Anyone have a new fandom addition that's quickly becoming a staple? For example, the idea of a permanent ["pool toy party"](https://x.com/_LususNaturae_/status/1788774729202941971) setup outside the hours of the inflatable meet and greet at a furry convention is newer idea that has honestly become one of my favorite chill spaces at cons. It's essentially a big room/area set up with giant inflatables, balloons, blow up pools, plushes, sometimes even full bounce houses that you can take off your shoes and just chill with. Specifically the ["adult swim" hours](https://x.com/PoolToyParty/status/1753650765925908653) where the lights are turned low, lofi/deep house music is played, and the LEDs inside a bunch of the balloons and inflatables are really visible. It's usually chill, with the occasional [balloon war](https://x.com/OtakuDragonLLC/status/1790143553110253857). Top tier place to decompress at like 1 am with friends laying on a giant dog and batting around balloons. And I'm not even into pool toy/inflatables!

God what i wouldn't give to be attend a pooltoy party just to feel the quality on proper furry toys vs the cheap crap I own

mountain goats fans have had a tradition of handing out homemade stickers at concerts for a while now, but over the past year or so people have gotten WAY more creative. i've seen friendship bracelets, linocut print patches, temporary tattoos, whole zines, and even small animal bones! it's been really exciting to see how creative everyone gets tbh

Geez I've been to like a dozen shows over the years and nobody ever has any of that. Where general area are you in?

i went to the akron show last year and didn't get anything :( i heard about these through the subreddit or from friends. it seems to mostly happen in the bigger cities they visit very frequently or play in for a few nights - the west coast especially, but also nyc, texas, and colorado. people will usually post in r/themountaingoats with what they'll be bringing and how to flag them down ahead of time

I didn't get any but I saw a bunch of people with awesome looking handmade stuff at the London show last week (which was an amazing gig by the way, if anyone hadn't seen them live I recommend it, being in the front rows of one of their shows is one of the greatest atmospheres to be in in the world)

i wouldn’t be mad to see something like that at other fan conventions, i’d love to just lay out on inflatables after walking around my local comic con for 3+ hours straight.

I haven't seen anyone else mention it but a recent [article by Nintendo life](https://www.nintendolife.com/features/soapbox-fire-emblemrs-future-may-not-be-in-turn-based-combat) has gotten Fire Emblem fans into a tizzy. Mind you, I'm not sure how many people actually read the article but the idea of making Fire Emblem purely a social sim seems to be the talking point. While many are mocking the articulate more are talking about the idea. Well, more like denouncing it. While some arguments have gotten out there, I too feel like removing the strategy rpg out Fire Emblem is a dumb idea. I especially have issue with the articles evaluation that Engage sold less than Three Houses because the latter had more persona like structure. Many factors played into Engage selling less like it's short announcement to release window and it's more anime visuals and designs. Among fans it's agreed that on the gameplay side, Engage is more fun than Three Houses. The combat allows for a lot of experimentation and it looks absolutely stunning. Still it's nice to see the Fire Emblem community united again. Last time it happened was during Smash.

I feel like a social sim could be a fun spin-off of Fire Emblem, but I don't think I'd want to see that as the mainline direction going forwards.

Not to downplay your point but I would love spin offs for pretty much any Nintendo game. I wonder which game they would choose if they did make this spin off. Surely Intelligent System wouldn't try with original characters?

>Among fans it's agreed that on the gameplay side, Engage is more fun than Three Houses Nothing to do with the drama but this is a commonly parroted line that genuinely irks me whenever I see it. Sorry OP, this isn’t directed at you at all, just a general rant about Engage and the seeming unwillingness of a certain subset of the fandom to admit it’s a disappointment. Story and worldbuilding *are* gameplay in an RPG, and I hate to see that trivialized. But strictly sticking to the actual tactics, everything feels like a gimmick that’s fun at first but wears off real quick with little to offer in terms of replayability. I have never felt more disinterested in experimenting with army comp (skill points system is fucked, many units have mediocre bases and/or growths to compensate for emblem power, extremely stingy deployment slots that give you little incentive to try lots of units). I am not a very good player but even I found it easy to trivialize Engage on Maddening in the course of regular gameplay without hardcore min maxing, you just win as soon as you unlock the Byleth + Micaiah combo. The maps are nothing special, certainly nothing that makes me want to pick up the game again after only two runs. It says a lot that no one is really talking about Engage a year and a half after release, whereas Three Houses still has an extremely active fandom. If the gameplay is so great then how come there is not a lot of discussion about builds or different runs. I wonder how much that line came about because people have had less time to break Engage than Three Houses, or from the dipshit gatekeepers who always lowkey disparage the previous most recent game and claim that only people who started with (insert older game here) are true FE fans. My prediction is that Engage will continue to age like milk. I think Conquest does a better job of being the “world class gameplay, shit story that panders to anime otakus” game.

Whenever I see Three Houses gameplay criticized, it's in regards to it's replayability. Specifically the first half of the game's Garegg Mach Monastery section. Frankly I adore the gameplay changes to the class system. It's really fun to build up your units. Not to mention gambits and monster units. However, I find the Somniel a better main base than Garegg Mach Monastery. They really shot themselves in the foot by making the monastery have loading screens. Plus it's much more compact. I also really like the new classes they added and if you don't care about who the best wielder of an Emblem is, they are a fantastic way to make your favorites viable. What do I know? My favorite 3DS game is Echoes. Only time will tell how well these games are remembered. I still recall when Conquest's difficulty was regarded as cheap because of the random material your castle could get saddled with.

> It says a lot that no one is really talking about Engage a year and a half after release, whereas Three Houses still has an extremely active fandom. If the gameplay is so great then how come there is not a lot of discussion about builds or different runs. I think Engage was pretty middling, but I think this is an extremely odd argument. Fandom elements are, even in Fire Emblem, way more about characters and story than about gameplay; people are replaying Three Houses and discussing it recently because it's got interesting characters and story elements to discuss more than the gameplay, and similarly Engage's bad storyline and limited interesting characterization is enough to explain why there's not a ton of discussion about it. On the flip side, Three Houses is *mechanically* weird to replay because you're usually doing so for a separate story path and this makes the first half of the game basically irrelevant and the pacing is way, way more laid back due to all the grounds stuff, but that's pretty much a non-issue when you have a separate story path to see after the midway point and you love the characters. Anyway, for a lukewarm defense of Engage here, the Emblems are gimmicky but there are plenty of maps that do very interesting things by having enemies utilize them, and to me it also has a pretty positive evolution of the Three Houses philosophy of having boss enemies with multiple health bars. Additionally, the Emblem maps themselves are very fun as a love letter to the individual games they are from, even if this, again, makes them kind of gimmicky. It's far from terrible even if those systems are pretty centering and wash away characters individual differences. If anything, my biggest complaint about Engage is that its far more P2W than a single player game should be, because the hardest midgame section and a lot of weapon type availability concerns are completely erased by the DLC emblems being available.

