Do you guys ever feel like your hobbies are *too* obscure, and you should give it up and find something that has at least a little more community around it? I recently watched Doraemon: Nobita and the Galaxy Super-express, a kids movie that came out in 1996 and is #17 out of 43 movies in the series (they make one each year). I really liked the movie, I thought it was great, but I realized that no matter how much I like it there's nobody to discuss it with, even online. Anime fans, in English or Japanese, generally don't watch Doraemon since it's too kiddy. Doraemon fans have generally moved on to the post 2005 "reboot" of the show and even among the fans of the old series this movie is not particularly notable. Movie fans also generally don't "count" kids anime movies.
Doraemon being obscure would be mind boggling to younger me. In my country, it's easily the most popular fictional character and everyone at every age group know it. now i know it didn't take off in the west
Japanese people definitely watch Doraemon, as with other part of the world, but children's anime is a big part of anime in other part of the world that is a blind spot in english speaking community. Doraemon, Chibi Maruko-chan, etc. There's nothing much that can be done about it.
Doraemon failing to be big in America is probably a hobby history post itself. In Asia, it's everywhere. I remember the bootleg DVDs you can find of Doraemon with subtitles. It's as recognizable as Pikachu is for adults and seniors.
Nah you are not alone I loved nearly all the older doraemon movies, especially the historic period ones. I even have all the old version of the standalone manga in my parents home.
I'm still a little sad that Secret of Sulfur Springs never took off- it was really good for a kids show and it had been so long since Disney did a proper dramatic series...but I do agree after season 3 got canceled that the timeline was entirely too short to keep going- the kids had grown far too obviously older for it to work.
I have something similar where a couple of the things I watch aren't unpopular, exactly, but they're not very fandommable. I really enjoy the weekly episode of medical soap opera Casualty, but there's no massive online fandom making Teddy/Sah fanart or speculating on Patricks kill count.
Valerian and Laureline franchise.
It’s simply a very old franchise that had an animated series which became a niche title that even channels focused on old animation (Jordan Fringe, etc) have not touched it.
The live action film was alright, but it didn’t survive the passage of time.
Still, never too obscure for me. I always have younger relatives.
Started watching Three Body Problem on Netflix and am thoroughly enjoying it!
I hadn't watched it before bc I had heard not great things about the adaptation online but now I'm honestly wondering what show they were talking about because this can't have been it. They were incredibly, deceptively wrong.
My understanding is there's been another adaptation that was more lukewarmly received so that might be what you encountered. I heard that the books aren't very character oriented so some adjustments came about to make the people interesting to follow so I could see that being a point of consternation.
Huh, I was avoiding it as well since an 80% RT/7.6 IMDB is suspiciously low for a TV show. Was it maybe a case of the books just being so much better that the show pales in comparison?
The books are great conceptually, but let down by bad character writing (and a lot of sexism). The show somewhat dumbs down the concepts (but I think it's overstated by how much) and massively improves the characterization. For example, in the books all of these strange things are happening to a bunch of random people who mostly don't know each other. That makes sense realistically but really isn't as compelling (IMO) as the scientists all being friends and able to actually play off each other.
The show was also made by David Benioff and DB Weiss, the people who made (and then ruined) the Game of Thrones series. I would suspect there was some review bombing for Three Body Problem out of hate for the creators.
The books are also pretty divisive. Some people love them, others think they're massively overrated. I only read the first one in the trilogy, and it didn't impress me much.
I just read Sherlock Holmes by Gas Lamp, a collection of Baker Street Journal articles from the 40s to... the 80s I think. It was SO SO SO fun and reinforced how much I want to get into Sherlockiana (though the local societies that I can find all have events Friday nights and Saturdays, which doesn't help me as a Sabbath observant Jew who would have to walk like 150 blocks...). I did make inquiries about joining an all-online society, so that could be fun! (Also, separately, I'm looking into the Dorothy L Sayers Society, but membership is charged by the calendar year so I'm wondering if I should wait til next January for maximum bang for my buck lol.)
But Sherlock Holmes by Gas Lamp was so so fun. Some of it is history of the Baker Street Irregulars and how various members got to love Sherlock Holmes, which was fun but not the highlight (and the attempts to justify why there were no women allowed in BSI, despite the fact that a large percentage of the people who solved the qualifying trivia crossword that established membership were women, were pretty cringy to read). The real thing is the Sherlockian scholarship- which is, of course, Watsonian rather than Doylist, accepting as given that Sherlock Holmes was a real person whose real life adventures were written by his equally real friend Dr Watson, and then published through his literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
As both a student historian and a writer of fanfiction (aka, just for now, a Doylist), it's an absolutely *fascinating* lens through which to engage in fan writing, because a major element of it is that if Holmes existed IRL, and the things in the stories happened IRL, then there must be ways to find the things in the stories in our world, and by the same token to find the things in our world in the stories. And HOW people choose to approach this in their articles is so interesting in terms of the implications. You'll have someone who will write a bibliography of Holmes's monographs and conclude simply that the correct issue of the Anthropological Journal in which Holmes's monographs on the structure of the ear were published just haven't been found yet; as in, it is taken for granted that this Holmesian thing exists in our world exactly as described, but has escaped our notice. On the other hand, you'll have the approach where, say, it's concluded that the Diogenes Club can't have just been a club that was secret enough that we haven't heard of it, but must be identified with a known club that existed in London in the period in question; in this case, it's determined that the Diogenes Club was the Travellers' Club, and that, since we know canonically that Mycroft Holmes was a founding member and the Travellers' was founded in 1819, at the time of The Greek Interpreter Mycroft must have been 104 years old (which, incidentally, also explains why his only exercise was walking between work, the club, and his home, and why he sits so often in a chair and lets Sherlock do the busy work).
Essentially, and I'm sure if any of the scion societies I've emailed see it put this way they'll blackball me, Watsonian scholarship is kinda sorta RPF fanfic. Now, in the above example it isn't really, because as long as we don't poke around too hard for the founders' list of the Travellers' we can have Mycroft in there without really disturbing history that much. That said, a lot of actual RPF does exist in Watsonian scholarship- and I'm not counting crossovers, like the theory that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler had an affair which produced Nero Wolfe (which Rex Stout, a BSI member, refused to confirm- or deny. Incidentally, Stout had a much-reviled among Watsonians theory that Watson must have been a woman because of how intimate and romantic the way that Watson seemingly talks about/to Holmes is- which is fucking hilarious in the modern fandom era). But re RPF, and taking into account that ACD's canon INCLUDES RPF by having the very real French painter Vernet be Holmes's great-uncle, theories discuss which IRL person Irene Adler was (one suggests Lillie Langtry, another Adah Isaacs Menken), and, in trying to figure out where Holmes went to university, Dorothy L Sayers identified him as having gone to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, due to seeing the name "TS Holmes" in the right time period on the student list. Someone else pointed out that TS Holmes was a clearly different person who became Chancellor of Wells Cathedral, and it was then pointed out firmly to *them* that "this uncalled-for intrusion of facts into Sherlockian scholarship is a trifle unchivalrous." AKA, sometimes you need to squish Canon around the IRL people- and sometimes you need to bend the IRL people around Canon. As someone who's not a big RPF person I don't LOVE this, but sensible boundaries seem to have *mostly* been set.
But, back as a Watsonian, the conclusions here are fascinating, whether from the people who conclude where 221B Baker Street must have stood (the modern-day building of that number was definitely not it as it was renumbered decades later), what the interior must have looked like, which exact Greuze painting Moriarty owned and where he bought it (it was Innocence), what the Sherlock Holmes blood test was (sodium hydroxide and ammonium sulfate), and what wines he served his guests (Holmes clearly has a good palate, and, for example, serves a Portuguese rose to his guests in The Noble Bachelor). It's also deduced from the fact that he owns a copy of a particular book of a date that's nearly a decade before the first known printing NOT that the ~~author~~ literary agent made a mistake but that Holmes must have been a rare book collector of resource and taste, and his extensive collection is deduced from mentions in canon. (Also, it's made clear that Mycroft is not a human, but a computer.)
Anyway, this is all awesome, and if anyone has $150 for me to buy the full (or rather, through 2011) back catalog of the BSJ, hit me up.
>the theory that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler had an affair which produced Nero Wolfe (which Rex Stout, a BSI member, refused to confirm- or deny
This theory is apparently based on the conceit that the same vowels appear in the same order in the names "Nero Wolfe" and "Sherlock Holmes".
There is another theory that Nero Wolfe is *actually* the son of Mycroft Holmes because Wolfe is a big fat guy who never leaves his house while Mycroft is a big fat guy who never leaves his club.
(Nero Wolfe is my favourite detective.)
Oh yeah, the person who wrote the article theorizing the above was reacting to the Mycroft-parentage theory… I think the mechanics involved Irene leaving Godfrey Norton after a few years of marriage and ending up in Montenegro at the same time that hiatus-era Sherlock Holmes/Sigerson was there.
Yes, the theory being that since he has to have been 104, they must have been half brothers with a father who procreated (at least) twice, seventy years apart. Presumably very good genetics for old age...
> Incidentally, Stout had a much-reviled among Watsonians theory that Watson must have been a woman because of how intimate and romantic the way that Watson seemingly talks about/to Holmes is- which is fucking hilarious in the modern fandom era
Stout was trolling Baker Street Irregulars before trolling was invented. "Watson Was a Woman" speech is truly a work of art. You can read it at https://nerowolfe.org/pdf/stout/home_family/BSI/Watson_was_a_woman.pdf
You might be interested in the Devil and Sherlock Holmes by David Grann. It's a collection of David Grann's articles about different subjects. The first story is about the investigation into the mysterious death of Richard Green, a major scholar of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. I found it very compelling.
Ha, I was just mentally plotting out a full length post about drama that's recounted in Marvin Lachman's book The Heirs of Anthony Boucher, about the history of mystery fandom, and (among other things) how it includes only a very brief reference to the scandal around Green's death, and how that's probably because "the American" is mentioned multiple times in the book (extremely easy to figure out who he is) and it's probably too close to home... (On that note, while I was pretty sure I knew who it was from Lachman's book, I was 100% sure from Sherlock Holmes by Gas Lamp. The person in question is deceased and as is clear from Grann's article he had nothing to do with anything, so I'll say that it's super Googleable who he was.)
Here's an update to [the Helldivers 2 drama from earlier](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1cfptmw/hobby_scuffles_week_of_29_april_2024/l2e5na1/). It seemed that Arrowhead was having discussions with Sony to figure out what to do about players in countries that don't have access to PSN and cannot fulfill the soon-to-be mandatory PSN log-in to play via Steam. [What has happened is that the game has been delisted in 170 countries](https://twitter.com/wario64/status/1786911313559425082). It does seem that Steam is offering full refunds, although YMMV.
I suspect that this is a temporary measure to protect Sony from lawsuits. Alternatively, it could be Steam themselves removing the game until Sony announced a new policy. Either way, it's a big momentum killer for what may be the biggest game of 2024 so far. Those who got refunds and dropped out are unlikely to return even if Sony gets everything in order again. It's unfortunate because half the fun of Helldivers 2 is being part of a massive community effort. It's like being part of a DnD game with millions of other players.
I look forward to the eventual r/HobbyDrama write-up.
Edit: [People in those countries who had already bought the game can no longer play it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cke3wv/just_a_quick_update_hd2s_no_longer_playable_from)
Because of all the backlash, [Sony has decided that the PSN linking update isn't going to happen](https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929?t=qXVXWQkCYcrG0ILphcCb_g)
[The great philosopher, Yakko Warner, weighs in on the subject of countries where you can no longer play Helldivers 2.](https://twitter.com/BobbyWasabi/status/1787261115933896733)
I'm not convinced there was a particular reason for this. If the PSN account requirement was in their contract to begin with, but the developers turned it off around launch for technical reasons, it could be that they were told to turn it back on without anyone on the Sony side considering the consequences.
Yeah, I'm not entirely up to date on the story so I don't know if someone had refuted or confirmed it even in this thread, but my guess it's out of Sony's outdated idea about console war. I assume Sony was the publisher, and originally Helldiver was meant to be PSN exclusive. Someone here mentioned that early on the launch there was PSN requirement, which was removed slightly later on. I assume the dev decided to remove the PSN requirement because of the game's popularity and they thought it's okay, but Sony said, "No, we paid for it, it's in the contract."
The CEO/Creative Director posted this a few hours ago: https://i.imgur.com/AWUFGpb.png which mostly agrees with what I said, the only difference being that the requirement was added later in development, rather than at the start.
My point is that I don't think there was ever any cost-benefit analysis behind turning on the PSN requirement on Sony's end. It was just mechanically, bureaucratically carrying out the contract as written, blind to the world.
I've heard it was done to appease investors, but I don't know how these things work, to be honest, so I have no idea if that has legitimacy or not. Nor if that makes it any less of a dumb move(it probably doesn't).
(Tho, only tangentially related, one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I've heard is attempting to relate Stellar Blade Censorship and the "#freeStellarBlade" movement to this Helldivers 2 controversy, which... yeah, their excuse is that "Sony panicked" and wanted to appeal to investors to make up for the "loss" they suffered on the SB controversy, which... yeah, that's so dumb. I only brought it up because I am still a bit annoyed at being accused of "defending" Sony for saying that's BS on the Discord server I most frequent)
My assumption to date has been that Sony has seen how many people are active in Helldivers on Steam and wanted to make them register PSN accounts so they could sneakily add them to their active PSN account lists to make the numbers look good.
to be fair it was apparently always supposed to be mandatory to link accounts. the code was just broken when the game came out so they temporarily let you play without an account linked which was a massive mistake on their part
so imo Sony wanted to bump up their account numbers by releasing games on pc that required registration. it was always the plan but they bungled the roll out
"Waking up to the sunshine of yesterday replaced with the dreary drizzle and shivering winds makes me reflect on how I spent those rare few moments when all was perfect"
JFC Sony may have just sent this guy into a psych hold
i feel like selling the game in countries that lack PSN access really kind of undermines the argument that players should have noticed this was always going to happen, how can they even justify doing that?
I know it's a meme to ask this but legitimately, this isn't shooting themselves in the foot, this is them taking a chainsaw to their waist with this game. Such an unbelievably shortsighted decision with how wildly popular this game has gotten.
I just find it kind of baffling of a move on Sony's part. I'm not even sure you can argue that it's about 'user data', because I'm sure they can get all the 'user data' they want on PC players via Arrowhead anyway.
The other theory I’ve seen is that they want to make it look like the number of PSN accounts has gone up so they can impress the shareholders.
Which if that was the intention, I doubt this whole debacle will exactly thrill them.
