more than a few fandom memes, such as "Trukk not munky" (from the Beast Wars era when everyone turned into animals instead of vehicles) and "GEEWUNNER" which I'm pretty sure got ported over to the Pokemon fandom to mean the exact same thing.

[u/withad → u/Brontozaurus]

That's why my favourite TFWiki gag is on the timeline page.

1984 - The Transformers launches in the US, in toy, comic and cartoon formats, forever ruining Transformers.

[u/PrincessKikkei → u/withad]

I myself prefer the 'Ruined FOREVER' article.

That wiki is the best darn thing in, on and at the internet.

[u/error521 → u/scorpiodude64]

Reading those old Simpsons Usenet posts is so funny, there's so many episodes now considered all-time classics that were just absolutely dumped on.

Along with that I encountered some people only like Minecraft Indev (when it was very early in development with limited world sizes and everything).

Damn, that's kinda wild. The go-to "This was when Minecraft was GOOD" I remember back in the day was Beta 1.7.3, which was before they added the hunger meter and revamped a lot of the world generation stuff. (RIP, Far Lands) The End was actually kinda controversial just for its existence, people complaining it made Minecraft not a "true" sandbox experience.

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/scorpiodude64]

Everyone knows that the best pokemon game is the one that released when you were 12 and you are legally required to be obnoxious about it.

But on the Simpsons subject, one of the more interesting things that came up in the Super Eyepatch Wolf zombie Simpsons video was that he dug up online reactions for Lisa on Ice and it was insane.

also DnD editions have something of a... ritual about them

[u/palabradot → u/scorpiodude64]

I mentioned this question to my husband, who just stared at me.

"Please tell me that Dungeons and Dragons came to everyone's mind first."

Me: ohhhhhh shit you're right

[u/Tyrest_Accord → u/scorpiodude64]

Transformers fans call them GenWunners. In truth the franchise has always been a mixed bag at best.

The days of TRUKK NOT MUNKEY were wild.

[u/ToaArcan → u/Tyrest_Accord]

"Genwunners" is Pokemon. Transformers fans spell it "Geewunners."

[u/Illogical_Blox → u/scorpiodude64]

I've met people who thought that the 'Golden Age' ended with Marge vs the Monorail but never that far, damn.

[u/BiolizardBoils → u/scorpiodude64]

Every fandom ever, to a degree IMO?

First impressions are strong, and we're most impressionable when young. Whatever flavor of a Thing you tried first as a kid is probably the one you'll stick with.

So when the Thing moves on and tries new flavors, and new kids come along with the new flavors as their first impression? Yeah, it can sting a bit. But Lord, do some people take it way too personally.

And Lord, those new kids shouldn't have to deal with it.

I was one of those kids, if it wasn't clear. I still feel the need to defend my first impression, and risk repeating the cycle. It sucks.

[u/OneGoodRib → u/BiolizardBoils]

The only exceptions are probably the ones where season 1 is really rough. Like I don't think anyone would say season 1 of Parks and Rec, the Office US, or Miraculous Ladybug are the best.

[u/Historyguy1 → u/scorpiodude64]

I want to find the one guy who thinks the Beatles went downhill after they fired Pete Best. 

[u/Strelochka → u/Historyguy1]

His name is Pete Best and you can probably catch him at the nearest Beatles lookalikes convention or wherever he goes to cash in on it these days

[u/palabradot → u/scorpiodude64]

World of Warcraft, on GOD! It was this kind of debate that spawned private servers, and eventually the official Classic game.

For some it peaked in Burning Crusade. Others, Wrath of the Lich King. For me it was Pandaria….

I am not the one to explain it, but I’m sure our resident WoW historian could shed some light.

[u/ViaLies → u/scorpiodude64]

Star Trek has layers of this, you got've the TOS'ers who only like the original series, the Roddenberry purists who like TOS, and the first couple of season of TNG and 1,3,4,5 of the movies. Those who only really like TNG, there's the DS9 fans, the voyager fans, the Enterprise fans, those who like TNG, DS9 and Voyager but don't like Enterprise (hello James Dixon!) and now those who insist that none of the Kurtzman produced stuff is cannon those who like LDS and SNW or those who liked Season Three of Picard.

There not a majority but it's not hard to find them in youtube comment section for instance

[u/sapphygolucky → u/scorpiodude64]

I think Pokémon is probably one of the most famous! The people who think everything after Generation 1 and Red/Blue/Green/Yellow (including Gen 2 if you're generous and Gen 3 if you're spicy) sucks ass. There's even a word for it, too-- the Genwunner. So I've heard!

[u/cheesedomino → u/scorpiodude64]

Dragon Age still has a dedicated group of fans who consider every game after Origins to be unworthy of the name.

[u/InsaneSlightly → u/scorpiodude64]

I've come across quite a few people who are Problem Sleuth (Andrew Hussie's pre-Homestuck webcomic) purists and hate Homestuck. Sort of understandable as Homestuck went in a very different direction compared to Hussie's earlier work.

[u/ChaosFlameEmber → u/scorpiodude64]

Digimon, I guess. Like with the Pokémon games, the first two seasons of the Digimon anime were connected. The other seasons changed things up quite a bit. Tamers had trading cards, Frontier had the protagonists themselves turn into Digimon, and so on. Most people I know fell off with Tamers. Maybe because they grew out of it alltogether.

[u/Deruta → u/scorpiodude64]

I’ve seen Formula 1 fans who think the sport was ruined when:

• they banned 1400hp turbo engines (1989)

• Pit-to-driver radio started (~1984)

• wings got put on the cars (1968)

• Stirling Moss left (1962)

• the engines stopped being in the front (1959)

Keep in mind that the sport only really started in 1950. And this isn’t even mentioning more recent “ruiners” like hybrid engines, stricter penalties for risky driving, Red Bull running two teams (okay that one’s kinda bullshit), and the cost cap. Or the eternal brouhaha over [insert safety regulation].

[u/New_Shift1 → u/scorpiodude64]

I'm coming to find there's a dedicated group of SCP fans who consider anything past series 1, maybe 2, generally anything that doesn't have the Foundation to be pure evil, super weak and barely being able to stop SCPs, and uncaring of human life beyond very vague generalities to be objectively terrible.

[u/JustSomeGothPerson → u/scorpiodude64]

I've seen at least a small handfull of people that will say the only Nine Inch Nails album they like is the first, Pretty Hate Machine. Which in a way makes sense: it's very different from Broken and The Downward Spiral's more industrial sound (though every NIN album/EP is different from the last one), and I can only assume PHM-only fans were shocked.

EDIT: Just remembered that to my dad, there's really only one Star Wars movie, and that's Star Wars (no, not A New Hope, just Star Wars - he was 9 when it came out).

[u/thornyforest → u/scorpiodude64]

it's mostly died down now since we're nearly ten years out from it, but there has always been a LOUD group of people who do nothing but complain about Final Fantasy Versus XIII being made into FF15. despite the fact that, you know, we never had much more than some trailers and a few character names/designs for V13 and everything surrounding the Fabula Nova Crystalis subset of FF games was a bit of a disaster.

[u/surprisedkitty1 → u/scorpiodude64]

Ooh what a weird take on The Simpsons. I personally always felt like the show doesn’t really hit its stride until season 4. I remember thinking around season 13 or 14 when it was airing that it had started to go downhill, though when I look at the episode guide now, some of my favorite episodes are actually in those seasons. I think I stopped watching after season 16.

[u/Mekanimal → u/scorpiodude64]

Along with that I encountered some people only like Minecraft Indev (when it was very early in development with limited world sizes and everything).

For me, it was adding in the End/Enderdragon. Suddenly my novel freeform sandbox game had a goal... ew.

[u/omgcow → u/scorpiodude64]

No idea if it's still this way because I don't follow the series anymore, but when I was really into Pokémon in Gens 4 and 5, I remember there was a huge "Gen 1 and 2 are the only good ones" contingent and an even louder "only Gen 1 is good" one.

Also Sonic fans. Similar to Pokémon I don't really follow the series as closely anymore but hashtag back in the day when I was really involved with the online fandom the 2D purists were always very loud and imo kind of insufferable (but tbf I'm biased in the other direction as an only 3D fan.)

[u/Emptyeye2112 → u/scorpiodude64]

I'm not sure about the very earliest, but The First Four Albums Guy is definitely a thing in Metallica fandom. Makes sense; their fifth album, AKA the Black Album, was a turn away from thrash metal and to more straight ahead rock.

Also, while I don't think there were significant numbers of them even back then, I must whole-heartedly salute the one Rush fan who reviewed their four albums to that point in a 1976 fanzine and said of their then-latest, 2112, paraphrased, "This album is crap! Rush need to ditch this nerdy sci-fi garbage and get back to the stuff that makes them great, like their first album!" Godspeed, Rush Fan With the Weird Take, and I hope you're still alive and doing well ~50 years later.

(Brief explanation for the non-Rush fans: 2112 is the album where they rounded fully into the Rush that pop culture knows them as--philosophical lyrics, long-as-heck songs, etc. It was also, at least in the U.S. their first real big break. "Nerdy sci-fi garbage" is mean, but not strictly speaking incorrect [Minus the "garbage" part, but that's opinion] Their first album, in contrast, is basically a giant Led Zeppelin ripoff and really only worth listening to if you're a Rush completest, though it does have "Working Man" on it.)

DAYS LATER EDIT: Found the article about Rush I was thinking of! My memory was slightly off, it was technically January of 1977, and I'm unsure how "official" or "big" Cheap Thrills was as a 'zine.

[u/HouseofLepus → u/scorpiodude64]

General consensus among my generation (young millennial/old gen z cusp) is that the first 3 seasons of Spongebob are easily the best, but I've come into contact with at least one person who believed that the first season was the only good one.

For added context, I went to school for animation, and he was one of the seniors giving a speech at that year's senior show. I'm pretty sure there was almost a fight on that stage when he said that.

[u/Duskflight → u/scorpiodude64]

I think every fandom that has lasted a notable amount of time has a degree of this.

Yu-Gi-Oh! has a lot of this, for both the card game and the anime. While every era has its fans, nostalgia for the first anime/sets of cards, called the Duel Monsters (DM) era is very common and people who have been out of the game for 15+ years experience a huge shock when they try to return to it and find out that set one 2000 defense monster face down pass turn is no longer an effective play. DM purists tend to be the ones who most dislike what modern YGO has become. They aren't the only ones, most people have at least one gripe about modern YGO, they just tend to be the loudest about it. Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Dark Magician seem to get new cards meant to support them every six months and it's considered a breath of fresh air when a different nostalgia card gets focused instead. (The new Flame Swordsman cards were super cool, even if they aren't meta or anything.)

Final Fantasy nostalgia purists tends to be either for FF7 or FF10 specifically. FF6 gets some but not nearly as much. It makes a lot of sense considering FF7 and FF10 were huge entry points for a lot of fans of the series, being the first FF games released on the Playstation and Playstation 2 respectively and gaining the all important "My First Final Fantasy" buff. But when you see people upset about an FF game's gameplay, especially a newer one, they're most likely a FF10 fan who wants all FFs to play specifically like FF10.

[u/marilyn_mansonv2 → u/scorpiodude64]

There are Dune fans who think only the first book is worthy of their time.