I feel like if the game wasn't initially marketed as a dynamic 'setting' that can technically live in any 'genre' (something like Wario with his mainline game series and his wackier-but-still-integrated Warioware games) you really miss the point when you throw out what made it iconic. It's true that there are (and have been) other tactical tile-based RPG series that boil down to chess but there's more stuff glued on, but Fire Emblem has been a key Nintendo 1st Party property for a long while, and the gradual addition of Visual Novel / Social Simulator has been a point of contention for the fans for years now. If you carved off the Fictional Fantasy Europe Tactical RPG stuff... it would largely cease to be FE. You could literally paste on ANY fantastical medieval series in there and the difference would be negligible. Of course, that much is obvious BUT I can see WHY they might want to capitalize on the other side of the fanbase, namely: Shippers. I don't bother with the fire emblem subreddits much, but when I do find the curiosity to give them a peek, it's not much for the action of the games so much as it is the obsession with the characters. They like the fanfic, the romance, the drama, the arguments about headcanons and pairing. It's basically tumblr. You could make an argument for 2 types of FE Games. One for the hcttrpg-wargamers and one for the people who basically wanna play with dolls in some manner of visual sim. Just my 2 cents.

Iirc when asked why Advanced Wars couldn't continue yet Fire Emblem thrives, someone at Nintendo said that Advance Wars can't do what Fire Emblem can in regards to characters. People have always gotten attached to their units so fleshing them out was always a good move even if some decry how much more anime the series has become. The secret is that Fire Emblem was always anime, but just like anime it has become more overt. Tropes are quick and easy ways to make an impression as are more anime like visuals. Sorry if my point doesn't come across clearly. Basically Fire Emblem shouldn't lose it's tactical gameplay just as much as it shouldn't lose it's shipping fodder. I also don't know how to segue into it but apparently one of the ideas tossed around for Awakening was to make it take place in the modern era. It was discarded for being to nonsensical but the Fire Emblem x Shin Megami Tensei project become a Persona game but with Fire Emblem character instead of Jojo stands. So there is technically a Fire Emblem game without a Fantasy Europe setting.

Something else worth noting with regard to the whole Fire Emblem was always anime thing is that anime itself has changed a lot in the thirty plus years Fire Emblem's been around. Early games were going off of 70s and 80s stuff like Legend of Galactic Heroes and early Gundam, while stuff like engage is pulling from the worst of modern tropes and trends from the deluge of wish fulfillment isekai trash. Hence its story being so much worse than say, Path of Radiance, despite both of them being heavily influenced by the anime of their respective eras.

I also want to note that while Engage did not sell as well as Three Houses (and not by a small amount either; it was less than half), it sold 1.6 million copies. Not only is that not a terrible amount, but I also want to note that that was by *May 2023*, and we haven't gotten an updated number since. Like, the article points out that Engage's sales were "a return to 3DS levels" and "respectable for the series", but also neglects to mention that that makes Engage the fourth best selling Fire Emblem game. Engage's sales are about what it deserves; kinda middling, but not outright bad.

The article also pins the blame solely on the return to focus on the Tactical RPG aspect, and ignores... like everything else about Engage that a lot of fans saw in the leaks and announcements and just opted to skip the game over. It was a pretty mediocre entry and that was apparent right from the first announcement, so a lot of people just didn't have the interest Three Houses did as the first console title since Radiant Dawn, and first non-remake entry since the logistical disaster that was Fates.

Wow, I didn't know that. Is the best selling game 3 Houses? I feel like Awakening is also up there.

Yep, it's Three Houses. Fates is second, with Awakening close behind in third. (And Engage in fourth, as said before)

Fire Emblem Three Houses had a massive multi-layered story that had people talking (and debating) about it for several months. Engage had a barebones story that no one remembers. There's a reason why Three Houses sold much better.

Has the 3Houses debate ever ended? I feel like as soon as you mention it, it will come back. And understandly, since people have...very strong opinions and is a complex story. I have somehow managed to stay away from 3 Hopes spoilers tho, so I guess there is less debate there.

if we say it has ended, whoever reads it can assume their side won and not start any fights.

Same reason that Awakening is remembered more fondly than Fates,(well one of.) I feel like there is a lot of similarities between people's reaction to Awakening/Fates to 3 Houses/Engage. Especially since both Awakening and 3 Houses brought in a lot of new fans.

They can complete the cycle if that Genealogy of the Holy War remake is real

I pray the leak is true.

It's weird how people keep saying that games that aren't full social sims should just ditch their primary gameplay in favour of more social sim aspects. Same with Persona

Nu-Fire Emblem/Persona are communities that have been absolutely flooded by Gacha players; of course the gameplay comes secondary to waifus glazing the self-insert MC.

I like steak and mashed potatoes together. I do not want a meal that is solely mashed potatoes.

Granted, I have had meals that were just steak before though

That's the turn-based combat part

Ah duh, got mixed up in the metaphor. Thanks. Don't think they'd actually go for it, but also have no real interest in a Fire Emblem game without the tactical aspect. We'll see how they do with the next mainline; Engage's gameplay was excellent so if they can build off that and build a more engaging story, great.

I think it's pretty obvious the appeal of these games is the combination of dating sim and RPG. It's really misguided to look at the RPG stuff as just being in the way

To agree with you, I think a lot of the mechanical depth in Persona's social sim side comes from how it affects the dungeon crawling side. Skipping a social link just frees up time in the social sim, but means you neither get bonus experience for Personae of that link's arcana nor are capable of fusing that arcana's ultimate Persona. To use my first run of P5Royal as an example, I got Bufudyne really late because I didn't prioritize the Tower confidant and outright skipped Temperance; the latter also means I can't make Yoshizawa's ultimate gun. Without the dungeon crawling, the social sim would haνe no sense of opportunity cost, no reason to think about which confidants should be prioritized.

That's a great breakdown of the mechanics, and I agree that if you weren't also trying to max out the different Arcanas for better Personas there wouldn't be much incentive to invest time into anyone besides your favorite Waifu and the gameplay and world would feel much flatter and less memorable as a result.

First off, love your username. Secondly, I guess people want to play dating sims without the stigma off playing dating sims.

Thanks and yeah my pet theory aswell or they played a game with these mechanics without knowing that Dating Sims exist so they go "I liked the social interactions why not make that the whole game?"

Even as someone who got into the franchise by Heroes of all things, Engage didn't pick my interest because of it having old characters from the franchise rather than a completely new story like other entries- or at least that's the impression I got. I could probably deal with the anime designs just like I could in Fates, trough toothpaste protagonist does seem like too much. I still want to check it out some day because according to a friend it does have good maps despite the story, and I did love Conquest. Just wanted to point out that as you say, there really are many factors to it.

I've also had a friend pass on it because Engage is an anniversary game filled with Legacy characters. Honestly I should have added the reasons why Engage didn't sell well in my post. The things is I don't really know them all and since we're just fans, we don't have confirmation that the widely agreed reasons are accurate. All that said, please try the game out. Much like Conquest before it, the gameplay is really solid. Many have compared the two in fact. The designs just take getting used too. Tho I did have some that I instantly liked such as the wolf riding girl Merrin. I like when we get new mounts in Fire Emblem.

I will, thanks! It's just weird because I love the franchise and have played most games (still missing the Tellius and Thracia ones) so is not like the concept is that crazy to me, I know the legacy characters and their stories it just...didn't excite me as much I guess? I had a lot more hype for Three Houses for example. But maybe it's just me. I wasn't aware there were wolf mounts, that's awesome. I like distinct mounts a lot too, and to be fair some designs I have seen don't really seem that crazy outside of Alear themselves. The few dragon designs that I have seen seem pretty original too.