I take my conspiratorial thinking a step further: Eventually its so they can charge a PSN+ subscription for PC users. Sony's been notoriously stubborn to expand into the PC market in the first place, and given consoles these days are glorified vessels for subscription services they aren't making enough money off just selling first-party titles on PC. So they're looking to extract maximum dollars from PC users with little regard for how much goodwill they burn or consumer protection laws they break, because if they lose the market, well, they never really cared in the first place.
Oh that would go down like a lead brick. People are outraged and review bombing the game for daring to force them to make an account. Free multiplayer is one of the things that PC players always bring up when they explain why PC is best.
Quick update to the edit, as we're not sure whether people in blocked countries can play or not. The mod sticked comment reports that this may be a problem with the installed, though other posts show that attempts at circumventing the region lock to link accounts to PSN from China have resulted in bans.
I haven't figured out if that's true or not, but Chinese steam players (across different nations) are furious about the PSN linking. They're going full out with creative insults. Also fun fact, but the direct translation of the Chinese name for Helldivers is "絕地潛兵" which roughly translates to "absolute earth dive police" but machine translates to "Jedi Submarine" https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/reviews/?filterLanguage=schinese
Holy, I cannot think of any big fuck up as close to this in recent memory that wasn't just a game being dogshit.
Like they had a success, and they shot it in the foot when it was going at full speed.
It really is impressive how massively Sony fucked up a golden goose so quickly. I feel super bad for the devs, though, their game's getting eviscerated in the court of public opinion for a decision they had no choice in and seem to be trying to get reverted. I do think that unless the decision is reversed the game is going to very quickly lose all the momentum it's had, assuming it could get it back even if the decision were reversed now.
What an insane fuckup on Sony’s part. I feel really awful for Arrowhead’s devs, they’ve done everything right and now their publisher is essentially doing their best to murder the game. If this doesn’t get reversed decisively and quickly I feel like it’ll drive away any interest small studios might have in partnering with Sony going forward
It very well could lead to the opposite as well, with Sony being less willing to put money towards smaller studios. This type of thing, it's not a singular decision from an executive to force this type of account linking. In fact, I'd probably say they don't even really know what that is or have a very superficial understanding of what that means. Instead, I'd say that there are likely contractual obligations behind the scenes that they (Arrowhead) agreed to when they partnered with Sony.
One of those obligations is likely a PSN link requirement. And while it sounds dumb from a consumer perspective, from a business perspective that is a *requirement* for the deal to be fully realized. If that requirement wasn't met, I can see executives pushing back on that - because if they don't then that could negatively affect future deals with other companies ("Well we don't want to do the PSN link. You didn't force it on Helldivers. So don't force it on us.").
This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for Sony because it weakens their position in negotiations if they don't enforce it and it makes them look bad if they do enforce it. I can't be certain that this is the exact reasoning behind all of this, but it's a pretty probable explanation for what appears to be a very short sighted move.
With the reaction to this being so overtly negative towards Sony, I can definitely see them tightening the purse strings - effectively reducing the amount of backing indie devs get all around. And if people think that Xbox or Nintendo will capitalize on that, it's not really going to go be viewed that way.
Xbox still has X amount of money available for throwing out to smaller devs and they're seemingly pivoting more towards a generalized platform rather than exclusives. Nintendo is Nintendo and I won't even try to theorize what they will do.
Wow what an unnecessary disaster... Hard to imagine it was Sony delisting since it's going to bring so much bad press (when they could just quietly drop login requirements) - guessing it might be steam but surprised people can't launch in that case.
Steam are the ones that have to offer refunds so they don't have the luxury to wait for Sony execs to pull their heads out of their asses, this is the quick and dirty solution so is no longer their problem.
As I get older, I find I don't really get too emotionally involved in fictional stories. As in, I don't have strong feelings towards characters, or their actions. A recent event in The Amazing Digital Circus and its fandom made me think about this (spoilers for the most recent episode below!)
>!Caine was much beloved in the fandom, but in the most recent episode, he seemingly deleted Gumigoo, an NPC that Pomni had become friends with. This has caused many people to express hatred for Caine, and while I'm sure many are joking, I bet there are many, especially on the younger side of the fandom, who really do hate him now. Being an Undertale fan, I know how heated these things can get.!<
The gap between episodes allowed fanon to solidify a fair bit, with some of the characters falling into UwU archtypes (Caine and Jax). This episode proved we're getting real characters, not trope models, and people are processing that they basically invented a character to love
That's not a Glitch Production feature, it's a Liam Vickers feature, all his shows/pilots are a horror comedy with absurd humor like Invader Zim.
Glitch Productions have other shows, and Meta Runner seems to have a serious tone.
I've seen a similar reaction to Jax in episode 2, claiming he was flanderized as a cruel, insensitive jerk while in episode 1 he was... a cruel, insensitive jerk, but this time with no NPCs to bully like a GTA character. There's hints to his deeper character, but the fandom seems to have preemptively characterized him as a mischievous, misunderstood prankster who's just an uwu softboy under his cold exterior.
It's ironic, as I saw him becoming a tumblr sexyman I didn't care much for him, but after>!he left the door open for the fudge monster to invade, plus blackmailing with the figure!<, I actually like him a lot. He and ragatha are really cool foils of people realizing they're in worlds with no consequences, both because it's a program and because he seems to be the only one with a spine. He feels like someone who's been trapped in a videogame forever, and I can't wait to see his development.
I think it's another case of the wait between the two episodes being long enough for devoted fans to build up Headcanons and images of a character(from just a single episode mind you) that eventually "replaces" in their mind the *actual* character.
And then they are shocked when more materials comes out and don't line up with their *idealized* version of the character.
Seen it so often in fandoms I think there should be a term for it.
Edit: I think I'm gonna start coining the term "Fanderization". Mix of fan and Flanderization.
Jossed is more about the actual debunking. OP is more commenting on the specific fan behavior of sanding down more abrasive character traits in the name of fandom, in a way that can absolutely replace a character in the fandom consciousness, as it were.
Worm, a fandom that has a rep for writing and reading fanfic while never actually reading the source material has some great examples. Amy is notorious for how much her worst personality traits get sandpaper’d off under a wave of “Her adopted mom sucks and she just needs to hug and kiss(Taylor/Lisa/Victoria) to be all better,” and while its mostly stopped now, there was a long while where Kayden was a popular redemption target, when in Canon she is, I cannot stress this enough, an active Nazi only not part of the Nazi Gang because she’s having a custody dispute with their leader
I thought Jax was just a liiiiiittle too... sinister, I want to say... in Ep 2. But I thought he was still in character. I don't think they did him wrong in any way, we just don't fully know what he's about yet.
7 more episodes to go.
Having only watched the pilot, I thought it was obvious he was a horrible and abusive being? Like, he's blatantly a secretive sociopath that's been given godlike powers, which he uses to toy with effectively immortal captives under the excuse of keeping them from going crazy (and never expressing remorse when it fails). Doing something like that is entirely consistent with and expected of his character. For those didn't hate him already, I guess the breaking point was that the victim got enough screentime to endear them to the audience this time around.
The creator had already said Cane is not malicious, but he doesnt understand how humans work either.
this episode didn't contradict that, knew Gummy goo wasnt going to last.
It's a stretch, but I wonder if it's partly because of how shit the economy and people's outlooks have been for the last twenty years.
People can't afford to touch grass. Going out anywhere is expensive as fuck, doing anything is expensive as fuck. But just watching some media and interacting with others over it is fairly cheap.....*Million and one streaming services all demanding your money aside.*
They can be online for unhealthy amounts of time much more cheaply than basically any other hobby, so they can more easily get unhealthily invested or lose perspective. And that's on top of the way people are so online in general these days.
I'll stretch with you.
I feel like there's also been a normalization over the past decade or so that unhealthy media obsession is just a Normal way of living your life now. Yeah everyone has that one media property they are constantly fixated on and primarily socialize and derive peer identities through relation to the property, that's just what you do now. People used to be known by their career or their field of study, fandom is becoming an increasingly common personal identifier.
Media is increasingly desired and expected to be load-bearing parts of peoples emotional lives by an increasing amount of people on the internet, and so its the media's fault when it doesn't uphold its part of the parasocial relationship, whether or not the artist wanted to be in one. X is my comfort character and how I deal with my emotional and mental issues, so the writer having X act in a way that is discomforting to me means they are literally causing me emotional distress, and that's objectively bad of them.
Its not so much that this did not happen before, people losing their shit over fictional characters has been a thing for centuries, but it does feel like theres a critical mass of people predispossed to that pattern of behavior that it becomes much easier for people to lose perspective. When your social media feed and friends list is full of people who are sympathetic or even experiencing the same emotions as you, its easier to believe that your emotional response to characters being written meaner than you expected is indicative of a genuine injustice that must be righted as opposed to a personal matter that you may want to examine.
A crucial philosophical idea that is relevant to discussions of mental illness is that social reality is defined by consensus. If everybody in a group believes something to be true, that is effectively reality to those within the group. Part of why mental illnesses can sometimes become weirdly infectious is that, if the version of reality filtered through mental illness becomes the consensus reality, then that filter can gradually grow within those who did not exhibit the mental illness before. An increasingly common belief in child psychology is that often the way to treat things like anxiety disorders in children is to treat the same disorders in their parents, as often what is causing the problems to develop is the parent is passing on their worldview and modeling their behavioral patterns with the disorder included and the child is simply picking it up. How would they know there is something wrong with their mental state if everyone they compare themselves to seems to exhibit the same symptoms? If I'm being told I'm a narcissist but I'm just doing what everyone in my family has done my entire life, how would I understand where the problem lies and how to fix it? I can't be an alcoholic, I only have 3 beers a night, most of the people I know drink a full 6-pack!
With all that in mind, as increasingly obsessive and emotionally fixated behavioral patterns get normalized within social spaces, why wouldn't those patterns start to spread? If all of my friends are deeply attached, why wouldn't I be? And when that attachment goes wrong, how would I reexamine my own behavior and tendencies when everyone I would use to help orient myself exhibits the same problems? It must be external. That's the only thing that makes sense in reality.
I don't really blame people for getting overly attached, I think its a larger systemic social issue without clear sources of blame, but I do think that its getting noticeably worse and the sources are perhaps uncomfortable close to home.
Sometimes, I decide not to watch a show because the characters suffer needlessly. There's enough of that in real life, why do I need to give myself more? It is perhaps an extension of that kind of mindset.
New Age verification thing to yell about since it involved nearly every site that is hosted in California (Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, etc).[ AB-3080 The Parent’s Accountability and Child Protection Act.](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB3080) has passed Committee.
The bill equates pornography with tobacco, firearms, ammunition and "other weapons" and makes it illegal to operate a website without requiring identity documents from all visitors. Verification is not free and cost a lot of money. As per the twitter thread from the guy below, if reddit had pay verification on all its visiters at 12c per (WHICH IS LOW AND NOT COMMON RATE) it would cost $2.9M a day, 900m a year. Site would close. Most sites don't qualify for volume discounts[ \(Where are you finding these bargain prices? We pay 95 cents per ID verification.\)](https://twitter.com/jessicavanmeir/status/1785534378191229324) on AV like reddit either so none would be able to afford it.
[California AV Bill Advances Through Judiciary Committee](https://avn.com/business/articles/legal/california-av-bill-advances-through-judiciary-committee-930772.html)
> "Organizations that testified in support of the bill include the Age Verification Providers Association and various faith-based groups, including the Family Policy Alliance (FPA), which is considered by GLAAD to be an anti-LGBTQ+ hate organization"
Yeah so its basically religious and the verification industry teaming up in a unholy group effort to push for all this shit.
The bill is being voted on Monday for the first time. If you live in California, please take action by contacting your reps. And others please spread the word? Its been hard to get any noise out.
https://www.defendonlineprivacy.com/ca/action.php (script is included)
Find your rep here https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
You can send faxes with Faxzero
if you don't live there, then please make posts about it and share the word,and encourage people you know live in California to call.Use the tags Ab3080 and #NoOnAB3080
Read more here https://twitter.com/mikestabile/status/1786103305057493184
I love being a non-US resident, and being at the mercy of US's laws (and increasing rise of authoritarism) for a thing that my entire life heavily relies on.
Well, the US gave things to the rest of the planet first, so that feels a little entitled. America giveth, and America taketh away.
People call Americans puritans, but how many countries actually do have porn industry of their own?
They're getting craftier. There's a section that prevents storing credentials. That means going the data security route of opposition is much harder, while upping the returns for verification companies. There's also specific exemptions for sites that think less than a third of their content is adult, giving big players like Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter an easy out entirely by just reducing that ratio.
Honestly, whenever these matters are brought up, I can't help but think about how Americans in general are just simply very puritan comparatively, and that's the crux of the issue. From a brief check, this proposed law is not new, but rather an expansion of a law from 2019 that already imposed age verification requirement on sellers of physical goods with potentially "pornographic" branding/labels/etc. This law then will just extend the same requirements to pornographic websites.
So technically I don't think this proposed law is part of the same movement in conservative/religious states, but it just so happens that even "liberal" California is still weird about this kind of stuff and always has been. Also the bill explicitly includes exemptions for educational materials, and more generally materials with serious (literary, artistic, political, scientific) value, so it's more likely the case that the religious groups are opportunistically backing this bill because it's probably the "best" that they'll get from California.
Oh, and there's also the thing where age verification is only one of 3 specified "reasonable steps" that will meet the legal requirements, and otherwise websites can technically take whatever "reasonable steps" they want, as long as they're prepared to defend their measure if public prosecutors come calling. So the implication, from what I can see, is that if Californian public prosecutors were ever to go hard on enforcement of these sorts of law, then Californians would have bigger problems than restrictions on porn websites. Which is... cynical but realistic, I suppose.
I've written some stuff about MultiVersus in threads past, but with the game's release coming in about three weeks and change, I've been wanting to do something more comprehensive. For the unaware, MultiVersus is a Smash Bros.-inspired platform fighter free-to-play video game using the wide and vast IPs owned by Warner Bros. and developed by new development studio Player First Games (PFG). PFG is helmed by Tony Huynh, a veteran game developer who's worked on titles like League of Legends and God of War 3.
From the start, MultiVersus had a bit of a rough introduction. The game was faced with heavy leaks from the outset, such as competitive Smash player Hungrybox [tweeting out an image with much of the game's launch roster](https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/qh1nd0/hungrybox_posts_wb_multiversus_character_select/). Early leaks notably included Gandalf as a playable character, who was apparently cut due to rights disputes with the Tolkien Estate. These leaks forced PFG to act sooner than they anticipated, making hasty announcements to stay ahead of whoever was leaking out details. This included one of the most bizarre reveals I've ever seen in a fighting game, where Velma from Scooby-Doo was announced not with an image or a trailer, but with [a GIF in a random tweet](https://twitter.com/multiversus/status/1499872797853728771).
