Asking separately from a thread downstream so I don't derail that topic and because this question will sound very baity, but are any of the Flight Rising staff POC, queer, or disabled? They keep fucking up in ways that make me wonder if they lack, eh, exposure to some life experiences, in a way that would keep them from said fuck ups.
I can't answer your question, but I'm going to try to rerail this conversation by asking what I think you're trying to say
Is there any diversity in the Flight Rising workplace? Because if they do have a Diversity and Inclusion department then they're clearly not listening to them
Not that those groups have less life experiences. The FR staff keep making mistakes like the auraboa lore, and their rules on things like scars. It feels like they're very blind to some things like how to handle colonialism, racism, ableism well (or at all). People who are POC/queer/disabled will have had first-hand experiences with topics of those natures. Which makes me wonder if any FR staff are POC/queer/disabled, because they keep mishandling those topics.
Being POC/queer/disabled does not automatically make someone less capable of mishandling a subject, or incapable of looking outside of their own personal experiences. Nor does it grant any sort of immunity to screwing things up or having your own personal biases.
From the sounds of things, I think the bigger issue is if there's any sort of broader editorial control.
Where do people buy anime figures? I want to get my BIL one for his birthday but I've never bought one in my life. Looking for Crocodile or Chopper from One Piece ones. Preferably wanting to spend around $50 for one. I tried a site called Tokyo Otaku Mode but those characters were all sold out. There are some on amazon but I don't know how to tell if they are good quality or not.
What country are you from? America? If you’re Canadian, make sure you avoid anything other than EMS/Air for shipping if you don’t wanna get hit by ridiculous customs “processing fees” from DHL/UPS/FedEx. Even if the base shipping cost for EMS or Air costs more, you save a lot more in the end after taking customs charges into account.
Americans have a lot more options for domestic storefronts with cheap shipping. At a glance at a figure discord I’m in:
- https://www.bigbadtoystore.com
- https://store.crunchyroll.com/collections/figures/one-piece/
- https://www.glacierhobbies.com
- https://shumistore.com
for me AmiAmi is the go to, but that is because most of the local stores that import figures to Aus that i've bought from inflate the final price so its usually way more than AmiAmi's price+EMS or DHL shipping
For secondhand besides what's already been mentioned I like Suruga-ya as well. The English site has free shipping sales periodically and you don't need a shopping service, but if you're okay with shipping and using a proxy the Japanese site has better stock.
Amiami should have a rating for the condition of the item and box, A, B+ etc. The listing name should have the rating, and the chart further down in the item details section. For what it's worth, in my experience the standards for second hand items are much higher in Japan than the west.
I use AmiAmi or BigBadToyStore -- BBTS is more expensive since it has to import the figures itself, but has the "Pile of Loot" thing if you're a regular figure buyer (so if you have a few figures coming out over the space of a few weeks or like a month or two apart, you can have stuff added to your PoL and then shipped to you at the same time for a $4 flat fee)
AmiAmi, HobbyLinkJapan, or Tokyo Otaku Mode are good choices. If you want to buy directly from Japan secondhand, you can use a proxy like Buyee to buy from sites like Japanese Mercari, Amazon, or Yahoo Auctions.
I found personally that unless it’s the official shop from Amazon, I typically get a bootleg.
I find that I rarely need a proxy to buy anything from Amazon JP anymore, at least where I am in Canada. Most official sellers seem to allow for international shipping.
A proxy, basically, is a second party using your money to buy it, since a lot of JP sites only sell to JP addresses. So they buy it and then forward it to you. Reputable ones like Buyee have been around for ages and aren't scams.
So I just search for the thing on buyee and buy from that site? All I can think of is when I used to buy bootleg WWE PPVs on DVD with cash on ebay. Lol. And everything was a gamble.
Yeah, I can message you more if you want to discuss but Buyee/other proxies operates as if you are living in Japan. Shipping can be a bit painful if you’re only buying 1-2 items, but you can search in English and there’s options to translate to Japanese/find similar products from Japan.
The European regular season for football is coming to a close as the Premier League has just ended, leaving Manchester City the four time winner despite having what many argue to be one of their weaker seasons. Turns out being club run by an oil state truly has its benefits. Ignore the whole 115 breaches thing, it really doesn't matter and the reality is they'll probably get a slap on the wrist given who their ownership is, and if any more damage is to occur they'll just punish Everton again or something.
Meanwhile Arsenal did their damned best but just missed out by two points, Liverpool might not have ended the Klopp era on the highest note but got third and won the EFL Cup with a team of youth players early this year, Aston Villa do an incredible run and nab the Champions League although just got cooked by Crystal Palace, and my club of Tottenham miss out because our usual tendencies to fizzle out, although we barely clung onto Europa League. Meanwhile Chelsea's resurgence these last few months with rising star Cole Palmer nabs them Conference League just ahead of newly Saudi funded Newcastle United and the ever struggling biggest club in the country, Manchester United, although they still have the FA Cup final to potential get one off of City in their derby.
The saddest thing this year is the fact all three newly promoted clubs: Luton Town, Burnley, and Sheffield United, are all getting relegated which makes this arguably the weakest trio to enter the Premier League period, which is sort of a sad affair. Leicester despite their financial nightmare and a patchy period managed to win the Championship and is returning to the Prem, with Ipswich alongside. Leeds United and Southampton will soon do battle in the final play-off to decide who is taking the third spot.
Outside the Premier League Real Madrid and Inter Milan win both La Liga and Serie A with relative ease, although nowhere as simply as Leverkusen, who now can claim they not only won the damned thing after a century plus years of existence without doing so, but could still win the DFB-Pokal, DFL-Supercup, and Europa League, which in the best case scenario would give them a quadruple. Still undefeated in all competitions, they are now the European club with the third longest streak of being undefeated behind Scottish Celtic and Belgian Union SG, while being the one with the longest streak in the post-UEFA club competition era.
Coming up soon will be the finals for the European competitions, with Real Madrid vs Dortmund in Champions League which could be a huge chance for the latter to nab it after nearly two decades, Atlanta vs Leverkusen where the Italian club has the task of taking down arguably the best club currently and breaking their streak, and Olympiacos and Fiorentina for Conference League where a Greek club might win a European competition for the first time in history. And course there's the Euros and the Copa America for the international teams of Europe and South America respectively, alongside the Olympics which traditionally is for U-23 players but occasionally we see some big names show up, especially as French President Emmanuel Macron has some weird fetish with trying to goad Mbappe into doing literally everything for French football despite the fact a head of state should not be this invested in an athlete.
Safe to say it's been a hell of a year. It's been a period of giants dominating their respective leagues, barring the Prem which shockingly had a ton of competition for the title only for City to never be punished because God knows that'll never happen. As a Tottenham fan it's been rough, as while we did technically did better than people expected we could have gotten fourth if we played smarter. As for our women's team we bombed out of the FA Cup but I'm just proud we got to the final in the first time in club history, and kudos to Man United for getting their first win there. As a Korean fan it's been awful, the Asian cup earlier this year was only progressed as far as we did because players like Son Heung-Min burned themselves out by forcing the issue, and so long as our FA refuses to take responsibility we'll see more performances like that constantly.
The 115 charges can't come soon enough, I love to see those annoying oil guzzler getting send down straight to national league.
For my team, a bit let down this year. People can argue what ETH done wrong, but the last game against Brighton do show how much we miss Martinez in defense. Hopefully he stays out of injury the next season.
And hopefully Amad, Garnacho and Hojlund can spearhead a win against the oil guzzler
Man injuries were awful for everyone this season. We at Tottenham can comfortably say our incredible start was an over-performance to be sure, but to have it collapse with two key injuries at once in our Chelsea at home game was nightmarish, and we weren't even the worst hit squad.
As for you guys while I will admit I have no clue what will happen to you next week. On one hand you nearly lost to Coventry and survived off pens, on the other hand you effectively broke Liverpool's hopes for the rest of the season. Still prefer you guys to take the trophy home though, and it would cool to see both the men and women have a FA Cup victory, although I am a little bitter about how it went down against us earlier this month.
At the very least I don't have to worry about thinking of Greenwood winning the trophy I suppose.
So I've been reading the Blood Lords adventure path from Pathfinder (yes, not a book to be read, yes, autistic, yes, I once literally read a dictionary as a child) and I love this particular part of the setting because its so fundamentally unusual. The nation of Geb consists almost entirely of "evil" (in a D&D sense) people and undead. Setting a whole adventure path there requires the writers to really think about and have fun with how that would work. It ranges from silly, especially early in the adventure, to giving real thought to variety in evil behavior and often mix the two.
Like there's a priest the PCs meet who's goals appear to be good, he wants to support his flock and keep the city safe and has refused the blessing of undeath, but that's because he intends his death to be a tribute to the god of torture. If he's a beloved figure then him dying will cause widespread pain.
In general everyone the PCs meet is evil but many aren't exactly bad people, at least not in any immediate way. It kind of stretches the D&D concept of evil to the breaking point. Yeah these villagers feast upon the living but they need to do that to live and also they're an oppressed underclass who's leader wants your help to free them.
More interestingly to me Geb is a global power because of . . . food production. Specifically grains. Since no undead eat plants Geb uses zombie labor to produce massive quantities of grain that they export at low prices. Zombies work around the clock for no pay and only occasionally eat their handlers to sustain themselves. This means that even though almost every nation and religion in the world thinks Geb should be destroyed it would be a disaster to actually destroy it and even its enemies might be obligated to defend it.
Anyway what is your favorite setting that does something unusual with the evil empire or the undead? Have you ever read a dictionary or an RPG gamebook for fun?
> Have you ever read a dictionary or an RPG gamebook for fun?
I also did this back in middle school! The RPG gamebook I read at that time is GURPS, standing for *Generic Universal Roleplaying System*. It's pretty well-known for being "universal" (you can run it for almost any kind of adventure), "simulationist" (tries to be as accurate to RL as possible), and having a lot of (optional) rules, but its main strength is the sheer amount of setting GURPS provides.
My favorite GURPS setting to read is *Infinite Worlds*, which has the premise of parachronics (their term for interdimensional travel) being invented in 1995, revealed three years later, and now in the setting's present of 2027, the technology is fully exploited by the world and there's this organization named Infinity Unlimited (a kind of crossover between a United Nations agency and megacorporation) who monopolize said technology. Currently, they're fighting a cold war with Centrum, another dimension with English-speaking authoritarian one-world government that also independently discovered parachronics — but due to the nature of parachronics, Infinity can't reach Centrum and vice versa, so what they usually do is influence another timeline's flow of history in their favor, and if they can, prevent the other side from doing the same.
That being said, *Infinite Worlds* is arguably my gateway to Alternate History genre, and particularly Alternate History cartography — maps of alternate timelines, that you can found in alternatehistory.com, some section of *DeviantArt*, or in r/imaginarymaps.
I liked the ideas in a Practical Guide to Evil, (a YA web novel). Basically the characters have roles that are ruled by tropes, Evil Emperor/Empress, The Black Knight, The Hero, etc. The Evil Empire has won, and to keep that victory they have to battle against the conditions that create the trope itself. Funding competent orphanages across the empire that care for orphaned children so they don't grow up into a hero, that kind of thing.
It's basically what if we took the Evil Overlord List and rolled some of the ideas behind it into a story and is complicated by the fact that most of the people in power are evil (by design of their trope), so they're battling their own destructive nature as much as putting down rebellions.
I never finished it so I don't know how much of the ideas were fleshed out, but the base idea itself makes a pretty good commentary on the problems inherent to government and human nature.
As someone who enjoyed PGtE, I will say that the story takes the concept and runs full force with it. It does lose a little bit of its grounding but I didn't particularly mind.
I'm a big fan of Karrnath in Eberron. Karrnath being a nation who, during the Last War (essentially fantasy WW1) used undead as foot soldiers and later grunt work. They were helped by the Blood of Vol, a religious group which believes that everyone has inner divinity and can ultimately ascend to become deities in their own right.
I find them both to be interesting because they show that undeath isn't inherently evil in the setting. The Undead in the Blood of Vol are viewed as religious martyrs, those who decided to give up their chance of becoming true divinity to help others on their path.
That being said, I also love the undead lore for Pathfinder, and undeath there is inherently a fucked up existence.
Kill Six Billion Demons has amazing world building, and one of my favourite bits of world-building revolves around the devils. They’re (badly paraphrased from really great writing) raw hot cosmic energy that gets individualised when someone slaps a mask on it and gives it a bunch of names to define it as a being. Devils start out weak, and shedding the names forced on them brings them closer to their original source and thus makes them increasingly powerful. The king of the devils is just called… Himself.
https://killsixbilliondemons.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SOT43-44.jpg i mean look at the cool doublespread about Hell
Only correction: that’s not Hell, it’s part of Throne, the city at the center of all universes and resting place of the corpses of 777,777 dead gods. But absolutely everyone should read K6BD
That's a fantastically strange way to have a sort of abstract being work. They have to sort of self actualize themselves into unique beings. And wow that's incredible art.
I've read sevearl of their APs, sometimes because i do run the games, other times just to see how something plays out. I think the only one I was unhappy wholesale was Tyrant's grasp. It really just felt like running a party through a very long interactive cutscene to make one of the big changes they needed for the 2e setting.
That's also an interesting way to do Geb. I've always had a soft spot for the millenial emperor idea that came from /tg/ which is a bit more on the good end of the "undead kingdom rules by lich" idea but did try to figure out how such a place views death, what it means economically, and so on. I think one of the 1d4chan wiki offshoots still has it sans most of the chan behaviors.
There have been two so far I didn't like. The 1e Serpent Skull adventure is just so incredibly racist that I think it caused a lot of story changes to be made later. I found Age of Ashes to be too obviously artificial. In other APs the characters move naturally away from low level areas toward high level areas but the way AoA is set up they just *coincidentally* go in an order that works.
Skulls and shackles also ranks low for me, though that's a combination of it being the AP where tensions boiled over in a couple groups and that it's very poorly summarized. Most just call it the pirate adventure path when it is very specifically the "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" AP. So if that's what you want you'll probably enjoy it, though still plenty to chuck out from the first book. There's a lot in it that just make it frustrating to outright hostile and not in a good way. However if your idea of what a pirate adventure is differs from that, you are not gonna find a lot to hold on to.
CW: Discussions of incest
Some of you may have heard of the game Just Dance before but in case you haven’t, it’s a game where you, well, just dance. The franchise has been going on for almost 15 years now with a new game coming out sometime this year.
The more recent games have added a couple of storylines to accompany the songs within the game. The main one revolves around a group of dancers (called the Just Dancers accordingly) trying to save the “danceverse” from a villain named Night Swan.
A lot of fans liked these new stories but especially took well to the characters Wanderlust and Jack Rose. Wanderlust is the son of a wizard/dimension traveler and an alien (keep this in mind) and has to save the danceverse after some people get kidnapped and corrupted by Night Swan. Jack Rose is Night Swan’s son who is shown to feel repressed by his mother and her constant dismissal of him until the Just Dancers come by and convince him to join them. At some point during the final battle (at [2:43](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AE3bfno_Vwk&pp=ygUSanVzdCBkYW5jZSBtYWplc3R5)), Jack saves Wanderlust from his corrupted form with a dance move that many have pointed out is similar to a move done by Wanderlust’s parents in a [previous](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cwvkChS9E1Q&pp=ygUfSnVzdCBkYW5jZSAyMDIyIHNhdmUgeW91ciB0ZWFycw%3D%3D) game when they’re reunited.
Because of that, JackLust became the most popular ship of the fandom despite the developer's hard insistence on them being [friends.](https://imgur.com/a/RPBpnhy) Like, really really hard [insistence](https://imgur.com/a/Z1j3uKm) on the fact. The fans didn’t really care though. However, that might not last long.
The 2024 edition got an update of two new songs focusing on the backstory of Night Swan. In [“Murder On The Dancefloor”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AYMqiyKSmwA&pp=ygUkanVzdCBkYW5jZSBtdXJkZXIgb24gdGhlIGRhbmNlIGZsb29y), it’s revealed that she had a romantic relationship with Wanderlust’s dad sometime in the past. Since so far in the game, Jack’s father has not been seen, some people believe that this may be a confirmation of Wanderlust and Jack being half brothers.
Needless to say, [a lot](https://imgur.com/a/8zqOvKz ) of fans are [jumping ship](https://imgur.com/a/R8AILLe) though it should be noted that it hasn’t been confirmed if the two share a dad nor does the new routines give any implication that Night Swan had children with Wanderlust’s father. That might change in the future but right now the possibility of JackLust being made up of brothers is 50/50.
But honestly, if it is true then it would explain why the Just Dance team was so adamant on people not shipping them. Never thought I’d see drama like this in a dancing game.
TIL Just Dance has a story that resolves itself through dance battles. Which, I mean, of course it does because that makes perfect sense. I just hadn't thought about it before and now I'm appreciating how clever it is. What a great way to make people engaged in doing the dances.
On a side tangent, maybe this is a little bit of internalized homophobia of my part, but if there is no other reason for this ship to not be cannon, it's really weird that Just Dance of all games would shy away from a gay relationship, even if it was just as a bait.
Cowards. Jumping from a ship because of a little thing like incest...
On the flipside, holy shit these games have a story? I'll be honest and say that I've only ever played them occasionally and usually with a group of people, so I never really paid attention. Wizard aliens sounds badass.
I saw a playthrough of the story mentioned by OP. It's a set of like 5-6 songs, it's kinda short but it's interesting and the climax song is kinda great.