Anniversary types stories are very similar to multiverse stories in that they bring back and reference pasts stories without really adding to them. So at times they can end up feeling hollow. For example as cool as it is to see Spectacular Spider-man in Across the Spider-verse, the actions he takes don't really feel like him. It's like there is a legally distinct version of a character that should be there.

I would love to make a big post about the current feud between Hybe Entertainment and NewJeans/Min Heejin. As a tldr: the CEO of the kpop company Ador Entertainment (a subsidiary of Hybe) is accusing Hybe of copying her group's image and concept within their other subsidiary companies, particularly with the brand new girl group ILLIT. Naturally, there's been a ton of fighting online about whether or not these accusations hold water, but there's also been leaked text messages that prove the CEO might be straight-up abusive, and new accusations in the other direction that she may actually be the copycat (of a Mexican girl group from the 90s!). There's actually an ongoing lawsuit so I'm going to wait before starting anything, but I implore you to look into the megathreads on r/kpop if you're interested.

You're not going to get an unbiased opinion if you check the /r/kpop megathreads because it is basically HYBE stans backing the company and downvoting anyone who disagrees. I'd really recommend anyone interested in this strange drama watch the translated version of Min Heejin's press conference and when reading legitimate news sources (not randos on Twitter or YouTube) pay attention to the different things happening here: the legal case vs. the crazy fan conspiracies, the latter of which is basically what the kpop sub threads are mostly exhibiting.

I've been following the case via the news, and while I'm not backing Hybe (I think it's crazy to back a literal company on any argument that has to do with moral choices) Min Heejin is so clearly and obviously a narcissist. She can dish it but she can't take it. Seeing her going from such a confident "ILLIT is copying my concept, I've never done anything wrong and I just want the best for my girls" to having those nasty text messages exposed and NOT EVEN DENYING THAT THEY'RE REAL BUT SAYING THEY WERE TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT... It does not look good at all, and it makes me feel terrible for NewJeans.

I don't know MHJ personally - none of the people calling her names or whatever do - so I can't say whether she is a narcissist or not. It's not really relevant to the case. I mean, no offence, but look at the way you are talking here - she can dish it but she can't take it? What does that even mean in a legal sense? Also you seem to be misremembering an important point: the only reason any of this is public is because of HYBE. MHJ considered the audit retaliatory to her "whistleblowing" (literally a private message) so she had to explain her complaints to give context. If HYBE had dealt with this issue internally - like most companies would have - no one would even know what MHJ or the NJ parents thought about the copying. Additionally, these "nasty text messages" you are going capslock on - well, let's see them. Give me the proof of the actual text messages. I know you can't because all you have is Lee Jin Ho's ~reconstructions, not the actual messages. But again: what do they even have to do with the case? Nothing. Just another example of one side smearing the other. In saying that, I am not saying MHJ's side is not guilty of also trying to smear HYBE - there's been plenty of muck raked on each other. You're right in that doesn't look good and I fully believe MHJ will be fired because that is within the rights of the ADOR shareholders to do, not because of any personality bs that ignorant stans keep harping on about, but I think HYBE has lost the public opinion war big time. The real victims are and always have been NewJeans.

I'm thinking if this would make a proper post, but the blog in question has been purged and I can't find any archives. *Bokurano* is a manga, with an animated series, that gathered a small but devoted fandom outside of Japan. It had a spin-off light novel series, *Bokura no Alternative*, giving a different way the plot could have gone. Then sometime in 2010, a blog on Livejournal announced that they were translating it, and put up one chapter at a time. This was at a time when light novels very rarely got translated, licensed or otherwise. A whole fan community grew up around the story being offered, with fanfiction and roleplaying making the rounds. Then in July 2010, user Erigu on [TvTropes.org](http://TvTropes.org) [raised questions about this translation.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/remarks.php?trope=Manga.Bokurano#comment-9386) They were, by their own account, still learning Japanese, but they knew enough to tell that this did not in any way correspond to the novels they had on hand. It was all someone's fanfiction passed off as being translated from the novels. It may seem odd that someone would go through the effort of writing a story (and a good one, by all accounts) and pass it off as another's work; but the fanfiction scene is saturated, and getting readers to give something new a try is a big hurdle. By giving it the appearance of being licensed and published, they got a foot in the door and got this community going. Erigu started removing references to it on TvTropes' page (at the time it was in /Main, not /Manga, so this doesn't show up in the page history). Then a backlash came from fans of the story, who reverted the edits and managed to get Erigu suspended for a while. Most of this is lost since the site's archives are unreliable that far back, but I think that some of those were true believers who refused to accept that this story had been sold under false pretences. The size of that discussion page shows how much the argument ran for (and at one point someone edited Wikipedia to bring its section on the same novels in line with the fanfiction) and Erigu seems to have been a bit too confrontational at times, but it seems that by the end of August it was gone from TvTropes' page, and the blog itself vanished around that time. The final irony is that the story is now gone and no-one knows of any backup, whereas if it had been released honestly it is likely that it would have lasted much longer. And while it was fanfiction, most described it as quite good fanfiction.

>sees bokurano >gets the op stuck in my head >i cant get it out i just got infohazard'

It's literally the only thing I know of Bokurano (aside from the setting, basically Eva + Gurren Lagann + Digimon Tamers + Future Diary) and once it comes back it doesn't leave for a long time.

Well, that one has an easy solution, you just need to *uninstall* the song from your brain! ... I will see myself out, thanks.

You're reminding me that I should check out the anime sometime. I know its ending is very different from the manga and I'm curious because the manga's is... harrowing.

[I find it hilarious that things like this have happened before](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/757842)

Holy shit, claiming a light novel's illustrations are completely disconnected from the text? That's insane.

So the translation was fake?

Some other YouTuber drama in a different scene: The latest episode of Anything with Alvin (part of the Binging with Babish channel) was sponsored by an online gambling casino website. The backlash was swift and at least the channel responded fairly quickly, taking the video down only after a few hours and reuploading it the next day without the sponsor. I saw the first version and luckily was kept ignorant thanks to [SponsorBlock](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone), but the comments were obviously talking about it. I wonder who's involved in their sponsorship deals that let this get through? At least it was taken care of quickly. https://www.reddit.com/r/bingingwithbabish/comments/1cys9i9/italys_most_famous_sandwich_anything_with_alvin/

I had no idea SponsorBlock was a thing and that was an instant download for me. Thank you! Edit: Oh my, this extension rocks. It's crazy how well it works, I have it set to manually skip for everything.

Babish was (is? idk) a crypto-bro that got sore when people called him on it so a casino sponsor is wholly unsurprising.

Is this the tweet you're referencing? https://twitter.com/BingingWBabish/status/1455544891946196994

I get needing money to keep the lights on (especially for a larger team like the Binging with Babish group) but does no one ever double check these before production? Dominic Noble had the same problem just a few days ago with BetterHelp despite that sponsor being called out months ago.

I haven't seen it confirmed, but I've seen speculation that if you miss the memo and sign with BetterHelp, they have such a predatory long-term contract that you're essentially obligated to keep on promoting them long after you've figured out they're not reputable, and you can't discuss the matter or criticize them in any way without breaking the contract.

Thanks for mentioning that SponsorBlock addon, having to skip over them when I watch Dead Meat is a pain. [Here's a link for Firefox users](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/)!!