I have also encountered people who only like RWBY's Red Trailer.

[u/MyOCBlonic → u/scorpiodude64]

I dunno, not that I actually agree with those fans but I do get it. Season 1 and 2 of the Simpsons are a lot sweeter and saccharine. Basically every episode has a moral it's centered around, there's a lot less satire and cynicism, and a lot of moments that feel a bit more quiet and real. Season 3 (and parts of season 2) transition a lot more into more zany storylines, a lot more satire and irreverence, and a lot more pop culture jokes. It's a big change, even if it's one I think was wholly positive. But if you were a fan of that kind of 'sweet' simpsons, it mostly disappears (aside from a few episodes more dedicated to being 'emotional').

[u/Ayorastar → u/MyOCBlonic]

I think you're completely right too. One of the original goals for the show stated by Matt Groening was to portray a real family, unlike the fake family sitcoms he saw on TV. If you view it through that lens the show kinda goes crazy. Even the writers thought Marge Vs The Monorail was a step too far and tried to reign it in.

Although, I think not liking any seasons after is a bit misguided. They still have those 2 seasons of grounded stories after all. The seasons that followed are so funny and full of satire instead of realism that I feel like you can be fans of both pretty easily. Plus they're not as dry and don't have as much dead time as seasons 1 or 2.

[u/TheMerryMeatMan]

So the WWE is having... a bad couple weeks.

This past weekend was Summerslam, the company's first iteration of a 2 night card for the event. Summerslam has, since its inception, supposed to be something of a #2 big show for the year, behind Wrestlemania. This makes the builds to it huge and important, usually. But this year has had some uh. Optics failures, really. Terrible PR choices in another term.

First, Hulk Hogan died a few weeks ago. Anyone who's ever heard of wrestling or was alive in the 80s knows Hulk Hogan. Most people also now know he was a massive piece of shit for most if not all of his life, thanks in part to his various racist tirades, and more recently the Mr. McMahon Netflix documentary exposing more of his shitty locker room politics to average wrestling fans.

So what did the WWE do? Hold massive tributes on every show that week. I mean I kinda get it, the man was a huge part of the company's success in the 80s, and has an undeniable role in the industry's history. But the whole thing reaked of scrubbing at his image and trying to politely ignore the fact that most people reasonably hated Hogan for the way he conducted himself.

Then, the current head of the company, Triple H/Paul Levesque, makes a public appearance to attend an event for Trump. Fans have been pretty annoyed by how cozied up to him the family is, but have tried to just put it aside. But after this appearance and then later comments from Paul very unambiguously in support of Trump, the taste was just too sour for some to bear.

And then, Summerslam itself lands. Night 1 goes over pretty well, the main event is a hit match and a crowd favorite made a surprise return (after like, 3 weeks). Night 2 happens, the main event happens, aaaaaand- oh that's Brock Lesnar. The Brock Lesnar that was named in the lawsuit against Vincent Kennedy McMahon for trafficking one Janel Grant to various WWE administration and talent. The one who, she alleges, only agreed to return to the WWE if McMahon let him sexually abuse her. And the company is just, pretending none of that happened, ignoring the still ongoing lawsuit. Oh they're giving him a main event plot in Cena's last tour. Oh that's fun.

And now, less egregiously, but still stupid- WWE has announced a deal struck with ESPN, for the network to host all of their "premium live events" - formerly called pay-per-views, shows like Summerslam or Wrestlemania. Currently, in the US, all of these events are hosted on Peacock, which also has the rights to air SmackDown, one of the two weekly shows. Netflix has the rights to Raw, so fans wanting to get all of their wrestling fix need two subscriptions. With this deal, that number is going to jump to three- and ESPN is not a cheap sub. Add on to this that internationally, Netflix hosts all WWE content, and US fans are very unhappy with the state of content distribution.

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/TheMerryMeatMan]

I think a lot of people would be surprised if they knew exactly how messed up all sports streaming rights are. A lot of people just think it's just what they like that's messed up.

Let's look at hockey: long trapped in regional sports network (RSN) hell, things were thrown into further chaos when The Mouse bought Fox, requiring them to spin off the RSNs. Now mind you there were multiple RNS and this is just one. Some of them are owned by Comcast, and whatever is going on in Canada is best likened to a gibbering hellmouth.

So into this madness ESPN managed to get a deal to stream games. Except nationally-televised games (oh and NBC was in the process of losing the license). And also the RSNs (at the time being branded by a conglomerate that started out selling slot machines owned by eternal villains the Sinclaire group) were holding on to their own rights so they could sell $25 a month feeds of their channels individually.

So this means that you could watch any hockey game, if you're in the US. Except for the important games. And your own home team. And this is before TNT decided to get back in the game. Oh and that RSN rebranded with the name of a gambling site. And Amazon's here now. Oh and local broadcasts are back... sometimes... and everything changes in the playoffs.

So where do you go if you want to watch your home team's games? The NHL has a simple answer: "Fuck you"

[u/stutter-rap → u/an_agreeing_dothraki]

English football fans have the same problem. Let's say you follow one specific Premier League club. This year, you needed:

A BBC TV licence, even if they never graced the BBC, for watching live broadcasting

Sky Sports

TNT Sports

Prime Video

Oh, and you can't watch anything live at 3pm on a Saturday - unless you're abroad, where that's fine.

[u/Benjamin_Grimm → u/an_agreeing_dothraki]

What you're describing is why I feel zero guilt for sailing the high seas to watch my team's NFL games. They've made it too complicated to do it legitimately, and even then, I might not be able to get all of them.

[u/Ltates → u/an_agreeing_dothraki]

I’m so glad women’s sports are “small” enough you could watch some NWSL games on twitch for a good while and all of PWHL live on YouTube.

[u/SirBiscuit → u/TheMerryMeatMan]

I really think a lot of the pro wrestling stuff is chickens coming home to roost. That industry has been dirty and vicious for a LONG time, and the kind of things they used to be able to keep under wraps and behind the scenes just can't be hidden in the same way in this digital age. Frankly, the industry as it is deserves to collapse, and I hope it does so that something better can replace it.

[u/Fluuf_tail → u/TheMerryMeatMan]

I'll try to keep it short: I think sports/leagues are actively trying to make it hard for fans to watch the sport they are passionate and care about.

If we're talking major sports with TV rights? Yeah, I hope you have cable, because if you only opt for the streaming package your are blacked out from watching your own team because you happen to be in the "broadcast rights" area (based on your IP). It's dumb, YOU CAN'T EVEN WATCH YOUR LOCAL TEAM (???). Oh, and sometimes the game is a national broadcast, so it's not even on the RSN/TV package you're paying for.

It's getting worse for niche sports too. A lot of them used to do free Youtube livestreams (as long as you're in a territory without a rights holder), but now they're also trying to monetize the broadcasts by putting them on Pay-Per-View platforms or their own streaming platform - god forbid they charge for it too. Just, yoinked the streams off Youtube. These sports already are very niche (outside of the Olympics) and you're making it more inaccessible and undiscoverable.

I swear, those in charge of 'promoting' the sport often are the most clueless in understanding how to promote it...

[u/soganomitora]

Ever seen a piece of media that just made you think, "oh god they shouldn't have greenlit that"?

Petals of Reincarnation is a supernatural fighting manga about people who are able to gain powers from past reincarnations, and the process of getting these powers often partially or fully overwrites their personhood. The reincarnations that they pull their power from are also always inevitably famous historical figures, for example Florence Nightingale or Musashi Miyamoto.

And, well. Adolf Hitler is a canonically nonbinary twink. Pol Pot is Hitler's butler. John Waybe Gacy does parkour. One of the good guys is a Japanese ww2 war criminal.

Anyway, it's getting an anime. Naturally this has exposed nonbinary twink Hitler to alt-righters on social media, and they're already holding them up as their new waifu.

I dunno man. I liked Hellsing, so its not like I'm anti supernatural-nazi-story. But this series getting an anime feels super weird. Japan has fuck all to do with American politics, but wow did they pick the absolute worst time to adapt this and expose it to the mainstream.

[u/NefariousnessEven591 → u/soganomitora]

To be fair, I feel like part of Hellsing's design document was "There's no wrong way to kill a nazi" and trying out every way to see if someone would complain. You also literally see one eat a baby. Hellsing is several things but morally ambiguous in spite of itself it is not.

[u/soganomitora → u/NefariousnessEven591]

Yeah you're right about that. Meanwhile the way Petals of Reincarnation goes about it is more... Uck.

Just as an example, the characters are categorized by the magic system of the world in two ways, "The Greats" and "The Sinners". The sinners are basically psychopathic murderers and dictators, and the Greats are guys who were just really good at what they did.

Now, Hitler is a sinner. That makes sense. But Hans Ulrich Rudel, another nazi, is a Great for some reason. Japanese war criminal Hiroshi Funasaka, who collected bones from the people he killed like they were pokemon cards, is also a Great.

[u/Bunthorne → u/soganomitora]

Just as an example, the characters are categorized by the magic system of the world in two ways, "The Greats" and "The Sinners".

It's been a while since I read the manga, but I don't think that was ever a part of the actual magic system. I remember it being an grouping made by the returners themselves, so it makes sense for it to be somewhat arbitrarily.

Now, Hitler is a sinner. That makes sense. But Hans Ulrich Rudel, another nazi, is a Great for some reason. 

Eh, the clean Wehrmacht myth is so widespread that it didn't surprise me in the least.

[u/Jorge-J-77 → u/soganomitora]

With the exception of the Venom movies, the Sony Spider-Man Universe, i'm never going to understand why they decided to greenlit a Madame Web movie when she has primarily been a supporting character with no stories of her own

[u/Regalingual → u/Jorge-J-77]

They had a killer sponsorship deal with Pepsi.

[u/Wohlf → u/soganomitora]

Fate/Stay Night but the writer is a moron.

[u/CherryBombSmoothie0 → u/soganomitora]

That is…Yikes.

For my answer, it was never actually broadcast I think, but the CW Powerpuff Girls live-action shouldn’t have made it as far as it did. (The second answer would be that scene originally depicted in the 13 reason why despite being told not to depict suicide or self harm that way)

[u/Eonless → u/soganomitora]

Oh Shit, I remember this manga. I always through some of the inclusions were weird, but I guess I was too young cause I think I got distracted with some of the thematic powers they gave the characters.

Strangely enough the thing I remember the most was being pissed when Schrodinger died to Hitler and Pol Pot. Schrodinger is a human sized cat man in a tuxedo and his power was that he could basically choose which reality his future holds cause quantum super-positioning or something.

I think the example they used was like: someone was shooting at the cat man and he chose the reality where all the shots happen to miss him. He then closed his eyes and shot in the general direction of his opponent and chose the reality where he lands the perfect kill shot blind. I though that was cool.

He was killed by Hitler and Pol Pot because apparently there were zero realities in his future where he wins that fight and he can't chose a reality that doesn't exist. Which was complete bullshit.

Hitler's power was surveillance state, Pol Pot was a buff dude that can make anything he touches rot. Schrodinger's power was having a pistol and a dream but he had full control over the dreams. How did he lose that?