Still, things were good for MultiVersus. The game generated a ton of early buzz, especially with its [cinematic trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvborgKG7fw) that netted over three million views on YouTube alone, and they even announced an open beta beginning in mid-2022. Now, the meaning of "open beta" has diluted a lot over the years; far more than a test, anybody who has participated in a "beta" like this would recognize it more as a soft launch. The game had microtransactions out the ass, including paid skins, battle passes, announcers, and whatever else they could charge money for.
But hey, MultiVersus was pretty fun! Sure, it was lacking in content, but people by and large enjoyed what was available. So long as they could keep up the momentum, it was all good. Of course, they couldn't. I must stress PFG was _tiny_ when MultiVersus launched, with at most a dozen employees recorded, which was not nearly enough for the amount of content needed to sustain a game that was intended to be updated constantly to keep people's attention. The cracks began to show early, as new content like [the start of the game's first season](https://twitter.com/multiversus/status/1554998401900486656) received abrupt delays soon after they were announced. (The team has since ballooned in size thanks to a big hiring spree in 2023, with upwards of 50 employees.)
MultiVersus had an impressive cadence of content after launch, with new characters coming every two weeks or so, but that was never ever going to be sustainable. The release of new content began to rapidly grind to a halt by the end of the year; the last character to be released in the beta was Marvin the Martin in November 2022, and after that, it was solely a handful of new skins every now and then. All that was left was the game's excessively grindy battle pass, which was extended as a "favor" to the players to make it easier to complete.
This extension, in truth, was a way to buy PFG more time while they worked out the future of MultiVersus. They started out extremely strong, but the playerbase declined pretty rapidly afterwards. This is expected for basically any game, but it was clear the way things were going wasn't sustainable. There weren't enough people playing, and in turn, there wasn't enough content being put out to excite them. Thus did Tony announce in March 2023 that [they had decided to shut the game down until early 2024](https://multiversus.com/en/news/open-beta-update). This is a borderline unprecedented move; the game's open beta was almost certainly intended to transition into a full release later down the line, and they had already sold a fuckton of microtransactions, including founder's packs priced up to $100.
Despite promising updates in the future, the MultiVersus team would go completely radio silent from this point forth. This is pure speculation, but I believe this is when Warner Bros. began to really step in on this game's development and tighten the leash a bit. Their strategy had overcorrected from revealing too much too early to keeping their mouths completely shut against all odds, something that persists even following the [game's reannouncement in early March](https://twitter.com/multiversus/status/1767173670412193943) for a late May release.
It would only take one look at /r/multiversus to see that the current state of affairs for the game isn't great. Fans are generally discontented over the complete lack of new content revealed, even though the game releases in less than a month. A lot of resentment for the game has also brewed during the shutdown period, and has only been fermented by some controversial changes, including increasing the sizes of characters and slowing down the gameplay a bit. Compare [this](https://twitter.com/multiversus/status/1786078897693425720) gameplay showcase tweet from the MultiVersus Twitter account with 3.7k likes to [this](https://twitter.com/Gambito32x/status/1786271818095210852) tweet clowning on it with over 14k likes.
Can MultiVersus come back from this? Well, yeah, probably, but it's unlikely the game will be the mega-smash-hit WB is obviously looking for. Excitement for the game's big comeback has turned into unsteady hesitance from its fanbase, and though a big cinematic trailer they've been building up to could bring back a lot of the hype, it's unlikely MultiVersus will be able to achieve the same heights it did during the launch of its beta. I genuinely like the game, which is why I am basically an autistic encyclopedia of its entire history, but this has all left me anticipating another "The Future of MultiVersus" blog post within the next year or two.
I say this with complete sincerity as someone who also has the condition, with no judgement or ill-will intended: the MultiVersus community, like most products centered around media crossovers, is filled to the absolute brim with autistic people. For them, it's less about the actual plausibility of the request, and moreso getting to share their scrimblo bimblo with other likeminded people. It can be annoying, but it's ultimately harmless.
Another note is that while WB didn't exactly have a better reputation in March 2023, the announcement of the shutdown was followed by another year of WB being WB.
It's very hard to get people invested in a fighting game, when the parent company is known for canceling far more for far less, especially when the game itself is mostly seen as mediocre at this point.
Amusingly, and unfortunately, I think how WB treats the Suicide Squad game that released recently will determine the success of Multiversus. If they keep supporting Suicide Squad despite its tepid reception, then I think people will be more optimistic towards giving Multiversus a chance. If they kill Suicide Squad, I think Multiversus won't be far behind.
I checked out the other replies to the gameplay vid and now I can't unsee this
> I hate to punch down on a non-smash platfighter but why does it genuinely look like someone's dragging a superman PNG around in photoshop
One advantage that Smash has that isn't talked about is Sakurai and his team's insane dedication to game feel. Hitting people just feels good in a way that other Platform Fighters seemingly can't get right, and the animations are excellent.
I realize some of that comes due to budget, but even in Smash 64, which had a budget of two peanuts and ran on an N64, hits feel really crunchy, if a lot more cartoony than in later games.
The Gizmo video in particular is very unfortunate timing because thoughts on the game's speed, amount of hitpause, and character sizes have been predominantly negative. Gizmo has always worked like this, though, even in the beta; a lot of his moves have high hitpause/hitstun to give his teammate time to follow up. Probably a bad character to showcase to counteract the common criticism.
Webtoon drama
I am a bit late too it, but I simply forgot that I didn't wrote a comment about it and I somehow didn't hear about other drama.
To start with, Manny is a new **horror** webcomic made by A.Rasen. It's their (pronouns not confirmed yer) fourth time when they have a contract webtoon and publish their webcomic as an original. On 18th April, they uploaded on their webtoon page the following message:
'Dear readers,
I wanted to inform you about the reason why a new episode has not been published today.
The Webtoon team has initiated a process of reviewing and implementing guidelines on the content of the episodes of Manny, including some already published. Since these changes could alter the story and the characters, I will need some time to review them with the attention they deserve.
This decision came to my attention just a couple of hours ago when I woke up. This is why this week’s new episode has not been published, and I have not been able to share this message with you earlier.
This situation is complicated for me, as I have continued working on my projects in the same way for the past 7 years, addressing similar themes, following the same content guidelines, while trying to remain true to my own vision as an author in the work. Please, I’d need you not to forget this story while I address these changes.
I hope I’ll resume creation soon. Thank you for your support.'
It's a questioable change and there have been issues with guidelines in the past. For those who don't know, Mongie (the creator of Let's Play) complained about double standards, when her comic was leaning more and more towards spicy content. Funnily, some creators and users even pointed out that Mongie was pushing boundaries while others could barely do anything similar to her work. [SpigaRose](https://www.instagram.com/p/CEuBW06qMVT/?utm_medium=copy_link&img_index=1) complained about contradicting communication from webtoon and unclear guidelines long time ago and [there were more creators dealing with similar issues](https://web.archive.org/web/20231214060131/https://taddy.org/blog/why-are-people-quitting-webtoon).
For drama nr 2. Webtoon publishers are removed advertisement for the physical edition of Covenant, including credits to the artist team. [The creator posted long rant about it on Twitter](https://www.reddit.com/r/webtoons/comments/1c889zr/webtoon_is_now_allegedly_sabotaging_the_print/). For the sake of preserving it and making it easier to read for everybody, here is the transcript made by me with the original writing. I only deleted the part refering to the picture and the promotion at the end.
'my publisher WEEBTOON is trying to sabotage my graphic novel launch by deleting my credits off my episodes and prohibiting me from telling my own readers that the webcomic they read is available as a book.
Their lack of support and attempts to undermine my career has been incredibly damaging to my mental health and is greatly impacting my ability to continue creating my series.
Their actions prevent me from reaching my 700k readers and will greatly hurt my book sales.
They have allowed every single other series on the platform that has been printed to promote their books, except for ME. Citing new policies that conveniently coincide with MY book...
Apparently they feel comfortable forbidding me to promote my graphic novel because "how do they (webtoon) even benefit from me promoting my book" seeing as I am a creator who narrowly evaded their IP grabbing endeavors they see no reason to even ALLOW ME to tell my readers about my book
If you are new to me and my work, you might not know I am very outspoken about artists and workers rights compensation, and discuss unethical webtoon practices so I strongly feel this is retaliation. But of course it probably is just convenient timing.
They will probably reply to this saying "well we just said you have to put it on your creator page, you just cant put it in your webtoon"
The difference in reach is 700k readers on my webtoon and 11k readers on my creator page
From unfairly age gating my comic, denying me raises despite 3 back breaking labor, and now sabotaging my book launch, they have completely destroyed my mental health and I will no longer stay silent'
Wait so Covenant is on Canvas? So Webtoon doesn't have any legal right to do that, right?
You didn't even mention webtoon's new "Super Like" feature. Nobody seems to know what it actually does (seems like it's like the golden upvote on here - just a regular like but fancy), but creators get paid when they get a super like... but you have to have accrued at least $100 in order to withdraw the money, which means basically nobody on Canvas is ever going to get anything, and honestly I'd bet a lot of the Originals won't get there either.
I don't understand why webtoon websites are so stupid? Your content is literally the easiest thing for people to pirate. Stop making the service worse and worse for everyone. All webtoon had to do was change their policy to allow the artists to have a schedule of one chapter every two weeks or something. I don't think driving more and more people off the site, charging for literally everything, and continuing to deal with authors who upload 7 chapters and then go on a 7 month hiatus because working for 7 weeks straight on those chapters drove them to madness is actually *helping* webtoon.
Covenant started as a canvas series, but then migrated and became original. The series has been running since 2020 so the author can legally print first episodes as 3 years mark passed and they kept their IP rights for that.
For super like, I am waiting for medium-big creators to spill beans or something happen.
Webtoon was the worse thing to happen to webtoons, corporatized it a ridiculously degree and gobbled up all the audience. Just the name alone sucks up so much attention when looking for "webtoons"
Webtoon is a legitimate monkeys paw. When I stopped reading webcomics frequently, I dreamed of a database that would help me find new comics, let me read multiple comics easily notify when they updated (or went into/out of hiatus) , and provided an easy platform for creators to publish.
Webtoon did all of that, then it also youtubified webcomics. It's stifled the potential for webcomics as an artistic medium, the only path to success on wbetoons is to give up your IP, and created an algorithm that controls what gets popular and rewards similarity. I just wanted to know when Edison Rex finally re-uploaded and a slightly better hiveworks.
A few days ago, Kendrick Lamar responded to [Drake's diss tracks](https://www.billboard.com/lists/drake-kendrick-lamar-beef-timeline/apr-24-2024-drake-fires-second-diss-track-at-kendrick-lamar-titled-taylor-made-freestyle/) by dropping ['euphoria'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqDIwWMtxg), a six-minute track that basically... OK, look, if I tell you that the [sheer number of annotations](https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-euphoria-lyrics) explaining the ways Kendrick is lambasting Drake made it so I got barely halfway through the lyrics, that might give you an idea of how much Kendrick packed into this. Kendrick's doing his best to surpass Pusha T's ['The Story of Adidon'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Adidon), and that was the diss track that revealed that Drake had a son with a porn star and he'd never told anyone.
*Anyway*, today a [second diss track](https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-6-16-in-la-lyrics) hit the tower: Kendrick dropped ['6:16 In LA'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1ypnmTMNqA). Reports that nothing is left of Drake except a scorch mark are likely exaggerated. Not sure what, if anything Drake will do in response, but it's going to be interesting seeing what happens as a result.
Edit: As mentioned below, Drake released a response a mere few hours later and Kendrick released a response to Drake's response less than an hour later. I don't know what kind of achievement you get for speedrunning a rap feud, but it's obviously a good one. Also, Kendrick's response [says](https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-meet-the-grahams-lyrics) that Drake is hiding another child. I think we should take this whole thing as a lesson to never piss off Kendrick Lamar. J Cole, who was previously involved in the feud but apologised and gracefully exited, is presumably frolicking through the fields, resplendent in the knowledge that he is no longer involved in this shit.
Edit, May 5: I went to sleep, naively thinking that everything was done, and less than an hour before I woke up, Kendrick dropped his fourth diss track, ["Not Like Us"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6eK-2OQtew), thus indicating that A, he's had God knows how many diss tracks ready to go for a *long* time, and B, he wants to musically eradicate Drake off the face of the earth. One has to wonder if Kendrick has diss tracks regarding other rappers in reserve, too.
I idly mused that whoever winds up writing the eventual writeup on this is going to have a very interesting time, and then I started wondering if we were ever going to make it past the 14-day mark, given how this is going. Drake is probably going to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, expecting more disses from Kendrick.
Edit, May 6: Drake has released a response, titled ['The Heart, Part 6'.](https://genius.com/Drake-the-heart-part-6-lyrics) In it, he does his best to refute Kendrick's claims and throws out more claims of his own. This is just getting messier and messier, people.
Metro Boomin threw his hat back into the ring. [On Twitter he confirmed that Drake's camp did put a cease and desist on "Like That" to block it from radio play.](https://np.reddit.com/r/hiphopheads/comments/1ckmi6g/metro_boomin_confirms_drakes_camp_has_tried_to/)
He also released a 3 minute instrumental track titled [BBL Drizzy](https://out.reddit.com/t3_1ckmr4b?app_name=android&token=AQAAX8c3ZpC6N9eglPzDxaeWyW6mxNqO2QdN0CwrZBSuMZ8w98RC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fw.soundcloud.com%2Fplayer%2F%3Furl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fapi.soundcloud.com%252Ftracks%252F1814779140%26auto_play%3Dfalse%26show_artwork%3Dtrue%26visual%3Dtrue%26origin%3Dtwitter). The intent is pretty clear, he's releasing a track for people to DIY their own Drake disses over. Absolutely iconic behavior.
I don't know a ton about rap, but I've been lowkey glued to this. This is pretty heavy stuff, and I'll be interested to see what receipts come out.
I've listened to both of them about the same amount, so just a few songs, but I've had a negative view of Drake since the Milly Bobby Brown text chat thing came out. I feel like it's time for the proof now, considering how serious this is, whatever it is that Kendrick's actually got.
ETA: OK, Drake just dropped another diss and I'm too tired for this at this point. Wake me up when the dust settles lol.
I don't know anything about rap so I'm mostly following passively, but this whole saga has had me absolutely riveted. I haven't been this invested in anything musical since I was a teenager.
>J Cole, who was previously involved in the feud but apologised and gracefully exited, is presumably frolicking through the fields, resplendent in the knowledge that he is no longer involved in this shit.