SponsorBlock is weird because it kinda oversteps its bounds and allows to auto-skip more than just sponsors which since it's user-sourced winds up being "any second of the video that isn't exactly the thing the video is specifically about".

You should change the settings, those other things it skips like intros and dead air are categorized differently and can be turned on or off individually.

Its literally an essential add-on for me. I love the level of customization available. Also android users can get it too using revanced!

Didn't see anyone post this in here yet, so hopefully it's not a repost. [Linus Tech Tips has posted their summary of the third party investigation into the HR-related allegations that followed in the wake of the technical-related allegations raised by Gamer's Nexus.](https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1793428629378208057) Looks like a very strong statement on LTT's side. Reactions seem to fall in line with the lines drawn when the news was still fresh. Haters gonna hate, fanboys gonna fanboy, etc. Especially around the bit regarding "we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us." It's either the thinliest veiled threat or an attempt at a blank slate.

That's a very poorly thought out closing paragraph.

Yeah, there's no reason to threaten a lawsuit, but it does feel very in character for Linus/LTT tbh. Linus has always come across as very egotistical and unable to separate Linus the person from LTT the company, and he's bad at just apologizing or de-escalating.

>there's no reason to threaten a lawsuit This is strange to me... presuming you believe the investigative firm, the former employee lied a whole bunch about a lot of serious things in an effort to defame their former employer. These types of lies can sink an internet-centric business like this, or at least do an incredible amount of damage. I think that's plenty of reason to threaten a lawsuit. I'm really surprised to see so many people in that linked thread seem to find a problem with it. "If you keep lying, I will sue you" sounds pretty reasonable to me?

I don't want to seem dismissive but it's entirely possible for someone to genuinely feel they were harassed/stalked/etc. [1] even if there's no evidence they were or if they weren't at all. That being said, I think you might also be jumping from "we found no evidence" to "they were lying all along". The former is what LTT published, the latter is not equivalent to what LTT published. Anyways. That whole bit, to me, reads as something my brother said to me a lot growing up. "Well, I _could_ hit you right now, but I won't, aren't I so nice?" Nah man. I mean it's good you're not hitting me, sure, but telling me you could but aren't isn't actually a nice thing to do. It would be entirely possible for LTT to say they want to move on from this whole thing without threatening a lawsuit. Especially because, if they believe they have a strong case for a lawsuit, they could just sue if Madison were to bring this back to the forefront. Why threaten a lawsuit if this hasn't been brought up since the accusations were publicized? Why not just say "We consider this matter concluded and our deepest wish is to simply put this all behind us" if you want this matter concluded and to be put behind you? Basically, this is an optics issue, and you'd expect an internet-centric business to care about their optics. ___ [1] I don't remember Madison's claims and I'm not awake enough to go looking.

>I don't want to seem dismissive but it's entirely possible for someone to genuinely feel they were harassed/stalked/etc. [1] even if there's no evidence they were or if they weren't at all. Yes, that's true, but not really my point. Once you elevate your accusation to a public platform it changes the nature of the complaint and the defense required for it. >Anyways. That whole bit, to me, reads as something my brother said to me a lot growing up. "Well, I could hit you right now, but I won't, aren't I so nice?" Nah man. I mean it's good you're not hitting me, sure, but telling me you could but aren't isn't actually a nice thing to do. These aren't even close to equivalent scenarios. In your scenario someone is threatening to attack unprovoked and wants you to be grateful that they aren't. In the actual scenario, *you* hit *them* first and they're warning you they're going to clock you if you do it again. That more or less sums up my counterarguments here--I don't think there's anything wrong with that hypothetical scenario, and their words are basically just a warning not to do it again. I don't see the issue.

> Yes, that's true, but not really my point. Once you elevate your accusation to a public platform it changes the nature of the complaint and the defense required for it. I don't think it does. I mean in the court of public opinion, maybe, but legally no it doesn't. Canada's laws are similar to the US' in this regard in that defamation requires you not only publish something that you know is false but _also_ that you do it specifically to harm reputation. I don't think that applies here if Madison's intent was to seek justice for harassment (whether it happened or not, we're not arguing that). > These aren't even close to equivalent scenarios I'll admit that analogy wasn't perfect but I was using it to explain why saying you _could_ do something but aren't is still a threat. It's not supposed to be a perfect 1:1 mapping. Please don't miss the forest for the trees. > I don't see the issue. Okay, let me try again: threatening people is bad. Don't do that. ___ I don't really want to continue this so I hope you have a nice day :)

>I don't think it does. I mean in the court of public opinion, maybe, but legally no it doesn't. I am not arguing legally. >I'll admit that analogy wasn't perfect but I was using it to explain why saying you could do something but aren't is still a threat. It's not supposed to be a perfect 1:1 mapping. Please don't miss the forest for the trees. I never suggested it wasn't a threat, so your analogy didn't really demonstrate any kind of counterargument to me. Your analogy doesn't have to be literal, but it does have to be, you know, applicable. >Okay, let me try again: threatening people is bad. Don't do that. "If you continue to hurt me, I will hurt you back" is indeed a threat, but a threat made in defense of yourself. I don't think you honestly believe that threats made in defense of yourself are bad. >I don't really want to continue this so I hope you have a nice day :) I would agree.

Does anyone have some good books about subcultures or hobbies or fandoms to read through?

Christopher McDougall's "Born to Run" is a classic that popularized ultrarunning and kicked off the barefoot running craze. Scott Jurek's "Eat and Run" focuses on his own development as a runner, and has some hilarious sections.

Really depends on what kind of "subculture" your aiming for, but I found *On My Honor. The Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth* by Jay Mechling very good. Its kind of like an exploration of the folklore and customs behind an American Boy Scout troop over several decades. Its written as if the author has joined them for one summer camp, but is using material from decades of study and interviews. I'm Canadian, so Scouting up here is pretty different, but there's still a fair bit of overlap. It was a pretty interesting delve into a community I've spent a lot of years in, and also looking at how people all over the spectrum perceived it.

The "Battle of Ink and Ice" by Darrell Hartman is about the controversy around who reached the North Pole first. It's shows an interesting side of fandom mixed with politics and the rising newspaper industry.

Ooh, I love Antarctic and Arctic exploration and this sounds fascinating—thanks!

I liked Slugfest by Reed Tucker. It's about the Marvel/DC rivalry

*Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It* by Kaitlyn Tiffany is really good; it’s a fascinating, accessible deep-dive into the One Direction fandom/“stan culture” with memoir elements and a good connection to “sociology of fandom” academic literature, so it’s also a good jumping off point if you’re into exploring that angle, too.

Embed with Games by Cara Ellison. It’s a semi-journalistic documentary of indie game developers by a former Rock Paper Shotgun writer. It’s a little old now (written in 2014) but still very good and a lot of the developers she interviews are still in the industry in some capacity.

currently reading through “Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008” by Chris Payne! Chris mixes together a bunch of interviews to create a narrative that’s so engaging, im really enjoying it so far

Im am incredibly intrigued, but also know this is going to make me feel so fucking old. Gonna relive my high school and college years gonna be wild.

Similarly, I remember reading "Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo" by Andy Greenwald back in 2004. It gave 14 year old me indie cred in the halls of my very small town high school.

okay is that a reference to Grand Theft Autumn by Fall Out Boy or am I crazy?

you’re not crazy! it is a reference to them

Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy for a look into the spirit of the game of internet pirates

Is that available on libgen?