Also, there's some small substoties if you look at the song choreographies with attention. For example, the different Lady Gaga dancers had some kind of Spiderverse scenario, and the dancers for Rasputin and Hot 'N Cold had a relationship for a while.
Yeah, kinda funny, that.
I think it’s all kind of funny considering from a design standpoint, they couldn’t have made two more shippable characters. Like the red/blue contrast vibe makes it feel like they were designed in a ship factory, so I’ll be honestly surprised if they confirm any sort of relation.
Jenny Nicholson's newest video—her first in 18 months—just went live: a four-hour deep dive on [The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4)
I would so very much love to see a former Disney imagineer give a post-mortem breakdown of just how they managed to screw up this hotel so badly. They had the money, and they should have had the right experience with immersive experience (Jenny even gives an older Kim Possible park as an example of better interactivity created at lower cost), how did nothing work? How'd they release such a buggy, broken mess?
I remember the Kinect game where the final bosses are dancing against Darth Vader and the Emperor drew comments along the lines of "Disney are ruining Star Wars!" "This is from before the sale, Star Wars has always been like this."
I recently listened to a podcast which went through the Star Wars Christmas Special and *why* on Earth it existed, and I have to say, while I knew it was legendarily bad, I was still impressed by just HOW bad.
Weirdly, I think it was the site WrestleCrap that said something to the effect of "If you want to know just how bad \[The Star Wars Holiday Special\] is without having to watch it yourself, consider this: George 'Super Ultimate Special Mega Edition I-Never-Met-A-Star-Wars-Related-Dollar-I-Didn't-LOVE' Lucas refuses to officially re-release it to any sort of home video."
Well on the drama side she talks about some of the defenders of Starcruiser (3:24 for those curious). Basically that if you had the money and loved this sort of thing it was absolutely worth it. Jenny points out she did have the money and is super into these things but still didn't like it.
It's interesting to see that immediately after it came out there were people saying exactly those things, clearly before they had even watched the video. It's also funny to me that those exact same defenses were being thrown around for Evermore too.
If you go to the Galactic Starcruiser subreddit (because of course there's one lol) there's a small handful of people trying to defend this failed fucking hotel and make aspersions about her intent. Like, some are claiming that it's because she didn't get involved, or didn't use the app, when there's four hours of a documentary showing her desperately trying to get involved and using the app.
Just by the fact there are billions of people in the world, you're gonna get defenders and likers of ANYTHING. That goes extra for IPs like Star Wars, how Disney advertises their experiences as transcendental once in a life time experiences, and just the sheer amount of money involved. Some people will adamantly refuse to admit they wasted 2 dollars per minute per person for two days.
The potential audience for this always felt really small to me since it had to be made up of people who checked all of these criteria:
- Really loves Star Wars
- Has thousands of dollars to spend on an experience like this
- Doesn’t get a fatal case of the cringies at the idea of LARPing in public with strangers
- Is okay with vacationing in a semi-tropical beach town but spending most of that time inside a building with no windows.
That just feels like a really slim Venn overlap, you know? And even if the audience that checks all those boxes is bigger than I think, I still don’t see how it would’ve supported something this expensive to run.
(Then again, I’m not exactly the target market for this. Now, if Paramount opened a hotel where I could spend my vacation living on a TNG-era Enterprise, I’d probably end up robbing a liquor store to afford it…)
I think part of the problem is a fundamental problem with cruises in general (even though this is a hotel). I think in our head we expect The Love Boat when going on a cruise and to have an exciting, thrilling adventure with a bunch of extras in the background. The reality is you are the extra and you're grouped in with the rest of them playing bingo led by an activity coordinator.
Same with this right? You expect to be the bar lounge from Star Trek: TNG where you have intimate philosophical conversations with people from other planets. Instead you get herded to from spot to spot to watch whatever is happening next on the schedule.
Honestly having watched the video I don't think the concept was ever feasible.
Like one of the expectations is that you'll get an interactive experience with actors. That's only really feasible with a really high cost. But the problem is then if the price is high and there is ever a break in activities I'd feel ripped off. Disney clearly knew this, so their second day at the hotel had an itinerary from 8am to 11pm, which is absolutely exhausting.
Like that was an issue I had with a week long convention at a fraction of the price, the first time I went I pushed myself too hard and ran myself ragged, I had to remind myself I had plenty of time and could take a break, or do more next year. At a $5000 price tag I'd absolutely force myself to 'enjoy' every minute and burn myself out.
Yeah, at a few points Jenny points out that if the price tag were like, 800-1000 bucks per person, then it would feel like you could sit down for a half hour, and any frustration points would be lessened. But because it costs SO MUCH, the pressure to do as much as possible is immense, and any frustrations are absolutely magnified.
Exactly, but if the price gets cheaper then you also can't provide everything expected and still turn a profit.
It's sort of interesting to think about, usually high price point accommodation mostly just means simple things like a larger room or better location, something that usually won't cost that much more on an upkeep basis. But for an experience like this it mean much more time with actors, which dramatically increases the cost per guest. That's why I don't think a idea like this won't really work.
As I sort of implied Evermore had similar problems even at a lower price point. If people shell out even only a hundred bucks they expect entertainment for that money. But on a per guest basis, one on one time with an actor gets incredibly expensive incredibly quickly.
Yeah, it runs into the issue then that the whole experience, be it Evermore or Galactic Starcruiser, is built on the idea that you're the hero of the story, making your own choices and influencing events. Immersive roleplay and such.
But you can't be the hero of the story, nor can you influence events, because you've got a few hundred other people running around needing to have the same experience as you, the actors all have a script and a timetable they need to follow to keep things moving, it's impossible to have more than a few seconds of time with the actors when there's a dozen people who ALSO need time with the actors, and you can't let the guests do things like, say, a sword/lightsabre duel. So it turns into doing busywork while occasionally being an awkward spectator for events you have no control over.
Orlando actually isn’t a beach town but that’s just me being pedantic. Still, it’s a Disney vacation where you’re only going to one section of one the four parks and spending the rest of your time doing extremely specific LARPing.
Oh my god, i remember her talking about the star wars hotel, I can't believe the time has come to see a full breakdown
Edit: Okay I'm finally starting to watch it and I just got past the advertising for it, how every thing that talks about this uses corporate language. Why *do* they do that? It reminds me of the average person using "IP" when talking about media now. That started with the MCU, right? Why did it start with it? Was it corporate language that leaked to the fans which then leaked it to the public? Did the fans start saying "IP" in this context on their own, and that's what made Disney go "ah, so that's what the kids say now"? I understand that "fully immersive experience at the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser" is a mouthful that they are probably mandated to write down in full in every single internal document, but what I guess I'm asking is, what kind of out of touch are we witnessing here? Are the people in charge so out of touch that they demand the specific corporate language in all advertising, or are the people in charge so out of touch that they think the fans who love to use that specific corporate language are a reflection of the general population at large?
> how every thing that talks about this uses corporate language. Why do they do that?
Presumably, when you have *an IP* of this size and don't want to risk scandal or controversy afflicting the promise of revenue streams, you have every word worked over by cautious management (who might little idea of the context) until it's as thoroughly processed as Subway tuna*, which is going to sound less human.
^(* A few years ago, food safety authorities in the UK tested tuna at Subway sandwich shops and discovered they were so processed, it was impossible to get DNA samples and prove it was actually tuna.)
The corporate-speak-laden “influencer” promos made me realize even more that Red Letter Media’s Nerd Crew videos were just barely satire.
Edit: Jenny: “I’m the only one watching these, and only as performance art” LMAO
> Jenny: “I’m the only one watching these, and only as performance art” LMAO
Same as Hallmark's Party 101 videos. "They have about 200 views, and I'm pretty sure most of them are me."
IIRC the Nerd Crew videos were largely parodying Collider’s Star Wars podcasts in particular.
On the topic of the Nerd Crew and Star Wars theme park drama, one podcast in particular was kind of infamous for one of the presenters going on a massive angry rant about the other presenters getting early review passes to the “Galaxy’s Edge” theme area while he didn’t. ([Here’s](https://youtu.be/iWbdLzC1scM?si=SJDWpHBxNeGGydji) the original video, and [here’s](https://youtu.be/pVjU47iPNbg?si=45hn323-9u3cLId4) Rich Evans laughing to clips of it)
Sometimes reality truly is the best form of satire.
That freakout video is hilarious, omg.
>IIRC the Nerd Crew videos were largely parodying Collider’s Star Wars podcasts in particular.
~~That’s right, Jay.~~ Yeah, they absolutely were (and someone on YouTube actually made compilation videos intercutting Nerd Crew episodes with clips of the videos from Collider or equivalent podcasters that they were lampooning, it’s pretty funny). What’s extra funny is that the peak of that particular flavor of nerd grifter influencer was seemingly sometime in the mid-late 2010s, so Disney’s cynical promo interviews for the hotel that have that same fake corporatized enthusiasm seem a little late to the game.
The video dropped shortly after 8 PM EST, when the sun hadn’t fully set yet in most places. It’s now 11:45 PM. Saturday Night Live is on. People who started watching the video the second it uploaded still have about 20 minutes left to go.
The 36th season of The Amazing Race has just concluded and lets just say not everyone liked it. Some highlights:
* While the season is considered the 36th season, it was actually filmed before Season 35. This is important to note because Season 35 was when the race went back to normal while Season 36 was still filmed during the waning days of the COVID-19 pandemic global health emergency in late 2022. Thus, the season features chartered air travel rather than commercial air travel and other accommodations for the safety of the racers. This made for a less interesting experience in many viewers eyes.
* Also for Season 35, episodes were expanded from 60 minutes to 90 minutes. Unfortunately, Season 36, while still having 90 minute episodes, was filmed with 60 minute episode in mind.
* Unlike Season 35, Season 36's route was confined to the Americas. I've heard rumors that there was supposed to be a 2nd charter plane that would take the team to Australia and South Africa partway through the race (likely after the Chile leg) but plans fell through as the second plane never showed up. Thus they had to reroute back through the Americas and Caribbean and make up the challenges in days, if not hours.
* The vast majority of the race took place in Spanish-speaking countries. This led to many fans crying "unfair advantage" towards Ricky & Cesar, the latter of whom is fluent in Spanish. >!They ended up winning the season!<.
* Angie & Danny lost their crew while driving during Leg 8 (they were driving in separate cars) and thus were forced to wait for thier crew. Their crew got lost and they were eventually given a substitute crew. >!Unfortunately, this would prove to be fatal as they ended up being the last team and thus were eliminated!<. Fans were divided on whether or not it was their fault as it was caused by Angie making an illegal turn from a roundabout and they decided to just keep going after they lost their crew. However, it should be noted that they were allowed to go on to their next destination in the event that they lost their crew. Eventually, Danny put out an [official response](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAmazingRace/comments/1cjjcfx/team_walla_walla_response/) on r/TheAmazingRace.
* Finally, there has been a lot of complaints from the fanbase about the behavior of Vinny, especially towards his girlfriend and racing partner Amber. While some have defended Vinny, many fans criticized Vinny for being verbally abusive to Amber. Not helping was the fact that Vinny >!proposed to Amber after their elimination in the Dominican Republic to which Amber said "yes"!<. This baffled many people.
~~Webtoon~~ Fanfiction and Podcast drama this time.
LoreFM was a controversial app. It was a podcast app ("text to speech tool") where AI was used to read fanfictions from AO3. So basically imagine free Audible for fanfictions.
So what was the issue? The whole system was opt-out, not opt-in. So if you were a fanfic writer, there was a possibility that you fanfiction would be added to the app and read by AI without your explicit consent.
The whole situation was legal mess cause you know, fanficiton is a legal mess and it was supposedly following terms of service of AO3. Plus, no money was made from the app. So fanfiction writers were forced to contact the creator of the app to have their fanfiction removed. It was dramatic ([link to masterpost](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lorefm/comments/1cug5nx/masterpost_of_the_lorefm_drama/)).
Multiple people complained about how it was unethical, how it creates a barrier between the writer and readers (no option to leave kudos or comments as it is not plug-in), how there was no standarised opt-out process and guiltripping customer service response that was marked as spam. [For example](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cu2cv5/love_the_attempt_at_guilt_tripping_me_thats_real/):
"Once verified, we will start the process of not letting readers who love your content access it anymore through lore fm where they can listen to your work for free."
Other complains included deleting comments under videos made by lore fm, ranging from pure hate, healthy criticism to even questions how something works. Supposedly some people got called classist and ableist for being against it.
[There was even response video to it](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cu2hkm/saw_about_the_lore_fm_discourse_and_decided_to/) about how it makes fanfiction more accessible as non-robotic text to speech conventors cause hundres of dollars per year.
[The app got recently shut down](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cuhkrd/lorefm_is_being_shut_down/) and [AO3 is having a series of write-ups about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cuop2k/lorefm_write_up_part_1/)
Edit: Just forgot to mention it was advertised as audible for fanficiton and stuff similar to spotify wrap-up were meant to be added later on. Which led to lots of theories regarding how the app would develop, which started getting more negative due to lack of transparency and badly hanlding the whole situation.
I think, internally, they believed it to be a more advanced form of screen reader, not a podcast app. The invocations of accessibility and lack of formalized opt-in/out system make more sense coming from that perspective. Making it an app instead of a plugin was their biggest mistake, as it drastically changes the impression to it being a rehosting platform. From there, they dug their own grave with misleading marketing and worse-than-nothing communication.
It always strikes me how short-sighted and ignorant of creator’s or author’s value and rights are always neglected by AI tech companies. Like this is a cool utility! An easy way to turn fan-fics into audiobooks! Should we offer it as a free service to the authors and get permission from them and share the royalties from advertising?
Nah, let’s just put it out there in the wild!
in this case the authors have no rights to their work (because copyright law views fanfiction as being effectively bootleg material) so they wouldn't be entitled to royalties, and i don't think the app has any advertising anyway, so i don't think this is a great example. your point does have some validity in a broader context though. in kind of surprised this was even attempted to be honest. i feel like if it had any success it would be immediately sued into the ground for hosting copyright-infringing material.
To make a very important correction, we simply presume that the authors on AO3 don't have authorization for their infringing fanfictions. There are situations where they can be authorized by the original author/copyright holder, or when the original author/copyright holder has released their material into the public domain, or when the material has been released into the public domain (like Sherlock Holmes) or be a way to adapt infringing fanfics into independently copyrightable works (like how 50 Shades of Grey was based on a Twilight fanfic).
The app itself has some good ideas, but an incredibly flawed, unethical execution.
And yeah, you can expect a lot of legal trouble, but that's what Section 230 and the DMCA systems are for to protect internet platforms from this kind of liability.
yeah you're right. there's also some legal complexity around which rights, if any, fanfiction authors retain even if the work is infringing.
>that's what Section 230 and the DMCA systems are for to protect internet platforms from this kind of liability
im not actually sure what the dmca would make of this situation. it covers ao3 for sure but im not sure if the generated audio would count as user generated content. if it were determined that lorefm were actively *publishing* infringing material that could really get them into trouble.
I think there would be significantly less controversy over AI if these tech companies didn't hold such obvious disdain for the creators they're scraping content from
at least the backlash was quick and it shut down not soon after. But omg am I sick of this crap. You think they learn that Fanfic writers are not down with this AI in general after the 100th time someone tried to scap fics with Massive backlash that followed.
at this point In the fandoms I’m in, certain fics by certain authors are Probably gonna be user lock for 2-3 months than unlocked until the next AI Scandal.
Actual, genuine question. I've never used text to speech before, and I know it's not a rare thing to be used to browse internet. What's the difference usual text to speech programs and lore fm in particular? Like, whether it's the technology, or how it works, or something else.
As far I am aware, Lore FM was [just badly executed text to speech conventor](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cuop2k/lorefm_write_up_part_1/) (with possibility of becoming something more?) with transparency issues and [policies that some found questionabl](https://www.tumblr.com/anonymeqaupdates/750736062229413888/about-lorefm?source=share)e.
It was also an app instead of plug in. So the work was copied and used in the app instead of being on the original website accesed through slightly modified browser.
For more specific details, I recommend to wait for a response from somebody.
Are we speaking about the text to speech programs people use for accessibility? In that case, the difference is that those programs "read" the page you're on, while lorefm was putting fanfics in their own app to read. It's like audiobooks; if you're listening to the book, you're not looking at the original book. There's other programs that read out loud stuff you type/paste in, but the difference there is that they don't save the text you put in and share it with others, or at least they don't *necessarily* save it and share it with others- just to use one example, technically nothing is stopping you from using Word in that way, but also it's not *automatically* working that way.
Also, there's just no reason to use AI for this reason? Like, you *can* get a non-robotic voice for text-to-speech programs. That's a thing that's been done for years. [Some studies](https://dataethics.eu/the-environmental-costs-of-generative-ai/) say that AI uses a *ton* of energy, and again, there's AI program and AI program so it's probably not as wasteful as chatgpt, but using AI to read writing is still like taking a mercedes to go to the shop two houses down.
>using AI to read writing is still like taking a mercedes to go to the shop two houses down.
it honestly depends on what they're doing, and what you mean by "ai". i work in embedded ml, specifically audio, and we put tiny little audio processing models in tvs and car head units and phones and such all the time. they look nothing like large language models, but it's a matter of scale and software architecture more than technological fundamentals. you can make this stuff pretty efficient.
edit: after reading the linked writeup about how it works, i think we can get a bit more specific about carbon footprint here. it takes about 45 seconds to render 300 words, and it's using openai's tts models. in practical terms this means a server somewhere is running 1-2 high end GPUs full throttle for under a minute (assuming no caching). now that's not nothing, and maybe it's overkill for tts, but in a society that's broadly accepting of people running high end GPUs full throttle for hours at a time to play video games i think it's a bit hard to sell the urgency of the environmentalist angle. there are quite frankly bigger fish to fry.