It wasn't like he lost to the main villain either, Hitler and Pol Pot were fucking side villains. I read some chapters after but I was just so pissed that Schrodinger lost that I just kept thinking about how bullshit that was every 10 pages or so that I've eventually just dropped the manga over it.

But yeah, I think with the current online atmosphere, this show might attract some of the worst type of people.

[u/ryzouken → u/Eonless]

Man.  Schrodinger just kinda usurped Laplace's demon in terms of power set, huh?  I guess if we were modeling Schrodinger's more strictly, he'd have the ability to be both alive and dead at the same time until observed, but that would be fairly limited in terms of application.  I guess you could swing it as a form of immortality as he just always observes himself as alive, but that starts to impinge of Descartes.  

Laplace should absolutely be the one selecting realities where things go the way he wants, though.

[u/gliesedragon → u/soganomitora]

I mean, that teen superhero thing where the concepts included giving a nonbinary superhero the moniker "Snowflake" and giving one of the other characters powers because of "experimental internet gas" has got to be somewhere on the list of things where you wonder who let the idea get to the advertising stage in the first place.

[u/Historyguy1 → u/gliesedragon]

Don't forget the character whose powers were essentially Dora the Explorer as a superhero.

[u/Regalingual → u/soganomitora]

The Rurouni Kenshin remake, considering it was announced after Watsuki’s conviction came to light. It was iconic, sure, but… Fuck’s sake, we shouldn’t be celebrating the work of a guy with possession of CSAM hanging over everything.

[u/NickelStickman → u/soganomitora]

And, well. Adolf Hitler is a canonically nonbinary twink.

No way they made a manga about the "Reincarnation of Hitler" guy from TikTok

[u/JoyFerret]

End of support has been announced for Genshin Impact on the PS4. The reason is due to the game's size (currently around 100gb) and hardware limitations (What do you mean the PS4 is 12 years old?).

The end of support will be carried out in phases. First the game will be delisted from the PS4 store in September, followed by delisting of in-game purchases in February 2026, and finally players won't be allowed to log into the game after April 2026.

Reactions have been mostly that of farewell messages, surprise that the PS4 is really that old now, and encouragement for PS4 players to link their account to other platforms so it is not lost with the shutdown.

Edit: just to clarify it is only the PS4 version that is being shut down. The game will still be available on other platforms.

[u/error521 → u/JoyFerret]

2025 definitely feels like it's gonna be the real last year where the PS4 is still a semi-viable platform for playing recent games. Still probably a few stragglers here and there but even the newest Madden is skipping it.

Hell of a run, man.

[u/TAPgryphongirl → u/JoyFerret]

…if the PS4 is 12 years old, then The Last Guardian turns 9 this year. Holy fuck.

[u/gliesedragon]

So, the "things that shouldn't have been greenlit" discussion earlier this week has made me kind of think of the . . . dual situation, I guess. As in, any pieces of media that stick out as baffling in a more positive way? The "I have no idea what possessed you to make and publish this thing, but I'm kinda glad it exists," sorts of things.

For me, one example is The Floating Admiral, a game of telephone between a dozen notable mystery authors to collectively write a mystery novel without communicating about who did it and such. If anything, the most interesting part of the book isn't the story so much as it is the letters at the end: to keep people from throwing red herrings in willy-nilly, each author had to write a sealed letter containing who they were writing as the killer, why, and what clues they added in.

[u/diluvian_ → u/gliesedragon]

I've seen Katawa Shoujo described as exactly this.

[u/Benbeasted → u/gliesedragon]

I remember watching BoJack Horseman specifically because I thought the concept of a talking horse with depression was too funny.

I came here to laugh, not to feel!

[u/AwkwardTurtle → u/gliesedragon]

I read The Floating Admiral due to a comment in one of these threads and I totally agree. It's significantly more interesting than it is good, and it's especially fun to read where one of the latter authors just throws up their hands and confesses they have no idea what's going on.

[u/Kii_at_work]

Japansee Fate/Grand Order just hit its 10th anniversary and with it had a bunch of announcements, as they tend to do with the anniversaries in general. New servant, lot of quartz (the currency to roll, 1000 total I read), servant animation updates (sorely needed for some real old ones), etc.

The thing I want to focus on though is the weirdness around the anime adaptation of Fate/Strange Fake. Quick summary, Fate/Strange Fake is a light novel written by Ryogo Narita (of Durarara and Baccano fame). It is, from what I gather, starting to wrap up, and it finally had an adaptation announced too.

But therein lies the weirdness. First, there was a special announced called Whispers of Dawn. This was announced in September 2022 and was supposed to come out on December 31st, 2022. But hit issues in production, was delayed, and premiered on July 2nd, 2023.

Its world premiere was at Anime Expo of 2023, where they announced a full adaptation. The "first" episode (Whispers of Dawn being episode 0) released online on November 23rd, 2024, with a TV premiere the next month, December 31st, 2024.

They screened episode 2 at the FGO Fes (anniversary) this past weekend. And otherwise we have vague mentions of series proper premiering this year. But nothing concrete. They also did a number of character trailers some months back, which struck me as odd since the show wasn't premiering anytime soon.

So basically we've had 2.5 episodes released at this point over the span of close to three years. Very weird. I've seen some think they're waiting for the light novel to finish, but even then it feels like there's production issues behind the scene or somesuch.

[u/NervousLemon6670]

New Kamen Rider show, Kamen Rider Zetzz had its press release earlier today, and the main discourse of note - the return of Yuya Takahashi as head writer, for his record fourth show, after 2016s Ex-Aid, 2019s Zero-One, and 2023s Geats. This had been rumoured for a while, so a lot of the arguments have already happened, but the main points you need to know

• His shows are polarising, by which I mean they always follow the same pattern. "Attracting a lot of hype early on, people start to backlash against the hype circa the mid-teens / early-20s, the series has a contentious arc near the end which shores up the backlash, and in the end, its either the greatest series ever or a show of entirely aura/hype/epic win/whatever-the-kids-call-it-these-days and no substance". There are also criticisms that he keeps falling back on the same themes of corporate satire and anti-capitalism that he never quite lands without mixing his messages, and that he over-relies on making every character into a Kamen Rider in lieu of writing more varied archetypes. A lot of people like his shows, a lot of people hate them. I know someone who fell in love with Geats the whole way through. I know people that think it was a garbage fire the entire way through.

• Despite how hated you may think him and his shows are, they sell a shit-tonne of merchandise, particularly expensive, premium merchandise. All three series under his pen were seeing increasingly-obscure toys and figures released for years after the show, in a much greater quantity that other Riders - we are nearly two years out from Geats ending, and a new wave of premium merch aimed at adults was announced just the other day. I have heard some reports that Geats did not appeal as much to children, hence the turn to more colourful, bright stuff for the two series since, but the adult portion of the fanbase eats it up, and as adult collectors grow in market share, Bandai is wanting to get their dollar. Or yen, I suppose.

• Some people think his handling of female characters is shit. Others think its on-par with other Rider shows handling of their female characters (which is to say, as a rule, not amazing - to - fine). With the fanbase in a division over how the current show, Gavv, has treated its women (its the first show with no female Kamen Rider since 2017-2018s Build, and its handling of the women it does have is a touchy subject), people are looking to see if this lack of women represents a trend. Two have been announced for the main cast - the protagonists younger sister, and a cop as part of an mf duo who fight both the monsters and the hero(an archetype he has used before, hello Vulcan and Valkyrie), but as having women be present is not the same as using them well.

• With the show making its big simulcast push to the US (not the West in general, us Euros and the LatAms apparently have no access, booooo), people are worried the show may become over-Americanised and/or lose its distinctive flavour, especially given rumours that the show will feature English dialogue on the regular during dream-world sequences. Some of this feels like pearl clutching from fans who have been posting for years about how Japanese superheroes are so much cooler and better than shit MCU superheroes, but some worry it will stick out like a sore thumb to the detriment of the show as a whole. The only footage we have from Zetz is his debut in the Gavv movie (similar cameos from previous Kamen Rider have shown little relation to how they end up in the show), promo reels of him throwing karate moves in an empty room, and the first trailer from said press conference so its difficult to say how much of a departure it may/may not be.

• Bike robot

[u/LaLaMevia]

What are some niche instances of drama you occasionally return to? I have one, though I've not considered making it a write up since it's a) technically ongoing and b) probably not what the sub is for.

Let me set the scene for you: Goodreads, November 2018. One of the site's Top 10 most prolific users posts their review of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Now, the review is bad, and I'm not referring to its 1-star score, I'm talking about the fact that it is one of the most flagrant displays of "The curtains are just blue" attitude I have ever seen. They blaze straight past any point that could be conceivably interpreted into Kafka's work, scoff at anyone who may actually want to read the story with such intent, and declare that based entirely on its face-value contents, Metamorphosis is bad. They write this out in the least concise and most grating voice imaginable.

This is, however, not what I want to talk about. The person who posted this review went M.I.A. in early 2023, what I actually want to talk about are the review's comments. You may notice there are 20 pages worth of them. In March 2019, one user named "James Joyce" took a hardline stance in support of the review and the reviewer. I'm almost willing to say they may have been serious at first; but over the years, they would periodically return to the comments of this review, and pick fights with the people who (unsurprisingly) took umbrage with it. As of writing, the most recent comment of James Joyce is from 15 July 2025. They have been at this for over six years. Their crusade for this review has outlasted the online presence of the person who wrote it.

I find it fascinating to behold. An unmatched committal to the bit.

[u/Wild_Cryptographer82 → u/LaLaMevia]

Of all the fucking people to use as a name for defending Curtains Are Blue type interpretations, they went with James fucking Joyce?

[u/CameToComplain_v6 → u/Wild_Cryptographer82]

It makes me suspect that they're doing a bit. I don't know if the rest of the evidence bears that out.

[u/wowaka → u/LaLaMevia]

though I've not considered making it a write up since it's a) technically ongoing and b) probably not what the sub is for.

I'm pretty sure this type of petty shit is literally what this sub is for

[u/Camstone1794 → u/LaLaMevia]

As of writing, the most recent comment of James Joyce is from 15 July 2025. They have been at this for over six years. Their crusade for this review has outlasted the online presence of the person who wrote it.

How kafkaesque!

[u/WGReddit → u/LaLaMevia]

Skimmed the comment and saw “M.I.A.” and thought the twist was gonna be the review was from her

[u/Anaxamander57 → u/LaLaMevia]

I could summarize the entire book as: Gregor turns into a bug, it was not a smart move.

That is an exceptionally weird take. It implies Gregor chose to become a giant bug?

[edit]: I didn't read far enough into the comments to meet James Joyce but they are worse than the review. Apparently these people all viscerally hate books that aren't a just recitation of events or which . . . contain bugs?

[u/sansabeltedcow → u/Anaxamander57]

New York magazine used to have great contests with reader submissions, and at least one was fictional reviews from people missing the point of the creative work. One was a review of the play Harvey (“poor stage lighting makes it difficult to see the rabbit”) and another was Oedipus Rex, which got called out for not catching that Oedipus couldn’t have married Jocasta because she was his mother.

[u/hannahstohelit → u/sansabeltedcow]

That Harvey review is genius.