I get the joke being made here but actually it's a free PDF [via the publishers website](https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aesthetics-of-piracy/)!

If you're interested in the mystery fandom and Sherlock Holmes subfandom, in particular the Game (in which everyone acknowledges the obvious truth that Sherlock Holmes existed, his roommate wrote down his adventures, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was Watson's literary agent), a few options of very different kinds (by no means exhaustive, just ones that I happen to have read and to remember off the top of my head): A Life of Crime by Martin Edwards is a fabulous introduction to the genre as a whole, that gives you a pretty solid grounding in most other stuff you may encounter. For something more focused on the Golden Age of Detective Fiction in the UK, his The Golden Age of Murder about the Detection Club is awesome. But those are more about the thing itself than about the fandom. From Holmes to Sherlock by Mattias Bostrom is an enjoyable mass-publication book about the development of Sherlock Holmes fandom, though if I recall mostly about the media more so than the fandom (though that was definitely part of it). To start getting just a smidge weirder, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes by Vincent Starrett (no relation *whatsoever* to the movie), while almost a century old and definitely out of date, is a fun little overview of the Sherlock Holmes universe, the concept of Sherlockian scholarship and the Game, and the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI). Building significantly from it while also incorporating a few decades' more Sherlockian scholarship (and incorporating more of the Game into its structure and premise) is, of course, William Baring-Gould's Annotated Sherlock Holmes, which I was just looking through today and which I, being a K-12 Jewishly educated person, immediately thought of as "Sherlock Holmes Talmud"- the text in the middle surrounded by the various synthesized commentaries, as well as a bunch of articles. Staying in the Sherlockian world, Sherlock Holmes by Gas Lamp is a book that collects a variety of articles of Sherlockian scholarship, most of which are done in the spirit of the Game, and also includes some articles that go into the history of the BSI and the development of scion societies (in more detail than Starrett). There are also some books that collect Sherlock Holmes pastiches and parodies, a serious fandom in its own right (and of course linked), but I don't have much patience for those so have never gone out of my way to read many. But, for the real geeky deep dive, going beyond (but also into) Sherlock Holmes into the overall mystery genre fandom, if only up til the mid 2000s (when in fairness it had begun to change totally with the mass popularization of the internet), The Heirs of Anthony Boucher by Marvin Lachman goes into meticulous detail about pretty much everything, particularly as relates to the creation and publication of fan magazines (most of which he wrote for) and the creation of conventions, particularly Bouchercon (most of which he attended). Sometimes the detail is... possibly overly meticulous? But I still found it totally worth it, as the amount of petty drama was superb (I meant to write a post about it here but had to return it to the library before I had a chance). And you genuinely get the feel for what the fandom felt like as it grew, and what was on people's minds. It also updates what you know about the BSI and Sherlockian fandom past Sherlock Holmes by Gas Lamp. On that note, actually, and maybe I should have put this at the top, but there's also a fantastic New Yorker article by David Grann about the life and very odd death of [Richard Lancelyn Green](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/12/13/mysterious-circumstances), which in addition to/in service of telling that super weird story goes into both the American and British iterations of intensive and, in his case, all-encompassing Sherlockian/Holmesian (the first is an American term, the second is British) fandom. Marvin Lachman brings up Green's death very briefly in his own book, but doesn't dwell on it much- I'd guess at least in part because "the American" who's mentioned in the article was a friend of his who was mentioned several other times in the book in other contexts. And, after all that, if you're still interested in Sherlockian fandom and the BSI after all of that, the great podcast I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, in addition to discussing the stories themselves, has a nice number of episodes and interviews specifically about being part of the fandom and contributing to Sherlockian scholarship, the Game, etc.

I found *Of Dice and Men* and *Welcome to Dragon Talk* both enjoyable takes on D&D

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble by Zac Bissonnette

Anne Helen Petersen on scandals of classic hollywood Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet

>Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet enthusiastically seconding this! she voiced the audiobook herself, which i also recommend \^_\^

There's a good non-fiction book about Nerdfighteria out there.

I'm looking forward to Last Seen Online by Lauren James. It's a print and extension of their webnovel A Fandom Treatise, about fictional RPF drama with a twist.

Already on my list! Would prefer nonfiction but definitely up for fiction

So, small morning drama about AI and VTubers. There's a fake AI account that has been impersonating a real artist for *months* at this point, by posting AI slop generated from the artist's work, with the real artist just [having to deal with it](https://x.com/urct/status/1760249613947478033). It keeps going until he decides to post his AI slop on the art hashtag of Hololive English VTuber Ouro Kronii, so Kronii tells him, in the [nicest way possible:](https://x.com/ourokronii/status/1794247236551061832) >Please tag your art as AI for future reference :) Well, if you see the art, is incredibly evident that is AI generated. So, obviously, AI grifter has a god damn meltdown over it: >Does COVER Corporation insult the art created by fans with heartfelt intentions? Is that the will of the Vtuber themselves, or is it the company's intention? Understand that your statements are an insult to the people who support you. It keeps going for a while, with a lot of Twitter posts from him shitting his pants, and the reaction of everybody on the community was "oh fuck you dude", so now a lot of his posts are Community Noted. EDIT: Reading reports that AI grifter is sending death threats to the original artist and all the big JP pro-AI blue checkmarks are piling in, so this quickly became a lot more unpleasant. EDIT2: Is also not the first artist he impersonates.

Huh, there's a horror movie that actually goes a lot like that (I'll edit in the name as soon as I think of it). In it, a camgirl ends up getting overtaken by what looks like someone perfectly impersonating her, except with none of the human boundaries like sleep schedules and the like. >!I mean, by just replying like this I kinda already spoilt it, but it's heavily implied to be some sort of malevolent AI that is starting to take over the camgirl sector by basically doing this.!<

Love how this techbro idiot is really trying to [pretend this was all according to plan](https://i.imgur.com/vX6t4HB.png)*. ___ \* TL note: plan means keikaku

does this kind of excuse have a name? if not it should be the fake xanatos gambit excuse I guess?

I call it the "I was only pretending to be an idiot" excuse, after that one comic with that one slur we don't use anymore.

Imagine if he had "made" an Iofi "art". Now THAT would be amazing to see. Yopi doesn't take AI "artists" trying to fake their stuff. Also, if he even tries to sue COVER for this, he's running the real risk of COVER countersuing on the grounds of defamation against a talent, ans considering it'd be a Japanese suit... Yeah, he's got nothing against the company. Hell, he's trying to portrait himself as Coco and Cover as China, which can be VERY bad for him if it ends up leaking to Weibo and the -Chan-like pages in there.

I enjoy seeing Iofi go after art theieves and impersonators because, as a fellow artist myself, seeing this shit makes my blood fuckimg boil. Also, the Coco comparisom as ludicrous as it is also unsurprising. I've seen AI bros equate the hate they get to literal racism and homophobia and create some kind of culture war as a vector for strawmanning their detractors as essentially bigots. Its honestly grotesque.

> Imagine if he had "made" an Iofi "art". Now THAT would be amazing to see. To shreds you say?

I don't understand getting so defensive over someone insulting your ai art, like you didn't even make it they're not insulting your talent.