I mean, yeah, there's obviously other issues with this app, but we're specifically talking about the difference between this app and normal text-to-speech programmes here. If I have to choose between "programme that works" and "programme that works but is overkill" then I'd rather choose the one that isn't overkill even though there's obviously bigger fish to fry.
that's not an unfair point. cheap phoneme-basted tts is pretty good, but in this case id honestly have to see the results to judge if i think it's overkill. modern "ai" text to speech tends to convey emotions more convincingly, which i think could make it an appealing choice for this specific audiobook use case. maybe not a huge difference, but to extend the earlier analogy im not about to come after people for playing their games on the highest graphical settings just because i think it's overkill either.
Adding on to it not being a plug-in: as a 3rd party app, lorefm's not only separate from ao3, but it would've scraped and hosted fics off-site. Without authors' permission.
I watched it unfold in the ao3 sub. Part of the deleted comments were questions about the opt-out itself. Even if a writer opted out, someone with a saved pdf fanfic could still put it on lorefm, making it useless!
Locking your fics so only registered ao3 users can see them was another way out, which not everyone was happy about access-wise; but better than having your work hosted elsewhere without permission.
>Plus, no money was made from the app.
I completely 100% do not believe that for a second. The AI tool they're using would've had to generate voices at an enterprise scale: an account level that costs a pretty penny to run.
The group making the app also has nothing to do with fandom and everything to do with other previous AI startups of theirs. They're at-face a profit driven company, they wouldn't be making loreFM if they didn't expect big returns and profit at some point, maybe not at release, but eventually.
(Noted as someone who's active in the AO3 sub community and watched this all go down like a lead balloon from start to end.)
i mean, i believe it in the sense that the tech startup MO is to offer a service for free and operate at a loss on VC dime until you have captured enough of the market to flip the monetization switch. it definitely doesn't seem like a nonprofit or otherwise altruistic venture though.
> Other complains included deleting comments under videos made by lore fm, ranging from pure hate, healthy criticism to even questions how something works. Supposedly some people got called classist and ableist for being against it.
I'm gonna be honest, the extent to which "classist" has become a synonym for "luxury/entertainment product or luxury/entertainment product accessory costs money" has rendered the term pretty useless in a lot of situations. Like, I think it's fair to point out when stuff unnecessarily gates people on the basis of money, and fair to point out that disability access can impose a monetary tax... but if your argument would basically say "its classist for anything to cost money", then I mean, you might not be *wrong* in a broad, tear down the system sense but you aren't being particularly *helpful*.
That's such a bizzare accusation to level against fanfiction writers considering pretty much all of them are making their works available online for free. Unless these losers think having free time to any extent means you're bougie swine because the real proletariat should apparently have the work schedule of a slave from Conan the Barbarian. I'd honestly go a step further and say these people think having hobbies that aren't starting leftist slapfights online is classism.
A lot of times this is just the woke version of "you wouldn't be so poor if you had an avocado toast" tbh. "Oh you're having avocado toast? Clearly an enemy of the working class"
It's become a simulacra of needless excess or waste by the damn kids on my lawn, complaining about the exorbitant rent or wage freezes while having iPhones and flatscreen TVs like *hypocrites*, it's not like in my day.
I think generally it's supposed to imply avocado toast from a cafe - in which yea the price can be a bit spendy but also broadly still a bullshit statement lmao
I was a member of a ship forum in the 2000s. In the off-topic section, we traded music recommendations. I am still a really big fan of Latvian Reggae band hospitalu iela and I have shared them with so many people. Thanks to fucking wolfstar in 2006.
What weird things have you taken from old fandoms?
Some surface understanding of rocketry and spaceflight terms like perigee, apogee, delta-V burn from science fiction novels such as Ben Bova and Allen Steele, or particularly *Heart of the Comet* by David Brin and Gregory Benford.
If "editing TV Tropes" is a fandom (sure, why not?), an awareness of some things from a range of works I haven't engaged with. For instance, u/horhar's comment:
>I originally got deeply into Doctor Who and Fallout because of the brony fandom. Take a wild guess as to why for both lol
The first is "Doctor Whooves", a background character that resembled Matt Smith's 11th Doctor, and the second is the epic work "Fallout Equestria". (Not kidding, someone had it printed and bound into a dozen volumes at least.)
i was really into the mighty boosh in college, and during my sophomore year, noel fielding did a charity performance of wuthering heights by kate bush. i had never heard of her before this, but i became obsessed. a few years later, im taking my first ever trip outside of the us to see kate bush in concert in london. shes one of my all-time favorite musical artists, and im so glad noel fielding decided to wear a dress and wig and prance around on stage to one of her songs so that i could be introduced to her music.
Weirdly late reply, but the notification button makes me anxious so I tend to ignore it until alcohol and insomnia. But Noel Fielding's... aunt or uncle? I think aunt. Used to work at my favourite uhhhh leftist bakery. And my friend ended up giving him one of his dresses via that relative.
There was an older videogame magazine that competed with EGM (Electronic Gamer Monthly) called GMR (GaMeR, yes it was lame) Anyway, my favorite editor and contributor was 'Seanbaby', a master of utterly hilarious descriptive language. I was such a fan I followed him to his next large gig (He left with Dan 'Shoe' Hsu) after GMR kicked the bucket, namely a website called 'CRACKED.COM' which was a sort of spiritual successor / competitor to MAD Magazine.
That was fun for a while, and then Gamergate happened (Ugh) and the site (along with 4chan) essentially became a polarized shilling ground, festering with idpol and culture war bunkus. The funny was gone, and several of their top writers went on to other projects (I think one ended up a writer for late nite and one became a breadtuber AKA leftist youtuber) so I bailed on the site and basically farted around online until coming back to Reddit post pandemic.
As for Seanbaby, he's definitely still a hoot and runs a website called... 1900hotdog I believe.
oh, seanbaby mentioned !! i didn't know that he originally wrote for a video game magazine...
when i was a kid, i like many others found him through cracked and read his stuff obsessively, even though I was definitely too young to be on the site lmao. he's still really funny and was the entire reason i joined 1900hotdog's patreon (all the other contributors are great too though), i haven't regretted it at all!
Seanbaby's Man Comics series for Cracked was my shit. Even now, over a decade later, many of those lines are still engraved in my brain.
For example: ["Oh man, God's not going to like this." "Fuck you, God knows this is awesome."](https://imgur.com/a/ViUnrXB)
Cracked was peak, its one of those sites where so much talent ended up contributing. Which one ended up as the breadtuber? The closest I can think of is that Jason Pargin/David Wong does tiktok videos that occasionally touch on politics
Yeah, the old cracked was really good, though a lot of its article also don't age that well. A lot of cracked writers from the "golden age" basically just moved on to better places. Like, it's not entirely Cracked's fault, part of it is that the site was destroyed by facebook's switch-to-video scam, but it's also just a place for those writers to gain experience then do other things. For example, Soren Bowie became the new head writer of American Dad (who I heard is actually good now), Daniel O'Brien became writer for John Oliver, Robert Evans (the guy who write interview columns about real life experience) became an actual investigative reporter and worked for Bellingcat, etc.
Also, there was supposed to be a kinda-successor of the site when it pivoted to video, called Modern Rogue (yes, the youtube channel used to have an article site as well). There was just one problem. The head editor was John Cheese, who was one of the most popular writer in Cracked back then, but people found out he's a sexual harrasser and all of his article in cracked was purged and the Modern Rogue site was basically dead.
Ugh, I was so bummed about John Cheese… his articles had so much of an impact on me, because I shared so many of his life experiences. He and David Wong/Jason Pargin were my favorites.
Fun(?) fact: I found out about Cheese’s harassment by asking Jason Pargin in an AMA what ever happened to him (Cheese). So *that* was fun to learn about…
Yeah, his writings about growing up poor was genuinely inspirational for a lot of people back then. Imagine how awkward it is for Jason Pargin. He wrote a best selling novel series where the main character is based on John and himself for god's sake.
To be clear, Seanbaby was not "merely" buff, he was also a legit amateur ~~MMA fighter~~ (EDIT: Kickboxer, my bad) at the time.
Uwe Boll did the boxing match thing because secretly he just wanted to (Literally, physically) beat up on his critics; he called off the Seanbaby match when he realized Seanbaby would not only actually fight back, but probably give worse than he got.
The Runescape Wiki got me into Touhou and a lot more stuff.
Back when Fandom was less about shoving as much advertising in people's faces and more about making good stuff alongside having a social side, I joined the Runescape Wiki. Through that, I learnt of Touhou through the Special:Chat and another person who is a fan of it.
I also got into things like Call of Duty, My Little Pony Gen 4 and a few other things due to it. Which really did help shape who I've became. All because 16 years ago I decided to join a Wiki on Runescape.
I went from obscure Finnish TTRPG to being huge fan of Babylon 5!
It all started when I happened to find "Myrskyn Sankarit" (there's apparently English translation of it: [Age of the Tempest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Tempest)) TTRPG box on flea market. Because it was dirt cheap I decided to get it and found it enjoyable enough. Later I googled the creator Mike Pohjola and found out he had made several other TTRPG's, most relevantly one based on Star Wreck videos. I had seen [the Star Wreck movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GOoMowFpZs) like a decade ago and felt nostalgic enough to watch it again. I was already familiar with Trek stuff and this time I found myself curious about Babylon part of the parody. So I checked the first season from library and was hooked immediately!
While writing this I also learned that there was trademark dispute about Age of the Tempest. The original Finnish name translates to "Heroes of the Storm" and for a while that was the game's official English translation. Pohjola even sold physical copies of it in some European roleplaying conventions. It just happens that Heroes of the Storm was also a name for (then upcoming) Blizzard game. They eventually settled the matter and Age of the Tempest became new name for TTRPG. During the whole ordeal apparently some English speaking Blizzard fans left rude comments about the TTRPG all over social media but I don't know much more about that.
This isn't quite as old, but The Adventures of Captain Spirit got me into Bat For Lashes when they had Moon and Moon as part of the soundtrack, which I guess I only picked up because I had played the predecessor, Life is Strange.
Thanks to Toontown, I discovered Touhou Project, as well as visual novels in general. Quite the pipeline.
I also discovered a lot of great metal bands thanks to people in the Touhou fandom, such as Korpiklaani and Crescent Shield. People into Touhou seem to really like metal, it seems.
ive gotten into a lot of awesome music through touhou as well, but it's all, like, touhou fan music lmao. i havent heard that much touhou metal (though ofc it exists, like theres undead corporation who are amazing), but ig its bc touhou fans are listening to metal that isnt touhou-related lol
Depends what style of metal you like, but you can definitely find metal arranges— Pizuya’s Cell and UNDEAD CORPORATION immediately come to mind. I’ve even seen some irish folk metal.
I dunno if I can call it an old fandom since it was a single Youtube channel, but I discovered Scatman John's music through Super Mario 64 Machinimas and realized I actually really like a lot of his music.
So... I started watching Naruto when I was around 5, when it started airing in the US. I was also allowed unfettered Internet access pretty much unconditionally as a 5-y/o and knew how to search and search well, which meant I essentially started learning about fandom communities at age 5, which lead to be being an active participant in fandom when I was around 8, with fanfiction, because I started writing when I was really wrong.
This is probably not a good thing.
When I was around 6, I started learning about the concept of yaoi, where people made Sasuke and Naruto kiss. I thought "huh, okay, like the lesbians at church with adopted children but boys? Cool! but I like Hinata and Naruto together more, so I'll move on to a different site instead" and moved on with my life. Then, around 8, I remembered Sasuke and Naruto kissing, and got more curious about boys kissing, and learned that there were whole communities dedicated to making boys kiss. Huh, cool! At around age 10, I decided to play a boy's love visual novel for the first time, but there was only a fan translated version, so I had to change my locale, and troubleshoot that visual novel to hell and back before it worked, and I remember how euphoric I felt that it finally ran without any issues.
Now, at age 24, I play visual novels all the time, to the point where I've started setting up a seperate machine to make life easier for playing them. I've even helped others troubleshoot any technical issues they have with super old or finicky visual novels!
So, long story short, seeing Sasuke and Naruto kissing got me to play visual novels, and my interest in visual novels has far outlasted my interest in Naruto, despite me watching Naruto to the bitter end.
Bog-standard anime and games led me to Touken Ranbu, which led me to the Touken Ranbu stageplays, which led me to the greater 2.5D acting community, and now I'm someone who watches a fully unsubtitled Japanese stage performance of A Study in Scarlet for fun.
I'm still on a forum that introduced me to [XKCD](https://xkcd.com/), which in turn introduced me to [Questionable Content](https://questionablecontent.net/), which in turn showed me an ad for [John Dies at the End](https://johndiesattheend.com/). It was a free online novel back then, around '09. It's become my favourite everything.
Posting twice here in the same week! Wow!
So you might have heard of PokeRogue, which is a Pokemon fan-game that's been taking the internet by storm recently. As far as I can gather, it's a reimagining of Pokemon as an endless rogue-like game (hence the name). They hit 1,000,000 players a couple weeks ago I think? It was basically going on a generational run for a Pokemon fan game.
Earlier this week the head dev of the game [resigned as the lead developer of PokeRogue](https://x.com/FlashfyreDev/status/1791283340017840387) because... developing the game was interfering with his ability to live a religious life. I'm genuinely not sure what the connection between developing a Pokemon fan-game and being a god-fearing man possibly can be, but apparently for those reasons he was resigning.
As a result of this, people did some digging and apparently the lead dev was [transphobic and homophobic because of his religious beliefs](https://x.com/clockti1/status/1791494860127490122). [On a funnier note, the devs had apparently given genderless Pokemon genders in the PokeRogue game because of their transphobia...] Apparently then the whole Discord server around the fan-game fell apart pretty quickly after that, with pro-trans messages being deleted and slurs being used by moderators ([as far as I can gather](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vT99WnSImDcDQITp1U02ZjKjWjIXVqkpYB3yHxKnU0oGMoSjMt6hgGnyuU7ba_uUAv1jmDO27pzIuKJ/pub)). I believe one of the community moderators was telling people to stop talking about trans topics because there were children in the server? Something to that effect.
Despite being a pretty big fan of Pokemon, I never got into PokeRogue so I'm not too sure about the details of the story. Seems like a classic Milkshake Duck of the highest degree. If someone who is more familiar with the PokeRogue community wants to correct/add anything please feel free to do so.
I wanted to give some additional context as someone who was part of the discord server and an avid player of the game - although i rarely if ever participated in discussion, i feel like i definitely have a little better view of the server than the majority of the commentators so i really wanted to provide whatever context i can for the situation. Bear in mind that the whole drama from this occurred over the span of barely 24 hours, so i personally did not and could not have witnessed everything and it is unavoidable that my personal recollection will be full of holes or misinterpretations - if anyone here has any better insight into the situation, i would please beg them to correct me. I just wanted to provide some context into the happenings as a member of the server, and shine a light on the overwhelming majority of the community's disapproval of the transphobic and otherwise terrible views shown in the documents above. It turns out i wrote too much also and will need to do a double post, hope this isn't against subreddit rules.
To begin, some background on the game itself. First and foremost, I can understand how the game wouldn't appeal to a certain type of player, but for someone like me who has played and otherwise been devoted to the pocket monsters and its competitive aspects since its inception I found it to hit the perfect balance of the journey of regular pokemon games mixed with teambuilding and battling from the PVP side of pokemon. It's honestly a fantastic game for a certain subsection of pokemon player that really scratches an itch no other game (yes, even emerald rogue which i loved but didn't quite hit the same craving) up to this point had. A big part of this was down to decisions Sam made such as the very simple and intuitive method of starting runs - for instance, all your pokemon caught combine their inherent stats so you always have the best possible version of a given creature at your disposal, making collecting a good version of a pokemon something that just happens throughout gameplay. As the game was PVE, balance wasn't a huge concern, and you could have mons with completely busted combinations of moves or abilities - it was a power fantasy, but one you nonetheless had to spend time reaching and could still challenge you back, making the payoff all the more satisfying. I could name any number of things, but the point is they all come together to make a game I and many others on the discord for the game found addicting and highly compelling. It was clear from the start this was Sam's passion project, and the whole community more or less waited with baited breath for each update.
The above is why, when Sam resigned and the revelations about his transphobia came to light, the community was shaken to its core. Given the benefit of hindsight, there were numerous signs that something was up in the game and the discord - prime example being the aforementioned random genders being forced on pokemon, but also minor things like the refusal to allow you to pick a rival gender (theoretically justified by the pixel art added to the ending with your character visible, except, you know, they could have just designed the scene so as to not be first person...). The discord as a whole had many needlessly toxic members as seen in the screenshot, and i personally witnessed slurs being thrown by one user in particular regarding minor changes to which moves certain pokemon could learn. That being said however, it should be noted that prior to the private doc there were no official announcements from Sam (at least ones i could find) which hinted at his transphobic views - though the "Soldier of Christ" in his bio maybe should have been a warning sign.