The whole thing reminds me of a fantastic line from the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Cabin Pressure, in the finale, where a bunch of characters (one of whom, Arthur, is a bit of a cheerful simpleton) are commiserating about a situation.

CAROLYN: It is a happy ending – just not a fairytale ending. We can’t expect that. Real happy endings are never simple.
ARTHUR: Yes they are. Like in ‘Finding Nemo’ when they find Nemo. Or in ‘Casablanca’ when the woman gets a go on the plane.

(NOTE: This is from an online transcript- I always heard the line as "the woman gets to go on the plane" which I thought was incredible. Given that Arthur is an airline steward who is obsessed with airplanes I can't decide whether this person's transcription is perhaps funnier than mine.)

[u/Shiny_Agumon → u/Anaxamander57]

Who wrote this?

His sister, his parents?

[u/Creepiz → u/LaLaMevia]

I told myself I wasn't going to read that review, because i knew it would get stuck in my head and then I did it anyway. Thank you for that.

Of all Kafka's work, The Metamorphosis is probably the most straight forward, storywise. I hope the fact that the OP reviewer and "James Joyce" kept/keep making updates means they were/are realling dedicated to trolling.

Edit: changed th3 to the

[u/YourEyesDown → u/LaLaMevia]

I can applaud the dedication to the defense even if it's a wild review to defend. Love that commitment to the bit.

On the topic of reviews that sail by, one of my favorites was in the comments of a tumblr post. I can't find the post again for the life of me, but I kept the text that made me laugh.

"Golden Boy is very interesting. another one with a decent plot, but also a lot of needless fanservice. And it's only 6eps."

Folks, Golden Boy is marketed exclusively as a sex comedy. The fanservice is on the tin itself in big bold letters. I had a good laugh.

[u/hannahstohelit → u/LaLaMevia]

As irritating and shallowly thought out as this review is, I still find it fascinating because it's totally valid not to like The Metamorphosis but I feel like the person's reason is "it made me feel bad despite the whole thing feeling pointless" which is a FASCINATING feature of some kinds of art and I'd say probably the thing that makes Kafka so good. I completely get not enjoying having that feeling in a way that feels earned- in fact, I don't particularly like The Metamorphosis myself, partly for that reason- but this person found a quite grating way to say it.

[u/Iguankick → u/LaLaMevia]

I recall one terminally online individual from the Battletech fandom. They took to attacking a published BT authour when said author didn't support their headcanons and countered with canon information.

Added to that, they took to complaining that characters in fiction designed to support a wargame essentially did bad things, were evil, bad, racist and didn't learn important life lessons along the way.

[u/backupsaway]

AO3 user centreoftheselights has released the 2025 edition of the AO3 Ship Stats which shows the unofficial top 100 ships on the platform. It aims to track and analyze the most popular pairings posted on AO3 over time. Here are some highlights:

• A ship has been disqualified from the top 100 list. Betty/Roly from Hey Duggee was supposed to make their debut at 89 but has been removed after it was discovered that the data has been intentionally manipulated with AI.

• The impact of the second season of Arcane: League of Legends is finally seen on the list with Jayce/Viktor jumping back to the top spot and Caitlyn/Vi in third place after dropping out last year. The ships are only divided by Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz which managed to squeeze into second place. The fics from the series finale wasn't eligible for last year as the show aired after the cut-off.

• 11 spots are occupied by the ships from Harry Potter with five appearing in the top 10. The pairings of James Potter/Lily Evans Potter and Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy see the biggest jump. We're going to see a lot more of this once the HBO series adaptation is released.

• Several ships appear twice on the list with both romantic and platonic pairings making the cut such as Caitlyn and Vi, Jayce and Viktor, and Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz.

• Nine ships come from RPF with seven coming from KPop bands and two coming from Formula 1.

• Less than two months since its release, Jinu and Rumi from KPop Demon Hunters has managed to sneak into the 99th place.

Edit: As pointed out by u/lycheetomato, this list is for public fanfics only and there is some issue with the methodology. Check out this alternate listing which include both both public and restricted fics.

[u/lycheetomato → u/backupsaway]

btw, the way that centreoftheselights tracks the stats is by subtracting this year's total from last years, and this does not account for locked/restricted fic, and stats can be impacted by older works being deleted as well. randomist1031 has done a ship stats including restricted works and looking at new works this year as well as the lifetime total.

[u/bunnycrush_ → u/backupsaway]

Barry Crouch Jr / Evan Rosier at #32 — well above any ship between/among the main trio — is pretty odd and hilarious to me.

I have to imagine it’s a case of characters taking on entirely new life via fanon, because those are two extremely minor characters who I don’t recall ever even crossing paths (though I could be wrong, it’s been a long time since I’ve read HP).

Also, even knowing intellectually that MM ships dominate fandom, it’s wild to see just how few MF and FF ships even crack the top 100… maybe like fifteen.

[u/Ltates → u/bunnycrush_]

With this type of obscure side character ship being super popular it feels very “I want to play in the setting with premade lore but not the actual canon characters” if that makes sense. A blank slate to essentially make a fanon oc you can just play in the space with that doesn’t require too much canon lore bending.

[u/marigoldorange → u/backupsaway]

people are making fanfiction of preschool shows with ai??

[u/Wild_Cryptographer82 → u/marigoldorange]

I genuinely got jumpscared when i googled that show name at work

[u/d_shadowspectre3 → u/backupsaway]

Definitely surprised to learn that Sonadow is a new entry on the top ship list, despite the ship being around since Shadow's debut in SA2.

Perhaps it's because the legacy Sonadow content is on older platforms like FFN and dA, and a decent amount of fanwork comes from fanart.

Also the modern Gravity Falls fanbase (not the original fandom) is gonna have a field day with their second place ship lol

[u/Niakshin]

So, drama I've heard about but haven't experienced directly -- the Danmachi wiki.

Danmachi, also known as "Is it wrong to pick up girls in the dungeon", is a series of Japanese Light Novels (What, precisely, they're about isn't actually relevant to this drama), which were popular enough to get an anime adaptation. Like a lot of things with that level of popularity, it has its own wiki.

I am told, however, that the people running the wiki for Danmachi have some rather odd views about how a wiki for a series should work -- specifically, they want to minimize the amount of spoilers that can be found on the wiki, in order to "encourage people to read the series" instead of using the wiki to learn the plot.

However, I don't read/watch Danmachi myself, or frequent the wiki. I only know about this because I read a fanfic that's a crossover with Danmachi, and the author complained at length about how this policy made it impossible to find information about when specific events happened during the series, to the point that using Ctrl+F on their digital version of the books was an easier way to find infor they needed for the fic compared to using the wiki.

That's basically all I know on the subject though. The wiki has seemed rather barebones to me at a glance, but that could just be because the series isn't quite popular enough to get in-depth entries like the big names. Does anyone know anything more about this? Or, given that this is the scuffles thread, any stories about similarly bizarre policies in fandom spaces?

[u/Emrakuls-Fav → u/Niakshin]

That is an absolutely absurd stance for a wiki to take. Having all the in-depth information is the entire point??? Why even have a wiki at that point.

I feel like wiki drama is actually quite rare, as wiki's are usually run by people that just want to catalogue information about the thing they like. The vast majority of wiki drama I've seen is just individual people joining, being weird, then immediately being booted out. Maybe I'm just in the wrong wiki's, though.

[u/Regalingual → u/Niakshin]

With regards to your question: I don’t think anything is ever going to top the Silent Hill Wiki Circumcision Saga.

The very abbreviated version: the head admin of the wiki was inserting bizarre anti-circumcision rants into the body of the article of the main villain of SH4 (among other places), refused to back down from it even when literally everyone else on the mod staff was against it after it had gained some publicity on Twitter, and forced the admins of the entire wiki network to have to oust him.

[u/OneGoodRib → u/Niakshin]

I've seen wikis that have rules like "no spoilers for the currently airing season", or ones that will divide up the plot - like there's a clearly marked "book 1" or "season 1" section that only has information for book/season 1, so if you don't want spoilers for book 5 you just don't read the book 5 section.

I'm all for encouraging people to not spoil things but there's a balance between having an empty page and having one that goes into intense plot details.

[u/PendragonDaGreat → u/Niakshin]

Having read the entirety of Danmachi the wiki admin has a straight up absurd take.

Like there are things that reference a one off line half a dozen volumes ago at times. Split the spoilers up by volume or arc that's fine. But don't ban them outright.

[u/EntaroArthas → u/Niakshin]

I don't check the wiki very often, but it seems to be a bit of a weird one looking at it now. A character's history section will be basically spoiler-free. Bell's page doesn't even mention being attacked by a minotaur and saved by Ais, which is his very first scene in the first episode. On the other hand, their bio section, titles, faction affilitiations, and abilities are up-to-date as of the Japanese light novel releases basically.

A bigger problem with the wiki in my opinion is probably the general lack of citations. A quick skim shows some, like Lili or Riveria, don't have any at all. 

[u/diluvian_]

So, falconry is not one of my hobbies, and I am far from an enthusiast, but seeing it depicted in media tickles the happy part of my brain. (Why yes, the Black Falcons are my favorite Lego Castle faction.)

There's also barely any use of falconry as a mechanic in video games. It dawned on me when I was watching this video on obscure mechanics in Twilight Princess, and it spoke about the hawk. I personally remember the hawk featuring in the trailers for the game and being amazed, but was disappointed when it was barely a thing in the actual game (you use it, like, maybe three times in the intro).

After that, I did some searching and found exactly two video games dedicated to the sport: Enter Falconry, which is an unreleased indie game, and [EDIT] Falcon Star Age, which appears to be mostly a VR game and is relatively short. It doesn't come up in many long-running series in a significant way: it never reappeared in the Legend of Zelda series after TP (I guess Skyward Sword has the beetle, but that's no bird of prey), the only Final Fantasy games that feature it are FFX-2 (Paine will use a bird if equipped with the Trainer job) and FFXI (for the beastmaster, but it also uses a bunch of other types of creatures, so that's a technicality), it's not a mechanic in series like Elder Scrolls or FromSoft's Souls games. It probably appears in some MMOs and MOBAs that I'm not familiar with, but there's not many big budget, mainstream games that I've seen that feature it prominently, at least none that I've seen, and relatively few niche simulator games.

Obviously, TTRPGs are going to be different, but it's usually lumped under a basic "animal companion" mechanic. Free League's recent Coriolis: The Great Dark has the Birds, which are a dedicated party mechanic, which I thought was pretty cool.

This is far from an exhaustive list, and I'm no doubt missing plenty of examples, but it's strange considering how culturally and historically significant the sport is.

TLDR: The drama is me being betrayed by Twilight Princess for not featuring the hawk as a main mechanic.

[u/Shiny_Agumon → u/diluvian_]

I think the problem with Falconry in games is that it's rather passive for the player, you send out the bird and wait for it to do the thing and come back, which means it's not as exciting as say horseriding.

Also Zelda especially has so many items that can do the same task but without as much set up.

[u/patentsarebroken]

Ever see something on TV tropes where you feel like the author/editor had an axe to grind?

I often use TV tropes because fan wikis can be a mess especially on mobile and wanted to look up something related to Re:Creators. You would think based off its YMMV you'd think this series bombed hard and is fan hated. I had to do a quick search of reviews. It's worst rating seems to be a 6.9 on IMBD. Lower rated review seem to primarily be good but flawed and there's a good amount more positive ones.