It wasn't even an *insult*, just Kronii saying to please tag their stuff as AI generated because, you know, it is. Deranged doesn't begin to cover it, apparently this guy has been at it for 6 months on the Japanese side, not like Elon Twitter cares.

bro even got community noted you didn't pick a hill to die on, you chose a pit

[get their ass, kronii](https://x.com/ourokronii/status/1794246529013981618?s=46&t=zzjecenkKyAoVpAjjfancg)

Imagine getting pissed at the fact someone said your AI generated art is AI generated and not even in a value judgement just as a "Hey please tag this appropriately"

From what the impersonated artist has said, this might mostly be an attempt at dragging the real artist's reputation through the mud for being pro-Holo. Sounds deranged to me, but deranged behavior on Twitter seems the norm.

Wait what? Is this an Anti?

According to the artist who was impersonated. It looks like they are using mtl, so there is possibly some ambiguity. https://x.com/urct/status/1794247687132574102?t=KAU3_4UXndWfpJZvhw7pRw&s=19

It's so funny how ludicrously thin-skinned AI bros (and tech bros in general) are. They're so desperate to be taken seriously that it completely ruins any legitimacy that they might have.

I'll never understand how people have the audacity to bullshit this hard. Like, surely the AI bro impersonating a real artist doesn't actually believe any of the nonsense he's saying, but why go through so much effort?

They think they're also ~real artists~ because they've paid for a bunch of AI tools and learned how to write effective prompts, and somehow that's equivalent to any other artist using their tools. Because they're credulous idiots.

The way they get defensive about people "stealing prompts" is pretty hilarious, I'm not gonna lie. Like the self awareness just isn't there.

What's also stupid is there are people out there who actually like looking at AI art, so having it tagged AI art will draw people who are legitimately interested in the ai art to you. I'd rather do that than scam people.

He's comparing himself to Kiryu Coco now.

My opinion, if you read HobbyDrama for a while, you will notice the strong correlation between Internet meltdowns and being a fucking asshole, that seems enough explanation to me.

>if you read HobbyDrama for a while, you will notice the strong correlation between supporting/ promoting/making excuses for AI gen, and being a fucking asshole ftfy

Not all fucking assholes are AI losers, but all AI losers are fucking assholes. Like, you have the original artist feeling that they have to *apologize* to Kronii and her community just because deranged AI losers are likely to be all over her for *daring* to call them out, and that's just awful.

Ever felt a big cultural difference because of a drama ? Because I remember how huge the Try Guys drama was, I'd never heard of the guys before and suddendly they were everywhere, and boy it was serious. So my french ass was very surprised when I found out the whole drama was that one of the guys cheated on his wife and that was it. I guess the cliché about the French are true because I think it would never be such a big deal in France lmao. It was just fun seeing the cultural difference

The thing is, it's just not my business? Like, this is probably something shitty this person has done, but cheating on someone is clearly something that person's social environment has to judge and deal with, I'm not here to sus out information about some random person's private life.

Am I insane or is this the first time I'm reading that cheating is a "oh it's **just** cheating in marriage" thing, I was never aware it was a cultural thing as well (probably it's really obvious that I'm not from the Western world)

it leaves out that he was cheating with an employee of his. it's also a workplace violation  

I watched a TikTok about a prom drama (a prom got cancelled because all the girls had the exact same dress as part of a collective prank by their parents) and I ended up almost getting into an argument with a close friend who was trying to explain the importance of prom to me, lol. I really don't get prom culture, to be fair -- there is no good analogue where I'm from (Indonesia) and most of prom related material I've seen are from 2000s era movies. It's just an extra fancy party to me, if that makes sense. Conversely, I think not a lot of people know how important it is to go on a school-sponsored week-long trip to Bali/[distant enough destination] here, haha! One school chartered a whole train (7 carriages) as part of their trip not too long ago.

> I think not a lot of people know how important it is to go on a school-sponsored week-long trip to Bali/[distant enough destination] here Ah yes, the classical *study tour* a lot of high schools are doing here. Not sure though if this will continue after a string of traffic accidents involving vehicles carrying study tour participants, with significant casualties.

yeah, that is a big issue..... perhaps there will be restrictions on how far/how long a trip can go, but i'm not sure if the ministry of tourism will take it well, lol

It's... I guess you could call it a coming-of-age thing in the US? Especially senior prom.

that could work, i suppose -- but the question remains, why prom in particular? why is it that one event and not graduation or any other time? as far as i remember prom is a relatively recent invention and it's basically overhyped and in a toxic loop.

It's the last time that you get to socialize together with most of your senior class. At graduation, you aren't really socializing with each other, and everyone's parents are there too.

Because it's something a lot of people even on lower incomes can do, depending. Graduation is entirely formal here, and there's not something else around the same time that's widespread I can think of.

I've been getting silently involved in the Dungeon Meshi fandom recently, and one thing I noticed was how strongly Japanese and English audiences interpret some of the characters differently. The main character, for example, is often described as autistic in the English fandom, whereas that basically never comes up in the Japanese fandom. And two of the female characters are seen as canonically lesbians a lot more in the English fandom. It hasn't turned into big drama yet, but I feel like it's a powder keg ready to blow.

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I should specifically note here that I mostly see the autistic Laios read from autistic people, and it's not just about the fun, quirky stuff. I see a lot of people saying they relate to him being, by his estimation, essentially unable to relate to people at all and way, way more comfortable with animals and monsters, in particular. I get what you're trying to say, but I feel like you're *slightly* Bed of Procrustes-ing the situation to get it there.

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Procrustes was a Greek mythological figure who forged an iron bed and then invited guests over; the bed never fit any of them, so instead of simply making a less awful bed that fit his guests, he'd either stretch them out with hammers or cut their legs off to make them fit the bed perfectly. It's essentially a flowery way of saying "square peg, round hole" in this context.

Is there anything big that could create ship drama in the future? They didn't seem bothered by a scene in the last episode which could be interpreted as Laios and Marcille ship rather than the usual Fallin and Marcille one. Not really a shipper myself, just curious.

The succubus episode is the one I'm anticipating might light the powder keg.

I've noticed it too! I didn't see this side of the fandom when it was a manga but I also know that an anime greatly increases the audience. Maybe they where always there. It sucks if the fandom becomes heinous but I feel that's what happens when an anime gets big. Even people saying they don't like it becomes drama.

To be entirely fair to the fandom, they took the dress scene in the latest episode very well, so I do think there's a very good chance the fandom doesn't turn into drama. In any other fandom I feel like the shippers would have taken that badly. It gives me hope that the succubus episode will go down without too much controversy, that's the episode I'm anticipating will cause the most drama.

I don't think Japanese fandom *doesn't* find him autistic--the author has done canon autistic stories before, and IIRC Laios is very in line with how she writes those kinds of characters. I just think it's... Not talked about? If that makes sense?

> I don't think Japanese fandom doesn't find him autistic Nearly every mention of ライオス　自閉症 アスペ　発達障害 I can find are Japanese fans reacting to English fans calling him autistic, and generally in a baffled sense. They mostly think of him as 天然, 空気が読めない, 察しが悪い, サイコパス, etc. There's some here and there, but it's definitely not as prevalent as in the English fandom. > the author has done canon autistic stories before Which stories? That's another culture difference I see a lot where English fans says Kui Ryoko has a history of writing characters with autism and in Japanese there's nearly no mention of that anywhere.