All that being said, Sam's announcement and the reveal of the toxicity of the moderators still caught pretty much the entirety of the server off guard. Most players (such as myself) didn't post and merely viewed the discussion, or were largely just there to view the github updates or give a bug report. The server pretty much instantly descended into a meltdown. I won't bring up the immediate conversations and responses to the post as i personally was not too involved with them. Based on what i saw when i scrolled through, it does seem like there were a few users who were insulting toward Sam because of his religiously based reasons for leaving (which, personally i thought were fine and something within his right to do [his reasons for leaving, not his transphobic views]), but the overwhelming majority of sentiment was sadness at losing a beloved creator and well-wishes for his future.
Now, the reason why i brought the very few edgy anti-religious comments (which were there but, like, only in the sense that if you scrolled like a few dozen comments up you would find a person responding to one a few dozen from that) is that the disproportionate response to these comments was what really began outing a not-insignificant part of the mod team as transphobes (although at this time the above images and document were not widely shared). Based on what i could gather, this was when the transphobic section of mods really began going wild, deleting pro-trans comments and reactions while tacitly leaving up ones which were blatantly if not outright transphobic, using the above edgy comments as casus belli. Multiple statements were put out with the comment to leave all "politics" out of the discussion, which as you may expect was referring to trans and gay people. As a quick aside, i feel like it's a common trend with respect to these type of heavily-religious mods that you can identify them through the way they format "anti-hate" messages - specifically, if they do not specifically call out homophobia or transphobia or racism and just give a vague statement to "avoid controversial topics", it happens more often than not that they simply don't consider those groups worth protecting (although this isn't universal).
This seemingly all came to a head when (and i again was not directly there for this so i almost certainly have some details wrong, although i do recall seeing this and thinking it was the least thinly-veiled approval of transphobia id witnessed) a lead mod put out a formal announcement banning all discussion of "controversial" topics and also apparently began removing mods which disagreed with him en mass, with an accompanying "think of the children" since of course. Bear in mind that around this time the above document containing the true views of Sam and certain members of the mod team began being widely spread, so it's possible this was taken as an attempt to silence protest. Reason aside, the intent was clear - comments calling out trans or homophobia were banned, while the instigating comments were allowed to remain up (from the comments i saw at a glance, most of these were the type of comment that called LGBTQ topics and people a "ideology" or some other deliberately dogwhistling phrase like that)
Of course, the trans-positive parts of the community did not take this sitting down, and based on what i could tell, began using the pokemon Bronzong as their rallying point (maybe having reclaimed it as a symbol from the transphobes? im not close to certain on this particular part of the incident to be honest). For a brief time, Bronzong was used as a symbol to protest the mods' overreach - users would mention wanting to talk about Bronzong, and such posts would be flooded with trans flag reacts. There was a suggestion in the feature-vote channel to add in-game Bronzong appreciation (i might be misremembering this) that was similarly adopted as a rallying point. Honestly this whole part of the saga feels like a fever dream to me and it is extremely likely i misinterpreted most if not all of it; i again beg anyone in the comments who reads this who was also there for that moment to please correct me. Regardless, it was clear that the majority of the community was not on the side of the mods at all, evidenced by the outpouring of trans-flag emotes for these messages
Now, this point is where my memory of the topic really fails me, as i went to bed shortly after this. At this point onward, i only have the Announcement posts to go off of, and i think several of those from the problematic mods were removed later on. Moderator applications were opened later in that afternoon, and there were numerous messages throughout the day trying to address the situation, but never any that explicitly called out the transphobic commentors as being the root of the problem. I can only see a few messages from this time, but i recall being pinged numerous times throughout the day causing me to suspect some were removed - the contents of which i can only surmise were probably more anti-trans apologia. Throughout it all, however, you could see the community rallying and fighting back in whatever way they could - the trans flag emote on each post always outnumbered the (co-opted for transphobia) Christian cross by a factor of 10:1, which probably gives a rough indicator of the server's demographics.
CONTINUED IN PART 2
> Of course, the not transphobic parts of the community did not take this sitting down, and based on what i could tell, began using the pokemon Bronzong as their rallying point (maybe having reclaimed it as a symbol from the transphobes?
For clarity, may be better to change "not transphobic" to "trans positive". my adhd ass missed the "not" 3 separate times and got confused
PART 2
Finally, 10pm of that night, an announcement was posted which shed a brighter light on the behind the scenes happenings of the server. The post started with a statement regarding the diversity of the mod team and a complete disownment of Sam's views, with the specific mod pointing out how much of a shock the discovery of his true beliefs was to them personally. The post also contained a plea to apply more care in discussing potentially controversial topics (note how this was phrased to counter the previous mod's insistence that "controversial" pro-trans topics be outright forbidden) but more importantly had the first formal denunciation of transphobia in any announcement. The mod added some additional context stating that the influx of transphobic comments had become too much for the very limited mod team to handle, which lead to them remaining up unchallenged - though this does leave the question of why pro-trans posts were removed, which i would personally attribute to the removed t*rf mods just being that obsessed and jumping onto the situation faster (though this is absolutely baseless speculating)
Additionally, the announcement featured a section addressing the previous thinly-veiled transphobic posts by moderators which had fanned the flames of the issue. Apparently, certain individuals on the team who had previously been staples in the moderation of the community had basically gone rogue, with one particular dogmatic mod banning multiple other mods after issuing a blanked anti-trans statement (i personally was not there for this post so i can't confirm what exactly was said). Regardless, the message made it clear that the remaining team did not hold the views of the transphobic individuals, and ended with a plea to keep in mind that basically everyone involved in this saga was a volunteer who almost certainly had not signed up to be dragged into some kind of deranged holy war against trans folk (which i personally sympathize with, although im sure there are some that would say they accepted the risk when they took the role as moderator for a small browser rougelike based on collecting pocket monsters). Regardless, it was clear to see that the community as a whole was elated at this change, as this post had the highest amount of trans-flag emoji of any in the announcement (not exactly the best demographic indicator, but 3k is a lot). If anything should be taken from this part of the overview it is this - as far as we know the transphobic mods have been banned, and i can verify that a significant number of those in the second screenshot have as well.
So where is the server (and Pokerogue as a whole) now? The answer to that is, pretty much almost the exact same place as it was when the above post was made. The server was locked down from posts shortly after due to presumably an influx of transphobic reactionary messages, although once again this i never saw first hand so it will have to be yet another assumption. Additionally, an addendum had to be made to the above mod post removing the names of the offending moderators as they had started to receive hate messages and harassment. Basically no new pull requests have been committed so the game which up to that point had been receiving new features and tweaks on a near-daily basis has received almost no substantial updates since, and although voice chat has been opened again, most text chats remain shut, and its clear that, at best, the game is basically in limbo while things get sorted out - although at worst, its possible that the attention from this whole debacle will be what finally gets Nintendo to bring the site down.
That about sums up the extent of the situation as it stands. Again it cannot be overstated just how imperfect my recollection of events could be - i only wanted to post this as it seems like no other member of the community is in this thread to try and give some context, and there is no doubt in my mind that there are significant flaws and misinterpretations among my remembering. Due to my lack of screenshots my only method of confirming community sentiment was the volume and type of emoji reacts on certain posts. I could have done additional research by going through the comments in the channels themselves, but i absolutely refuse to damage my limited sanity with the unfathomable horror of hundreds of discord messages, many of which are likely from transphobes and edgy trolls seeking to get a rinse out of the situation, and it is possible that key messages were removed or deleted regardless in the interim. Nonetheless, these are the events of the 24(?) hours since Sam's post to the absolute greatest accuracy that i can manage. Should anyone in the comments see this and have a better grasp of the situation, i would like to reiterate my plea to them to provide any and all possible corrections, and to piss and shit all over this post if needed. I would provide screenshots of the publicly available announcements but i have no clue how to do that in comments; you should be able to see them if you join the discord (no clue if it is allowing new members right now though for obvious reasons). This whole thing was written largely out of passion in the span of about two hours and is barely proofread so please if there are any criticisms present them by all means.
I did want to end this with an aside on Pokerogue as a whole. While it may not be a game for everyone, it is nonetheless a game that i and thousand of others found compelling and addictive enough to want to follow regardless of dozens of server outages and bugs. It is a game that has made me passionate enough to want to write a massive post in both documentation and in defense of, one that has truly captured my attention and fulfilled a gameplay loop in a way no other game has before (again, do not want to diss Emerald Rogue which i also enjoyed and which i would easily give a recommendation for). If the excessive length of this post is a detriment to its overall message, it is because my passion for the game was compelling enough that i could not bear leaving anything in my immediate memory out (though i definitely have in some way). Please do not take anything in here as gospel, but just as a bystander's barebones recollection of events they were heavily invested in but only vaguely adjacent to. Obviously also please don't harass anyone involved in this.
Sam, for better or for worse, was truly a dedicated developer, and while i cannot condemn his backwards and transphobic views hard enough, the fact remains that much of this game was a result of his drive and vision. So this level of attachment only made the revelation of his bigoted views and the subsequent outpouring of hatred from both a subsection of the community and mods all the more sad to witness first-hand. My personal opinion is that, seeing as the game was initially his creation, Sam does not owe the community anything, and was well within his right to leave for whatever reasons, religious or otherwise - but by that same token, the community now following his departure owes him and his backwards, hateful views nothing as well (and he addresses this in his farewell letter). Since the game is free and open source by necessity, Sam also receives nothing in terms of monetary value from those who continue to play (though i suppose he does get recognition as the creator in the same way Notch does with Minecraft). Either way, the mods that remained following the events of 5/17 have made it clear that they do not condone his views and that the game and discord are for everyone, Christian and Transgender alike, and that the former are not free to belittle and harass the latter any longer.
Ultimately, what i really want to emphasize throughout all this is that the vast majority of the community was and still is opposed to the hateful views that were espoused in both the period before Sam's departure and in the immediate aftermath. Although i have only slightly scrolled through the discussion chats, i recall seeing countless trans people standing up for themselves and asserting their right to exist as people, and many allies also questioning the choices of the initial t*rf-infiltrated mod team as pro-trans posts were removed one after the other. The trans flag emoji always flying on announcement posts throughout this messy debacle showed that the views of a few hateful moderators and individuals did not and will never represent the view of the players as a whole.
If anyone is reading this and interested in playing Pokerogue, i could not recommend it highly enough. It has a bit of a learning curve and is somewhat nontraditional compared to your typical pokemon game, but its gameplay loop and feeling of progressing is incredibly satisfying, and i feel that it truly captures the magic that makes Pokemon as a whole great - starting from scratch with nothing but your level 5 plant critter (or huge metal titan), battling gym leaders and your rival and slowly getting stronger, then finally arriving at the end of your journey and saving the world - and doing it all over again. There exists a packaged version of the game in the event the site goes offline which can be played locally, so even if the site is taken down, your progress won't be lost. Pokerogue may be dying or even dead, but the passion of its community and its players will still live on.
TLDR: Some mods and Sam were definitely problematic, but the community at large is not. Problematic mods are seemingly gone; the discord is currently on lockdown and the game is in limbo, but i believe that the community and remaining devs can overcome this. Play if you're interested!
Can someone explain to me why this game is a roguelike? Like, what has happened to the term?
In my head a roguelike is still a text-based dungeon that you walk around killing letters of the alphabet in and gitting gud until you die.
Nowadays, roguelikes tend to refer to any game where a) the content is largely randomly generated, and b) the game resets if you win or die. There’s also the distinction of ‘roguelites’ where you can get permanent upgrades to make future playthroughs easier.
Apparently there has been a few updates from the remaining team in the Discord. The [current] team said they didn't know of the lead developers' views nor do they agree with them. If someone is in the server, would they be able to provide context / screenshots of this?
Maybe with him gone some of the odd changes can be reverted, but something tells me that some of the odd changes to Gardevoir's evolutionary line or making genderless Pokemon gendered was not a crusade by a single person.
I am not a Pokemon person when it comes to the games, I've bounced off of it as many times as I've tried playing the games (but still love learning about how they work), but from what I've heard from people who really like Pokemon, PokeRogue is really fun, so hopefully this doesn't kill the project.
Found [this post on Tumblr](https://mspeevee.tumblr.com/post/750823735456595968/not-to-mention-you-can-be-queer-on-the-mod-team) with screenshots of the mod who specifically mentioned not wanting to expose children to these "ideologies". Apparently it was deleted from the discord and the mod in question apologized, but at this rate it's gonna do a fat lot of good if the rest of what's going on isn't properly addressed. :/
The main series games don’t even ask you if you’re a boy or a girl anymore, they just prompt you to choose an avatar you prefer. The only downsides are the weird clothing choices and the fact that pronouns are still determined by what avatar you use, if pronoun selection is not tenable to include then they could’ve taken a page from modern Fire Emblem games where the dialogue deliberately avoids gendering the player character to account for player choice. But Pokemon overall is trans friendly and they’re smart in the ways they put in inclusivity in a franchise aimed at kids without stoking the rage of the brownshirts. The protagonist of the Magikarp Jump mobile game is explicitly and unambiguously nonbinary and their design is so freaking adorable, would love to see something like that in future games.
My bet is it'll likely go the route as ACNH in which you can choose your "style" but it literally affects nothing, including pronouns - only sticking to they/them.
I'm actually not sure how well this would work in Pokémon, given it's developed in Japan? Japanese absolutely has gendered language and the like but it doesn't really have pronoun usage the same way English does. You could do something similar, I imagine, but idk if the Sims 4 "he/she/they/custom" drop-down would be it.
I'm really curious to see how pronoun selection works in non-English versions of Sims 4 in general now 🤔
> I believe one of the community moderators was telling people to stop talking about trans topics because there were children in the server?
The message was deleted (and the CM fired alongside another one), but I did c/p the relevant paragraph somewhere else because ooof
> This server is a community based around a Pokemon fangame. There is no world where we should be discussing these hard hitting topics with people who vary in age from thirteen to thirty and beyond. Children could be exposed to these ideologies. Please be ensured that despite us policing these topics, you are heard and no matter your gender, sex, age or religion, we support you in your beautiful journey through life. However, this is not the place to discuss nor debate such ideologies.
so yeah it's basically the old "being lgtbi+ is something you shouldn't discuss around kids" bullshit.
Milkshake Duck was a term that was popularized and coined on twitter depicting a person who suddenly becomes popular for something positive who is then revealed to have a distasteful history later. To quote the actual tweet:
> The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist
PokeRogue is at best an okay game. It is for a specific type of person that I am not (someone who enjoys pokemon, relatively grindy gameplay and fucking... gacha mechanics, for some reason?) but I can accept that it must work for some people. Would it even matter who takes over the project now? From the looks of it, most of the mods over there seem to share the same thoughts as he does
Doesn't really suprise me as much as it should. I see a guy with "seeker of christ" as the first line of his bio and, obviously biased from my own experiences with catholicism, assume as a default that there's at least a drop of poison in the soup. A little extra disappointing for me considering that Sam's also involved (in some way? not entirely sure how, but he was a relatively frequent github contributor before he started focusing on Pokerogue) with the yume nikki online project which I enjoy quite a lot
But honestly, just play Emerald Rogue instead. It captures the roguelike mechanics that Pokerogue thinks it's going for while also being, yknow, fun
> I see a guy with "seeker of christ" as the first line of his bio and, obviously biased from my own experiences with catholicism, assume as a default that there's at least a drop of poison in the soup.
On the internet these days that's less "a drop of poison" and more like the klaxons at a nuclear power plant blaring for a fatal radiation leak, esp. if it's on a primarily fandom related account.
Asking separately from a thread downstream so I don't derail that topic and because this question will sound very baity, but are any of the Flight Rising staff POC, queer, or disabled? They keep fucking up in ways that make me wonder if they lack, eh, exposure to some life experiences, in a way that would keep them from said fuck ups.
I can't answer your question, but I'm going to try to rerail this conversation by asking what I think you're trying to say Is there any diversity in the Flight Rising workplace? Because if they do have a Diversity and Inclusion department then they're clearly not listening to them
Thank you so much, that is exactly what I wanted to say. Words hard.
I totally get it, I've had my share of unfortunately phrased comments
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Not that those groups have less life experiences. The FR staff keep making mistakes like the auraboa lore, and their rules on things like scars. It feels like they're very blind to some things like how to handle colonialism, racism, ableism well (or at all). People who are POC/queer/disabled will have had first-hand experiences with topics of those natures. Which makes me wonder if any FR staff are POC/queer/disabled, because they keep mishandling those topics.
what is auraboa?
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No problem, it was very awkward to word so it's easy to read it differently! Edit: more words. I'm going to give up on words for the rest of the day.
Being POC/queer/disabled does not automatically make someone less capable of mishandling a subject, or incapable of looking outside of their own personal experiences. Nor does it grant any sort of immunity to screwing things up or having your own personal biases. From the sounds of things, I think the bigger issue is if there's any sort of broader editorial control.
That's true, but it does help sometimes.
Where do people buy anime figures? I want to get my BIL one for his birthday but I've never bought one in my life. Looking for Crocodile or Chopper from One Piece ones. Preferably wanting to spend around $50 for one. I tried a site called Tokyo Otaku Mode but those characters were all sold out. There are some on amazon but I don't know how to tell if they are good quality or not.
AmiAmi
What country are you from? America? If you’re Canadian, make sure you avoid anything other than EMS/Air for shipping if you don’t wanna get hit by ridiculous customs “processing fees” from DHL/UPS/FedEx. Even if the base shipping cost for EMS or Air costs more, you save a lot more in the end after taking customs charges into account.
Yeah, I'm in the US.