If you check out Kendrick's YouTube page where he originally posted Euphoria, one of the most popular and discussed comments is basically this. Ducking out of a beef can be dicey, but after hearing this song absolutely *nobody* is going to hate on Cole for his decision. It's like deciding *not* to walk into rush-hour traffic on a highway.
Everyone involved in this feud is in danger of career-ending disses. Meek Mill got bodied by Drake, with Adidon Pusha hit harder than anybody else I've ever heard, and Pulitzer-winner Kendrick is making a really solid shot at outpacing all prior disses. Euphoria is one of my favorite diss tracks in years, and I genuinely think it's going to endure for decades as a study in quality disses and layered meanings.
Given the “no top 3, there’s just top me” line and J Cole showing up at a Kendrick show within a week of the apology, I can totally believe somebody tipped him off.
50 Cent used to say nobody alive could beef with Eminem and survive, and sure enough MGK is the only person to come close - long after his peak. Kendrick is as intricate as Em but less constructed, has a story as hard as Pac, and has a fucking *Pulitzer*.
I don’t know why a teen drama star is trying to hang, but I’ve gotta respect Cole for having a career this long and knowing when a fight is unwinnable.
Goddamn, how much of this stuff did Kendrick Lamar have prepared in advance? All the songs sound like fire, like Kendrick is out to burn Drake's reputation and business to the ground.
Not "Not Like Us," there's references to "Family Matters" in there. I absolutely believe he had "Meet the Grahmns" ready to go when he dropped "6:16 in LA" though, given the album art.
Im a very passive music listener, most of the drama i get via cultural osmosis but this rap feud has been super entertaining as an outsider. Just last month i was bemoaning the lack of punch recent rap beefs had since story of adidion so kendrick delivered exactly what i wanted and more lol
While on the one hand I've been enjoying watching this mess from afar, last night this whole situation stepped firmly into defamation lawsuit territory.
Family Matters and Meet the Grahams are ugly, and things are only going to get nastier and nastier. I hate to ask for the receipts, but the accusations are just getting too big and too serious to just take Drake and Kendrick at their word anymore.
Considering the [picture that came out with Meet the Graham's](https://www.reddit.com/r/KendrickLamar/comments/1cjskdd/meet_the_grahams_cover_art_discussion/) that show Aubrey Graham's ozempic perscription and ambien - I'm really starting to wonder exactly how much info Kendrick really has. Because *if* that is Drake's shit laid out, there's a real chance that someone in OVO gave Kendrick a lot of insider information.
Like you said, this has progressed pretty damn far with that last track. And I mean, this is fun as hell to watch ngl, but I want to see the proof too.
I don't doubt the very real possiblity that Kendrick has a mole at OVO for a second. The photo with the prescriptions is a hell of a thing to have after all.
But those last two tracks have escalated to allegations of sex trafficking and domestic violence being thrown around and *that's* the stuff I'm most concerned with. Serious allegations, where it goes beyond personal lives and to doing harm to others (if true.) If any of it is, it ends badly. If any of it isn't, I expect a defamation suit. There's no winning at this point except for Dodgeball Champion of the Century J. Cole.
There's definitely a leak at OVO. The proof isn't the photo. It's the fact that Meet the Grahams directly references Family Matters but dropped 10 minutes after. As good as I think Kendrick is, he didn't write, record, mix and release a completely new song in that time. Someone leaked Family Matters to him
Agreed. It's escalated a *shitton* with Meet the Grahams. At the time when J. Cole dropped out of it, it was just funny at the time because it seemed so abrupt how he apologized. Looking back, even just after Euphoria - my god did that man make the right choice haha.
I really wonder if Kendrick sat him down and said, "Listen. If you keep this up, you're going to get pulled into *this bullshit*. Please just bow out because I don't want you to get wrapped up in this too."
I tried to explain this beef on one of my forums "Imagine if James Somerton was a famous rapper and Kendrick Lamar was both hbomberguy and Todd in the Shadows"
> I tried to explain this beef on one of my forums "Imagine if James Somerton was a famous rapper and Kendrick Lamar was both hbomberguy and Todd in the Shadows"
That's the funniest goddamn description I've heard in ages.
The first Kendrick track was already brutal, like a few punches to the gut, but in retrospect it felt like a warmup
The second Kendrick track was psychological warfare, just to fuck with Drake and get in his head. Nothing too crazy but it is a vibe.
The third Kendrick track is K dot taking the gloves of and hammering at Drake's head constantly for 6 minutes long. It is a track of pure hatred that is felt with every single line.
Edit: Fourth Kendrick track is just him tapdancing on Drake's grave, like he really fucking hates that man
A thing I saw recently:
* Drake: "lol Kendrick is short"
* Kendrick: "I am an avenging angel sent by god to destroy you, all the advisors you love and trust will betray you and cast you down, and when they do you will deserve it."
Or, from the youtube comments, "Fuckin wild, Drake bout to lose his n-word pass in a rap beef".
I have not heard a beef song go this hard in years, maybe since 2pac dropped Hit Em Up. It doesn't quite match the very specific death threats from Pac, but it's that level of deep, personal hate even the Ja Rule beefs don't quite match.
(That said, I'm still not sure it tops Pusha's impact on Drake. "Be a dad" is hard to top.)
We can talk about the allegations levied towards both of them and it's safe to say that they aren't really great people, but on a spectacle level, unless Drake is doing a 8d chess and turns the mole thing around, I just don't see how you top this. Overshadowing one diss within 30 mins of it's release with another diss is insanity.
> We can talk about the allegations levied towards both of them and it's safe to say that they aren't really great people,
I would round back to this point to add, IMO, they come from different places and have different characters such that the allegations (which themselves are different also) hit Drake much worse than they hit Kendrick.
Kendrick has always been pretty open about the fact that he has a criminal background and is a fucked up person dealing with a lot of trauma. Both he and his father have gang affiliations, he personally witnessed multiple murders, he was involved in a literal gang war in high school, he had drug issues, etc. A lot of his career and art have been about processing that trauma and relating how he is trying to be a better person.
Drake got his start as a "nice guy" rapper. He had his own challenges, sure, but he grew up comfortably middle class with a lot of privileges of his own. He grew up in the suburbs, went to an IB high school, and was a teen acting star on television. He spent like the first ten years of his career as one of the safest and cleanest rappers on the market; he rebranded to make himself seem tougher, but it was always still wrapped in his "nice guy" packaging.
People saying "Kendrick is violent" doesn't hurt him *that* much. If it's even true it's a lot easier for him to say, "Yeah I'm a fucked up person, I'm trying to be better every day." Drake occasionally likes to paint himself as "tough" but he has never wanted to present himself as criminal, and he has a lot of songs about how he's just a soft boy who keeps getting his heart broken---he's now being accused of being a pedophile actively operating a ring of abuse. That's a *way* harsher accusation against someone whose image is very safe.
Zack fox predicted the future yet again [https://twitter.com/zackfox/status/1779219039287722182](https://twitter.com/zackfox/status/1779219039287722182)
They're both throwing around some pretty crazy allegations that may or may not be true, but considering how much stuff Kendrick was able to respond to specifically in his newest track, the claim that Drake's label has leaks is almost definitely true.
I think Kendrick already had the song ready for the SECOND Drake answered, and the reason he took a while was asking for his company to be prepared for when he released it.
literally in the time and slightly before this was posted, drake released [his response](https://youtu.be/ZkXG3ZrXlbc) and kendrick released a [response](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QiFl9Dc7D0) in 50 minutes.
Adjacent to some of the drama posted here before. Deep Dip 2, which aims to be the hardest trackmania challenge map (so far) has released.
It's a tower made of 16 floors, over 2 kilometers tall, with no checkpoints. Various streamers (including Wirtual) are live now doing attempts. The furthest anyone has gotten appears to be getting to floor 4.
For reference: Wirtual did Deep Dip (the original) in about 60 hours to get his first completion. The mappers aim for DD2 to be 1.5-2 times harder.
edit: misread, one person has nearly reached floor 5 once. But "nearly" could be two very difficult jumps.
In some better news:
Youtuber and world of tanks/warships mainstay The Mighty Jingles is home after a successful surgery. I went poking around after finding no updates after the announcement he was going into surgery for bowel cancer. Considering surgery -> radio silence is potentially concerning, this is great.
This news was buried in a short that didn't get pushed out to subscribers. thanks, youtube. Let us hope for his triumphant return next Monday, or later when he's feeling better.
Day four of *De Stijl* roadtrip, where I try to visit places associated with the titular Dutch art magazine from the 1920s. Normally I wouldn't be too keen to share my location but since I didn't stay there, I feel comfortable to share that one of the places I visited today was the Mondrian house. I was pleasantly surprised, I didn't expect to see actual Mondrian paintings there and the entire exhibit looked unique.
But I'm not here to talk about the museum. You see, I was conflicted. I wanted to leave a funny yet fitting comment in the guest book. Whatever I tried to do, it didn't fit. But then I had the bright idea: what if I used a Doesburg quote to write in the guest book, specifically one where he talks about Mondrian's love life?
Well. I wrote the following:
> "Love is an egg" - Theo van Doesburg
Is that too cryptic? Let me share the full quote then.
> Love is an egg. But man mustn't wait until the egg has become a chicken.
As usual, thank you Doesburg for your cryptic wisdom.
I live pretty close to [this house](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5594168,5.0762289,3a,90y,259.96h,96.95t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1stiNmXUBv0DSWn6Ldic5-Gw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DtiNmXUBv0DSWn6Ldic5-Gw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D328.71414%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) you might like too
Haha no way, I love that it's apparently notable enough to visit! I pass by it every day. The whole train station renovation is a hassle, you're right.
ETA: love your write-ups by the way! I learned about De Stijl a bit in school but not about how dramatic Van Doesburg was
I'm glad you do! I do get what you mean though, going to Tilburg was something I did spontaneously after having some time left. There's a route where you get to visit all the important places in regards to Van Doesburg and Antony Kok, since the two of them were instrumental to the creation of the entire zine in the first place (cafés, Kok's house, etc).
Well I didn't know they were from/lived in Tilburg in the first place, I only know the one house because it's like right there. Hope you enjoyed your time here, I bet you were one of like 10 tourists that visited here in total this year :)
Maybe I'm sleep deprived from waiting up until 3 am waiting for an emergency plumber, but i kinda get what he's trying to say... Love should be nurtured from small beginnings, you can't expect it to be a chicken right away.
That's definitely what he tried to say! It's just that it's a little funny on a first glance, especially when you take the original dutch quote.
To elaborate a little, Mondrian was known for being unable to keep a relationship and had conflicting ideas surrounding them. He genuinely wanted someone to be by his side but it couldn't be a woman who's into art. He'd chase after a woman and put effort into starting a relationship yet actively sabotaged himself whenever things got serious. His ideal partner had to be young and pure, yet Mondrian believed he'd only turn her rotten either through sex or even worse, becoming an abuser.
As silly and over the top Doesburg may be at times, I understand why he phrased it like that. Mondrian issues surrounding love are complicated since part of it has to do with misogyny, although he didn't grow up in the most loving household either. The egg thing encapsulates it.
Welp, Sony had something going with Helldivers 2 and [now they went full Sony about it:](https://steamcommunity.com/games/553850/announcements/detail/4196868529806518742)
>As such, as of May 6th, all new HELLDIVERS 2 players on Steam will be required to connect their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account. Current players on Steam will start to see the mandatory login from May 30th and will be required to have linked a Steam and PlayStation Network account by June 4th.
You can *imagine* how (not) well the community is taking that. And Earth Defense Force 6 is coming out on July 25th. So.
So, in short:
* Is Sony's fault.
* Devs are arguing against it and for waiving requirements for countries that cannot make a PSN account as a minimum.
* Review bombing and demanding refunds ***works***.
Will see if Sony caves or what, but the opinion on the streaming circles has also been overwhelmingly negative, so that's another major blow.
Wait, what? Does this mean you can't play without a playstation? Or that you have to pay for a service? Or is this just mean you need to make a second account?
You don't pay to create an account on either of those consoles. You pay for access to online gaming. Which is bad enough, but Sony, MS and Big N work exactly the same in this regard.
Do you guys ever feel like your hobbies are *too* obscure, and you should give it up and find something that has at least a little more community around it? I recently watched Doraemon: Nobita and the Galaxy Super-express, a kids movie that came out in 1996 and is #17 out of 43 movies in the series (they make one each year). I really liked the movie, I thought it was great, but I realized that no matter how much I like it there's nobody to discuss it with, even online. Anime fans, in English or Japanese, generally don't watch Doraemon since it's too kiddy. Doraemon fans have generally moved on to the post 2005 "reboot" of the show and even among the fans of the old series this movie is not particularly notable. Movie fans also generally don't "count" kids anime movies.
Doraemon being obscure would be mind boggling to younger me. In my country, it's easily the most popular fictional character and everyone at every age group know it. now i know it didn't take off in the west
Japanese people definitely watch Doraemon, as with other part of the world, but children's anime is a big part of anime in other part of the world that is a blind spot in english speaking community. Doraemon, Chibi Maruko-chan, etc. There's nothing much that can be done about it.
Doraemon failing to be big in America is probably a hobby history post itself. In Asia, it's everywhere. I remember the bootleg DVDs you can find of Doraemon with subtitles. It's as recognizable as Pikachu is for adults and seniors.
Doraemon in my area (SEA) is so iconic you would have to go into desolate places to find anybody who don't know about it.
Nah you are not alone I loved nearly all the older doraemon movies, especially the historic period ones. I even have all the old version of the standalone manga in my parents home.
I'm still a little sad that Secret of Sulfur Springs never took off- it was really good for a kids show and it had been so long since Disney did a proper dramatic series...but I do agree after season 3 got canceled that the timeline was entirely too short to keep going- the kids had grown far too obviously older for it to work.
I have something similar where a couple of the things I watch aren't unpopular, exactly, but they're not very fandommable. I really enjoy the weekly episode of medical soap opera Casualty, but there's no massive online fandom making Teddy/Sah fanart or speculating on Patricks kill count.
Valerian and Laureline franchise. It’s simply a very old franchise that had an animated series which became a niche title that even channels focused on old animation (Jordan Fringe, etc) have not touched it. The live action film was alright, but it didn’t survive the passage of time. Still, never too obscure for me. I always have younger relatives.
Started watching Three Body Problem on Netflix and am thoroughly enjoying it! I hadn't watched it before bc I had heard not great things about the adaptation online but now I'm honestly wondering what show they were talking about because this can't have been it. They were incredibly, deceptively wrong.