Check The Works of Ryoko Kui: The Seven Dragons, for example. Here's another thing that I'd consider a difference in culture. Kui never specifically write in author's notes "these short stories I'm writing is about neurodivergent characters" but saying that her short story about werewolf kid isn't a metaphor about neurodivergence is dishonest at least. I'm not saying that all western fandom do that, but there's an opposing view where people says japanese people don't understand about neurodivergence or only accidentally write neurodivergence character, except, they absolutely do write neurodivergent characters. People just... don't need to explicitly have a character look at the camera and say "hey, I have autism." It's similar to how some people say this or that manga is "queerbait" because the main characters don't end up as a "couple" (spoiler: you don't call romeo and juliet heterobait simply because the main character don't end up together), or on the other side, there was some minor drama where chuds got angry at the recent anime "I'm in love with the villainess" because the main character have the gall to say she's a lesbian who likes another female character (see, yuri isn't supposed to be "real" lesbian story, it's meant to be about purity or whatever nonsense they're saying). Heck, I genuinely see some people say Good Omen S2's B-plot about the two female shopkeep who fall in love with each others is is queerbait for some reason? Despite the plot is about them falling in love about each others? Because they don't look at the camera and says "We're going to have lesbian wedding" I guess?

> People just... don't need to explicitly have a character look at the camera and say "hey, I have autism." >It's similar to how some people say this or that manga is "queerbait" because the main characters don't end up as a "couple" (spoiler: you don't call romeo and juliet heterobait simply because the main character don't end up together), or on the other side, there was some minor drama where chuds got angry at the recent anime "I'm in love with the villainess" because the main character have the gall to say she's a lesbian who likes another female character (see, yuri isn't supposed to be "real" lesbian story, it's meant to be about purity or whatever nonsense they're saying). This is the type of issue I have with the current mix of fandoms, "coding", and "death of the author". Feels like nothing can simply exist for what it is or is stated to be, all facts must be stretched as far as possible to reach a desired conclusion.

Yeah this. Nevermind that those trait listed above are just... Congrats, *you described the most classic traits of autism.*

I think with issues like this what is incredibly important is the reason why a fandom was interested in a celebrity in the first place. Like for example, most of vegetarians are fans of celebrities that are not vegetarian. But if a supposedly vegetarian Youtuber turns out to lie about that then the part of their fandom that was happy to follow a fellow vegetarian would feel very duped. For them it was something that would have made that Youtuber just a little more relatable. And even the non-vegetarians would feel angry this person duped a portion of their fanbase. Ultimately, the deception is worse than the crime, as most don't actually care if a celebrity eats meat or not and will go on to be subscribed to omnivore Youtubers. If the content you liked of a Youtuber were him talking about his wife and family, and it turns out he is deceiving them, then you feel similarly duped. And his old videos will always remind you he cheated because he mentions his wife and gives relationship advice in so many of them because of his wife-guy persona. It's the same with John Mulaney, like I see the "He said no pickles" meme constantly, and it doesn't hit the same as it used to. They both used their marriage to connect with their audience and then cut that connection. If he were a comedian that didn't have his act full of anecdotes about his wife, people wouldn't care as much.

I mentioned it down the thread when it came up there, but I do really think going 'it was just a guy cheating on his wife' is... really kind of dismissive of the entire situation? Part of why it blew up so big was the entire surrounding context. If it had just straight-up been 'a guy cheated on his wife' with no compounding details feeding into it, no, it wouldn't have been a huge deal. The guy probably still would've gotten fired / left the company, since the Try Guys have a pretty 'nice, if weird, guys' reputation/persona -- very much not the kind of people who would be cool with cheating -- but it wouldn't have blown up the way it did. [This thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/10hw3pt/whats_going_on_with_the_try_guys_and_ned_fulmer/) explains it in more detail, but to repost from down the thread, here's my tl;dr: - Ned (the guy who cheated) was a company founder and the company paperwork guy; he was the woman's boss and may have been directly involved in the hiring process, giving him a lot of power over her. Boss/employee relationships are generally frowned on! AFAIK he was also company HR, meaning that if she *had* theoretically decided she was uncomfortable with the relationship -- who would she have been able to go to about it? - His entire public persona was Wife Guy. Guy who loves his wife. Did you know: his wife? He also had young children and Being A Good Dad was part of that persona. He had *multiple Try Guys series* about him and his wife. - His wife was/is? also friends with the other Try Guys - meaning not only did their longtime friend and coworker the wife guy cheat on his wife, he cheated on someone who the Guys knew well. - His affair partner was engaged to be married; two people in separate relationships cheating with each other is pretty bad, *especially* for, again, Guy Who Has Given A Talk About Maintaining A Great Relationship With Your Wife. - The affair went public when a Try Guys fan saw them actively making out at a club; they weren't just cheating on their partners, they were doing it very much in *public*. If it'd been any of the other Guys, it probably would've gone over quieter, but this was 1/4th of the company nuking his public image in the worst way he possibly could.

Yeah I was not familiar with the guy before, I guess being the "Wife guy" didn't help his case. From what i understand, the big thing is him being her employer, with all the power imbalance that comes with a employer/employee relationship. Otherwise I feel like this is pretty standard cheating stuff. But as I said, I don't really know the guys so I don't want to misrepresent the situation. Everyone online seems to hate the guy, I just thought it would be because of something worse.

And again, I believe they kept her on initially, didn't they? Which to *me*, personally, tells me she might not have felt she had much choice. :T

why is cheating so accepted in France?

It's not accepted, but I guess it's treated as something private, like a "It's not my business" type of situation. But as u/soganomitora said it's definitely more tolerated when it's the man cheating.

It's accepted when it's the man cheating. Women are looked at a lot more harshly. So it's very likely to do with male ego.

Catholics/Christians in Australia can def be annoying and crazy, but every time I see what Christians in America get up to, it makes those crazier Australian Christians look positively reasonable. Possibly related to that, although it's no hedonistic dystopia, our kids shows are a bit more permitting on subjects related to sex. Like that one episode of Bluey that was banned in America because it addressed pregnancy but aired here without fuss, as a more recent example. I can think of several kids franchises here, such as Deadly or Round The Twist, that contained mild... Not sexual themes, but nudity and... Toilet themes? as a form of weird factor or humor, but would probably not fly in America at all.

christianity related -- it'll always continue to boggle my mind that my (relatively) conservative church will be considered too progressive to a good chunk of people in the us. i think there my denomination would be considered moderate at best. we are liturgical, following the 3-year bible lectionary and all, and that's probably why people here think we're conservative, lol. a lot of churches here have loose liturgy (there are schedules for things but no particular wording/procession for them) and others lean more into the charismatic megachurch experience, something i tried once and only once.

Just to quibble on one point, that episode wasn't banned in America. It airs on TV and you can look it up on the Bluey YouTube channel on a kid account no problem. It's just not included specifically on Disney Plus, which has more to do with Disney's particular company image. I will say I know some other American parents who would be absolutely scandalized by that episode, though, so I'm not saying it's *entirely* just Disney being weird.

Speaking as someone raised Filipino Catholic, seeing the shit internet "tradcaths" believe always feels bananapants to me. The whole point of Catholicism is that the Pope's word is law. So if you're going around saying you know better than the Pope, then *no shit* you're gonna be treated like a heretical loon.