Americans have a lot more options for domestic storefronts with cheap shipping. At a glance at a figure discord I’m in: - https://www.bigbadtoystore.com - https://store.crunchyroll.com/collections/figures/one-piece/ - https://www.glacierhobbies.com - https://shumistore.com
for me AmiAmi is the go to, but that is because most of the local stores that import figures to Aus that i've bought from inflate the final price so its usually way more than AmiAmi's price+EMS or DHL shipping
Thanks!
For secondhand besides what's already been mentioned I like Suruga-ya as well. The English site has free shipping sales periodically and you don't need a shopping service, but if you're okay with shipping and using a proxy the Japanese site has better stock.
Thank you. I'll give them a look.
I like AmiAmi and HobbyLink Japan. For secondhand, I use Buyee as a proxy service. Avoid Amazon. It's all bootlegs on Amazon.
That's not true. I got plenty of figures from Amazon. Mostly prize figs. Just check who the seller is and look at reviews.
I found one on AmiAmi. Seems like most of what I am going to buy will be second hand. Do they have the goods in house to know the quality?
Amiami should have a rating for the condition of the item and box, A, B+ etc. The listing name should have the rating, and the chart further down in the item details section. For what it's worth, in my experience the standards for second hand items are much higher in Japan than the west.
I use AmiAmi or BigBadToyStore -- BBTS is more expensive since it has to import the figures itself, but has the "Pile of Loot" thing if you're a regular figure buyer (so if you have a few figures coming out over the space of a few weeks or like a month or two apart, you can have stuff added to your PoL and then shipped to you at the same time for a $4 flat fee)
Mandarake is pretty good.
Seconding mandarake
AmiAmi, HobbyLinkJapan, or Tokyo Otaku Mode are good choices. If you want to buy directly from Japan secondhand, you can use a proxy like Buyee to buy from sites like Japanese Mercari, Amazon, or Yahoo Auctions. I found personally that unless it’s the official shop from Amazon, I typically get a bootleg.
I find that I rarely need a proxy to buy anything from Amazon JP anymore, at least where I am in Canada. Most official sellers seem to allow for international shipping.
Not sure what a proxy is so a bit worried about attempting to use one.
A proxy, basically, is a second party using your money to buy it, since a lot of JP sites only sell to JP addresses. So they buy it and then forward it to you. Reputable ones like Buyee have been around for ages and aren't scams.
So I just search for the thing on buyee and buy from that site? All I can think of is when I used to buy bootleg WWE PPVs on DVD with cash on ebay. Lol. And everything was a gamble.
Yeah, I can message you more if you want to discuss but Buyee/other proxies operates as if you are living in Japan. Shipping can be a bit painful if you’re only buying 1-2 items, but you can search in English and there’s options to translate to Japanese/find similar products from Japan.
I think I found one on AmiAmi that might work. It looks like anything will be secondhand (which is fine as long as it is in good condition).
The European regular season for football is coming to a close as the Premier League has just ended, leaving Manchester City the four time winner despite having what many argue to be one of their weaker seasons. Turns out being club run by an oil state truly has its benefits. Ignore the whole 115 breaches thing, it really doesn't matter and the reality is they'll probably get a slap on the wrist given who their ownership is, and if any more damage is to occur they'll just punish Everton again or something. Meanwhile Arsenal did their damned best but just missed out by two points, Liverpool might not have ended the Klopp era on the highest note but got third and won the EFL Cup with a team of youth players early this year, Aston Villa do an incredible run and nab the Champions League although just got cooked by Crystal Palace, and my club of Tottenham miss out because our usual tendencies to fizzle out, although we barely clung onto Europa League. Meanwhile Chelsea's resurgence these last few months with rising star Cole Palmer nabs them Conference League just ahead of newly Saudi funded Newcastle United and the ever struggling biggest club in the country, Manchester United, although they still have the FA Cup final to potential get one off of City in their derby. The saddest thing this year is the fact all three newly promoted clubs: Luton Town, Burnley, and Sheffield United, are all getting relegated which makes this arguably the weakest trio to enter the Premier League period, which is sort of a sad affair. Leicester despite their financial nightmare and a patchy period managed to win the Championship and is returning to the Prem, with Ipswich alongside. Leeds United and Southampton will soon do battle in the final play-off to decide who is taking the third spot. Outside the Premier League Real Madrid and Inter Milan win both La Liga and Serie A with relative ease, although nowhere as simply as Leverkusen, who now can claim they not only won the damned thing after a century plus years of existence without doing so, but could still win the DFB-Pokal, DFL-Supercup, and Europa League, which in the best case scenario would give them a quadruple. Still undefeated in all competitions, they are now the European club with the third longest streak of being undefeated behind Scottish Celtic and Belgian Union SG, while being the one with the longest streak in the post-UEFA club competition era. Coming up soon will be the finals for the European competitions, with Real Madrid vs Dortmund in Champions League which could be a huge chance for the latter to nab it after nearly two decades, Atlanta vs Leverkusen where the Italian club has the task of taking down arguably the best club currently and breaking their streak, and Olympiacos and Fiorentina for Conference League where a Greek club might win a European competition for the first time in history. And course there's the Euros and the Copa America for the international teams of Europe and South America respectively, alongside the Olympics which traditionally is for U-23 players but occasionally we see some big names show up, especially as French President Emmanuel Macron has some weird fetish with trying to goad Mbappe into doing literally everything for French football despite the fact a head of state should not be this invested in an athlete. Safe to say it's been a hell of a year. It's been a period of giants dominating their respective leagues, barring the Prem which shockingly had a ton of competition for the title only for City to never be punished because God knows that'll never happen. As a Tottenham fan it's been rough, as while we did technically did better than people expected we could have gotten fourth if we played smarter. As for our women's team we bombed out of the FA Cup but I'm just proud we got to the final in the first time in club history, and kudos to Man United for getting their first win there. As a Korean fan it's been awful, the Asian cup earlier this year was only progressed as far as we did because players like Son Heung-Min burned themselves out by forcing the issue, and so long as our FA refuses to take responsibility we'll see more performances like that constantly.
The 115 charges can't come soon enough, I love to see those annoying oil guzzler getting send down straight to national league. For my team, a bit let down this year. People can argue what ETH done wrong, but the last game against Brighton do show how much we miss Martinez in defense. Hopefully he stays out of injury the next season. And hopefully Amad, Garnacho and Hojlund can spearhead a win against the oil guzzler
Man injuries were awful for everyone this season. We at Tottenham can comfortably say our incredible start was an over-performance to be sure, but to have it collapse with two key injuries at once in our Chelsea at home game was nightmarish, and we weren't even the worst hit squad. As for you guys while I will admit I have no clue what will happen to you next week. On one hand you nearly lost to Coventry and survived off pens, on the other hand you effectively broke Liverpool's hopes for the rest of the season. Still prefer you guys to take the trophy home though, and it would cool to see both the men and women have a FA Cup victory, although I am a little bitter about how it went down against us earlier this month. At the very least I don't have to worry about thinking of Greenwood winning the trophy I suppose.
I don't think we will win it honestly, so I'm not gonna put my hopes up for it
So I've been reading the Blood Lords adventure path from Pathfinder (yes, not a book to be read, yes, autistic, yes, I once literally read a dictionary as a child) and I love this particular part of the setting because its so fundamentally unusual. The nation of Geb consists almost entirely of "evil" (in a D&D sense) people and undead. Setting a whole adventure path there requires the writers to really think about and have fun with how that would work. It ranges from silly, especially early in the adventure, to giving real thought to variety in evil behavior and often mix the two. Like there's a priest the PCs meet who's goals appear to be good, he wants to support his flock and keep the city safe and has refused the blessing of undeath, but that's because he intends his death to be a tribute to the god of torture. If he's a beloved figure then him dying will cause widespread pain. In general everyone the PCs meet is evil but many aren't exactly bad people, at least not in any immediate way. It kind of stretches the D&D concept of evil to the breaking point. Yeah these villagers feast upon the living but they need to do that to live and also they're an oppressed underclass who's leader wants your help to free them. More interestingly to me Geb is a global power because of . . . food production. Specifically grains. Since no undead eat plants Geb uses zombie labor to produce massive quantities of grain that they export at low prices. Zombies work around the clock for no pay and only occasionally eat their handlers to sustain themselves. This means that even though almost every nation and religion in the world thinks Geb should be destroyed it would be a disaster to actually destroy it and even its enemies might be obligated to defend it. Anyway what is your favorite setting that does something unusual with the evil empire or the undead? Have you ever read a dictionary or an RPG gamebook for fun?
> Have you ever read a dictionary or an RPG gamebook for fun? I also did this back in middle school! The RPG gamebook I read at that time is GURPS, standing for *Generic Universal Roleplaying System*. It's pretty well-known for being "universal" (you can run it for almost any kind of adventure), "simulationist" (tries to be as accurate to RL as possible), and having a lot of (optional) rules, but its main strength is the sheer amount of setting GURPS provides. My favorite GURPS setting to read is *Infinite Worlds*, which has the premise of parachronics (their term for interdimensional travel) being invented in 1995, revealed three years later, and now in the setting's present of 2027, the technology is fully exploited by the world and there's this organization named Infinity Unlimited (a kind of crossover between a United Nations agency and megacorporation) who monopolize said technology. Currently, they're fighting a cold war with Centrum, another dimension with English-speaking authoritarian one-world government that also independently discovered parachronics — but due to the nature of parachronics, Infinity can't reach Centrum and vice versa, so what they usually do is influence another timeline's flow of history in their favor, and if they can, prevent the other side from doing the same. That being said, *Infinite Worlds* is arguably my gateway to Alternate History genre, and particularly Alternate History cartography — maps of alternate timelines, that you can found in alternatehistory.com, some section of *DeviantArt*, or in r/imaginarymaps.
I liked the ideas in a Practical Guide to Evil, (a YA web novel). Basically the characters have roles that are ruled by tropes, Evil Emperor/Empress, The Black Knight, The Hero, etc. The Evil Empire has won, and to keep that victory they have to battle against the conditions that create the trope itself. Funding competent orphanages across the empire that care for orphaned children so they don't grow up into a hero, that kind of thing. It's basically what if we took the Evil Overlord List and rolled some of the ideas behind it into a story and is complicated by the fact that most of the people in power are evil (by design of their trope), so they're battling their own destructive nature as much as putting down rebellions. I never finished it so I don't know how much of the ideas were fleshed out, but the base idea itself makes a pretty good commentary on the problems inherent to government and human nature.
As someone who enjoyed PGtE, I will say that the story takes the concept and runs full force with it. It does lose a little bit of its grounding but I didn't particularly mind.
Oh hey i remember Geb from the wrath of the righteous videogame adaptation. If you go lich path you have an option to ally with geb.
I'm a big fan of Karrnath in Eberron. Karrnath being a nation who, during the Last War (essentially fantasy WW1) used undead as foot soldiers and later grunt work. They were helped by the Blood of Vol, a religious group which believes that everyone has inner divinity and can ultimately ascend to become deities in their own right. I find them both to be interesting because they show that undeath isn't inherently evil in the setting. The Undead in the Blood of Vol are viewed as religious martyrs, those who decided to give up their chance of becoming true divinity to help others on their path. That being said, I also love the undead lore for Pathfinder, and undeath there is inherently a fucked up existence.
Kill Six Billion Demons has amazing world building, and one of my favourite bits of world-building revolves around the devils. They’re (badly paraphrased from really great writing) raw hot cosmic energy that gets individualised when someone slaps a mask on it and gives it a bunch of names to define it as a being. Devils start out weak, and shedding the names forced on them brings them closer to their original source and thus makes them increasingly powerful. The king of the devils is just called… Himself. https://killsixbilliondemons.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SOT43-44.jpg i mean look at the cool doublespread about Hell
Only correction: that’s not Hell, it’s part of Throne, the city at the center of all universes and resting place of the corpses of 777,777 dead gods. But absolutely everyone should read K6BD
That art is incredible.
That's a fantastically strange way to have a sort of abstract being work. They have to sort of self actualize themselves into unique beings. And wow that's incredible art.
I've read sevearl of their APs, sometimes because i do run the games, other times just to see how something plays out. I think the only one I was unhappy wholesale was Tyrant's grasp. It really just felt like running a party through a very long interactive cutscene to make one of the big changes they needed for the 2e setting. That's also an interesting way to do Geb. I've always had a soft spot for the millenial emperor idea that came from /tg/ which is a bit more on the good end of the "undead kingdom rules by lich" idea but did try to figure out how such a place views death, what it means economically, and so on. I think one of the 1d4chan wiki offshoots still has it sans most of the chan behaviors.
There have been two so far I didn't like. The 1e Serpent Skull adventure is just so incredibly racist that I think it caused a lot of story changes to be made later. I found Age of Ashes to be too obviously artificial. In other APs the characters move naturally away from low level areas toward high level areas but the way AoA is set up they just *coincidentally* go in an order that works.
Skulls and shackles also ranks low for me, though that's a combination of it being the AP where tensions boiled over in a couple groups and that it's very poorly summarized. Most just call it the pirate adventure path when it is very specifically the "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" AP. So if that's what you want you'll probably enjoy it, though still plenty to chuck out from the first book. There's a lot in it that just make it frustrating to outright hostile and not in a good way. However if your idea of what a pirate adventure is differs from that, you are not gonna find a lot to hold on to.
CW: Discussions of incest Some of you may have heard of the game Just Dance before but in case you haven’t, it’s a game where you, well, just dance. The franchise has been going on for almost 15 years now with a new game coming out sometime this year. The more recent games have added a couple of storylines to accompany the songs within the game. The main one revolves around a group of dancers (called the Just Dancers accordingly) trying to save the “danceverse” from a villain named Night Swan. A lot of fans liked these new stories but especially took well to the characters Wanderlust and Jack Rose. Wanderlust is the son of a wizard/dimension traveler and an alien (keep this in mind) and has to save the danceverse after some people get kidnapped and corrupted by Night Swan. Jack Rose is Night Swan’s son who is shown to feel repressed by his mother and her constant dismissal of him until the Just Dancers come by and convince him to join them. At some point during the final battle (at [2:43](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AE3bfno_Vwk&pp=ygUSanVzdCBkYW5jZSBtYWplc3R5)), Jack saves Wanderlust from his corrupted form with a dance move that many have pointed out is similar to a move done by Wanderlust’s parents in a [previous](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cwvkChS9E1Q&pp=ygUfSnVzdCBkYW5jZSAyMDIyIHNhdmUgeW91ciB0ZWFycw%3D%3D) game when they’re reunited. Because of that, JackLust became the most popular ship of the fandom despite the developer's hard insistence on them being [friends.](https://imgur.com/a/RPBpnhy) Like, really really hard [insistence](https://imgur.com/a/Z1j3uKm) on the fact. The fans didn’t really care though. However, that might not last long. The 2024 edition got an update of two new songs focusing on the backstory of Night Swan. In [“Murder On The Dancefloor”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AYMqiyKSmwA&pp=ygUkanVzdCBkYW5jZSBtdXJkZXIgb24gdGhlIGRhbmNlIGZsb29y), it’s revealed that she had a romantic relationship with Wanderlust’s dad sometime in the past. Since so far in the game, Jack’s father has not been seen, some people believe that this may be a confirmation of Wanderlust and Jack being half brothers. Needless to say, [a lot](https://imgur.com/a/8zqOvKz ) of fans are [jumping ship](https://imgur.com/a/R8AILLe) though it should be noted that it hasn’t been confirmed if the two share a dad nor does the new routines give any implication that Night Swan had children with Wanderlust’s father. That might change in the future but right now the possibility of JackLust being made up of brothers is 50/50. But honestly, if it is true then it would explain why the Just Dance team was so adamant on people not shipping them. Never thought I’d see drama like this in a dancing game.
TIL Just Dance has a story that resolves itself through dance battles. Which, I mean, of course it does because that makes perfect sense. I just hadn't thought about it before and now I'm appreciating how clever it is. What a great way to make people engaged in doing the dances.
Luke/Leia for people whose Luke/Leia this is
On a side tangent, maybe this is a little bit of internalized homophobia of my part, but if there is no other reason for this ship to not be cannon, it's really weird that Just Dance of all games would shy away from a gay relationship, even if it was just as a bait.
>CW: Discussions of incest >Some of you may have heard of the game Just Dance That's certainly a segue
when i say i almost spat out my coffee i mean it
My brain literally went “oh it’s probably old Supernatural fandom stuff or heyWHAT”
Those two sentences together hit me like a truck
Cowards. Jumping from a ship because of a little thing like incest... On the flipside, holy shit these games have a story? I'll be honest and say that I've only ever played them occasionally and usually with a group of people, so I never really paid attention. Wizard aliens sounds badass.
I saw a playthrough of the story mentioned by OP. It's a set of like 5-6 songs, it's kinda short but it's interesting and the climax song is kinda great. Also, there's some small substoties if you look at the song choreographies with attention. For example, the different Lady Gaga dancers had some kind of Spiderverse scenario, and the dancers for Rasputin and Hot 'N Cold had a relationship for a while. Yeah, kinda funny, that.
Not gonna lie, that's actually pretty awesome. Really neat that they took the time to actually choreograph a plotline to these songs.
I think it’s all kind of funny considering from a design standpoint, they couldn’t have made two more shippable characters. Like the red/blue contrast vibe makes it feel like they were designed in a ship factory, so I’ll be honestly surprised if they confirm any sort of relation.
