Sunday Samplers are a “lightning round” of different subjects, none of which really warrant a full post, that have popped into my head over the course of the past week. They may or may not be regular weekly posts.
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There’s something about casinos that I find fascinating, even though I don’t care for gambling all that much.
No matter what theme or decor choice they make, there are certain things that every casino I’ve been to has the same elements: no windows (except for doors), deliberately looping & dizzying patterns, no clocks, and no places to chill that aren’t connected to a game in some way. But instead of it feeling manipulative, it’s actually kind of… fun. Even if you aren’t playing, you’re just walking around looking at everything, taking in the atmosphere & appreciating the details that make each unique.
And I’ll say this for the games, especially slots - they’re trying to feel more like actual games and not just money vacuums. They’re still money vacuums at the end of the day, but at least now they’ll have some interactive elements or animations that make them feel a little more substantial. There are some that have artwork that doesn’t skirt up against the “is it AI or is it just ugly” barrier, but they almost all have huge screens to show everyone the fun minigames & attract more players. They’ll never be as fun as an actual arcade game or pinball table to me, but hey, they’re trying.
(Unfortunately, due to casinos generally frowning on it for a bunch of reasons, I couldn’t take any pictures to better illustrate these point.)
They’re not my first choice for a thing to do on a day off, unlike with my family. It’s one of those places where the options of “ways to spend time at this location” are a little too limited for my liking, with the shopping & eating options usually being way out of my sphere. I’d rather go somewhere a bit more entertaining, a bit more affordable, and if it’s nice out, a bit more… outdoors. But there’s still interesting elements there that I can find interesting enough to not be bored.
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~Cuidado, cuidado, cuidado, cuidado, hay llamas…~
If you listen closely, you can hear it shouting “NERRRRRRD!” at me for that opening line.
Wait, wait, false alarm. It’s just an alpaca with its hair slicked back.
Cat rump included free of charge!
So… yeah, I’m enjoying this year’s advent calendar.
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Lightning-squared round! Cuz… I’m already running out of faux-witty justifications for this section. Not gonna stop me from doing it, though.
I don’t like this whole “parents of my peers & friends keep dying” phase of life one single bit.
Man, once I’m done with this Woobles advent calendar, I’m gonna have a treasure trove of 4.0mm crochet hooks & tapestry needles.
Since Toei is replacing Super Sentai with a reboot of Space Sheriff Gavan and trying to make the character the “center” of a new continuity, may I humbly suggest bringing back some of the magical girls from the Fushigi Comedy series? They deserve more than just a one-off cameo in a Kamen Rider movie & trivia mentions when talking about Codename: Sailor V.
Especially Ipanema, that poor girl had it ROUGH. (Pic from the Tokusatsu Wiki.)
Oh, Crunchyroll is ending their free ad-supported streaming and forcing subscriptions? At the same time that they’re getting near-universal hate for using AI subs & even using it for dubbed voices? AND there are rumors circulating that they’re gonna assimilate HiDive like they did with Funimation? Damn, I was looking forward to Restart and/or the new Precure season, but I guess it’s back to enjoying anime from a distance. Or via less safe but more accessible means.
She might not be in Restart, but her time has come!
Welcome Home also updated! This update focuses on Frank, a character who’s become one of my favorites, and starts to get more into the proverbial weeds of the story. Keep an eye out for his bugs… but don’t try to bring them home…
It’s lonely being the only person into animation who isn’t completely & absolutely enamored with Glitch Studios & their shows. They’re a step above Rooster Teeth, but that’s a bar so low Satan keeps tripping on it. And their biggest shows garnering a very particular kind of hyper-online audience isn’t gonna change that mild distaste into anything better anytime soon.
Uma update! Well, not really, but related to my casino ramble above, I can’t help but wonder if any of the Pennsylvania casinos with race tracks have considered doing a promotion based on the game. Cuz let’s be honest, there’s probably plenty of people who’ve come up with an Uma design for Smarty Jones, and holding a contest for them could bring them into the casino...
I’m normally not a South Park watcher, but after the past couple of weeks of trying to get approval to continue taking a medication that I need & that I have been on for literally years & will continue to need for basic health maintenance, this is EXTREMELY relatable.
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This week’s picture: a look at my average WFH lunch break.
The Hoagie Wanters have arrived.
Wishing everyone who celebrates a Happy Hanukkah this coming week, and see you all next time!
Sunday Samplers are a “lightning round” of different subjects, none of which really warrant a full post, that have popped into my head over the course of the past week. They may or may not be regular weekly posts.