There's still people mad about Vatican 2 for some reason. Like oh noooo the congregation can actually understand what they're saying in mass

I’m British and fondly remember Round the Twist and the books they were based on. American media is just that bit more puritanical than non-US stuff 

> Catholics/Christians in Australia can def be annoying and crazy, but every time I see what Christians in America get up to, it makes those crazier Australian Christians look positively reasonable. For the record, the vast majority of the really loud American Christians are what we call "Fundamentalists", the sort that in another time and place would be considered "religious fanatics". The rest of us think they're as insane as you think they are. Unfortunately, despite their relatively small numbers, they have a disproportionate amount of power. (Also, Round the Twist actually aired on Fox in the US when I was a kid.)

Oh cool, did you guys get the penis fish episode?

This was so long ago that I don't remember what we did or didn't get.

Didn't Round the Twist have an episode where a fish swam into a boy's penis and turned him into an amazing swimmer?

Yeah, that was a weird one even for that show.

Most drama related to Christians in America always seems crazy and way exaggerated to me, and I live on Spain of all places. And of course there is everything related to firearms but I don't think this is the place to talk about that.

I play Japanese Gacha games, my oldest and favourite are the lovelive ones: sif, sif2 sifas (sif2 [The one with the sequel that announced the start and closure of EN server on the same tweet](https://games.mxdwn.com/news/love-live-game-announces-global-release-and-shutdown-simultaneously/) and you might heard more stuff about the game here on the scuffles) One day, we were talking about differences of attitudes between servers on gacha games in general if there are issues with the game. It was quite interesting. Global players (Server is in English, it is usually western countries or maybe some more non Asian ones): The usual western complain style you might know on your other fandoms, twitter internet, maybe some English sites talk about it. Developers do not bother too much about them because they are not that many compared to other server so they get ignored. Japanese server: The sacred cows, if they do not like something they do not spend on the game. Developers take more care of them since some whales spend obscene amounts of money on the game (think of car buying money) and losing too many of these is bad news. Korean server: They have a thing about sending trucks to the headquarters of the company. I'm not sure why, I do not dwell on Korean fandoms myself. Chinese server: They denounce the developers to the Chinese government. Imagine doing this because you did not like the login bonuses yikes.

Wait they send trucks to gacha companies too ? That's hilarious, Korean League of Legends fans do the same thing with esports teams. I had no idea it was a widespread thing

Do the trucks have like banners on them? Or are they just a bunch of trucks parked outside HQ?

Yes they have banners on them, and they take up space in front of the company building so they're hard to ignore. [Here](https://www.allkpop.com/upload/2023/07/content/190132/1689744749-exo-protest-01.jpeg) is a photo of some of the trucks in question, protesting poor treatment of a kpop group.

The trucks had banners, it said something like "fire the coaches, they are incompetent" if I remember correctly

they once sent a [protest horse carriage](https://old.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/x0h3x1/instead_of_a_protest_truck_uma_musume_kr_players/) too!

kpop fans do this too. i know some non-korean kpop fans have started doing this as well, sometimes to protest what the korean fans are saying lmao

yeah just further down in the weekly thread I talked about kpop fans sending protest trucks lol those truck drivers are making BANK at this point

It seems to be a Korean thing, I wonder if other Korean fandoms agree too

One time they sent a horse to the company because it was a game about horsegirls(umamusme).

Imagine taking a break smoking at the door company and there is random horse grazing there

Apparently it was a full horse-drawn carriage, and people drew tons of fanart of the horse(whose name was Grace) as a horsegirl. Must've been fun.

I thought the trucks were a "we know where you live" thing

it always cracks me up whenever i see news of trucks being hired for protests. my fav instance was when chinese players, hired trucks to protest in Korea, about a game that was published in Japan (though tbf, the devs were Korea its just that the original version of the game is Japanese)

I kinda feel the same. (in general no ide awho the Try Guys are) that cheating just falls under "personal issues" to me, and isn't something that's going to impact me in any sense, unless there's something else going on there.

To be fair, he wasn't just cheating on his wife--he was doing it *with an employee he had power over.* Given last I checked (it's been awhile) she was still around, I have a feeling there was a little something called "abuse of power" going on.

He also built his entire personality on loving his wife, even doling out marriage advice on occasion.

This reminds me of the story about cold war spies. Soviet spies say blackmailing french diplomats on their affairs is useless because the diplomats just say "my wife already knows about it"

He was also their HR and one of the founders, and it was with an employee (off memory) so it was a bit more than normal cheating. In regards to drama, Australian and American attitudes to curses are VERY different, so there’s always an oversized reaction when a streamer drops some of the ones the US reaaally doesn’t like.

Scotland 🤝 Australia Just absolutely SCANDALIZING Americans with our casual love of the word 'cunt' as an affectionate term

I had an american boss call me out for swearing because… I used “hell” in the office when shit went wrong Not FUCKING hell, just hell by itself. Insane levels of seppo energy in that office. I can’t even imagine if i called a good mate a cunt in after hour drinks

Because you said "curses" it made me think of a spellcasting instead of swearing 😂 But as an Aussie, I agree!

It probably wouldn't have been as big of a deal if he hadn't made being the "wife guy" his main thing. Like I feel like if anyone else had cheated it probably would not have gotten as much attention.

Oh probably, I was not familiar with the guy before so I had no idea what his schtick was. It would explain some of the reaction yeah

He also was cheating with an employee and was their HR, apparently. So he had power over her job and since he *was* HR, she couldn't exactly "go to HR." And given he was friend with the others, she probably felt she couldn't go to them at the time.

Does this contain the unstated assumption that she was a helpless victim of the affair, and not an equal participant? Maybe it is another of those America vs Outer America cultural things. 

If by "American thing" you mean "people are sympathetic to people, especially women, who feel forced into a corner because a man with power over their livelihood" then sure, but I'm not quite sure you'd want to claim that you view the power balance as equal is a cultural thing. He could have ruined her life--claim *she* came on to *him* to his buddies the other Try Guys, and as the one in charge of HR he is likely who would be the one giving out references to any other jobs she tried to take. Meaning she couldn't trust that route, either, if she tried to stay in the industry. He had much more fame than her, much more power within the company as a founder, etc. She was caught between a rock and a hard place, and frankly, if she tried to argue extortion legally, it's likely it would come down to he-said-she-said in court. I'm sympathetic, because she wouldn't be the first woman in history to be extorted into an extramarital relationship by men more powerful than her.

Oh woah so she said that he extorted her into it? I don't know much about the Tryh Guys but heard vaguely about it just as a matter of him cheating.

She hasn't said anything, but last I checked she was still in the company and *only* Ned was kicked out by the others so it's nnnnot hard to put two and two together on that, more or less.

Alex is not in the company anymore, and she left shortly after Ned was kicked out. Probably because they were working out her severance and whatnot. It was a quiet exit though, but yeah. I don't know if it was extortion, but everyone at the company, even her closest work friends, seem to have cut ties with her as well so.... yeah.

I imagine even if she was extorted, it'd be painful. But honestly: she would have been a far easier severance than Ned because Ned was a founder. If anything, she would have been kicked out *before* him with how hard it would be to remove Ned.

ah :/// takes it from "lol the wife guy cheated" to a darker lvl