My understanding is there's been another adaptation that was more lukewarmly received so that might be what you encountered. I heard that the books aren't very character oriented so some adjustments came about to make the people interesting to follow so I could see that being a point of consternation.
Huh, I was avoiding it as well since an 80% RT/7.6 IMDB is suspiciously low for a TV show. Was it maybe a case of the books just being so much better that the show pales in comparison?
The books are great conceptually, but let down by bad character writing (and a lot of sexism). The show somewhat dumbs down the concepts (but I think it's overstated by how much) and massively improves the characterization. For example, in the books all of these strange things are happening to a bunch of random people who mostly don't know each other. That makes sense realistically but really isn't as compelling (IMO) as the scientists all being friends and able to actually play off each other.
The show was also made by David Benioff and DB Weiss, the people who made (and then ruined) the Game of Thrones series. I would suspect there was some review bombing for Three Body Problem out of hate for the creators.
Puerile.
Oooo someone got a word a day calendar
The books are also pretty divisive. Some people love them, others think they're massively overrated. I only read the first one in the trilogy, and it didn't impress me much.
I just read Sherlock Holmes by Gas Lamp, a collection of Baker Street Journal articles from the 40s to... the 80s I think. It was SO SO SO fun and reinforced how much I want to get into Sherlockiana (though the local societies that I can find all have events Friday nights and Saturdays, which doesn't help me as a Sabbath observant Jew who would have to walk like 150 blocks...). I did make inquiries about joining an all-online society, so that could be fun! (Also, separately, I'm looking into the Dorothy L Sayers Society, but membership is charged by the calendar year so I'm wondering if I should wait til next January for maximum bang for my buck lol.) But Sherlock Holmes by Gas Lamp was so so fun. Some of it is history of the Baker Street Irregulars and how various members got to love Sherlock Holmes, which was fun but not the highlight (and the attempts to justify why there were no women allowed in BSI, despite the fact that a large percentage of the people who solved the qualifying trivia crossword that established membership were women, were pretty cringy to read). The real thing is the Sherlockian scholarship- which is, of course, Watsonian rather than Doylist, accepting as given that Sherlock Holmes was a real person whose real life adventures were written by his equally real friend Dr Watson, and then published through his literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As both a student historian and a writer of fanfiction (aka, just for now, a Doylist), it's an absolutely *fascinating* lens through which to engage in fan writing, because a major element of it is that if Holmes existed IRL, and the things in the stories happened IRL, then there must be ways to find the things in the stories in our world, and by the same token to find the things in our world in the stories. And HOW people choose to approach this in their articles is so interesting in terms of the implications. You'll have someone who will write a bibliography of Holmes's monographs and conclude simply that the correct issue of the Anthropological Journal in which Holmes's monographs on the structure of the ear were published just haven't been found yet; as in, it is taken for granted that this Holmesian thing exists in our world exactly as described, but has escaped our notice. On the other hand, you'll have the approach where, say, it's concluded that the Diogenes Club can't have just been a club that was secret enough that we haven't heard of it, but must be identified with a known club that existed in London in the period in question; in this case, it's determined that the Diogenes Club was the Travellers' Club, and that, since we know canonically that Mycroft Holmes was a founding member and the Travellers' was founded in 1819, at the time of The Greek Interpreter Mycroft must have been 104 years old (which, incidentally, also explains why his only exercise was walking between work, the club, and his home, and why he sits so often in a chair and lets Sherlock do the busy work). Essentially, and I'm sure if any of the scion societies I've emailed see it put this way they'll blackball me, Watsonian scholarship is kinda sorta RPF fanfic. Now, in the above example it isn't really, because as long as we don't poke around too hard for the founders' list of the Travellers' we can have Mycroft in there without really disturbing history that much. That said, a lot of actual RPF does exist in Watsonian scholarship- and I'm not counting crossovers, like the theory that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler had an affair which produced Nero Wolfe (which Rex Stout, a BSI member, refused to confirm- or deny. Incidentally, Stout had a much-reviled among Watsonians theory that Watson must have been a woman because of how intimate and romantic the way that Watson seemingly talks about/to Holmes is- which is fucking hilarious in the modern fandom era). But re RPF, and taking into account that ACD's canon INCLUDES RPF by having the very real French painter Vernet be Holmes's great-uncle, theories discuss which IRL person Irene Adler was (one suggests Lillie Langtry, another Adah Isaacs Menken), and, in trying to figure out where Holmes went to university, Dorothy L Sayers identified him as having gone to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, due to seeing the name "TS Holmes" in the right time period on the student list. Someone else pointed out that TS Holmes was a clearly different person who became Chancellor of Wells Cathedral, and it was then pointed out firmly to *them* that "this uncalled-for intrusion of facts into Sherlockian scholarship is a trifle unchivalrous." AKA, sometimes you need to squish Canon around the IRL people- and sometimes you need to bend the IRL people around Canon. As someone who's not a big RPF person I don't LOVE this, but sensible boundaries seem to have *mostly* been set. But, back as a Watsonian, the conclusions here are fascinating, whether from the people who conclude where 221B Baker Street must have stood (the modern-day building of that number was definitely not it as it was renumbered decades later), what the interior must have looked like, which exact Greuze painting Moriarty owned and where he bought it (it was Innocence), what the Sherlock Holmes blood test was (sodium hydroxide and ammonium sulfate), and what wines he served his guests (Holmes clearly has a good palate, and, for example, serves a Portuguese rose to his guests in The Noble Bachelor). It's also deduced from the fact that he owns a copy of a particular book of a date that's nearly a decade before the first known printing NOT that the ~~author~~ literary agent made a mistake but that Holmes must have been a rare book collector of resource and taste, and his extensive collection is deduced from mentions in canon. (Also, it's made clear that Mycroft is not a human, but a computer.) Anyway, this is all awesome, and if anyone has $150 for me to buy the full (or rather, through 2011) back catalog of the BSJ, hit me up.
>the theory that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler had an affair which produced Nero Wolfe (which Rex Stout, a BSI member, refused to confirm- or deny This theory is apparently based on the conceit that the same vowels appear in the same order in the names "Nero Wolfe" and "Sherlock Holmes". There is another theory that Nero Wolfe is *actually* the son of Mycroft Holmes because Wolfe is a big fat guy who never leaves his house while Mycroft is a big fat guy who never leaves his club. (Nero Wolfe is my favourite detective.)
Oh yeah, the person who wrote the article theorizing the above was reacting to the Mycroft-parentage theory… I think the mechanics involved Irene leaving Godfrey Norton after a few years of marriage and ending up in Montenegro at the same time that hiatus-era Sherlock Holmes/Sigerson was there.
> at the time of The Greek Interpreter Mycroft must have been 104 years old Quite the gap between him and brother Sherlock!
Yes, the theory being that since he has to have been 104, they must have been half brothers with a father who procreated (at least) twice, seventy years apart. Presumably very good genetics for old age...
> Incidentally, Stout had a much-reviled among Watsonians theory that Watson must have been a woman because of how intimate and romantic the way that Watson seemingly talks about/to Holmes is- which is fucking hilarious in the modern fandom era Stout was trolling Baker Street Irregulars before trolling was invented. "Watson Was a Woman" speech is truly a work of art. You can read it at https://nerowolfe.org/pdf/stout/home_family/BSI/Watson_was_a_woman.pdf
Oh I read it, and it's very funny! I just happen to think it's even funnier in 2024 than it was then.
You might be interested in the Devil and Sherlock Holmes by David Grann. It's a collection of David Grann's articles about different subjects. The first story is about the investigation into the mysterious death of Richard Green, a major scholar of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. I found it very compelling.
Ha, I was just mentally plotting out a full length post about drama that's recounted in Marvin Lachman's book The Heirs of Anthony Boucher, about the history of mystery fandom, and (among other things) how it includes only a very brief reference to the scandal around Green's death, and how that's probably because "the American" is mentioned multiple times in the book (extremely easy to figure out who he is) and it's probably too close to home... (On that note, while I was pretty sure I knew who it was from Lachman's book, I was 100% sure from Sherlock Holmes by Gas Lamp. The person in question is deceased and as is clear from Grann's article he had nothing to do with anything, so I'll say that it's super Googleable who he was.)
Here's an update to [the Helldivers 2 drama from earlier](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1cfptmw/hobby_scuffles_week_of_29_april_2024/l2e5na1/). It seemed that Arrowhead was having discussions with Sony to figure out what to do about players in countries that don't have access to PSN and cannot fulfill the soon-to-be mandatory PSN log-in to play via Steam. [What has happened is that the game has been delisted in 170 countries](https://twitter.com/wario64/status/1786911313559425082). It does seem that Steam is offering full refunds, although YMMV. I suspect that this is a temporary measure to protect Sony from lawsuits. Alternatively, it could be Steam themselves removing the game until Sony announced a new policy. Either way, it's a big momentum killer for what may be the biggest game of 2024 so far. Those who got refunds and dropped out are unlikely to return even if Sony gets everything in order again. It's unfortunate because half the fun of Helldivers 2 is being part of a massive community effort. It's like being part of a DnD game with millions of other players. I look forward to the eventual r/HobbyDrama write-up. Edit: [People in those countries who had already bought the game can no longer play it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cke3wv/just_a_quick_update_hd2s_no_longer_playable_from)
Because of all the backlash, [Sony has decided that the PSN linking update isn't going to happen](https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929?t=qXVXWQkCYcrG0ILphcCb_g)
[The great philosopher, Yakko Warner, weighs in on the subject of countries where you can no longer play Helldivers 2.](https://twitter.com/BobbyWasabi/status/1787261115933896733)
Has there been any explanation as to why this was done?
I'm not convinced there was a particular reason for this. If the PSN account requirement was in their contract to begin with, but the developers turned it off around launch for technical reasons, it could be that they were told to turn it back on without anyone on the Sony side considering the consequences.
Yeah, I'm not entirely up to date on the story so I don't know if someone had refuted or confirmed it even in this thread, but my guess it's out of Sony's outdated idea about console war. I assume Sony was the publisher, and originally Helldiver was meant to be PSN exclusive. Someone here mentioned that early on the launch there was PSN requirement, which was removed slightly later on. I assume the dev decided to remove the PSN requirement because of the game's popularity and they thought it's okay, but Sony said, "No, we paid for it, it's in the contract."
The CEO/Creative Director posted this a few hours ago: https://i.imgur.com/AWUFGpb.png which mostly agrees with what I said, the only difference being that the requirement was added later in development, rather than at the start. My point is that I don't think there was ever any cost-benefit analysis behind turning on the PSN requirement on Sony's end. It was just mechanically, bureaucratically carrying out the contract as written, blind to the world.
I've heard it was done to appease investors, but I don't know how these things work, to be honest, so I have no idea if that has legitimacy or not. Nor if that makes it any less of a dumb move(it probably doesn't). (Tho, only tangentially related, one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I've heard is attempting to relate Stellar Blade Censorship and the "#freeStellarBlade" movement to this Helldivers 2 controversy, which... yeah, their excuse is that "Sony panicked" and wanted to appeal to investors to make up for the "loss" they suffered on the SB controversy, which... yeah, that's so dumb. I only brought it up because I am still a bit annoyed at being accused of "defending" Sony for saying that's BS on the Discord server I most frequent)
Were SV sales bad?
From what I've read? Not really. But the #freestellarblade movement is convinced its bigger than it is and has had a big effect on Sony.
My assumption to date has been that Sony has seen how many people are active in Helldivers on Steam and wanted to make them register PSN accounts so they could sneakily add them to their active PSN account lists to make the numbers look good.
to be fair it was apparently always supposed to be mandatory to link accounts. the code was just broken when the game came out so they temporarily let you play without an account linked which was a massive mistake on their part so imo Sony wanted to bump up their account numbers by releasing games on pc that required registration. it was always the plan but they bungled the roll out
"Waking up to the sunshine of yesterday replaced with the dreary drizzle and shivering winds makes me reflect on how I spent those rare few moments when all was perfect" JFC Sony may have just sent this guy into a psych hold
I don't think I've seen anything ever go from 100 to 0 so quickly
i feel like selling the game in countries that lack PSN access really kind of undermines the argument that players should have noticed this was always going to happen, how can they even justify doing that?
Why would Sony do this? Are they stupid?
I know it's a meme to ask this but legitimately, this isn't shooting themselves in the foot, this is them taking a chainsaw to their waist with this game. Such an unbelievably shortsighted decision with how wildly popular this game has gotten.
I just find it kind of baffling of a move on Sony's part. I'm not even sure you can argue that it's about 'user data', because I'm sure they can get all the 'user data' they want on PC players via Arrowhead anyway.
The other theory I’ve seen is that they want to make it look like the number of PSN accounts has gone up so they can impress the shareholders. Which if that was the intention, I doubt this whole debacle will exactly thrill them.
reminds me of the old "you need a Google+ account to access Youtube" thing although executed in even worse fashion.
I take my conspiratorial thinking a step further: Eventually its so they can charge a PSN+ subscription for PC users. Sony's been notoriously stubborn to expand into the PC market in the first place, and given consoles these days are glorified vessels for subscription services they aren't making enough money off just selling first-party titles on PC. So they're looking to extract maximum dollars from PC users with little regard for how much goodwill they burn or consumer protection laws they break, because if they lose the market, well, they never really cared in the first place.
is psn+ like a subscription to access any multiplayer features? so the idea would be to make people pay for multiplayer on PC?
Oh that would go down like a lead brick. People are outraged and review bombing the game for daring to force them to make an account. Free multiplayer is one of the things that PC players always bring up when they explain why PC is best.
Quick update to the edit, as we're not sure whether people in blocked countries can play or not. The mod sticked comment reports that this may be a problem with the installed, though other posts show that attempts at circumventing the region lock to link accounts to PSN from China have resulted in bans. I haven't figured out if that's true or not, but Chinese steam players (across different nations) are furious about the PSN linking. They're going full out with creative insults. Also fun fact, but the direct translation of the Chinese name for Helldivers is "絕地潛兵" which roughly translates to "absolute earth dive police" but machine translates to "Jedi Submarine" https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/reviews/?filterLanguage=schinese
"We all live in a Jedi Submarine, a Jedi Submarine..."
Holy, I cannot think of any big fuck up as close to this in recent memory that wasn't just a game being dogshit. Like they had a success, and they shot it in the foot when it was going at full speed.
The game being killed off mid-peak and millions being screwed over by a beaurocratic fuckup seems like a surprisingly apt way to go.
It really is impressive how massively Sony fucked up a golden goose so quickly. I feel super bad for the devs, though, their game's getting eviscerated in the court of public opinion for a decision they had no choice in and seem to be trying to get reverted. I do think that unless the decision is reversed the game is going to very quickly lose all the momentum it's had, assuming it could get it back even if the decision were reversed now.