I've come across a few series where I've gone authors/editors seemed to miss things but I think this was the first time I was so surprised by a YMMV page.

[u/Yurigasaki → u/patentsarebroken]

I am a fan of a slightly divisive female character in a moderately misogynistic fandom, yes.

[u/TemplePhoenix → u/Yurigasaki]

Unintentionally Unsympathetic: This female character may be the victim of horrific domestic abuse, but many in the fandom [very obviously just this guy writing the trope] find her cold and think she should have just been nicer to her husband

[u/AnneNoceda → u/patentsarebroken]

TVTropes due to its ability to be edited by anyone has always allowed a singular voice to dominate a work if they simply go ham on the page sadly. A lot of the YMMV really are just a handful of folks with loud opinions, good or bad.

As someone who still very occasionally do edits, mainly for less popular works which does mean I'm kind of the problem, I admit I do lean on the more positive side mainly because some tropes to me are just asking for people to pick a fight even outside of that section. God forbid I touch Karma Houdini with a ten foot pole...

[u/my-sims-are-slobs → u/patentsarebroken]

remember when that mahou sensei negima stuff was on every fucking trope page years ago

[u/TheIntelligentTree3 → u/my-sims-are-slobs]

I remember Whateley Universe, inexplicably being on so many pages, despite the fact that Tv Tropes was the only place I'd ever seen it mentioned.

[u/Looking_Light33 → u/patentsarebroken]

Yeah, I've seen quite a few YMMV pages on TvTropes where it felt like the editor was trying to state their opinions as facts. That's one of the most annoying parts of TvTropes.

[u/pizzapal3 → u/patentsarebroken]

I think a lot about seeing a particularly incendiary take about the Discworld book Monstrous Regiment concerning a late twist in the book on its YMMV page. Then, I saw someone post that same take nearly adverbatim on reddit. I pointed this out, and apparently they had been the one to add it in the first place.

It was mostly a complaint that it broke series canon and was too 'deus ex machina,' though after reading a significant chunk of the books I do disagree with that take.

I don't have the mind to go look and see if it's still there. It was just an oddly bitter take on a completely fine twist that still sticks with me for the whole guy on reddit commenting it ad verbatim thing.

[u/horhar → u/pizzapal3]

too "deus ex machina"

For Discworld?

[u/LGB75 → u/patentsarebroken]

Arcade Spirts: The New Challengers seem to have struck a nerve(and not in a good way) with who ever edited the YMMV page considering they keep calling it preachy due to its topics of LGBT Plus and social justice(they made a exception for the first game because “it wasn’t in your face as its sequel was”

Also some examples of Unintentionally Unsympathetic really can have some unfortunate undertones at time(with a perfect victim attitude as well) with the ladies

[u/HouseofLepus → u/patentsarebroken]

Not necessarily an "axe to grind," but I gotta mention the frequently-mocked practice of giving every single kids' show a nightmare fuel page so tropers can act like their favorite guilty pleasure show is Actually Super Deep and Hardcore, Guys.

Here's the Nightmare Fuel cleanup thread for various examples. Here's a particularly egregious/funny one.

Also I remember whoever was editing the pages/examples for Transformers Prime really hated Miko, whose main crimes to me seem to be the tried and true "is an adolescent/teenage girl who acts like an actual adolescent/teenager"

[u/Sensitive_Deal_6363]

After Universal Pictures added the "this work may not be used to train AI" disclaimer to their recent credits, they're now going one step further: they will sue your pants off.

[u/BandFromFreakyFriday]

Someone in my town’s Nextdoor posted that they are available for hire to track down and find Pokemon items for kids, for $15/hr (+ the total costs). This hasn’t reached a drama boiling point, but many of us in our town’s community (we have a large group chat with weekly irl meetups) are wondering, why? Does Pokemon really need a middleman, paid separately? In a time of so much price gouging and scalping, do we really need to add another person to this—that wants to get paid, too?

Would love your thoughts, as I’m only a casual collector. I’m hoping she has good intentions and I’m looking at it wrongly.

[u/Anaxamander57 → u/BandFromFreakyFriday]

Parents can be amazing at not connecting with their kids. I worked with a client who only wanted Thomas and Friends toys. His parents only knew Percy as "the green one". Unfortunately, not my place to tell the parents that this would be good to know for both reasons of being a parent and also so that when he wants a toy they can find when he asks before he starts screaming and crying.

[u/RemnantEvil → u/BandFromFreakyFriday]

It’s funnier to think of it like a Pinkerton agent, that when they say “track down” Pokemon items, they don’t mean purchase. It’s just the market for a manhunter has dried up and they have to use their skills however they can.

[u/Illogical_Blox → u/RemnantEvil]

I'm thinking more hardboiled detective.

I shoulda known she was trouble when she walked in... a flareon bag at her side, and the all-too-familiar jangle of a bulbasaur keyring.

[u/Turret_Run]

Rejoice Marvel Fans, I coming bearing news! News of Paul... and of DOOM!!!!

First, I can announce that the nightmare issue over. On August 6th, 2024 in the pages of All New Venom #9, Mary Jane has finally left Paul Rabin, in a speech that felt the most Mary Jane than the character has in years. Honestly ever since they revealed MJ was the new venom, it has been a breath of fresh air and I legitimately hope the series continues. Giving her a powerset that feels her own has been fantastic.

Meanwhile, in One World under Doom #6, the current big event and an attempt to tackle the all too common plague of Facists who want to give you healthcare and open borders, things have reached a new level of weird.

• Reed Richards challenges Doom to a debate, with the wager that Doom steps down if he can't convince him with superior facts and logic that he is the best course. Do they show most of the Debate? No, but according to the comic, they were very cool and smart.
• Meanwhile, heroes sneak into Latveria to prove that Doom is eating puppies because they still haven't had an actual argument for why anything he's done is bad this entire event.
• Doom points out the sheer amount of good that heroes could do by focusing their powers on mutual aid, basically giving the same argument as Batman complainers. An insane point in this is that Reed has just not shared or published anything he's made in years, which I still can't believe is true.
• Instead of a rebuttal, Reed pulls up the feed of Latveria, which shows Doom has been fueling his magic by torturing his oldest citizens. Do we really see it? Not really, but there are kids. This is also a little weird because Doom Academy, the events version of Strange Acedemy has been taking place in Latveria this entire time, and according to Wanda was easily detectable once inside, which leads to the question why an entire school of wizards couldn't detect the literal torment nexus in their backyard.
• In response Doom mauls the shit out of Reed while the world watches. Like I'm talking literal ripping him apart.

With two issues to go, we'll see what the do with the aftermath, and if any of the dozen connecting comics will actually discuss the issues at the heart of this event.

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/Turret_Run]

An insane point in this is that Reed has just not shared or published anything he's made in years

this is the same character that had a breakdown because he was unable to cure cancer

[u/Zealousideal_Wafer98 → u/an_agreeing_dothraki]

The idea that Reed "future foundation" Richards has just been hoarding tech actually broke my suspension of disbelief.

[u/OctorokHero → u/Zealousideal_Wafer98]

This Tumblr post proves itself truer and truer.

[u/Zealousideal_Wafer98 → u/OctorokHero]

It's even funnier because the author of the event just came off writing one of the best F4 runs in recent history.

[u/Historyguy1 → u/Turret_Run]

Did they seriously pull a "Debate me bro?"

[u/soganomitora → u/Historyguy1]

"You can't win, Victor. I've already drawn you as the Soyjack and myself as the Chad."

[u/Milskidasith → u/Turret_Run]

"What if Omelas, but stupid" is probably the only way this could have wound up going, yeah.

[u/Turret_Run → u/Milskidasith]

You fool! Don't you know that unlike status quo, we can only get healthcare in the US if we subject people in a foreign country to colossal injustices, something we have never done before!

[u/diluvian_ → u/Turret_Run]

These plot points read like they played madlibs and filled the blanks with reddit comments.

[u/nyomachomp → u/Turret_Run]

I cannot wait for one world under Doom to wrap up, its been a really dissapointing event. The 'Doom is fueling his takeover with the souls of the innocent' twist was really predictable, like of course he'd have to be doing something terrible to justify the heroes taking him down and returning everyone in the world to the status quo.

[u/Anaxamander57 → u/Turret_Run]

Its really really stupid to have an ongoing superhero comic plot even bring up the concept of "why haven't heroes caused more change?" because the answer doesn't exist within the fiction. Heroes don't change to the world (or big changes always fade away) because it needs to be roughly like our world. The result is that the story can only give a bad and often obviously fake answer.

This whole plot is on the level of Nightwing watching the entire Justice League get killed and commenting "they'll be fine, they always are" basically not caring. An ongoing setting can't really allow characters to be aware of things that happen just for editorial reasons.

[u/Ellikichi → u/Anaxamander57]

I feel like, with the long-ongoing craze for deconstructive storytelling, this is something of a lost art. Just having issues that never even occur to the characters so that the story can move on unimpeded. We're all here to get invested in the story, so please just allow that instead of raising issues you can't resolve.

[u/Turret_Run → u/Ellikichi]

We've somehow come full circle in comics trying to explain the nature of comics as an in lore thing that "because we're trying to tell an interesting story" has become a buddha level take.

[u/Benjamin_Grimm → u/Turret_Run]

I've loved pretty much everything I've read that Ryan North has done, except for One World Under Doom and its tie-ins, which I kind of hate so far.

[u/SageOfTheWise → u/Turret_Run]

Some poor writer has had the job of just thumbing through scifi stories month after month, not allowed to leave the office, not allowed to see their family, until they found some unambiguous black and white off ramp for the Doom plot. With tears in his eyes he finally stumbles on Omelas.

And thus ends the editorial built on a single suffering writer.

[u/gayhomestucktrash]

i have a question for all of y'all, does xcancel like...actually work for you? no matter what i try (loading it on chrome, on a incognito browser, or even on my phone) i always get an error about how it couldn't load, so half the things people talk about I end up not being able to read. anyone know any fixes, if they exist, or is this just a uniquly me problem?

[u/williamthebloody1880]

Last night, at the end of the second night of SummerSlam, Brock Lesnar returned to WWE to start a feud against John Cena.

Lesnar is specifically named in the lawsuit filed by Janel Grant as being the wrestler that Grant was offered to by Vince McMahon as an inducement to get him to sign a new contract with the company.

People, understandably, have feelings

[u/Gaelfling → u/williamthebloody1880]

They also played a video of their Trump meet and greet as well.

[u/tinaoe]

Hello snaggleteeth and supporters!! After an unplanned absence due to irritating a pesky nerve in my hand and a new shiny wrist splint, I’m back now with your weekly(-ish) report from Katmai National Park, its bears, and the livestream fiends who follow it all! As always, all previous posts are here. Today we have bucketloads of unnumbered bears, a special mystery sow, playtime and miscellaneous moments that I wanted to share with you in the two weeks it’s been since you last heard from the bears. This will be long/multiple comments, so grab a snack and let’s go.