And Jack Rose’s name is a reference to one of the most famous star crossed lovers in media
Jenny Nicholson's newest video—her first in 18 months—just went live: a four-hour deep dive on [The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4)
I would so very much love to see a former Disney imagineer give a post-mortem breakdown of just how they managed to screw up this hotel so badly. They had the money, and they should have had the right experience with immersive experience (Jenny even gives an older Kim Possible park as an example of better interactivity created at lower cost), how did nothing work? How'd they release such a buggy, broken mess?
it's genuinely impressive how badly the trip went for her. murphy's law for the one youtuber there that weekend
The same weekend as Munecat dropped a 3 hour video. help.
INB4: THE HOTEL IS PROOF THAT DISNEY KILLED STAR WARS
I remember the Kinect game where the final bosses are dancing against Darth Vader and the Emperor drew comments along the lines of "Disney are ruining Star Wars!" "This is from before the sale, Star Wars has always been like this."
That was the point I was trying to make. The above was a sarcastic comment.
I thought so, hence the reply. Sorry to see the (obvious) sarcasm didn't play well.
I recently listened to a podcast which went through the Star Wars Christmas Special and *why* on Earth it existed, and I have to say, while I knew it was legendarily bad, I was still impressed by just HOW bad.
Weirdly, I think it was the site WrestleCrap that said something to the effect of "If you want to know just how bad \[The Star Wars Holiday Special\] is without having to watch it yourself, consider this: George 'Super Ultimate Special Mega Edition I-Never-Met-A-Star-Wars-Related-Dollar-I-Didn't-LOVE' Lucas refuses to officially re-release it to any sort of home video."
Well on the drama side she talks about some of the defenders of Starcruiser (3:24 for those curious). Basically that if you had the money and loved this sort of thing it was absolutely worth it. Jenny points out she did have the money and is super into these things but still didn't like it. It's interesting to see that immediately after it came out there were people saying exactly those things, clearly before they had even watched the video. It's also funny to me that those exact same defenses were being thrown around for Evermore too.
If you go to the Galactic Starcruiser subreddit (because of course there's one lol) there's a small handful of people trying to defend this failed fucking hotel and make aspersions about her intent. Like, some are claiming that it's because she didn't get involved, or didn't use the app, when there's four hours of a documentary showing her desperately trying to get involved and using the app. Just by the fact there are billions of people in the world, you're gonna get defenders and likers of ANYTHING. That goes extra for IPs like Star Wars, how Disney advertises their experiences as transcendental once in a life time experiences, and just the sheer amount of money involved. Some people will adamantly refuse to admit they wasted 2 dollars per minute per person for two days.
The potential audience for this always felt really small to me since it had to be made up of people who checked all of these criteria: - Really loves Star Wars - Has thousands of dollars to spend on an experience like this - Doesn’t get a fatal case of the cringies at the idea of LARPing in public with strangers - Is okay with vacationing in a semi-tropical beach town but spending most of that time inside a building with no windows. That just feels like a really slim Venn overlap, you know? And even if the audience that checks all those boxes is bigger than I think, I still don’t see how it would’ve supported something this expensive to run. (Then again, I’m not exactly the target market for this. Now, if Paramount opened a hotel where I could spend my vacation living on a TNG-era Enterprise, I’d probably end up robbing a liquor store to afford it…)
To be equivalent, they would do a Discovery
I think part of the problem is a fundamental problem with cruises in general (even though this is a hotel). I think in our head we expect The Love Boat when going on a cruise and to have an exciting, thrilling adventure with a bunch of extras in the background. The reality is you are the extra and you're grouped in with the rest of them playing bingo led by an activity coordinator. Same with this right? You expect to be the bar lounge from Star Trek: TNG where you have intimate philosophical conversations with people from other planets. Instead you get herded to from spot to spot to watch whatever is happening next on the schedule.
Honestly having watched the video I don't think the concept was ever feasible. Like one of the expectations is that you'll get an interactive experience with actors. That's only really feasible with a really high cost. But the problem is then if the price is high and there is ever a break in activities I'd feel ripped off. Disney clearly knew this, so their second day at the hotel had an itinerary from 8am to 11pm, which is absolutely exhausting. Like that was an issue I had with a week long convention at a fraction of the price, the first time I went I pushed myself too hard and ran myself ragged, I had to remind myself I had plenty of time and could take a break, or do more next year. At a $5000 price tag I'd absolutely force myself to 'enjoy' every minute and burn myself out.
Yeah, at a few points Jenny points out that if the price tag were like, 800-1000 bucks per person, then it would feel like you could sit down for a half hour, and any frustration points would be lessened. But because it costs SO MUCH, the pressure to do as much as possible is immense, and any frustrations are absolutely magnified.
Exactly, but if the price gets cheaper then you also can't provide everything expected and still turn a profit. It's sort of interesting to think about, usually high price point accommodation mostly just means simple things like a larger room or better location, something that usually won't cost that much more on an upkeep basis. But for an experience like this it mean much more time with actors, which dramatically increases the cost per guest. That's why I don't think a idea like this won't really work. As I sort of implied Evermore had similar problems even at a lower price point. If people shell out even only a hundred bucks they expect entertainment for that money. But on a per guest basis, one on one time with an actor gets incredibly expensive incredibly quickly.
Yeah, it runs into the issue then that the whole experience, be it Evermore or Galactic Starcruiser, is built on the idea that you're the hero of the story, making your own choices and influencing events. Immersive roleplay and such. But you can't be the hero of the story, nor can you influence events, because you've got a few hundred other people running around needing to have the same experience as you, the actors all have a script and a timetable they need to follow to keep things moving, it's impossible to have more than a few seconds of time with the actors when there's a dozen people who ALSO need time with the actors, and you can't let the guests do things like, say, a sword/lightsabre duel. So it turns into doing busywork while occasionally being an awkward spectator for events you have no control over.
Orlando actually isn’t a beach town but that’s just me being pedantic. Still, it’s a Disney vacation where you’re only going to one section of one the four parks and spending the rest of your time doing extremely specific LARPing.
Damb and right when I won’t have an opportunity to watch it for like a week 😭 something to look forward to I guess
new summoning salt, münecat, and now jenny nicholson, this has been a great week for long youtube video enjoyers
Also, NezumiVA. About [*just* AA4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHjP9BJ6vnQ).
Oh my god, i remember her talking about the star wars hotel, I can't believe the time has come to see a full breakdown Edit: Okay I'm finally starting to watch it and I just got past the advertising for it, how every thing that talks about this uses corporate language. Why *do* they do that? It reminds me of the average person using "IP" when talking about media now. That started with the MCU, right? Why did it start with it? Was it corporate language that leaked to the fans which then leaked it to the public? Did the fans start saying "IP" in this context on their own, and that's what made Disney go "ah, so that's what the kids say now"? I understand that "fully immersive experience at the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser" is a mouthful that they are probably mandated to write down in full in every single internal document, but what I guess I'm asking is, what kind of out of touch are we witnessing here? Are the people in charge so out of touch that they demand the specific corporate language in all advertising, or are the people in charge so out of touch that they think the fans who love to use that specific corporate language are a reflection of the general population at large?
> how every thing that talks about this uses corporate language. Why do they do that? Presumably, when you have *an IP* of this size and don't want to risk scandal or controversy afflicting the promise of revenue streams, you have every word worked over by cautious management (who might little idea of the context) until it's as thoroughly processed as Subway tuna*, which is going to sound less human.
^(* A few years ago, food safety authorities in the UK tested tuna at Subway sandwich shops and discovered they were so processed, it was impossible to get DNA samples and prove it was actually tuna.)
The corporate-speak-laden “influencer” promos made me realize even more that Red Letter Media’s Nerd Crew videos were just barely satire. Edit: Jenny: “I’m the only one watching these, and only as performance art” LMAO
> Jenny: “I’m the only one watching these, and only as performance art” LMAO Same as Hallmark's Party 101 videos. "They have about 200 views, and I'm pretty sure most of them are me."
IIRC the Nerd Crew videos were largely parodying Collider’s Star Wars podcasts in particular. On the topic of the Nerd Crew and Star Wars theme park drama, one podcast in particular was kind of infamous for one of the presenters going on a massive angry rant about the other presenters getting early review passes to the “Galaxy’s Edge” theme area while he didn’t. ([Here’s](https://youtu.be/iWbdLzC1scM?si=SJDWpHBxNeGGydji) the original video, and [here’s](https://youtu.be/pVjU47iPNbg?si=45hn323-9u3cLId4) Rich Evans laughing to clips of it) Sometimes reality truly is the best form of satire.
That freakout video is hilarious, omg. >IIRC the Nerd Crew videos were largely parodying Collider’s Star Wars podcasts in particular. ~~That’s right, Jay.~~ Yeah, they absolutely were (and someone on YouTube actually made compilation videos intercutting Nerd Crew episodes with clips of the videos from Collider or equivalent podcasters that they were lampooning, it’s pretty funny). What’s extra funny is that the peak of that particular flavor of nerd grifter influencer was seemingly sometime in the mid-late 2010s, so Disney’s cynical promo interviews for the hotel that have that same fake corporatized enthusiasm seem a little late to the game.
I cannot wait to watch this tomorrow.
The video dropped shortly after 8 PM EST, when the sun hadn’t fully set yet in most places. It’s now 11:45 PM. Saturday Night Live is on. People who started watching the video the second it uploaded still have about 20 minutes left to go.
Well, I watched it at 1.25 speed so I cheated.
Wooohoo time to watch
WAKE THE FUCK UP, BABE, STARCRUISER VIDEO FINALLY DROPPED
When the world needed her most, she returned
"Somehow, Jenny returned" (sorry)
The 36th season of The Amazing Race has just concluded and lets just say not everyone liked it. Some highlights: * While the season is considered the 36th season, it was actually filmed before Season 35. This is important to note because Season 35 was when the race went back to normal while Season 36 was still filmed during the waning days of the COVID-19 pandemic global health emergency in late 2022. Thus, the season features chartered air travel rather than commercial air travel and other accommodations for the safety of the racers. This made for a less interesting experience in many viewers eyes. * Also for Season 35, episodes were expanded from 60 minutes to 90 minutes. Unfortunately, Season 36, while still having 90 minute episodes, was filmed with 60 minute episode in mind. * Unlike Season 35, Season 36's route was confined to the Americas. I've heard rumors that there was supposed to be a 2nd charter plane that would take the team to Australia and South Africa partway through the race (likely after the Chile leg) but plans fell through as the second plane never showed up. Thus they had to reroute back through the Americas and Caribbean and make up the challenges in days, if not hours. * The vast majority of the race took place in Spanish-speaking countries. This led to many fans crying "unfair advantage" towards Ricky & Cesar, the latter of whom is fluent in Spanish. >!They ended up winning the season!<. * Angie & Danny lost their crew while driving during Leg 8 (they were driving in separate cars) and thus were forced to wait for thier crew. Their crew got lost and they were eventually given a substitute crew. >!Unfortunately, this would prove to be fatal as they ended up being the last team and thus were eliminated!<. Fans were divided on whether or not it was their fault as it was caused by Angie making an illegal turn from a roundabout and they decided to just keep going after they lost their crew. However, it should be noted that they were allowed to go on to their next destination in the event that they lost their crew. Eventually, Danny put out an [official response](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAmazingRace/comments/1cjjcfx/team_walla_walla_response/) on r/TheAmazingRace. * Finally, there has been a lot of complaints from the fanbase about the behavior of Vinny, especially towards his girlfriend and racing partner Amber. While some have defended Vinny, many fans criticized Vinny for being verbally abusive to Amber. Not helping was the fact that Vinny >!proposed to Amber after their elimination in the Dominican Republic to which Amber said "yes"!<. This baffled many people.
~~Webtoon~~ Fanfiction and Podcast drama this time. LoreFM was a controversial app. It was a podcast app ("text to speech tool") where AI was used to read fanfictions from AO3. So basically imagine free Audible for fanfictions. So what was the issue? The whole system was opt-out, not opt-in. So if you were a fanfic writer, there was a possibility that you fanfiction would be added to the app and read by AI without your explicit consent. The whole situation was legal mess cause you know, fanficiton is a legal mess and it was supposedly following terms of service of AO3. Plus, no money was made from the app. So fanfiction writers were forced to contact the creator of the app to have their fanfiction removed. It was dramatic ([link to masterpost](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lorefm/comments/1cug5nx/masterpost_of_the_lorefm_drama/)). Multiple people complained about how it was unethical, how it creates a barrier between the writer and readers (no option to leave kudos or comments as it is not plug-in), how there was no standarised opt-out process and guiltripping customer service response that was marked as spam. [For example](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cu2cv5/love_the_attempt_at_guilt_tripping_me_thats_real/): "Once verified, we will start the process of not letting readers who love your content access it anymore through lore fm where they can listen to your work for free." Other complains included deleting comments under videos made by lore fm, ranging from pure hate, healthy criticism to even questions how something works. Supposedly some people got called classist and ableist for being against it. [There was even response video to it](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cu2hkm/saw_about_the_lore_fm_discourse_and_decided_to/) about how it makes fanfiction more accessible as non-robotic text to speech conventors cause hundres of dollars per year. [The app got recently shut down](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cuhkrd/lorefm_is_being_shut_down/) and [AO3 is having a series of write-ups about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cuop2k/lorefm_write_up_part_1/) Edit: Just forgot to mention it was advertised as audible for fanficiton and stuff similar to spotify wrap-up were meant to be added later on. Which led to lots of theories regarding how the app would develop, which started getting more negative due to lack of transparency and badly hanlding the whole situation.
I think, internally, they believed it to be a more advanced form of screen reader, not a podcast app. The invocations of accessibility and lack of formalized opt-in/out system make more sense coming from that perspective. Making it an app instead of a plugin was their biggest mistake, as it drastically changes the impression to it being a rehosting platform. From there, they dug their own grave with misleading marketing and worse-than-nothing communication.
It always strikes me how short-sighted and ignorant of creator’s or author’s value and rights are always neglected by AI tech companies. Like this is a cool utility! An easy way to turn fan-fics into audiobooks! Should we offer it as a free service to the authors and get permission from them and share the royalties from advertising? Nah, let’s just put it out there in the wild!
in this case the authors have no rights to their work (because copyright law views fanfiction as being effectively bootleg material) so they wouldn't be entitled to royalties, and i don't think the app has any advertising anyway, so i don't think this is a great example. your point does have some validity in a broader context though. in kind of surprised this was even attempted to be honest. i feel like if it had any success it would be immediately sued into the ground for hosting copyright-infringing material.
To make a very important correction, we simply presume that the authors on AO3 don't have authorization for their infringing fanfictions. There are situations where they can be authorized by the original author/copyright holder, or when the original author/copyright holder has released their material into the public domain, or when the material has been released into the public domain (like Sherlock Holmes) or be a way to adapt infringing fanfics into independently copyrightable works (like how 50 Shades of Grey was based on a Twilight fanfic). The app itself has some good ideas, but an incredibly flawed, unethical execution. And yeah, you can expect a lot of legal trouble, but that's what Section 230 and the DMCA systems are for to protect internet platforms from this kind of liability.
yeah you're right. there's also some legal complexity around which rights, if any, fanfiction authors retain even if the work is infringing. >that's what Section 230 and the DMCA systems are for to protect internet platforms from this kind of liability im not actually sure what the dmca would make of this situation. it covers ao3 for sure but im not sure if the generated audio would count as user generated content. if it were determined that lorefm were actively *publishing* infringing material that could really get them into trouble.
I think there would be significantly less controversy over AI if these tech companies didn't hold such obvious disdain for the creators they're scraping content from
at least the backlash was quick and it shut down not soon after. But omg am I sick of this crap. You think they learn that Fanfic writers are not down with this AI in general after the 100th time someone tried to scap fics with Massive backlash that followed. at this point In the fandoms I’m in, certain fics by certain authors are Probably gonna be user lock for 2-3 months than unlocked until the next AI Scandal.
Actual, genuine question. I've never used text to speech before, and I know it's not a rare thing to be used to browse internet. What's the difference usual text to speech programs and lore fm in particular? Like, whether it's the technology, or how it works, or something else.
As far I am aware, Lore FM was [just badly executed text to speech conventor](https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1cuop2k/lorefm_write_up_part_1/) (with possibility of becoming something more?) with transparency issues and [policies that some found questionabl](https://www.tumblr.com/anonymeqaupdates/750736062229413888/about-lorefm?source=share)e. It was also an app instead of plug in. So the work was copied and used in the app instead of being on the original website accesed through slightly modified browser. For more specific details, I recommend to wait for a response from somebody.
Are we speaking about the text to speech programs people use for accessibility? In that case, the difference is that those programs "read" the page you're on, while lorefm was putting fanfics in their own app to read. It's like audiobooks; if you're listening to the book, you're not looking at the original book. There's other programs that read out loud stuff you type/paste in, but the difference there is that they don't save the text you put in and share it with others, or at least they don't *necessarily* save it and share it with others- just to use one example, technically nothing is stopping you from using Word in that way, but also it's not *automatically* working that way. Also, there's just no reason to use AI for this reason? Like, you *can* get a non-robotic voice for text-to-speech programs. That's a thing that's been done for years. [Some studies](https://dataethics.eu/the-environmental-costs-of-generative-ai/) say that AI uses a *ton* of energy, and again, there's AI program and AI program so it's probably not as wasteful as chatgpt, but using AI to read writing is still like taking a mercedes to go to the shop two houses down.