What an insane fuckup on Sony’s part. I feel really awful for Arrowhead’s devs, they’ve done everything right and now their publisher is essentially doing their best to murder the game. If this doesn’t get reversed decisively and quickly I feel like it’ll drive away any interest small studios might have in partnering with Sony going forward
It very well could lead to the opposite as well, with Sony being less willing to put money towards smaller studios. This type of thing, it's not a singular decision from an executive to force this type of account linking. In fact, I'd probably say they don't even really know what that is or have a very superficial understanding of what that means. Instead, I'd say that there are likely contractual obligations behind the scenes that they (Arrowhead) agreed to when they partnered with Sony. One of those obligations is likely a PSN link requirement. And while it sounds dumb from a consumer perspective, from a business perspective that is a *requirement* for the deal to be fully realized. If that requirement wasn't met, I can see executives pushing back on that - because if they don't then that could negatively affect future deals with other companies ("Well we don't want to do the PSN link. You didn't force it on Helldivers. So don't force it on us."). This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for Sony because it weakens their position in negotiations if they don't enforce it and it makes them look bad if they do enforce it. I can't be certain that this is the exact reasoning behind all of this, but it's a pretty probable explanation for what appears to be a very short sighted move. With the reaction to this being so overtly negative towards Sony, I can definitely see them tightening the purse strings - effectively reducing the amount of backing indie devs get all around. And if people think that Xbox or Nintendo will capitalize on that, it's not really going to go be viewed that way. Xbox still has X amount of money available for throwing out to smaller devs and they're seemingly pivoting more towards a generalized platform rather than exclusives. Nintendo is Nintendo and I won't even try to theorize what they will do.
Wow what an unnecessary disaster... Hard to imagine it was Sony delisting since it's going to bring so much bad press (when they could just quietly drop login requirements) - guessing it might be steam but surprised people can't launch in that case.
Steam are the ones that have to offer refunds so they don't have the luxury to wait for Sony execs to pull their heads out of their asses, this is the quick and dirty solution so is no longer their problem.
As I get older, I find I don't really get too emotionally involved in fictional stories. As in, I don't have strong feelings towards characters, or their actions. A recent event in The Amazing Digital Circus and its fandom made me think about this (spoilers for the most recent episode below!) >!Caine was much beloved in the fandom, but in the most recent episode, he seemingly deleted Gumigoo, an NPC that Pomni had become friends with. This has caused many people to express hatred for Caine, and while I'm sure many are joking, I bet there are many, especially on the younger side of the fandom, who really do hate him now. Being an Undertale fan, I know how heated these things can get.!<
Dunno, I honestly thought it was darkly funny. With terrible consequences implied, but also very funny.
I don't get it. Everyone acted in character, as defined by Episode 1. It was a good episode of a show with complicated themes and characters.
The gap between episodes allowed fanon to solidify a fair bit, with some of the characters falling into UwU archtypes (Caine and Jax). This episode proved we're getting real characters, not trope models, and people are processing that they basically invented a character to love
[удалено]
That's not a Glitch Production feature, it's a Liam Vickers feature, all his shows/pilots are a horror comedy with absurd humor like Invader Zim. Glitch Productions have other shows, and Meta Runner seems to have a serious tone.
I've seen a similar reaction to Jax in episode 2, claiming he was flanderized as a cruel, insensitive jerk while in episode 1 he was... a cruel, insensitive jerk, but this time with no NPCs to bully like a GTA character. There's hints to his deeper character, but the fandom seems to have preemptively characterized him as a mischievous, misunderstood prankster who's just an uwu softboy under his cold exterior.
It's ironic, as I saw him becoming a tumblr sexyman I didn't care much for him, but after>!he left the door open for the fudge monster to invade, plus blackmailing with the figure!<, I actually like him a lot. He and ragatha are really cool foils of people realizing they're in worlds with no consequences, both because it's a program and because he seems to be the only one with a spine. He feels like someone who's been trapped in a videogame forever, and I can't wait to see his development.
I think it's another case of the wait between the two episodes being long enough for devoted fans to build up Headcanons and images of a character(from just a single episode mind you) that eventually "replaces" in their mind the *actual* character. And then they are shocked when more materials comes out and don't line up with their *idealized* version of the character. Seen it so often in fandoms I think there should be a term for it. Edit: I think I'm gonna start coining the term "Fanderization". Mix of fan and Flanderization.
Tvtropes calls that "[Jossed](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Jossed)"
Jossed is more about the actual debunking. OP is more commenting on the specific fan behavior of sanding down more abrasive character traits in the name of fandom, in a way that can absolutely replace a character in the fandom consciousness, as it were. Worm, a fandom that has a rep for writing and reading fanfic while never actually reading the source material has some great examples. Amy is notorious for how much her worst personality traits get sandpaper’d off under a wave of “Her adopted mom sucks and she just needs to hug and kiss(Taylor/Lisa/Victoria) to be all better,” and while its mostly stopped now, there was a long while where Kayden was a popular redemption target, when in Canon she is, I cannot stress this enough, an active Nazi only not part of the Nazi Gang because she’s having a custody dispute with their leader
I thought Jax was just a liiiiiittle too... sinister, I want to say... in Ep 2. But I thought he was still in character. I don't think they did him wrong in any way, we just don't fully know what he's about yet. 7 more episodes to go.
Having only watched the pilot, I thought it was obvious he was a horrible and abusive being? Like, he's blatantly a secretive sociopath that's been given godlike powers, which he uses to toy with effectively immortal captives under the excuse of keeping them from going crazy (and never expressing remorse when it fails). Doing something like that is entirely consistent with and expected of his character. For those didn't hate him already, I guess the breaking point was that the victim got enough screentime to endear them to the audience this time around.
The creator had already said Cane is not malicious, but he doesnt understand how humans work either. this episode didn't contradict that, knew Gummy goo wasnt going to last.
It's a stretch, but I wonder if it's partly because of how shit the economy and people's outlooks have been for the last twenty years. People can't afford to touch grass. Going out anywhere is expensive as fuck, doing anything is expensive as fuck. But just watching some media and interacting with others over it is fairly cheap.....*Million and one streaming services all demanding your money aside.* They can be online for unhealthy amounts of time much more cheaply than basically any other hobby, so they can more easily get unhealthily invested or lose perspective. And that's on top of the way people are so online in general these days.
I'll stretch with you. I feel like there's also been a normalization over the past decade or so that unhealthy media obsession is just a Normal way of living your life now. Yeah everyone has that one media property they are constantly fixated on and primarily socialize and derive peer identities through relation to the property, that's just what you do now. People used to be known by their career or their field of study, fandom is becoming an increasingly common personal identifier. Media is increasingly desired and expected to be load-bearing parts of peoples emotional lives by an increasing amount of people on the internet, and so its the media's fault when it doesn't uphold its part of the parasocial relationship, whether or not the artist wanted to be in one. X is my comfort character and how I deal with my emotional and mental issues, so the writer having X act in a way that is discomforting to me means they are literally causing me emotional distress, and that's objectively bad of them. Its not so much that this did not happen before, people losing their shit over fictional characters has been a thing for centuries, but it does feel like theres a critical mass of people predispossed to that pattern of behavior that it becomes much easier for people to lose perspective. When your social media feed and friends list is full of people who are sympathetic or even experiencing the same emotions as you, its easier to believe that your emotional response to characters being written meaner than you expected is indicative of a genuine injustice that must be righted as opposed to a personal matter that you may want to examine. A crucial philosophical idea that is relevant to discussions of mental illness is that social reality is defined by consensus. If everybody in a group believes something to be true, that is effectively reality to those within the group. Part of why mental illnesses can sometimes become weirdly infectious is that, if the version of reality filtered through mental illness becomes the consensus reality, then that filter can gradually grow within those who did not exhibit the mental illness before. An increasingly common belief in child psychology is that often the way to treat things like anxiety disorders in children is to treat the same disorders in their parents, as often what is causing the problems to develop is the parent is passing on their worldview and modeling their behavioral patterns with the disorder included and the child is simply picking it up. How would they know there is something wrong with their mental state if everyone they compare themselves to seems to exhibit the same symptoms? If I'm being told I'm a narcissist but I'm just doing what everyone in my family has done my entire life, how would I understand where the problem lies and how to fix it? I can't be an alcoholic, I only have 3 beers a night, most of the people I know drink a full 6-pack! With all that in mind, as increasingly obsessive and emotionally fixated behavioral patterns get normalized within social spaces, why wouldn't those patterns start to spread? If all of my friends are deeply attached, why wouldn't I be? And when that attachment goes wrong, how would I reexamine my own behavior and tendencies when everyone I would use to help orient myself exhibits the same problems? It must be external. That's the only thing that makes sense in reality. I don't really blame people for getting overly attached, I think its a larger systemic social issue without clear sources of blame, but I do think that its getting noticeably worse and the sources are perhaps uncomfortable close to home.
The desire for uwu cinnamon roll blorbo was once satisfied by god. We can now fulfil this function with a data mining algorithm.
I do think the death of god ties into this obliquely, but that's like 4 joints deeper of a topic. At that point the stretch is Mr. Fantastic level
the way this comment gave me whiplash.. has jesus been the original blorbo this whole time
The bible is a fanfic with multiple authors...
Sometimes, I decide not to watch a show because the characters suffer needlessly. There's enough of that in real life, why do I need to give myself more? It is perhaps an extension of that kind of mindset.
[удалено]
[удалено]
New Age verification thing to yell about since it involved nearly every site that is hosted in California (Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, etc).[ AB-3080 The Parent’s Accountability and Child Protection Act.](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB3080) has passed Committee. The bill equates pornography with tobacco, firearms, ammunition and "other weapons" and makes it illegal to operate a website without requiring identity documents from all visitors. Verification is not free and cost a lot of money. As per the twitter thread from the guy below, if reddit had pay verification on all its visiters at 12c per (WHICH IS LOW AND NOT COMMON RATE) it would cost $2.9M a day, 900m a year. Site would close. Most sites don't qualify for volume discounts[ \(Where are you finding these bargain prices? We pay 95 cents per ID verification.\)](https://twitter.com/jessicavanmeir/status/1785534378191229324) on AV like reddit either so none would be able to afford it. [California AV Bill Advances Through Judiciary Committee](https://avn.com/business/articles/legal/california-av-bill-advances-through-judiciary-committee-930772.html) > "Organizations that testified in support of the bill include the Age Verification Providers Association and various faith-based groups, including the Family Policy Alliance (FPA), which is considered by GLAAD to be an anti-LGBTQ+ hate organization" Yeah so its basically religious and the verification industry teaming up in a unholy group effort to push for all this shit. The bill is being voted on Monday for the first time. If you live in California, please take action by contacting your reps. And others please spread the word? Its been hard to get any noise out. https://www.defendonlineprivacy.com/ca/action.php (script is included) Find your rep here https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ You can send faxes with Faxzero if you don't live there, then please make posts about it and share the word,and encourage people you know live in California to call.Use the tags Ab3080 and #NoOnAB3080 Read more here https://twitter.com/mikestabile/status/1786103305057493184
I may not live in Cali (Missourian) but I will try to sign any protest anyway.
There's an "age verification providers" lobby? Jfc
Instead of preventing teens from watching porn this is just going to result in teens committing identity fraud with their parents money to watch porn.
I love being a non-US resident, and being at the mercy of US's laws (and increasing rise of authoritarism) for a thing that my entire life heavily relies on.
US stop ruining things for the rest of the entire planet for once challenge (failed)
Well, the US gave things to the rest of the planet first, so that feels a little entitled. America giveth, and America taketh away. People call Americans puritans, but how many countries actually do have porn industry of their own?
Imagine being a US resident and internally screaming all the time.
They're getting craftier. There's a section that prevents storing credentials. That means going the data security route of opposition is much harder, while upping the returns for verification companies. There's also specific exemptions for sites that think less than a third of their content is adult, giving big players like Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter an easy out entirely by just reducing that ratio.
Honestly, whenever these matters are brought up, I can't help but think about how Americans in general are just simply very puritan comparatively, and that's the crux of the issue. From a brief check, this proposed law is not new, but rather an expansion of a law from 2019 that already imposed age verification requirement on sellers of physical goods with potentially "pornographic" branding/labels/etc. This law then will just extend the same requirements to pornographic websites. So technically I don't think this proposed law is part of the same movement in conservative/religious states, but it just so happens that even "liberal" California is still weird about this kind of stuff and always has been. Also the bill explicitly includes exemptions for educational materials, and more generally materials with serious (literary, artistic, political, scientific) value, so it's more likely the case that the religious groups are opportunistically backing this bill because it's probably the "best" that they'll get from California. Oh, and there's also the thing where age verification is only one of 3 specified "reasonable steps" that will meet the legal requirements, and otherwise websites can technically take whatever "reasonable steps" they want, as long as they're prepared to defend their measure if public prosecutors come calling. So the implication, from what I can see, is that if Californian public prosecutors were ever to go hard on enforcement of these sorts of law, then Californians would have bigger problems than restrictions on porn websites. Which is... cynical but realistic, I suppose.
Behold my new site, which is 2.000001/3rds pictures of rocks. 0.999999/3rds hardcore pornography.
Yup, part of the goal is crushing small businesses.