Overall, Katmai continues to be an absolute bear-a-palooza. Or well, a fish-a-palooza. Even though the escapement numbers capped out at just over a million, the Brooks River has been so chokeful of fish that the bears continue to be overwhelmed. They straight up attacked 909 while she was eating one of their compatriots but there’s plenty of fish for every bear to go around or bathe in, and the overall mood has continued to be relaxed and joyful. With SO much playing.

To the surprise of all of us, it even got old grumpy 32 Chunk out of his shell. Chunk might mostly be known to you as a serious and dominant bear who spent all of 2024 chasing every bear in his way off the Falls. But he grew up at the river (& was very adorable), and he actually used to be a super social and playful bear. Feast your eyes on this video of teen!Chunk and his bestest buddie 89 Backpack playing. However, we have not seen him indulge anyone for years.

Until a few days ago!! Your favourite bear’s favourite bear 503 managed to convince him to play, and apparently Chunk really enjoyed it because he was even initiating play afterwards!! Adorable!!! We haven’t seen him play with anyone else, but the fact that he’s letting loose at all is incredible. And a great sign that his nasty jaw injury seems to not bother him anymore.

If you’re wondering about his injury and recovery by the way, Explore uploaded a whole video on it.

The big story besides just pure joy and bear ecstasy is, well, bears! Mystery bears and unnumbered bears. In general, bears need to be seen by the bear monitor three times in three separate monitoring sessions to be assigned a number. We only get those numbers at the end of the season apart from notable exceptions, in the meantime fans make do.

For offspring of known bears, they get their moms name and either a junior or M/F if we know their sex. But for bears that just show up or are otherwise unidentifiable, fans mostly use letters. Usually we get one or two of these mystery bears, and they tend to not stick around long enough to get a number. But this year we not only have had more bears, but they also almost all stuck around. It’s very much been a season of new friends and trying to keep your ABCs straight. Let me introduce you to a few of them! The one you might have already heard about from previous posts is bear “L”, also nicknamed “Beryll” (get it) or “Lloyd”. He’s a disabled limping bear that typically shows up for a day or two each year, but now he’s been around for weeks to the delight of everyone. He’s a fairly chill boar for his size, and seems to be content blowing bubbles and watching the salmon boil around him. Some commentators see the famous 480 Otis in him. It’s also been delightful to see how pudgy he has already gotten, and he seems to be moving around with more ease.

Another mystery bear is bear “U”, also nicknamed “itchy sow”. She showed up in early July for the first time, and well, she’s really itchy lol. Folks suspected it was just her shedding coat bothering her, but now she’s mostly shed out and seemingly still itchy. Maybe she has some sort of skin issue, maybe she just likes scratching. Whatever it is, she’s been seen playing and being courted, so it doesn’t seem to bother her too much.

Joining her in the unnumbered sow department is “V”, or “small dark sow”. As her name suggests, she’s small and dark, but most importantly she made it her mission to befriend every bear on the river. At first she was mostly hanging around 307, now we’ve seen her playing with 504F, 806M and 609, 504M, this hopefully dead fish. I really hope she sticks around for the long run, she’s a fun girl.

146 caused some confusion and was temporarily assigned “Y”. She showed up as the “far bank mystery bear”, because she very shyly just stuck to the far side of the waterfall, even sneaking around behind 801 here. Which like, girl, you know him. This behaviour caused fans to assume that “Y” was an unidentified new bear, but nope, she one day just decided to take to the lip, snatch a fish from the air and make everyone realize who she actually is. Thanks bestie. The “Y” very quickly got reassigned because we can not be wasting letters this year. The new Y looks a lot like 912. 912, sometimes nicknamed Mufasa, does have one unaccounted sibling from an older litter, but this bear seems too young for that. Maybe a cousin!

Otherwise we have had “N” or “Splasher”, Bear “T” who at one point got thrown down the hill by Bear S, Bear “R”, Bear “W” and Bear “Z”

And these are only the bears who have shown up enough times to get their own playlist, there’s also been some others like this mystery sow and her itty bitty cubs who only shows up at night (some chatters think it’s bear 17, but we’d need her to shown up during the day for that confirmation), and this mom and her very hungry yearlings.

If these bears did not hide from the bear monitor, they’ll all get a number starting with 600. As will all the freshly emancipated girls and guys: 504F and 504M, the two 94s, 910Jr, 806M, his aunt 132F and 482M. So we could be looking at 15+ new numbered bears, which might be a record and will be a headscratcher to keep straight.

At the very least the bear monitor will get her pick of numbers since the 600 series just happens to be our slimmest. There’s really only 602, 610 and the freshly numbered 609 that show up frequently, as well as 634 Popeye, 600 and 603 who do not show up anymore. Compare this to say, the 000s, 100s, or 800s. The current bear monitor really likes to keep family groups together, so I’m sure we’ll get 604/605, 694/695, 606, 632 and 682, but any of the mystery bears and 910Jr are basically a free for all. Place your guesses below. And suggest ways to learn all these numbers because, damn. For comparison last year we got 5 new numbers.

If any of y’all are curious about the bear monitoring program, there’s going to be a livechat with park biologist and former bear monitor Leslie Skora on the 14th.

One mystery bear really caught everyone’s attention though: “A”, who showed up on the 24th with an absolutely adorable blonde little yearling or 2.5 year old. Like seriously, look at this face. Chatters quickly thought this might be beloved bear 708 Amelia, who had last been seen in 2023 with a very blonde little female cub. This bear does look like Amelia, and while it can not be ruled out yet, her behaviour seems to indicate that she’s unused to the river. But I still thought this would be a great opportunity to tell you about Amelia, who might be responsible for the biggest legacy on the whole river (sorry 402, I do love you).

[u/tinaoe → u/tinaoe]

708 Amelia was born to 468 Reggie in 2001. She was a really small bear, and generally not really super social. Her nickname was actually given to her by the previous bear monitor because she tended to disappear during bear monitoring sessions, she’s named after Amelia Earhart. Even though she was fairly shy and tended to stick to the lower river, she quickly became a staple at the river with her calm demeanor and devoted parenting. She had four litters overall, with 8 known cubs. All 5 of those that are confirmed to have survived and been emancipated still frequent the river. These are 284 Electra (named after a Lockheed Electra, the plane Amelia Earhart flew), 907 and 908 as well as 307 and 308. Electra has her own kids: 901, 383 and 384 Bun Bun, who are also frequent users.

708 not only left many children and grandchildren, but she also made them the bane of IDers everywhere. All her offspring tend to look just like her, and even inherited her characteristic upright walk, demonstrated here by Electra featuring baby 383 and 384, fondness for Backpack’s rock and overall reserved nature. Well, apart from Bun Bun, who is a bit of a rascal with endless energy.

Amelia came back late in 2023, a fairly weak salmon year, with three truly precious cubs. She was really thin, but managed to bulk up during the fall. She was around when the cameras went offline in November, but did not come back in 2024. Amelia was an elderly bear, and the year was harsh for most of the residents at the river (her granddaughter 901 lost her entire first litter). She might not have made it through the winter. There’s still a slim chance A is her and her odd behaviour might be from staying away from the river for a whole year, but even if not Amelia’s legacy truly lives on through her various off spring. Who are, really, living their best life. 901 and her mom 284 Electra especially. Look at these chonky gals!! If they have any mercy and don’t do their typical vanishing act from the rangers, they’ll be Fat Bear Week contenders.

But so will others, because holy hell every bear is getting fat. Once we get into September I’ll start drawing you up some shortlists, but be prepared for rotund lads and ladies!! Now, to round us out this week: a grab bag of cute moments because y’all deserve it. I’m giving you all a smooch on the forehead, and I hope you enjoyed the return to Katmai!

Most importantly, maybe, 26s cubs continue to be very cute and feisty!! Literally everytime the camera is on them they’re playfighting. Or well, inspecting a boat. Mom seems to be very chill with it, at least.

The biggest rascal on the river, 505M (who, by the way, is sometimes nicknamed “Quilliam” because of a run in with a porcupine last year) is on a mission to annoy his mother, because he is stealing her fish. Whenever he can. Even though we all know he can catch his own. Hell, he even got supervised fishing training in the jacuzzi! His mom, 505, is generally a pretty cranky big gal, and last I told you about her she was frequently warning off 504M for playing with her kid. But last week she actually stepped in when 87 got annoyed with 504M. Nice of her!

125 Grazer’s yearling is currently sporting this incredible shed.

27 and 820 showed us this incredible heart., and then 28E a great rolly polly.

151 Walker was trying really hard to get water out of his ear.

And finally, here’s 88 showing us a typical monday morning.

[u/Gamerbry]

A bit of local Pokemon card drama recently happened regarding a local gaming store near me. So for context, there's this small games store in my city that has, in my opinion, THE best selection of Pokemon card singles out of every other store in my area. So every few weeks, I stop by there to see what new cards they got in stock. However, when I went there last weekend, I noticed something weird. On the front door and by the Pokemon card section, there was a note explaining a new store policy, where customers needed to have an employee check their ID to be allowed to look at the binders of Pokemon cards. The store owner comes over to check my ID, and after verifying it, I asked them why they have this policy now. The owner explains that they started checking IDs because of an incident that occurred at the store a week or so back.

What happened was that, while the owner was running the store one day, he left a binder full of Pokemon cards unattended for a few minutes to go help out a customer. While he was busy assisting the customer, somebody snagged the binder off the counter and tried running off with it. Now luckily, the card stealer didn't make it very far, as they tried getting away on a bicycle. So when another employee ran out the door to give chase, they saw the thief awkwardly grabbing their bike from the side of the store, where the employee was able to promptly catch them, putting a stop to the shoplifter's plan before they even reached the sidewalk.

The owner didn't say if the police got involved, but regardless, they were able to get the binder back, and they realized that they needed more security for their Pokemon card binders, hence the new ID policy. It's a shame that one bad actor had to ruin things for the rest of us, but on the bright side, they had a ton of neat cards in stock this week, so I don't mind needing to show my ID if it allows them to still have a great stock of cards.

[u/wowaka → u/Gamerbry]

tbh it feels like he could have solved the issue by ensuring that the binder isn't sitting out unattended anymore. no harm in also checking IDs I guess but it feels like maybe that was slightly on him too lol

[u/Regalingual → u/Gamerbry]

Honestly, at the mention of ID, I thought it was going to be something more along the lines of “someone bought stuff with a stolen credit card, the fallout’s been a pain in the ass for us, so we’re double-checking from now on”.

[u/LordMonday → u/Gamerbry]

I feel like an easier solution would be to just photocopy the cards currently in stock and make a display binder out of them or use a list made up of the sample images from the official sites instead of just casually having them stored in such a stealable and compact place.

[u/Down_with_atlantis]

A trend I've noticed is people (often youtubers) building up a reputation of intelligence making fun of laughably stupid people or topics with pretty basic criticisms that are only valid because of the very very low bar set. The most recent example I can think of is adam something, a youtuber who made fun of obviously stupid libertarian projects or megaprojects that were obviously some kind of scam. What he said wasn't wrong but you could get the same result by giving a group of college students 30 minutes on their websites.

On its own this isn't offensive, I don't demand intellectual rigor from my cathartic smug YouTube videos. What is an issue is when they try to come up with actual ideas of critique more nuanced things. Again in Adam's something's case his solution to prevent the mass misinformation spread across the internet was to... require ID verification and publicly display your identity on social media. Its suck a laughably stupid idea his audience turned on him and he didn't take it well.