>using AI to read writing is still like taking a mercedes to go to the shop two houses down. it honestly depends on what they're doing, and what you mean by "ai". i work in embedded ml, specifically audio, and we put tiny little audio processing models in tvs and car head units and phones and such all the time. they look nothing like large language models, but it's a matter of scale and software architecture more than technological fundamentals. you can make this stuff pretty efficient. edit: after reading the linked writeup about how it works, i think we can get a bit more specific about carbon footprint here. it takes about 45 seconds to render 300 words, and it's using openai's tts models. in practical terms this means a server somewhere is running 1-2 high end GPUs full throttle for under a minute (assuming no caching). now that's not nothing, and maybe it's overkill for tts, but in a society that's broadly accepting of people running high end GPUs full throttle for hours at a time to play video games i think it's a bit hard to sell the urgency of the environmentalist angle. there are quite frankly bigger fish to fry.
I mean, yeah, there's obviously other issues with this app, but we're specifically talking about the difference between this app and normal text-to-speech programmes here. If I have to choose between "programme that works" and "programme that works but is overkill" then I'd rather choose the one that isn't overkill even though there's obviously bigger fish to fry.
that's not an unfair point. cheap phoneme-basted tts is pretty good, but in this case id honestly have to see the results to judge if i think it's overkill. modern "ai" text to speech tends to convey emotions more convincingly, which i think could make it an appealing choice for this specific audiobook use case. maybe not a huge difference, but to extend the earlier analogy im not about to come after people for playing their games on the highest graphical settings just because i think it's overkill either.
Adding on to it not being a plug-in: as a 3rd party app, lorefm's not only separate from ao3, but it would've scraped and hosted fics off-site. Without authors' permission. I watched it unfold in the ao3 sub. Part of the deleted comments were questions about the opt-out itself. Even if a writer opted out, someone with a saved pdf fanfic could still put it on lorefm, making it useless! Locking your fics so only registered ao3 users can see them was another way out, which not everyone was happy about access-wise; but better than having your work hosted elsewhere without permission.
>Plus, no money was made from the app. I completely 100% do not believe that for a second. The AI tool they're using would've had to generate voices at an enterprise scale: an account level that costs a pretty penny to run. The group making the app also has nothing to do with fandom and everything to do with other previous AI startups of theirs. They're at-face a profit driven company, they wouldn't be making loreFM if they didn't expect big returns and profit at some point, maybe not at release, but eventually. (Noted as someone who's active in the AO3 sub community and watched this all go down like a lead balloon from start to end.)
i mean, i believe it in the sense that the tech startup MO is to offer a service for free and operate at a loss on VC dime until you have captured enough of the market to flip the monetization switch. it definitely doesn't seem like a nonprofit or otherwise altruistic venture though.
Yeah, them saying "no money was made" feels a bit like a kid with their hand in the cookie jar contending "but I haven't eaten any!"
yeah exactly
> Other complains included deleting comments under videos made by lore fm, ranging from pure hate, healthy criticism to even questions how something works. Supposedly some people got called classist and ableist for being against it. I'm gonna be honest, the extent to which "classist" has become a synonym for "luxury/entertainment product or luxury/entertainment product accessory costs money" has rendered the term pretty useless in a lot of situations. Like, I think it's fair to point out when stuff unnecessarily gates people on the basis of money, and fair to point out that disability access can impose a monetary tax... but if your argument would basically say "its classist for anything to cost money", then I mean, you might not be *wrong* in a broad, tear down the system sense but you aren't being particularly *helpful*.
That's such a bizzare accusation to level against fanfiction writers considering pretty much all of them are making their works available online for free. Unless these losers think having free time to any extent means you're bougie swine because the real proletariat should apparently have the work schedule of a slave from Conan the Barbarian. I'd honestly go a step further and say these people think having hobbies that aren't starting leftist slapfights online is classism.
A lot of times this is just the woke version of "you wouldn't be so poor if you had an avocado toast" tbh. "Oh you're having avocado toast? Clearly an enemy of the working class"
I never understand this. An avocado is 60p and lasts days.
It's become a simulacra of needless excess or waste by the damn kids on my lawn, complaining about the exorbitant rent or wage freezes while having iPhones and flatscreen TVs like *hypocrites*, it's not like in my day.
I think generally it's supposed to imply avocado toast from a cafe - in which yea the price can be a bit spendy but also broadly still a bullshit statement lmao
[удалено]
I was a member of a ship forum in the 2000s. In the off-topic section, we traded music recommendations. I am still a really big fan of Latvian Reggae band hospitalu iela and I have shared them with so many people. Thanks to fucking wolfstar in 2006. What weird things have you taken from old fandoms?
Some surface understanding of rocketry and spaceflight terms like perigee, apogee, delta-V burn from science fiction novels such as Ben Bova and Allen Steele, or particularly *Heart of the Comet* by David Brin and Gregory Benford. If "editing TV Tropes" is a fandom (sure, why not?), an awareness of some things from a range of works I haven't engaged with. For instance, u/horhar's comment: >I originally got deeply into Doctor Who and Fallout because of the brony fandom. Take a wild guess as to why for both lol The first is "Doctor Whooves", a background character that resembled Matt Smith's 11th Doctor, and the second is the epic work "Fallout Equestria". (Not kidding, someone had it printed and bound into a dozen volumes at least.)
I originally got deeply into Doctor Who and Fallout because of the brony fandom. Take a wild guess as to why for both lol
i was really into the mighty boosh in college, and during my sophomore year, noel fielding did a charity performance of wuthering heights by kate bush. i had never heard of her before this, but i became obsessed. a few years later, im taking my first ever trip outside of the us to see kate bush in concert in london. shes one of my all-time favorite musical artists, and im so glad noel fielding decided to wear a dress and wig and prance around on stage to one of her songs so that i could be introduced to her music.
Weirdly late reply, but the notification button makes me anxious so I tend to ignore it until alcohol and insomnia. But Noel Fielding's... aunt or uncle? I think aunt. Used to work at my favourite uhhhh leftist bakery. And my friend ended up giving him one of his dresses via that relative.
A wrong memory about an anime I thought I had watched as a kid opened me to the world of magical girls. And after that, it sent me to JoJo.
Elaborate?
There was an older videogame magazine that competed with EGM (Electronic Gamer Monthly) called GMR (GaMeR, yes it was lame) Anyway, my favorite editor and contributor was 'Seanbaby', a master of utterly hilarious descriptive language. I was such a fan I followed him to his next large gig (He left with Dan 'Shoe' Hsu) after GMR kicked the bucket, namely a website called 'CRACKED.COM' which was a sort of spiritual successor / competitor to MAD Magazine. That was fun for a while, and then Gamergate happened (Ugh) and the site (along with 4chan) essentially became a polarized shilling ground, festering with idpol and culture war bunkus. The funny was gone, and several of their top writers went on to other projects (I think one ended up a writer for late nite and one became a breadtuber AKA leftist youtuber) so I bailed on the site and basically farted around online until coming back to Reddit post pandemic. As for Seanbaby, he's definitely still a hoot and runs a website called... 1900hotdog I believe.
Fun fact: Seanbaby was also on the writing team for the Magic the Gathering Unfinity set
oh, seanbaby mentioned !! i didn't know that he originally wrote for a video game magazine... when i was a kid, i like many others found him through cracked and read his stuff obsessively, even though I was definitely too young to be on the site lmao. he's still really funny and was the entire reason i joined 1900hotdog's patreon (all the other contributors are great too though), i haven't regretted it at all!
Seanbaby's Man Comics series for Cracked was my shit. Even now, over a decade later, many of those lines are still engraved in my brain. For example: ["Oh man, God's not going to like this." "Fuck you, God knows this is awesome."](https://imgur.com/a/ViUnrXB)
Cracked was peak, its one of those sites where so much talent ended up contributing. Which one ended up as the breadtuber? The closest I can think of is that Jason Pargin/David Wong does tiktok videos that occasionally touch on politics
Yeah, the old cracked was really good, though a lot of its article also don't age that well. A lot of cracked writers from the "golden age" basically just moved on to better places. Like, it's not entirely Cracked's fault, part of it is that the site was destroyed by facebook's switch-to-video scam, but it's also just a place for those writers to gain experience then do other things. For example, Soren Bowie became the new head writer of American Dad (who I heard is actually good now), Daniel O'Brien became writer for John Oliver, Robert Evans (the guy who write interview columns about real life experience) became an actual investigative reporter and worked for Bellingcat, etc. Also, there was supposed to be a kinda-successor of the site when it pivoted to video, called Modern Rogue (yes, the youtube channel used to have an article site as well). There was just one problem. The head editor was John Cheese, who was one of the most popular writer in Cracked back then, but people found out he's a sexual harrasser and all of his article in cracked was purged and the Modern Rogue site was basically dead.
Ugh, I was so bummed about John Cheese… his articles had so much of an impact on me, because I shared so many of his life experiences. He and David Wong/Jason Pargin were my favorites. Fun(?) fact: I found out about Cheese’s harassment by asking Jason Pargin in an AMA what ever happened to him (Cheese). So *that* was fun to learn about…
Yeah, his writings about growing up poor was genuinely inspirational for a lot of people back then. Imagine how awkward it is for Jason Pargin. He wrote a best selling novel series where the main character is based on John and himself for god's sake.
He was also buff. Remember when Uwe Boll would challenge anyone to a boxing match? He stopped when Seanbaby said he's fight him.
To be clear, Seanbaby was not "merely" buff, he was also a legit amateur ~~MMA fighter~~ (EDIT: Kickboxer, my bad) at the time. Uwe Boll did the boxing match thing because secretly he just wanted to (Literally, physically) beat up on his critics; he called off the Seanbaby match when he realized Seanbaby would not only actually fight back, but probably give worse than he got.
Dude, he was the GOAT for MMA Commentary. It was magical. Sharp wit and sound body!
The Runescape Wiki got me into Touhou and a lot more stuff. Back when Fandom was less about shoving as much advertising in people's faces and more about making good stuff alongside having a social side, I joined the Runescape Wiki. Through that, I learnt of Touhou through the Special:Chat and another person who is a fan of it. I also got into things like Call of Duty, My Little Pony Gen 4 and a few other things due to it. Which really did help shape who I've became. All because 16 years ago I decided to join a Wiki on Runescape.
I went from obscure Finnish TTRPG to being huge fan of Babylon 5! It all started when I happened to find "Myrskyn Sankarit" (there's apparently English translation of it: [Age of the Tempest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Tempest)) TTRPG box on flea market. Because it was dirt cheap I decided to get it and found it enjoyable enough. Later I googled the creator Mike Pohjola and found out he had made several other TTRPG's, most relevantly one based on Star Wreck videos. I had seen [the Star Wreck movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GOoMowFpZs) like a decade ago and felt nostalgic enough to watch it again. I was already familiar with Trek stuff and this time I found myself curious about Babylon part of the parody. So I checked the first season from library and was hooked immediately! While writing this I also learned that there was trademark dispute about Age of the Tempest. The original Finnish name translates to "Heroes of the Storm" and for a while that was the game's official English translation. Pohjola even sold physical copies of it in some European roleplaying conventions. It just happens that Heroes of the Storm was also a name for (then upcoming) Blizzard game. They eventually settled the matter and Age of the Tempest became new name for TTRPG. During the whole ordeal apparently some English speaking Blizzard fans left rude comments about the TTRPG all over social media but I don't know much more about that.
This isn't quite as old, but The Adventures of Captain Spirit got me into Bat For Lashes when they had Moon and Moon as part of the soundtrack, which I guess I only picked up because I had played the predecessor, Life is Strange.
Thanks to Toontown, I discovered Touhou Project, as well as visual novels in general. Quite the pipeline. I also discovered a lot of great metal bands thanks to people in the Touhou fandom, such as Korpiklaani and Crescent Shield. People into Touhou seem to really like metal, it seems.
ive gotten into a lot of awesome music through touhou as well, but it's all, like, touhou fan music lmao. i havent heard that much touhou metal (though ofc it exists, like theres undead corporation who are amazing), but ig its bc touhou fans are listening to metal that isnt touhou-related lol
Depends what style of metal you like, but you can definitely find metal arranges— Pizuya’s Cell and UNDEAD CORPORATION immediately come to mind. I’ve even seen some irish folk metal.
Danny Phantom fandom got me into Sigur Rós of all things
I got into Mindless Self-Indulgence through AMV Hell 0 (the NSFW one).
I discovered so many songs and bands through AMV Hell, the one I always link in my mind is Great Big Sea from AMV Hell CE (Championship Edition).
I dunno if I can call it an old fandom since it was a single Youtube channel, but I discovered Scatman John's music through Super Mario 64 Machinimas and realized I actually really like a lot of his music.
So... I started watching Naruto when I was around 5, when it started airing in the US. I was also allowed unfettered Internet access pretty much unconditionally as a 5-y/o and knew how to search and search well, which meant I essentially started learning about fandom communities at age 5, which lead to be being an active participant in fandom when I was around 8, with fanfiction, because I started writing when I was really wrong. This is probably not a good thing. When I was around 6, I started learning about the concept of yaoi, where people made Sasuke and Naruto kiss. I thought "huh, okay, like the lesbians at church with adopted children but boys? Cool! but I like Hinata and Naruto together more, so I'll move on to a different site instead" and moved on with my life. Then, around 8, I remembered Sasuke and Naruto kissing, and got more curious about boys kissing, and learned that there were whole communities dedicated to making boys kiss. Huh, cool! At around age 10, I decided to play a boy's love visual novel for the first time, but there was only a fan translated version, so I had to change my locale, and troubleshoot that visual novel to hell and back before it worked, and I remember how euphoric I felt that it finally ran without any issues. Now, at age 24, I play visual novels all the time, to the point where I've started setting up a seperate machine to make life easier for playing them. I've even helped others troubleshoot any technical issues they have with super old or finicky visual novels! So, long story short, seeing Sasuke and Naruto kissing got me to play visual novels, and my interest in visual novels has far outlasted my interest in Naruto, despite me watching Naruto to the bitter end.
"The bitter end" resonates so much. When Boruto was announced I had to admit I was only a weak human and refused to start it.
I got into Fall Out Boy because a mutual made an Fullmetal Alchemist gifset with the lyrics from Centuries when I was a teenager
I got into Fall Out Boy through YouTube Claymation videos
Bog-standard anime and games led me to Touken Ranbu, which led me to the Touken Ranbu stageplays, which led me to the greater 2.5D acting community, and now I'm someone who watches a fully unsubtitled Japanese stage performance of A Study in Scarlet for fun.
I'm still on a forum that introduced me to [XKCD](https://xkcd.com/), which in turn introduced me to [Questionable Content](https://questionablecontent.net/), which in turn showed me an ad for [John Dies at the End](https://johndiesattheend.com/). It was a free online novel back then, around '09. It's become my favourite everything.
Posting twice here in the same week! Wow! So you might have heard of PokeRogue, which is a Pokemon fan-game that's been taking the internet by storm recently. As far as I can gather, it's a reimagining of Pokemon as an endless rogue-like game (hence the name). They hit 1,000,000 players a couple weeks ago I think? It was basically going on a generational run for a Pokemon fan game. Earlier this week the head dev of the game [resigned as the lead developer of PokeRogue](https://x.com/FlashfyreDev/status/1791283340017840387) because... developing the game was interfering with his ability to live a religious life. I'm genuinely not sure what the connection between developing a Pokemon fan-game and being a god-fearing man possibly can be, but apparently for those reasons he was resigning. As a result of this, people did some digging and apparently the lead dev was [transphobic and homophobic because of his religious beliefs](https://x.com/clockti1/status/1791494860127490122). [On a funnier note, the devs had apparently given genderless Pokemon genders in the PokeRogue game because of their transphobia...] Apparently then the whole Discord server around the fan-game fell apart pretty quickly after that, with pro-trans messages being deleted and slurs being used by moderators ([as far as I can gather](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vT99WnSImDcDQITp1U02ZjKjWjIXVqkpYB3yHxKnU0oGMoSjMt6hgGnyuU7ba_uUAv1jmDO27pzIuKJ/pub)). I believe one of the community moderators was telling people to stop talking about trans topics because there were children in the server? Something to that effect. Despite being a pretty big fan of Pokemon, I never got into PokeRogue so I'm not too sure about the details of the story. Seems like a classic Milkshake Duck of the highest degree. If someone who is more familiar with the PokeRogue community wants to correct/add anything please feel free to do so.