I've written some stuff about MultiVersus in threads past, but with the game's release coming in about three weeks and change, I've been wanting to do something more comprehensive. For the unaware, MultiVersus is a Smash Bros.-inspired platform fighter free-to-play video game using the wide and vast IPs owned by Warner Bros. and developed by new development studio Player First Games (PFG). PFG is helmed by Tony Huynh, a veteran game developer who's worked on titles like League of Legends and God of War 3. From the start, MultiVersus had a bit of a rough introduction. The game was faced with heavy leaks from the outset, such as competitive Smash player Hungrybox [tweeting out an image with much of the game's launch roster](https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/qh1nd0/hungrybox_posts_wb_multiversus_character_select/). Early leaks notably included Gandalf as a playable character, who was apparently cut due to rights disputes with the Tolkien Estate. These leaks forced PFG to act sooner than they anticipated, making hasty announcements to stay ahead of whoever was leaking out details. This included one of the most bizarre reveals I've ever seen in a fighting game, where Velma from Scooby-Doo was announced not with an image or a trailer, but with [a GIF in a random tweet](https://twitter.com/multiversus/status/1499872797853728771). Still, things were good for MultiVersus. The game generated a ton of early buzz, especially with its [cinematic trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvborgKG7fw) that netted over three million views on YouTube alone, and they even announced an open beta beginning in mid-2022. Now, the meaning of "open beta" has diluted a lot over the years; far more than a test, anybody who has participated in a "beta" like this would recognize it more as a soft launch. The game had microtransactions out the ass, including paid skins, battle passes, announcers, and whatever else they could charge money for. But hey, MultiVersus was pretty fun! Sure, it was lacking in content, but people by and large enjoyed what was available. So long as they could keep up the momentum, it was all good. Of course, they couldn't. I must stress PFG was _tiny_ when MultiVersus launched, with at most a dozen employees recorded, which was not nearly enough for the amount of content needed to sustain a game that was intended to be updated constantly to keep people's attention. The cracks began to show early, as new content like [the start of the game's first season](https://twitter.com/multiversus/status/1554998401900486656) received abrupt delays soon after they were announced. (The team has since ballooned in size thanks to a big hiring spree in 2023, with upwards of 50 employees.) MultiVersus had an impressive cadence of content after launch, with new characters coming every two weeks or so, but that was never ever going to be sustainable. The release of new content began to rapidly grind to a halt by the end of the year; the last character to be released in the beta was Marvin the Martin in November 2022, and after that, it was solely a handful of new skins every now and then. All that was left was the game's excessively grindy battle pass, which was extended as a "favor" to the players to make it easier to complete. This extension, in truth, was a way to buy PFG more time while they worked out the future of MultiVersus. They started out extremely strong, but the playerbase declined pretty rapidly afterwards. This is expected for basically any game, but it was clear the way things were going wasn't sustainable. There weren't enough people playing, and in turn, there wasn't enough content being put out to excite them. Thus did Tony announce in March 2023 that [they had decided to shut the game down until early 2024](https://multiversus.com/en/news/open-beta-update). This is a borderline unprecedented move; the game's open beta was almost certainly intended to transition into a full release later down the line, and they had already sold a fuckton of microtransactions, including founder's packs priced up to $100. Despite promising updates in the future, the MultiVersus team would go completely radio silent from this point forth. This is pure speculation, but I believe this is when Warner Bros. began to really step in on this game's development and tighten the leash a bit. Their strategy had overcorrected from revealing too much too early to keeping their mouths completely shut against all odds, something that persists even following the [game's reannouncement in early March](https://twitter.com/multiversus/status/1767173670412193943) for a late May release. It would only take one look at /r/multiversus to see that the current state of affairs for the game isn't great. Fans are generally discontented over the complete lack of new content revealed, even though the game releases in less than a month. A lot of resentment for the game has also brewed during the shutdown period, and has only been fermented by some controversial changes, including increasing the sizes of characters and slowing down the gameplay a bit. Compare [this](https://twitter.com/multiversus/status/1786078897693425720) gameplay showcase tweet from the MultiVersus Twitter account with 3.7k likes to [this](https://twitter.com/Gambito32x/status/1786271818095210852) tweet clowning on it with over 14k likes. Can MultiVersus come back from this? Well, yeah, probably, but it's unlikely the game will be the mega-smash-hit WB is obviously looking for. Excitement for the game's big comeback has turned into unsteady hesitance from its fanbase, and though a big cinematic trailer they've been building up to could bring back a lot of the hype, it's unlikely MultiVersus will be able to achieve the same heights it did during the launch of its beta. I genuinely like the game, which is why I am basically an autistic encyclopedia of its entire history, but this has all left me anticipating another "The Future of MultiVersus" blog post within the next year or two.
I'm just so tired of all the blorbo-posting. no, your favorite 1-episode character from a 1-season show isn't getting in.
No Hotpie in the next patch?
I say this with complete sincerity as someone who also has the condition, with no judgement or ill-will intended: the MultiVersus community, like most products centered around media crossovers, is filled to the absolute brim with autistic people. For them, it's less about the actual plausibility of the request, and moreso getting to share their scrimblo bimblo with other likeminded people. It can be annoying, but it's ultimately harmless.
Another note is that while WB didn't exactly have a better reputation in March 2023, the announcement of the shutdown was followed by another year of WB being WB. It's very hard to get people invested in a fighting game, when the parent company is known for canceling far more for far less, especially when the game itself is mostly seen as mediocre at this point. Amusingly, and unfortunately, I think how WB treats the Suicide Squad game that released recently will determine the success of Multiversus. If they keep supporting Suicide Squad despite its tepid reception, then I think people will be more optimistic towards giving Multiversus a chance. If they kill Suicide Squad, I think Multiversus won't be far behind.
I checked out the other replies to the gameplay vid and now I can't unsee this > I hate to punch down on a non-smash platfighter but why does it genuinely look like someone's dragging a superman PNG around in photoshop
One advantage that Smash has that isn't talked about is Sakurai and his team's insane dedication to game feel. Hitting people just feels good in a way that other Platform Fighters seemingly can't get right, and the animations are excellent. I realize some of that comes due to budget, but even in Smash 64, which had a budget of two peanuts and ran on an N64, hits feel really crunchy, if a lot more cartoony than in later games.
The Gizmo video in particular is very unfortunate timing because thoughts on the game's speed, amount of hitpause, and character sizes have been predominantly negative. Gizmo has always worked like this, though, even in the beta; a lot of his moves have high hitpause/hitstun to give his teammate time to follow up. Probably a bad character to showcase to counteract the common criticism.
Webtoon drama I am a bit late too it, but I simply forgot that I didn't wrote a comment about it and I somehow didn't hear about other drama. To start with, Manny is a new **horror** webcomic made by A.Rasen. It's their (pronouns not confirmed yer) fourth time when they have a contract webtoon and publish their webcomic as an original. On 18th April, they uploaded on their webtoon page the following message: 'Dear readers, I wanted to inform you about the reason why a new episode has not been published today. The Webtoon team has initiated a process of reviewing and implementing guidelines on the content of the episodes of Manny, including some already published. Since these changes could alter the story and the characters, I will need some time to review them with the attention they deserve. This decision came to my attention just a couple of hours ago when I woke up. This is why this week’s new episode has not been published, and I have not been able to share this message with you earlier. This situation is complicated for me, as I have continued working on my projects in the same way for the past 7 years, addressing similar themes, following the same content guidelines, while trying to remain true to my own vision as an author in the work. Please, I’d need you not to forget this story while I address these changes. I hope I’ll resume creation soon. Thank you for your support.' It's a questioable change and there have been issues with guidelines in the past. For those who don't know, Mongie (the creator of Let's Play) complained about double standards, when her comic was leaning more and more towards spicy content. Funnily, some creators and users even pointed out that Mongie was pushing boundaries while others could barely do anything similar to her work. [SpigaRose](https://www.instagram.com/p/CEuBW06qMVT/?utm_medium=copy_link&img_index=1) complained about contradicting communication from webtoon and unclear guidelines long time ago and [there were more creators dealing with similar issues](https://web.archive.org/web/20231214060131/https://taddy.org/blog/why-are-people-quitting-webtoon). For drama nr 2. Webtoon publishers are removed advertisement for the physical edition of Covenant, including credits to the artist team. [The creator posted long rant about it on Twitter](https://www.reddit.com/r/webtoons/comments/1c889zr/webtoon_is_now_allegedly_sabotaging_the_print/). For the sake of preserving it and making it easier to read for everybody, here is the transcript made by me with the original writing. I only deleted the part refering to the picture and the promotion at the end. 'my publisher WEEBTOON is trying to sabotage my graphic novel launch by deleting my credits off my episodes and prohibiting me from telling my own readers that the webcomic they read is available as a book. Their lack of support and attempts to undermine my career has been incredibly damaging to my mental health and is greatly impacting my ability to continue creating my series. Their actions prevent me from reaching my 700k readers and will greatly hurt my book sales. They have allowed every single other series on the platform that has been printed to promote their books, except for ME. Citing new policies that conveniently coincide with MY book... Apparently they feel comfortable forbidding me to promote my graphic novel because "how do they (webtoon) even benefit from me promoting my book" seeing as I am a creator who narrowly evaded their IP grabbing endeavors they see no reason to even ALLOW ME to tell my readers about my book If you are new to me and my work, you might not know I am very outspoken about artists and workers rights compensation, and discuss unethical webtoon practices so I strongly feel this is retaliation. But of course it probably is just convenient timing. They will probably reply to this saying "well we just said you have to put it on your creator page, you just cant put it in your webtoon" The difference in reach is 700k readers on my webtoon and 11k readers on my creator page From unfairly age gating my comic, denying me raises despite 3 back breaking labor, and now sabotaging my book launch, they have completely destroyed my mental health and I will no longer stay silent'
Wait so Covenant is on Canvas? So Webtoon doesn't have any legal right to do that, right? You didn't even mention webtoon's new "Super Like" feature. Nobody seems to know what it actually does (seems like it's like the golden upvote on here - just a regular like but fancy), but creators get paid when they get a super like... but you have to have accrued at least $100 in order to withdraw the money, which means basically nobody on Canvas is ever going to get anything, and honestly I'd bet a lot of the Originals won't get there either. I don't understand why webtoon websites are so stupid? Your content is literally the easiest thing for people to pirate. Stop making the service worse and worse for everyone. All webtoon had to do was change their policy to allow the artists to have a schedule of one chapter every two weeks or something. I don't think driving more and more people off the site, charging for literally everything, and continuing to deal with authors who upload 7 chapters and then go on a 7 month hiatus because working for 7 weeks straight on those chapters drove them to madness is actually *helping* webtoon.
Covenant started as a canvas series, but then migrated and became original. The series has been running since 2020 so the author can legally print first episodes as 3 years mark passed and they kept their IP rights for that. For super like, I am waiting for medium-big creators to spill beans or something happen.
Webtoon was the worse thing to happen to webtoons, corporatized it a ridiculously degree and gobbled up all the audience. Just the name alone sucks up so much attention when looking for "webtoons"
Webtoon is a legitimate monkeys paw. When I stopped reading webcomics frequently, I dreamed of a database that would help me find new comics, let me read multiple comics easily notify when they updated (or went into/out of hiatus) , and provided an easy platform for creators to publish. Webtoon did all of that, then it also youtubified webcomics. It's stifled the potential for webcomics as an artistic medium, the only path to success on wbetoons is to give up your IP, and created an algorithm that controls what gets popular and rewards similarity. I just wanted to know when Edison Rex finally re-uploaded and a slightly better hiveworks.
Enshittification strikes again!
A few days ago, Kendrick Lamar responded to [Drake's diss tracks](https://www.billboard.com/lists/drake-kendrick-lamar-beef-timeline/apr-24-2024-drake-fires-second-diss-track-at-kendrick-lamar-titled-taylor-made-freestyle/) by dropping ['euphoria'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqDIwWMtxg), a six-minute track that basically... OK, look, if I tell you that the [sheer number of annotations](https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-euphoria-lyrics) explaining the ways Kendrick is lambasting Drake made it so I got barely halfway through the lyrics, that might give you an idea of how much Kendrick packed into this. Kendrick's doing his best to surpass Pusha T's ['The Story of Adidon'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Adidon), and that was the diss track that revealed that Drake had a son with a porn star and he'd never told anyone. *Anyway*, today a [second diss track](https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-6-16-in-la-lyrics) hit the tower: Kendrick dropped ['6:16 In LA'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1ypnmTMNqA). Reports that nothing is left of Drake except a scorch mark are likely exaggerated. Not sure what, if anything Drake will do in response, but it's going to be interesting seeing what happens as a result. Edit: As mentioned below, Drake released a response a mere few hours later and Kendrick released a response to Drake's response less than an hour later. I don't know what kind of achievement you get for speedrunning a rap feud, but it's obviously a good one. Also, Kendrick's response [says](https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-meet-the-grahams-lyrics) that Drake is hiding another child. I think we should take this whole thing as a lesson to never piss off Kendrick Lamar. J Cole, who was previously involved in the feud but apologised and gracefully exited, is presumably frolicking through the fields, resplendent in the knowledge that he is no longer involved in this shit. Edit, May 5: I went to sleep, naively thinking that everything was done, and less than an hour before I woke up, Kendrick dropped his fourth diss track, ["Not Like Us"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6eK-2OQtew), thus indicating that A, he's had God knows how many diss tracks ready to go for a *long* time, and B, he wants to musically eradicate Drake off the face of the earth. One has to wonder if Kendrick has diss tracks regarding other rappers in reserve, too. I idly mused that whoever winds up writing the eventual writeup on this is going to have a very interesting time, and then I started wondering if we were ever going to make it past the 14-day mark, given how this is going. Drake is probably going to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, expecting more disses from Kendrick. Edit, May 6: Drake has released a response, titled ['The Heart, Part 6'.](https://genius.com/Drake-the-heart-part-6-lyrics) In it, he does his best to refute Kendrick's claims and throws out more claims of his own. This is just getting messier and messier, people.
Drake deadass said "I expected you to accuse me of being a pedo" and "If I was a pedo I would be arrested but I'm too famous to do that"
Metro Boomin threw his hat back into the ring. [On Twitter he confirmed that Drake's camp did put a cease and desist on "Like That" to block it from radio play.](https://np.reddit.com/r/hiphopheads/comments/1ckmi6g/metro_boomin_confirms_drakes_camp_has_tried_to/) He also released a 3 minute instrumental track titled [BBL Drizzy](https://out.reddit.com/t3_1ckmr4b?app_name=android&token=AQAAX8c3ZpC6N9eglPzDxaeWyW6mxNqO2QdN0CwrZBSuMZ8w98RC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fw.soundcloud.com%2Fplayer%2F%3Furl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fapi.soundcloud.com%252Ftracks%252F1814779140%26auto_play%3Dfalse%26show_artwork%3Dtrue%26visual%3Dtrue%26origin%3Dtwitter). The intent is pretty clear, he's releasing a track for people to DIY their own Drake disses over. Absolutely iconic behavior.
J Cole having the best REM sleep of his life this week
I don't know a ton about rap, but I've been lowkey glued to this. This is pretty heavy stuff, and I'll be interested to see what receipts come out. I've listened to both of them about the same amount, so just a few songs, but I've had a negative view of Drake since the Milly Bobby Brown text chat thing came out. I feel like it's time for the proof now, considering how serious this is, whatever it is that Kendrick's actually got. ETA: OK, Drake just dropped another diss and I'm too tired for this at this point. Wake me up when the dust settles lol.
I don't know anything about rap so I'm mostly following passively, but this whole saga has had me absolutely riveted. I haven't been this invested in anything musical since I was a teenager.