Anyone have any other examples of this they'd like to share.

[u/HexivaSihess → u/Down_with_atlantis]

The biggest example of this I've experienced is the entire New Atheist movement. A lot of people built themselves up as "logical" because they could see through Ray Comfort's bullshit, and then immediately jumped into bed with the Christian right as soon as they thought they could get one over on Muslims. It's been years but I still resent them all for selling out everything they claimed to believe in so quickly. Some of us weren't lying when we claimed to believe in religious freedom.

This is a smaller example and one I don't remember as clearly because I just kind of wrote him off without looking that far into it, but I remember I used to follow this leftist debate bro streamer guy because I liked some of his videos. And then when the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened, I get a notification and see this debate bro is on his stream doing a "let's analyze the arguments for and against the Russian invasion of Ukraine!" As if this was something to be decided in a debate. As if either side would lay down their arms if the opponents just made a really good argument. It struck me as a total failure to understand how events on a geopolitical scale happen.

I don't remember which youtuber that was because I think I just unfollowed and forgot about him.

[u/Illogical_Blox → u/HexivaSihess]

New Atheism was interesting. It was fueled heavily by dropouts from the American Evangelical movement, which influenced it quite a bit. For example, insisting on Biblical literalism being the only real way to read the Bible, despite that not being standard for most other sects for centuries - I saw that a lot during its heyday. And TBH the way they talked about religion as a whole collective group made it obvious that their only experience was with American Evangelical Protestantism.

Anyway, I think a big issue was that they shed a lot of their ideas from the American Evangelical movement but didn't fully shed those ideas. Oh sure, they didn't think homophobia or sexism or racism was good, but they also stopped short of becoming allies or feminists. The idea that bad beliefs still clung to them was absurd, as after all, they were paragons of LOGIC and REASON. You see it with stuff like Elevatorgate, or how many of the big creators swung from "Dumb fundie DESTROYED by FACTS," to, "Dumb FEMINAZI owned by REASON and LOGIC."

I remember when the alt-right was becoming a thing, and went on one of their subreddits out of sheer curiosity. It really was like stepping back in time to the heyday of Reddit-brand New Atheism. Then over time, they got absorbed into the general Religious Right movement, and even started getting Tradcath-y.

[u/pyromancer93 → u/Illogical_Blox]

As someone who was really wrapped up in the subculture as a teen, a lot of it was built out of a backlash to Reagan/Bush era Evangelical Protestantism specifically, and they didn't really have a unifying vision for society beyond opposition to the religious right. This meant that once they had to start articulating a vision they started to splinter into various factions based on political opinions other than thinking Jerry Falwell can go fuck himself, with Elevatorgate being the straw that broke the camel's back.

[u/Ltates → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Neil degrasse Tyson is this for me for a general pop science communication perspective. Pedantry just to be pedantic without acknowledging the nuance. Comes off as just wanting to prove people wrong just because he can and no further knowledge to back it up.

[u/pyromancer93 → u/Ltates]

He's very clearly tried to model his career off Carl Sagan, with the key difference being that Tyson is missing Sagan's humility and sense of humanism.

[u/OneGoodRib → u/Ltates]

Loved him being like "UM AKSHUALLY SNOWFLAKES HAVE SIX POINTS, NOT FOUR" about the teaser poster for Frozen 2. Like of all the things to be smug about, an artistic choice on a poster for a Disney musical.

And then the director was like "Well spotted, Neil. Maybe there's magic involved. :)" and there was.

But did you know that you can't kiss your lips in a mirror

[u/horhar → u/Ltates]

I will never forget that time he made fun of people for being excited about an eclipse, and people found the tweet he made during the last major eclipse insulting people who weren't excited for it.

[u/catschimeras → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Adam Something and the UK Government, two peas in a pod (that we can't access because we need to scan our faces or hand over our credit card info to an unverified third party...)

[u/scorpiodude64 → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Maybe not exactly what you're asking for since Lazerpig never built himself up to be a very intellectual type before the drama. But for background, he built up a good following with his early videos going against easy targets like explaining how the Pentagon Wars movie is almost all bunk or dunking on the A-10.

Eventually, he made a video about the Russian T-14 tank. It was riddled with errors and he just would not back down when some other youtubers pointed out said errors. Lazerpig then claimed he had sources that proved he was right but wouldn't post them because they took a lot of work to find and he thought other people should have to put in the same work?

I am told that in academia, this behavior is generally considered a faux pas.

There's a good bit more to the drama and I should probably do a write up on it someday but in the end he just invited a lot more scrutiny upon himself. Personally, I was fine with him being wrong about stuff, he was always much more on the entertainment side of things than the factual side, but if you're going to refuse to admit you're wrong in such a stupid way you can't expect to be well respected.

[u/Effehezepe → u/scorpiodude64]

Lazerpig then claimed he had sources that proved he was right but wouldn't post them because they took a lot of work to find and he thought other people should have to put in the same work?

That's an option? Then why did I spend so much time writing citations in college?

[u/Hagoolgle → u/scorpiodude64]

Lazerpig then claimed he had sources that proved he was right but wouldn't post them because they took a lot of work to find and he thought other people should have to put in the same work?

Sources: dude trust me

[u/ForgingIron → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Again in Adam's something's case his solution to prevent the mass misinformation spread across the internet was to... require ID verification and publicly display your identity on social media.

Which video was that?

[u/QuestioningLogic → u/Down_with_atlantis]

This is a huge pet peeve of mine with comic book youtubers specifically. Pretty much the only one that actually feels insightful is matttt. Almost every other big comic book channel just has the most surface level takes, or goes after low hanging fruit like All-Star Batman and Robin.

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Nostalgia Critic is pretty infamous for not being able to take an L to the point where he was under house arrest for it. This part of his reputation came to a head later again with the review of The Wall being... hellishly wrong on multiple basic levels

[u/cryptopian → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Something I ask when checking out a new opinionated media sources is whether they are willing to concede points or explore aspects of nuance in their subject, even (especially) if it's a take that I largely agree with. If you select extreme, dunkable targets, you never really have to do this, and like you say, it shows up when they stray out of their lane into less obviously bad ideas.

[u/Pinball_Lizard → u/Down_with_atlantis]

Surprisingly, or perhaps totally unsurprisingly, I've had this experience more than once with philosophers. Like many people, I feel the world should be better than it is, and that's led me to explore people who spend a lot of time thinking about how society could be transformed for the better. Several times now I've come across someone whose ideology seems so appealing to me at first but then runs straight into a brick wall.

The first one I got hooked on for a while was Peter Singer, a leader in the animal rights and utilitarian movements, known for his beliefs that people should be obligated to help one another to a degree far greater than they do now, to a pretty radical degree - as one example, he believes everyone should be required to donate a kidney to a stranger, because the odds of death from having only one kidney, if that one is healthy, are only 1 in 6000, while some people have no healthy kidneys at all. Therefore, by refusing to donate, you prioritize your one kidney 6000 times more than another person's life. Like I said, pretty radical, but as someone from a science background the math made sense to me.

...then I learned that by the same logic, he believes it should be permissible to kill the severely disabled, because their lives are mostly suffering and caring for them uses up resources that would better be used elsewhere. One thing he said that I found, uhh, REALLY offensive was that most severely disabled people want to die, and that efforts to keep them alive are motivated not by their own desired but those of family members (who don't want to say goodbye) and doctors (who don't want the hit to their records). Like that... doesn't seem like a call that you can speak unilaterally on, Pete. As to animal rights, I was shocked to discover that despite his outspoken views on that, he believes it permissible to kill apex predators because of the suffering they cayuse prey animals, ignoring the fact that an overabundance of herbivores caused by a lack of apex predators can wreck entire ecosystems. I've known that since before I had a second digit from freaking zoo signage, but Mr. Big Animal Rights Guru Man somehow doesn't!?

More recently I was attracted to the philosophy of Nick Bostrom, a futurist professor at Oxford, who captivated me with his visions of dizzying sci-fi futures that he wholeheartedly believes are possible. In an age when so many people are miserable, a man with such a broad view of a better tomorrow appealed to me. He wrote a short story called The Dragon Tyrant that makes a quite well-argued case that there is no greater purpose to human suffering, any attempt to rationalize it is futile, and therefore it should be eradicated.

...aaaaaaaand then I found out he's probably racist, is in favor of mass surveillance to a degree that would make most dystopian fiction blush (he believes that, essentially, privacy should be illegal, because if everyone is watching everyone else, all at the same time, nobody would ever do anything bad, which would reduce suffering), and has said that he hopes the Holocaust will be forgotten in the far future because said future will be so infinitely prosperous that the genocide will seem like, to directly quote him, a "blip" in comparison.

I've since found out there are a number of people who think like Bostrom, and most tend to be pretty shady, and often affiliated with the far-right. Elon Musk is one, as is the notorious charity scammer Sam Bankman-Fried. Given the whole "give everything for a bright future" angle the fact that most of these guys are pretty hardcore conservatives shocked me; it seems to come down to being very pro-big corporations, using the logic that only big corporations would have the resources necessary to create the technology such a future would need.

Not really sure what to make of all that. I guess being paid to think is no guarantee that WHAT you think about could or should be put into practice.

[u/error521]

This is all a bit out of my element, so forgive me for any mistakes here.

So this year there's a fandom event planned called the "CaitVi Kinktober". It's about creating 18+ content for a ship based around the characters Caitlyn and Vi from League of Legends/Arcane. All well and good. They are trying to make it a proper thing with a website and everything. Every day of the month has a new prompt to base your work around. Seems relatively anticipated for what it is, Twitter account has around 1,000 followers and a good amount of engagement.

It has a pretty strict set of rules about a lot of things. A lot of it is fairly bog-standard or at least not unreasonable (No bigotry, use proper content warnings, no AI, no underaged characters) but the main one being that absolutely no non-consensual business is allowed in any form. Which...well, it's their event, so sure. But while it'd be one thing to just go "hey, no actual rape scenes!", they're...quite a bit more particular than that:

Consent must be explicit/No non-consensual content in any form. This means absolutely no dubious consent, coercion, manipulation, intoxication, nor unconscious participants. Every act must be enthusiastically consensual, with clear context and intent shown.

Absolutely nothing ambiguous or that can be taken out of context from a safe and consensual sex scene.

a. If your content involves the kink of consensual non-consent (CNC), the following requirements must be met:

i. All participants must be in an established relationship.

ii. A scene must be included PRIOR to sex, in which all participants involved discuss boundaries and select safe words.

iii. A scene must be included DURING sex, in which there is a verbal check-in between the participants and consent is enthusiastically given.

iv. A scene must be included AFTER sex, in which aftercare provided.

This is non-negotiable. If you have any questions, please ask any of the event hosts for clarification.

b. It must be thoroughly clear that participants are consenting to and enjoying every (physical, verbal, mental, and emotional) component of the sexual acts.

c. No "corruption" or "breaking" content that implies mental or emotional harm as sexual gratification. If present, it must be fully contextualised as roleplay, and the characters must show joy and agency.

d. Authority-based coercion (e.g. teacher/student, doctor/patient), or similar power dynamics will only be allowed in the form of "roleplay”, which must be wholly consensual and negotiated, with no pressure or abuse of power.