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Hey! Hey! Who wants to see a steaming pile of bullshit?
I hate fandom. I truly, truly do. And sorry, Wednes3day, there is ZERO difference between fandom and the odious origins/behavior of standom at this point.
Are there things I’m a fan of and vocally enjoy? Yes. I’d argue everyone has at least one athlete or music act or TV show or author that they’ll always take joy in engaging with and want to share why they find value in that thing. But modern fandom isn’t about “community” or “connection” or whatever flimsy excuse they’re using. Modern fandom is a damn CULT.
I really wish actual trained psychologists or anthropologists would look at the modern fandom scene. I say this as someone who has grown up watching a branch of my family being ultra-fundamentalist, they are frequently indistinguishable from them except in the object of their devotion. Notably:
Criticism of the subject is treated as criticism of both the individual & of the world at large.
Creators/performers are seen as flawless leader figures to be obeyed & defended absolutely, not unlike a spiritual leader. Also not unlike some spiritual leaders, there are plenty of creators/performers who will exploit this, to better forge that connection, for their own benefits.
There’s a push towards constant evangelism of the subject/faith and converting new followers, and any attempts to rebuff these efforts are met with hostility.
If someone doesn’t belong to your particular fandom/church, it absolutely MUST be a sign of moral failure on their part.
Basically, it’s taking the absolutist mindset of a religious zealot towards their faith as the sole defining thing in their life, as opposed to just part of a wider personality tapestry, and applying it to things that are FAR less substantial. And I’d love for people more knowledgeable than me to get into the weeds of this. Is correlation equaling causation, and is there truly an Exvangelical-to-standom pipeline? How much does social media eroding the proverbial wall between creator & audience factor into this shift? Does the general slide into what I can only describe as “entitled rudeness” post-lockdown play a role as well? And the trend towards self-diagnosis of mental illness and/or neurodivergent conditions, is that a factor? There’s a lot I wanna ask and have someone with the actual smarts & professional distance from any kind of fandom experience answer.
Problem is, people still see “fandom” as a concept as a frivolous thing, which is what it SHOULD be. It should be no different than any other hobby, something you do that you enjoy, that you might opt to share with others, and something that isn’t as prioritized as, say, work or family or things that you actually have a stake in affecting in life. And in some spheres, that’s still the case; people who would rather spring for Disney season passes or season tickets for their favorite NFL team than pay their utilities or mortgages or keep their jobs (real examples, btw) still get viewed by people in everyday offline life as they should be, having a deeply broken sense of priorities. But for more online-based fandoms, that’s considered normal for some reason. Hell, that’s just the tip of the unhealthy behavior.
Maybe it’s cuz I grew up in the era of several high profile “fans gone too far” stories, from the guy who wanted to disfigure Bjork to the woman who killed Selena, that I tend to be extremely wary of what fandom has become. We get people routinely doxxing music reporters for giving their favorite’s latest album a mediocre review or harassing authors until they’re forced to out themselves. We get people in charge of the fandom subject weaponizing this mania to bolster themselves while portraying anyone who even mildly questions them as akin to terrorists or hate groups. We’ve seen examples of fans souring on the object of their obsession and turning on it violently, and the internet, as a collective, shrugged. They made excuses. They tried to portray it as solely stuff done by people that they already hated, be it for good reason or otherwise, only to turn around & do the exact same awful things with the flimsiest justifications.
So yeah, if anything, “fandom” should be the term that falls out of usage. It’s not strong enough anymore. The norm has become the stan, the guy driven to madness & murder because he’s too far gone and has nothing in his life except for the content he has slavishly consumed like a mindless hog. The term hasn’t been softened, no matter what Zoomers might try to claim. The “fringe” it described had simply molded & spread to become the norm, and they’re incapable of reflecting on that. It would mean questioning their world more than they’d be able to handle.
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Lightning-squared round! Cuz this is the best option compared to returning to social media aside from actual withdrawal symptoms..
PCL updated again! Labor laws! Overexpansion beyond your business’s original area of expertise! Toxic mascot yuri! Puzzles I’m too dim to decode! Lovely art! And the worst "pollinator mix” of garden seeds I’ve seen since the one I bought this past spring! Also, while they archived the short stories hidden in the Halloween update, I’m not sure that they did the same for the trick-or-treaters around the site (or I just couldn’t find them), and I hope they did.
Apparently there was a legit complaint about that British knitting reality competition show regarding them not paying the designers for their patterns being used in tie-in kits promoting the show. So that’s a real reason to be pissed with the show. And since they’ve stated that all rights & profits to the patterns will revert to the shows’ contestant designers once airing is done, it sounds like it’s been remedied.