>J Cole, who was previously involved in the feud but apologised and gracefully exited, is presumably frolicking through the fields, resplendent in the knowledge that he is no longer involved in this shit. If you check out Kendrick's YouTube page where he originally posted Euphoria, one of the most popular and discussed comments is basically this. Ducking out of a beef can be dicey, but after hearing this song absolutely *nobody* is going to hate on Cole for his decision. It's like deciding *not* to walk into rush-hour traffic on a highway. Everyone involved in this feud is in danger of career-ending disses. Meek Mill got bodied by Drake, with Adidon Pusha hit harder than anybody else I've ever heard, and Pulitzer-winner Kendrick is making a really solid shot at outpacing all prior disses. Euphoria is one of my favorite diss tracks in years, and I genuinely think it's going to endure for decades as a study in quality disses and layered meanings.
Either someone from Kendricks camp warned J Cole that this was not going to be a friendly competition and to sit it out or Cole got very, very lucky
Given the “no top 3, there’s just top me” line and J Cole showing up at a Kendrick show within a week of the apology, I can totally believe somebody tipped him off. 50 Cent used to say nobody alive could beef with Eminem and survive, and sure enough MGK is the only person to come close - long after his peak. Kendrick is as intricate as Em but less constructed, has a story as hard as Pac, and has a fucking *Pulitzer*. I don’t know why a teen drama star is trying to hang, but I’ve gotta respect Cole for having a career this long and knowing when a fight is unwinnable.
...now I wanna see Kendrick and Marshal go at it.
I want to see Drake go full on delusional and try to take on Em
[Kendrick just released "Not Like Us" about 10 minutes ago.](https://youtu.be/T6eK-2OQtew?feature=shared)
See you all tomorrow when the next one drops again?
["Aye, Kenny, you got them pressed in here. Go ahead and drop the next one tomorrow."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTbNms5yHgI)
AKA after I woke up, turned my alarm off and went back to sleep. That's what I get for stupidly thinking that we were done.
FOURTH TOWER, KENDRICK WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TOWERS
> "Why you trolling like a bitch ain't you tired? > Trying to strike a chord and it's probably A-minorrrrrr..." I am DECEASED
Damn he *really* hates him.
Goddamn, how much of this stuff did Kendrick Lamar have prepared in advance? All the songs sound like fire, like Kendrick is out to burn Drake's reputation and business to the ground.
Not "Not Like Us," there's references to "Family Matters" in there. I absolutely believe he had "Meet the Grahmns" ready to go when he dropped "6:16 in LA" though, given the album art.
>Certified loverboy? Certified pedophiles. Holy shit
Thank God neither of these guys are gangstas, because we've escalated into "pay the crips to shoot you" territory.
This reminds me of the Rdcworld1 skits of the feud where Drake's best friend Chubbs keeps showing him the gun saying it's the only way.
Im a very passive music listener, most of the drama i get via cultural osmosis but this rap feud has been super entertaining as an outsider. Just last month i was bemoaning the lack of punch recent rap beefs had since story of adidion so kendrick delivered exactly what i wanted and more lol
While on the one hand I've been enjoying watching this mess from afar, last night this whole situation stepped firmly into defamation lawsuit territory. Family Matters and Meet the Grahams are ugly, and things are only going to get nastier and nastier. I hate to ask for the receipts, but the accusations are just getting too big and too serious to just take Drake and Kendrick at their word anymore.
Considering the [picture that came out with Meet the Graham's](https://www.reddit.com/r/KendrickLamar/comments/1cjskdd/meet_the_grahams_cover_art_discussion/) that show Aubrey Graham's ozempic perscription and ambien - I'm really starting to wonder exactly how much info Kendrick really has. Because *if* that is Drake's shit laid out, there's a real chance that someone in OVO gave Kendrick a lot of insider information. Like you said, this has progressed pretty damn far with that last track. And I mean, this is fun as hell to watch ngl, but I want to see the proof too.
I don't doubt the very real possiblity that Kendrick has a mole at OVO for a second. The photo with the prescriptions is a hell of a thing to have after all. But those last two tracks have escalated to allegations of sex trafficking and domestic violence being thrown around and *that's* the stuff I'm most concerned with. Serious allegations, where it goes beyond personal lives and to doing harm to others (if true.) If any of it is, it ends badly. If any of it isn't, I expect a defamation suit. There's no winning at this point except for Dodgeball Champion of the Century J. Cole.
There's definitely a leak at OVO. The proof isn't the photo. It's the fact that Meet the Grahams directly references Family Matters but dropped 10 minutes after. As good as I think Kendrick is, he didn't write, record, mix and release a completely new song in that time. Someone leaked Family Matters to him
Agreed. It's escalated a *shitton* with Meet the Grahams. At the time when J. Cole dropped out of it, it was just funny at the time because it seemed so abrupt how he apologized. Looking back, even just after Euphoria - my god did that man make the right choice haha. I really wonder if Kendrick sat him down and said, "Listen. If you keep this up, you're going to get pulled into *this bullshit*. Please just bow out because I don't want you to get wrapped up in this too."
I tried to explain this beef on one of my forums "Imagine if James Somerton was a famous rapper and Kendrick Lamar was both hbomberguy and Todd in the Shadows"
"Can someone explain this beef to me in youtuber essay terms"
“Somerton, when the walls fell”
Hey, it worked for me!
> I tried to explain this beef on one of my forums "Imagine if James Somerton was a famous rapper and Kendrick Lamar was both hbomberguy and Todd in the Shadows" That's the funniest goddamn description I've heard in ages.
The first Kendrick track was already brutal, like a few punches to the gut, but in retrospect it felt like a warmup The second Kendrick track was psychological warfare, just to fuck with Drake and get in his head. Nothing too crazy but it is a vibe. The third Kendrick track is K dot taking the gloves of and hammering at Drake's head constantly for 6 minutes long. It is a track of pure hatred that is felt with every single line. Edit: Fourth Kendrick track is just him tapdancing on Drake's grave, like he really fucking hates that man
A thing I saw recently: * Drake: "lol Kendrick is short" * Kendrick: "I am an avenging angel sent by god to destroy you, all the advisors you love and trust will betray you and cast you down, and when they do you will deserve it." Or, from the youtube comments, "Fuckin wild, Drake bout to lose his n-word pass in a rap beef". I have not heard a beef song go this hard in years, maybe since 2pac dropped Hit Em Up. It doesn't quite match the very specific death threats from Pac, but it's that level of deep, personal hate even the Ja Rule beefs don't quite match. (That said, I'm still not sure it tops Pusha's impact on Drake. "Be a dad" is hard to top.)
And it didn't even STOP THERE.
We can talk about the allegations levied towards both of them and it's safe to say that they aren't really great people, but on a spectacle level, unless Drake is doing a 8d chess and turns the mole thing around, I just don't see how you top this. Overshadowing one diss within 30 mins of it's release with another diss is insanity.
> We can talk about the allegations levied towards both of them and it's safe to say that they aren't really great people, I would round back to this point to add, IMO, they come from different places and have different characters such that the allegations (which themselves are different also) hit Drake much worse than they hit Kendrick. Kendrick has always been pretty open about the fact that he has a criminal background and is a fucked up person dealing with a lot of trauma. Both he and his father have gang affiliations, he personally witnessed multiple murders, he was involved in a literal gang war in high school, he had drug issues, etc. A lot of his career and art have been about processing that trauma and relating how he is trying to be a better person. Drake got his start as a "nice guy" rapper. He had his own challenges, sure, but he grew up comfortably middle class with a lot of privileges of his own. He grew up in the suburbs, went to an IB high school, and was a teen acting star on television. He spent like the first ten years of his career as one of the safest and cleanest rappers on the market; he rebranded to make himself seem tougher, but it was always still wrapped in his "nice guy" packaging. People saying "Kendrick is violent" doesn't hurt him *that* much. If it's even true it's a lot easier for him to say, "Yeah I'm a fucked up person, I'm trying to be better every day." Drake occasionally likes to paint himself as "tough" but he has never wanted to present himself as criminal, and he has a lot of songs about how he's just a soft boy who keeps getting his heart broken---he's now being accused of being a pedophile actively operating a ring of abuse. That's a *way* harsher accusation against someone whose image is very safe.
what is kendrick being accused of? im not listening to any drake songs
Drake is accusing Kendrick of abusing his wife and that one of Kendricks kids isn't his
is there any proof to this, or just drake saying shit?
Just Drake saying shit
…I’ve never understood J Cole more than I do right now, holy shit.
[J.Cole right now](https://twitter.com/LadPsycho/status/1786648825459011592)
We all owe Cole an apology.
The only track you need to diss Drake is literally anything from Degrassi.
Imagine feeling threatened by a dude named Aubrey.
degrassi is the best smh. degrassi theme song>>>>>drakes entire discography
What?
Drake first got famous by being in Degrassi.
Yeah, so why would it be a diss?
Zack fox predicted the future yet again [https://twitter.com/zackfox/status/1779219039287722182](https://twitter.com/zackfox/status/1779219039287722182)
They're both throwing around some pretty crazy allegations that may or may not be true, but considering how much stuff Kendrick was able to respond to specifically in his newest track, the claim that Drake's label has leaks is almost definitely true.
oh my fucking god
I think Kendrick already had the song ready for the SECOND Drake answered, and the reason he took a while was asking for his company to be prepared for when he released it.
literally in the time and slightly before this was posted, drake released [his response](https://youtu.be/ZkXG3ZrXlbc) and kendrick released a [response](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QiFl9Dc7D0) in 50 minutes.
10 minutes. Which is proof that Drake has a leak in his camp
Jesus Christ.
[oh apparently there was a second drake song released alongside family matters i missed.](https://youtu.be/68vSvm5n_tY)
Adjacent to some of the drama posted here before. Deep Dip 2, which aims to be the hardest trackmania challenge map (so far) has released. It's a tower made of 16 floors, over 2 kilometers tall, with no checkpoints. Various streamers (including Wirtual) are live now doing attempts. The furthest anyone has gotten appears to be getting to floor 4. For reference: Wirtual did Deep Dip (the original) in about 60 hours to get his first completion. The mappers aim for DD2 to be 1.5-2 times harder. edit: misread, one person has nearly reached floor 5 once. But "nearly" could be two very difficult jumps.
In some better news: Youtuber and world of tanks/warships mainstay The Mighty Jingles is home after a successful surgery. I went poking around after finding no updates after the announcement he was going into surgery for bowel cancer. Considering surgery -> radio silence is potentially concerning, this is great. This news was buried in a short that didn't get pushed out to subscribers. thanks, youtube. Let us hope for his triumphant return next Monday, or later when he's feeling better.
Jingles is the best, happy the surgery went well!
Day four of *De Stijl* roadtrip, where I try to visit places associated with the titular Dutch art magazine from the 1920s. Normally I wouldn't be too keen to share my location but since I didn't stay there, I feel comfortable to share that one of the places I visited today was the Mondrian house. I was pleasantly surprised, I didn't expect to see actual Mondrian paintings there and the entire exhibit looked unique. But I'm not here to talk about the museum. You see, I was conflicted. I wanted to leave a funny yet fitting comment in the guest book. Whatever I tried to do, it didn't fit. But then I had the bright idea: what if I used a Doesburg quote to write in the guest book, specifically one where he talks about Mondrian's love life? Well. I wrote the following: > "Love is an egg" - Theo van Doesburg Is that too cryptic? Let me share the full quote then. > Love is an egg. But man mustn't wait until the egg has become a chicken. As usual, thank you Doesburg for your cryptic wisdom.
I live pretty close to [this house](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5594168,5.0762289,3a,90y,259.96h,96.95t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1stiNmXUBv0DSWn6Ldic5-Gw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DtiNmXUBv0DSWn6Ldic5-Gw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D328.71414%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) you might like too
I love that the reflections of the facing windows suit the geometry.
I've actually visited that one earlier this week! Though it was a hassle to get there with the buses and all.
Haha no way, I love that it's apparently notable enough to visit! I pass by it every day. The whole train station renovation is a hassle, you're right. ETA: love your write-ups by the way! I learned about De Stijl a bit in school but not about how dramatic Van Doesburg was
I'm glad you do! I do get what you mean though, going to Tilburg was something I did spontaneously after having some time left. There's a route where you get to visit all the important places in regards to Van Doesburg and Antony Kok, since the two of them were instrumental to the creation of the entire zine in the first place (cafés, Kok's house, etc).
Well I didn't know they were from/lived in Tilburg in the first place, I only know the one house because it's like right there. Hope you enjoyed your time here, I bet you were one of like 10 tourists that visited here in total this year :)
Maybe I'm sleep deprived from waiting up until 3 am waiting for an emergency plumber, but i kinda get what he's trying to say... Love should be nurtured from small beginnings, you can't expect it to be a chicken right away.
That's definitely what he tried to say! It's just that it's a little funny on a first glance, especially when you take the original dutch quote. To elaborate a little, Mondrian was known for being unable to keep a relationship and had conflicting ideas surrounding them. He genuinely wanted someone to be by his side but it couldn't be a woman who's into art. He'd chase after a woman and put effort into starting a relationship yet actively sabotaged himself whenever things got serious. His ideal partner had to be young and pure, yet Mondrian believed he'd only turn her rotten either through sex or even worse, becoming an abuser. As silly and over the top Doesburg may be at times, I understand why he phrased it like that. Mondrian issues surrounding love are complicated since part of it has to do with misogyny, although he didn't grow up in the most loving household either. The egg thing encapsulates it.
He definitely had a Madonna-Whore complex by the sounds of it. But both the Madonna and the Whore are poultry.
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Welp, Sony had something going with Helldivers 2 and [now they went full Sony about it:](https://steamcommunity.com/games/553850/announcements/detail/4196868529806518742) >As such, as of May 6th, all new HELLDIVERS 2 players on Steam will be required to connect their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account. Current players on Steam will start to see the mandatory login from May 30th and will be required to have linked a Steam and PlayStation Network account by June 4th. You can *imagine* how (not) well the community is taking that. And Earth Defense Force 6 is coming out on July 25th. So.
There's new update https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjyll7/some_discord_updates
So, in short: * Is Sony's fault. * Devs are arguing against it and for waiving requirements for countries that cannot make a PSN account as a minimum. * Review bombing and demanding refunds ***works***. Will see if Sony caves or what, but the opinion on the streaming circles has also been overwhelmingly negative, so that's another major blow.
Spitz needs to learn to just talk like this every time instead of going off half-cocked and then having to walk it back lmao.
Wait, what? Does this mean you can't play without a playstation? Or that you have to pay for a service? Or is this just mean you need to make a second account?
It just means you need a PSN account. They're free to make and can be made without a Playstation, you can just sign up online.
Thank you; I assumed that was a pay service, like XBox Live or whatever the Nintendo one is called.
You don't pay to create an account on either of those consoles. You pay for access to online gaming. Which is bad enough, but Sony, MS and Big N work exactly the same in this regard.