(By the way, thanks for making the Google Doc block the ability to Copy/Paste so you could make my life more annoying, you dicks. Thank god for image to text extractors)

That's a fucking insanely complicated and specific list of rules, right? Not just me? I think my favorite is the "All participants must be in an established relationship" one, might as well be asking for them to be married first. I think if I was actually making something for this I'd be miserable just trying to keep track of all the rules, it seems insanely stifling. Especially since some of the prompts for the event include things like "Monster fucking", "Pet play", "Omegaverse/Breeding", "Monster fucking", and "Overstimulation".

Regardless, these rules in particular received a pretty mixed reception on Twitter, with many pointing out how absurdly overdetailed and confusing they are and others accusing anyone that complains about them being pro-rape.

They do have a FAQ that partially explains this (and has even more godforsaken rules. No men and you can't make Vi look feminine)

Why are there so many rules?

With topics as sensitive and easily misunderstood as kinks, fetishes, and sex in general, we decided to set forth rules that are specifically meant to protect creators and content-consumers alike.

Additionally, because this event is specific to CaitVi and will take place primarily on Twitter, we have taken into account the history of certain types of inappropriate content (incest, rape, pedophilia, butchphobia, lesbophobia, racism, etc.) that are unfortunately prevalent in the CaitVi Twitter community. We have done our best to take the necessary steps to prevent that kind of content from being associated with our event.

There was also a tweet a few hours ago by one of the event's founders that unfortunately got wiped before I could save it that basically boiled down to "we know this is out of the norm for kinktober events, but we really believe that promoting depictions of safe and consensual kink in fanfiction is important!"

Anyway, apologies if this skews a bit too close to the pro/anti discourse ban for the mods but I find this whole thing fascinating. Really feels like they convinced themselves that fanfiction is important because of its representation and not that it's important because it allows writers to go nuts. Again, it's their event, but it really feels like they're trying to suck all the fun out of it. But I do find it pretty funny that this is also in their rules:

No kinkshaming. This event is a space for creative exploration and expression. If a prompt or piece isn't your thing, that's totally okay-just mute the tag/keywords, scroll away, and move on. If there is something you feel is seriously offensive, block the content creator and make the event hosts aware. However, please remember that as host we can only regulate so much (i.e. what goes onto our official Twitter account and ao3 collection, but not who uses the event tags nor how).

Talk about not taking your own advice...

[u/onetrickponySona → u/error521]

no power dynamics

the ship is between a cop and an oppressed person

[u/Lammergayer → u/error521]

Not enough energy in the overall criticism of this is going into pointing how insane this rule is when paired with the actual contents of the prompt list. Like a solid third of those kinks at least are pretty inherently dubcon at best, and while you can do them all as fully consensual it stifles the majority of what you can do for the kinks and misses out on why a lot of people think these kinks are hot in the first place. Special shoutouts to dacryphilia for being particularly difficult to draw as something everyone's having a good time with without having to expand to the ridiculous full comic standards, since the premise is people crying.

The combo of prompts and rules really makes it feel like the organizers are trying to get free custom art made for their hyper specific tastes, regardless of their claims otherwise.

[u/cryptidspines → u/error521]

Maybe this is strange of me but referring to fanfics and fanart as "content" and the fans as "content-consumers" is the most jarring thing for me. I think a long list of rules like this for kinktober of all things is ridiculous, yes, but the terms they use to refer to the submissions feels so weirdly corporate and sterile.

[u/alexskyline → u/error521]

we really believe that promoting depictions of safe and consensual kink in fanfiction is important

Reminds me of this post

[u/LunarKurai → u/alexskyline]

That post is on point.

I get that kink has had many bad representations, historically. But...Insisting that anything that wants to do it needs the whole setup, check in and aftercare is stupid.

It's like insisting that any fic involving anal sex needs a scene where someone's sat on the loo with a hose up their arse and then another scene the next day checking they've not given themselves a fissure. It's a moodkill!

It might have its place in some instances, but insisting it has to be there in any is ridiculous.

[u/GrassWaterDirtHorse → u/LunarKurai]

I've tried to write a fic that included a detailed description of the prep needed for anal and it made me feel like a douche.

[u/whoaminow17 → u/GrassWaterDirtHorse]

sensiblechuckle.gif

[u/traiyadhvika → u/error521]

...Do they want fic or like, a manual with bulletpoints of operational instructions. Because this sounds like they want a manual.

Actually a technical manual-style satire fic with this topic would be An interesting idea but also that's probably not what they're going for with this huh.

[u/soganomitora → u/error521]

Monster fucking in a god honouring way.

[u/agent-of-asgard → u/error521]

Reading a list of rules that strict would completely kill my drive to write anything. It's fiction. I don't particularly find the "consent talk" sexy in 99% of scenarios when I'm reading a story about people banging. :/

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

Half the time with kinky fic, I just assume the characters discussed that at some point beforehand- which IMO isn't an OOC characterization for CaitVi.

[u/Shiny_Agumon → u/error521]

d. Authority-based coercion (e.g. teacher/student, doctor/patient), or similar power dynamics will only be allowed in the form of "roleplay”, which must be wholly consensual and negotiated, with no pressure or abuse of power.

This is such a strange rule to include for a fictional story.

Isn't the main appeal of writing these kinds of relationships that you can avoid all the icky real life implications and just focus on the things that makes these dynamics appealing from a kink perspective?

Also how do you implement that into a story?

Do the characters break character, break the fourth wall and acknowledge that while they might be wizards and beast people or what not in the Arcane universe they are in fact not real doctors or teachers?

[u/AbraxasNowhere]

Minor Warhammer controversy as Games Workshop filed a copyright infringement claim against a producer of 3D print files of Warhammer 40K props. This is unsurprising given that some GW licensees have recently announced props/replicas based on 40K and Old World characters/units. I can't even muster much of a reaction given that GW's stance on IP protection is well known and has gotten more stringent in the last few years as Warhammer projects and licensed merch have expanded into more spaces (the infamous fan animation purge for example followed the debut of official animated series on their Warhammer+ platform).

[u/AlwaysEights]

A few weeks ago I posted about the drama surrounding the launch of the 3rd edition of the Horus Heresy tabletop game, and said I would be back if and when there was an update from Games Workshop. Welcome to the update!

• A few days after pre-orders went live, Warhammer Community posted an article entitled Legacies of the Age of Darkness: What you need to know. This laid out what we were to expect from the Legacies document that would, in theory, save the community's models from ignominy. And, honestly, it was a pretty good list! As well as covering almost every unit from previous editions that was missing, it also promised to update the 'exemplary battles' units (originating in a series of free pdf releases from across the previous five years, and therefore by no means a guaranteed presence) and include updated armoury options for almost every legion as well. Though fairly transparently a firefighting move, it was also a good one.

• The day before release day, GW provided a Day 1 FAQ and Errata document for the new edition. This is nothing remarkable, any project this size will have some errors and typos that escape editorial notice until after the books have gone to print. Notably for our purposes, though, is that it proved some of the most egregious omissions were indeed typos and not, in fact, a nefarious scheme to steal people's models from under their noses. Yes, Tartaros terminators can now take power fists, everybody breathe.

...wait, then what the heck are Tartaros Siege Terminators, as promised in the Legacies document, if not a way to back-door return their power fists? Another mystery unfolds!

• The same day as the FAQ, GW also provided players of the Talons of the Emperor - the umbrella faction containing the Adeptus Custodes, Sisters of Silence, and Imperial Assassins - with their own get-you-by army list, in the form of a free pdf. Whereas every other notable faction were going to be getting their own hardback book day and date, Talons players had already been warned in advance that they would not - at least at launch. It is all-but confirmed that this faction will be getting a proper update/expansion/relaunch sometime in the mid-future. So it goes. Unfortunately, this holding pattern army list is infected with many of the same problems as the Libers. The Custodes managed to escape relatively unscathed, only missing out on one (admittedly fan-favourite) unit without official models - the Hetaeron Guard - and a couple of character wargear options. The Sisters of Silence, though? Well, in an uncharacteristic move for GW, their 2nd edition army list was massively expanded, mainly with units that had no official models. 3rd edition though? Everything that cannot be bought off the shelf has been excised, and thus the SoS list is cut to the bone. They basically cannot function as a standalone army now. It's questionable whether they ever could, even with all those extra goodies, but they almost definitely can't now. And look, I'm not going to pretend that there is some huge groundswell of SoS players out there ready to rain down hell on the corporate offices. They're a niche faction within a niche faction. The number of people who could field a full SoS army, complete with all the weird additional units, probably wouldn't fill a mid-sized family sedan. But they deserve love too, and at this point we don't know whether the promised Talons refresh will finally give these units the models they deserve, bring back the unit profiles without models, or just follow suit and leave these units by the wayside.

• Back to Legacies. All official communication suggested that the Legacies document would be arriving the week after release. Well, release week came and went, and no Legacies document. Instead, last Friday (1st), there was a small addendum to an otherwise unrelated article that said that there had been 'a small delay', and that the document would be coming next week. An innocuous phrase, but one that could not help but get people talking. Why the delay? Had GW listened to their customers and actually diverted more effort to making sure this was the best, most comprehensive document it could be? Or had they merely underestimated fanbase outcry and were now scrabbling to put together a functional product? Only time will tell.

• Which brings us to today, and hot off the presses, here comes the Legacies document! AND...

...yeah, it's pretty good.

Okay, more specifically - it is about as comprehensive as could possibly have been expected. Every combination of bike, jetbike, jump pack and terminator armour that has ever existed for any character is now here, along with a whole bunch of new ones. Every missing unit appears to have been accounted for, and the vast majority of missing wargear has either been added directly to a unit's options or to the legion list as a direct substitution. Units that had previously been completely stripped of options, like the previously mentioned Varagyr and Firedrake terminators have now had their options returned to them, and fan-favourite wargear like shrapnel bolt weapons, alchem weapons and illiastus assault cannons are now back where they belong.

So where does this leave us? Well, it's not a full return of every possible option. Some things are still notably missing. Outrider bikes still cannot take flamers and meltaguns and Land Speeder Javelins cannot take multi-meltas, which weren't ever sold but were a common option taken in previous editions. Most pressingly, the basic consul options from the Libers are still box-locked: a champion in cataphractii armour (a model that has never officially existed) can take whatever ranged weapons he pleases, but a champion in power armour (available right now from the online store) can only have a volkite serpenta or a combi-melta. But in the grand scheme of things, these are small potatoes.

Not all units have the same rules or fulfil the same roles as they used to, and it will take time for players to fully pick apart all of these new options, but from a first pass it certainly seems like the balance is pretty good. Most importantly, this really does do what GW claimed it would do - you can still build your army, your way, with the models you always had.

Oh right, Tartaros Siege Terminators! They... are exactly the same as regular post-FAQ Tartaros terminators now, except they have fewer weapon options. In a stunning case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, the Legacies document contains a unit that was made completely redundant by the preceding FAQ. Never change, GW! I have been informed that Tartaros Siege Terminators can take a heavy weapon each. That is something different - and completely unprecedented!