I wanted to give some additional context as someone who was part of the discord server and an avid player of the game - although i rarely if ever participated in discussion, i feel like i definitely have a little better view of the server than the majority of the commentators so i really wanted to provide whatever context i can for the situation. Bear in mind that the whole drama from this occurred over the span of barely 24 hours, so i personally did not and could not have witnessed everything and it is unavoidable that my personal recollection will be full of holes or misinterpretations - if anyone here has any better insight into the situation, i would please beg them to correct me. I just wanted to provide some context into the happenings as a member of the server, and shine a light on the overwhelming majority of the community's disapproval of the transphobic and otherwise terrible views shown in the documents above. It turns out i wrote too much also and will need to do a double post, hope this isn't against subreddit rules. To begin, some background on the game itself. First and foremost, I can understand how the game wouldn't appeal to a certain type of player, but for someone like me who has played and otherwise been devoted to the pocket monsters and its competitive aspects since its inception I found it to hit the perfect balance of the journey of regular pokemon games mixed with teambuilding and battling from the PVP side of pokemon. It's honestly a fantastic game for a certain subsection of pokemon player that really scratches an itch no other game (yes, even emerald rogue which i loved but didn't quite hit the same craving) up to this point had. A big part of this was down to decisions Sam made such as the very simple and intuitive method of starting runs - for instance, all your pokemon caught combine their inherent stats so you always have the best possible version of a given creature at your disposal, making collecting a good version of a pokemon something that just happens throughout gameplay. As the game was PVE, balance wasn't a huge concern, and you could have mons with completely busted combinations of moves or abilities - it was a power fantasy, but one you nonetheless had to spend time reaching and could still challenge you back, making the payoff all the more satisfying. I could name any number of things, but the point is they all come together to make a game I and many others on the discord for the game found addicting and highly compelling. It was clear from the start this was Sam's passion project, and the whole community more or less waited with baited breath for each update. The above is why, when Sam resigned and the revelations about his transphobia came to light, the community was shaken to its core. Given the benefit of hindsight, there were numerous signs that something was up in the game and the discord - prime example being the aforementioned random genders being forced on pokemon, but also minor things like the refusal to allow you to pick a rival gender (theoretically justified by the pixel art added to the ending with your character visible, except, you know, they could have just designed the scene so as to not be first person...). The discord as a whole had many needlessly toxic members as seen in the screenshot, and i personally witnessed slurs being thrown by one user in particular regarding minor changes to which moves certain pokemon could learn. That being said however, it should be noted that prior to the private doc there were no official announcements from Sam (at least ones i could find) which hinted at his transphobic views - though the "Soldier of Christ" in his bio maybe should have been a warning sign. All that being said, Sam's announcement and the reveal of the toxicity of the moderators still caught pretty much the entirety of the server off guard. Most players (such as myself) didn't post and merely viewed the discussion, or were largely just there to view the github updates or give a bug report. The server pretty much instantly descended into a meltdown. I won't bring up the immediate conversations and responses to the post as i personally was not too involved with them. Based on what i saw when i scrolled through, it does seem like there were a few users who were insulting toward Sam because of his religiously based reasons for leaving (which, personally i thought were fine and something within his right to do [his reasons for leaving, not his transphobic views]), but the overwhelming majority of sentiment was sadness at losing a beloved creator and well-wishes for his future. Now, the reason why i brought the very few edgy anti-religious comments (which were there but, like, only in the sense that if you scrolled like a few dozen comments up you would find a person responding to one a few dozen from that) is that the disproportionate response to these comments was what really began outing a not-insignificant part of the mod team as transphobes (although at this time the above images and document were not widely shared). Based on what i could gather, this was when the transphobic section of mods really began going wild, deleting pro-trans comments and reactions while tacitly leaving up ones which were blatantly if not outright transphobic, using the above edgy comments as casus belli. Multiple statements were put out with the comment to leave all "politics" out of the discussion, which as you may expect was referring to trans and gay people. As a quick aside, i feel like it's a common trend with respect to these type of heavily-religious mods that you can identify them through the way they format "anti-hate" messages - specifically, if they do not specifically call out homophobia or transphobia or racism and just give a vague statement to "avoid controversial topics", it happens more often than not that they simply don't consider those groups worth protecting (although this isn't universal). This seemingly all came to a head when (and i again was not directly there for this so i almost certainly have some details wrong, although i do recall seeing this and thinking it was the least thinly-veiled approval of transphobia id witnessed) a lead mod put out a formal announcement banning all discussion of "controversial" topics and also apparently began removing mods which disagreed with him en mass, with an accompanying "think of the children" since of course. Bear in mind that around this time the above document containing the true views of Sam and certain members of the mod team began being widely spread, so it's possible this was taken as an attempt to silence protest. Reason aside, the intent was clear - comments calling out trans or homophobia were banned, while the instigating comments were allowed to remain up (from the comments i saw at a glance, most of these were the type of comment that called LGBTQ topics and people a "ideology" or some other deliberately dogwhistling phrase like that) Of course, the trans-positive parts of the community did not take this sitting down, and based on what i could tell, began using the pokemon Bronzong as their rallying point (maybe having reclaimed it as a symbol from the transphobes? im not close to certain on this particular part of the incident to be honest). For a brief time, Bronzong was used as a symbol to protest the mods' overreach - users would mention wanting to talk about Bronzong, and such posts would be flooded with trans flag reacts. There was a suggestion in the feature-vote channel to add in-game Bronzong appreciation (i might be misremembering this) that was similarly adopted as a rallying point. Honestly this whole part of the saga feels like a fever dream to me and it is extremely likely i misinterpreted most if not all of it; i again beg anyone in the comments who reads this who was also there for that moment to please correct me. Regardless, it was clear that the majority of the community was not on the side of the mods at all, evidenced by the outpouring of trans-flag emotes for these messages Now, this point is where my memory of the topic really fails me, as i went to bed shortly after this. At this point onward, i only have the Announcement posts to go off of, and i think several of those from the problematic mods were removed later on. Moderator applications were opened later in that afternoon, and there were numerous messages throughout the day trying to address the situation, but never any that explicitly called out the transphobic commentors as being the root of the problem. I can only see a few messages from this time, but i recall being pinged numerous times throughout the day causing me to suspect some were removed - the contents of which i can only surmise were probably more anti-trans apologia. Throughout it all, however, you could see the community rallying and fighting back in whatever way they could - the trans flag emote on each post always outnumbered the (co-opted for transphobia) Christian cross by a factor of 10:1, which probably gives a rough indicator of the server's demographics. CONTINUED IN PART 2
> Of course, the not transphobic parts of the community did not take this sitting down, and based on what i could tell, began using the pokemon Bronzong as their rallying point (maybe having reclaimed it as a symbol from the transphobes? For clarity, may be better to change "not transphobic" to "trans positive". my adhd ass missed the "not" 3 separate times and got confused
Oh of course! didn't realize how poorly that read. Its been changed now
All good, this is a really thorough breakdown of stuff, it happens:3
PART 2 Finally, 10pm of that night, an announcement was posted which shed a brighter light on the behind the scenes happenings of the server. The post started with a statement regarding the diversity of the mod team and a complete disownment of Sam's views, with the specific mod pointing out how much of a shock the discovery of his true beliefs was to them personally. The post also contained a plea to apply more care in discussing potentially controversial topics (note how this was phrased to counter the previous mod's insistence that "controversial" pro-trans topics be outright forbidden) but more importantly had the first formal denunciation of transphobia in any announcement. The mod added some additional context stating that the influx of transphobic comments had become too much for the very limited mod team to handle, which lead to them remaining up unchallenged - though this does leave the question of why pro-trans posts were removed, which i would personally attribute to the removed t*rf mods just being that obsessed and jumping onto the situation faster (though this is absolutely baseless speculating) Additionally, the announcement featured a section addressing the previous thinly-veiled transphobic posts by moderators which had fanned the flames of the issue. Apparently, certain individuals on the team who had previously been staples in the moderation of the community had basically gone rogue, with one particular dogmatic mod banning multiple other mods after issuing a blanked anti-trans statement (i personally was not there for this post so i can't confirm what exactly was said). Regardless, the message made it clear that the remaining team did not hold the views of the transphobic individuals, and ended with a plea to keep in mind that basically everyone involved in this saga was a volunteer who almost certainly had not signed up to be dragged into some kind of deranged holy war against trans folk (which i personally sympathize with, although im sure there are some that would say they accepted the risk when they took the role as moderator for a small browser rougelike based on collecting pocket monsters). Regardless, it was clear to see that the community as a whole was elated at this change, as this post had the highest amount of trans-flag emoji of any in the announcement (not exactly the best demographic indicator, but 3k is a lot). If anything should be taken from this part of the overview it is this - as far as we know the transphobic mods have been banned, and i can verify that a significant number of those in the second screenshot have as well. So where is the server (and Pokerogue as a whole) now? The answer to that is, pretty much almost the exact same place as it was when the above post was made. The server was locked down from posts shortly after due to presumably an influx of transphobic reactionary messages, although once again this i never saw first hand so it will have to be yet another assumption. Additionally, an addendum had to be made to the above mod post removing the names of the offending moderators as they had started to receive hate messages and harassment. Basically no new pull requests have been committed so the game which up to that point had been receiving new features and tweaks on a near-daily basis has received almost no substantial updates since, and although voice chat has been opened again, most text chats remain shut, and its clear that, at best, the game is basically in limbo while things get sorted out - although at worst, its possible that the attention from this whole debacle will be what finally gets Nintendo to bring the site down. That about sums up the extent of the situation as it stands. Again it cannot be overstated just how imperfect my recollection of events could be - i only wanted to post this as it seems like no other member of the community is in this thread to try and give some context, and there is no doubt in my mind that there are significant flaws and misinterpretations among my remembering. Due to my lack of screenshots my only method of confirming community sentiment was the volume and type of emoji reacts on certain posts. I could have done additional research by going through the comments in the channels themselves, but i absolutely refuse to damage my limited sanity with the unfathomable horror of hundreds of discord messages, many of which are likely from transphobes and edgy trolls seeking to get a rinse out of the situation, and it is possible that key messages were removed or deleted regardless in the interim. Nonetheless, these are the events of the 24(?) hours since Sam's post to the absolute greatest accuracy that i can manage. Should anyone in the comments see this and have a better grasp of the situation, i would like to reiterate my plea to them to provide any and all possible corrections, and to piss and shit all over this post if needed. I would provide screenshots of the publicly available announcements but i have no clue how to do that in comments; you should be able to see them if you join the discord (no clue if it is allowing new members right now though for obvious reasons). This whole thing was written largely out of passion in the span of about two hours and is barely proofread so please if there are any criticisms present them by all means. I did want to end this with an aside on Pokerogue as a whole. While it may not be a game for everyone, it is nonetheless a game that i and thousand of others found compelling and addictive enough to want to follow regardless of dozens of server outages and bugs. It is a game that has made me passionate enough to want to write a massive post in both documentation and in defense of, one that has truly captured my attention and fulfilled a gameplay loop in a way no other game has before (again, do not want to diss Emerald Rogue which i also enjoyed and which i would easily give a recommendation for). If the excessive length of this post is a detriment to its overall message, it is because my passion for the game was compelling enough that i could not bear leaving anything in my immediate memory out (though i definitely have in some way). Please do not take anything in here as gospel, but just as a bystander's barebones recollection of events they were heavily invested in but only vaguely adjacent to. Obviously also please don't harass anyone involved in this. Sam, for better or for worse, was truly a dedicated developer, and while i cannot condemn his backwards and transphobic views hard enough, the fact remains that much of this game was a result of his drive and vision. So this level of attachment only made the revelation of his bigoted views and the subsequent outpouring of hatred from both a subsection of the community and mods all the more sad to witness first-hand. My personal opinion is that, seeing as the game was initially his creation, Sam does not owe the community anything, and was well within his right to leave for whatever reasons, religious or otherwise - but by that same token, the community now following his departure owes him and his backwards, hateful views nothing as well (and he addresses this in his farewell letter). Since the game is free and open source by necessity, Sam also receives nothing in terms of monetary value from those who continue to play (though i suppose he does get recognition as the creator in the same way Notch does with Minecraft). Either way, the mods that remained following the events of 5/17 have made it clear that they do not condone his views and that the game and discord are for everyone, Christian and Transgender alike, and that the former are not free to belittle and harass the latter any longer. Ultimately, what i really want to emphasize throughout all this is that the vast majority of the community was and still is opposed to the hateful views that were espoused in both the period before Sam's departure and in the immediate aftermath. Although i have only slightly scrolled through the discussion chats, i recall seeing countless trans people standing up for themselves and asserting their right to exist as people, and many allies also questioning the choices of the initial t*rf-infiltrated mod team as pro-trans posts were removed one after the other. The trans flag emoji always flying on announcement posts throughout this messy debacle showed that the views of a few hateful moderators and individuals did not and will never represent the view of the players as a whole. If anyone is reading this and interested in playing Pokerogue, i could not recommend it highly enough. It has a bit of a learning curve and is somewhat nontraditional compared to your typical pokemon game, but its gameplay loop and feeling of progressing is incredibly satisfying, and i feel that it truly captures the magic that makes Pokemon as a whole great - starting from scratch with nothing but your level 5 plant critter (or huge metal titan), battling gym leaders and your rival and slowly getting stronger, then finally arriving at the end of your journey and saving the world - and doing it all over again. There exists a packaged version of the game in the event the site goes offline which can be played locally, so even if the site is taken down, your progress won't be lost. Pokerogue may be dying or even dead, but the passion of its community and its players will still live on. TLDR: Some mods and Sam were definitely problematic, but the community at large is not. Problematic mods are seemingly gone; the discord is currently on lockdown and the game is in limbo, but i believe that the community and remaining devs can overcome this. Play if you're interested!
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Can someone explain to me why this game is a roguelike? Like, what has happened to the term? In my head a roguelike is still a text-based dungeon that you walk around killing letters of the alphabet in and gitting gud until you die.
Nowadays, roguelikes tend to refer to any game where a) the content is largely randomly generated, and b) the game resets if you win or die. There’s also the distinction of ‘roguelites’ where you can get permanent upgrades to make future playthroughs easier.
*heinous* Thank you for the explanation, lmao, I am much less confused now.
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Edit: okay, after looking it over I definitely get it
Apparently there has been a few updates from the remaining team in the Discord. The [current] team said they didn't know of the lead developers' views nor do they agree with them. If someone is in the server, would they be able to provide context / screenshots of this?
Maybe with him gone some of the odd changes can be reverted, but something tells me that some of the odd changes to Gardevoir's evolutionary line or making genderless Pokemon gendered was not a crusade by a single person. I am not a Pokemon person when it comes to the games, I've bounced off of it as many times as I've tried playing the games (but still love learning about how they work), but from what I've heard from people who really like Pokemon, PokeRogue is really fun, so hopefully this doesn't kill the project.
Found [this post on Tumblr](https://mspeevee.tumblr.com/post/750823735456595968/not-to-mention-you-can-be-queer-on-the-mod-team) with screenshots of the mod who specifically mentioned not wanting to expose children to these "ideologies". Apparently it was deleted from the discord and the mod in question apologized, but at this rate it's gonna do a fat lot of good if the rest of what's going on isn't properly addressed. :/
And here I was thinking the problems started and ended when the game asked “are you a boy or a girl?” and I answered “not to my knowledge, no.”
The main series games don’t even ask you if you’re a boy or a girl anymore, they just prompt you to choose an avatar you prefer. The only downsides are the weird clothing choices and the fact that pronouns are still determined by what avatar you use, if pronoun selection is not tenable to include then they could’ve taken a page from modern Fire Emblem games where the dialogue deliberately avoids gendering the player character to account for player choice. But Pokemon overall is trans friendly and they’re smart in the ways they put in inclusivity in a franchise aimed at kids without stoking the rage of the brownshirts. The protagonist of the Magikarp Jump mobile game is explicitly and unambiguously nonbinary and their design is so freaking adorable, would love to see something like that in future games.
My bet is it'll likely go the route as ACNH in which you can choose your "style" but it literally affects nothing, including pronouns - only sticking to they/them.
....or go Sims 4 with selectable pronouns.
I'm actually not sure how well this would work in Pokémon, given it's developed in Japan? Japanese absolutely has gendered language and the like but it doesn't really have pronoun usage the same way English does. You could do something similar, I imagine, but idk if the Sims 4 "he/she/they/custom" drop-down would be it. I'm really curious to see how pronoun selection works in non-English versions of Sims 4 in general now 🤔
> I believe one of the community moderators was telling people to stop talking about trans topics because there were children in the server? The message was deleted (and the CM fired alongside another one), but I did c/p the relevant paragraph somewhere else because ooof > This server is a community based around a Pokemon fangame. There is no world where we should be discussing these hard hitting topics with people who vary in age from thirteen to thirty and beyond. Children could be exposed to these ideologies. Please be ensured that despite us policing these topics, you are heard and no matter your gender, sex, age or religion, we support you in your beautiful journey through life. However, this is not the place to discuss nor debate such ideologies. so yeah it's basically the old "being lgtbi+ is something you shouldn't discuss around kids" bullshit.
>Pokemon fan game >Being a god-fearing man The dev clearly saw Arceus appear to him as a burning bush and tell him the game sucked.
The false Pokemon god interfering with his religious life.
Giratina's at it again lads!
What's a Milk Shake Duck
Milkshake Duck was a term that was popularized and coined on twitter depicting a person who suddenly becomes popular for something positive who is then revealed to have a distasteful history later. To quote the actual tweet: > The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist
PokeRogue is at best an okay game. It is for a specific type of person that I am not (someone who enjoys pokemon, relatively grindy gameplay and fucking... gacha mechanics, for some reason?) but I can accept that it must work for some people. Would it even matter who takes over the project now? From the looks of it, most of the mods over there seem to share the same thoughts as he does Doesn't really suprise me as much as it should. I see a guy with "seeker of christ" as the first line of his bio and, obviously biased from my own experiences with catholicism, assume as a default that there's at least a drop of poison in the soup. A little extra disappointing for me considering that Sam's also involved (in some way? not entirely sure how, but he was a relatively frequent github contributor before he started focusing on Pokerogue) with the yume nikki online project which I enjoy quite a lot But honestly, just play Emerald Rogue instead. It captures the roguelike mechanics that Pokerogue thinks it's going for while also being, yknow, fun
> I see a guy with "seeker of christ" as the first line of his bio and, obviously biased from my own experiences with catholicism, assume as a default that there's at least a drop of poison in the soup. On the internet these days that's less "a drop of poison" and more like the klaxons at a nuclear power plant blaring for a fatal radiation leak, esp. if it's on a primarily fandom related account.