It sucks that the thing I have the biggest urge to write isn’t the next in-continuity part of the Phantom Violet story but rather a side story that would also mean breaking my “writing around copyright” rules, and that’s stuff that I don’t want to share publicly, even though I’m not sure why. Original work or no, it’s not like anyone reads my stuff…
There are certain characters (and you can probably guess which ones by now) that, whenever I see someone marginalized “seeing themselves” in them, it gives me the same reaction of “Really? I thought I hated myself, but if THAT’S what makes you ‘feel seen’, you’re definitely worse off mentally” as whenever some ace person says they “feel seen” by an emotionless, inhuman, and/or amoral character. I wanna believe that they’re not possibly THAT dense & desperate, that they’ll see a character built entirely on insulting their existence & see it as a positive, but that’s giving the modern world too much credit.
Gotta love when I see another reminder that a well-loved YouTuber who was directly an asshole to me (for the curious, see my Ace Week piece & find the link to the old essay I did) has absolute garbage taste in a very specific way, so I can continue ignoring him.
Super Sentai being stopped feels like Toei & TV Asahi have just broken one of the remaining seals that’s holding off the apocalypse. It also makes me wonder if Precure is safe…
What level of depression is it when you find yourself wanting to revisit some old concepts for fan senshi cuz you’re stumped on your original work?
Horse-girl game update: I finally beat the URA Finale! And with the Uma named after my favorite liquor, no less!
Y’know, it shouldn’t bother me that my stats show that absolutely no one followed me here from Bluesky once I gave up on it after the one-two punch of “wanton slides into the worst kind of gooner brain” and “extremely hypocritical & inhumane politics courtesy of Twitch grifters” with a side of "insulting you specifically once you’re barely out of earshot”, but MAN, is it making me extra disgusted with my social situation that such a place was my main socialization outlet for a couple of years. Once I’m not there to cheerlead for others, I’m forgotten. Even when I was actively sharing my stuff there, it was almost entirely ignored. And people wonder why I’m so jaded about everything…
The way that the internet manages to have 90% of its original celebrities turn out to be walking horrorshows of one stripe or another makes the sight of Christmas ornaments based on them darkly hilarious. And that includes ones who haven’t had any issues yet, cuz… c’mon, the odds aren’t really in their favor. Best they’ll get is “who the hell is this” five Christmases down the line.
Honestly, I don’t feel like anything good is gonna come from the Netflix/WB deal, even with the current state of the latter. Netflix is so cagey about how well it’s actually doing beyond “this show/movie is popular” that they come off as… untrustworthy from a business perspective. And given what gets popular with their service, at least online, I fear they’ll monofocus WB’s animation library even more on Adult Swim, which by now you should know I find odious. Also, I wonder if they’ll start to yank rights back from FAST outlets and/or MeTV Toons just to cut out potential “competition” but then let everything they yank back gather dust instead of offering it to stream. I just can’t see any upsides to this deal. As Jeff Harris points out, Netflix is the best option out of three bad ones, especially compared to Skydance. But the best of three bad options is still a bad option.
I’ll see your hatred of factory knots in yarn skeins and raise you “when thread gets caught in the glued part of the label, thus resulting in glue & paper being stuck to a section of yarn that can only be removed upon washing” for sheer frustration.
“GenX was born to suffer. I think they like it.” - some random YT commenter. You’re not wrong, friend…
There's a small account that I really want to support because of their great extremely niche creative work, but they’ve become one of those “AEW are blameless holy creatures and never do anything even slightly wrong” people, and damn does that make it hard. Sorry, I can’t support a company whose boss is a shining example of the standom-cult-leader problems above and whose staff AND fanbase behave in such a manner that I got to experience flashbacks to my shithole college for the first time. And constantly pushing them as the moral & always-original alternative is kinda souring me on their work.
I originally had a video recommendation piece, but I decided that it’s just worth the potential trouble. All I'll say is that others have noticed that the horseshoe theory is correct in regards to one subject in particular, and it’s fucking disgusting.
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Gonna give a quick salute to Larry Talbot Mendez-Brooks. My mom knew almost nothing about wrestling, but she knew about “that cute funny-looking dog”.
Here, we’re getting Larry’s hockey picks.
Rest in peace, you scrappy little house werewolf. Say hi to my dogs for me, especially Herbert.
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Instead of a cat pic this week, I'm using an ad from the Victorian era that I liked. It probably qualifies as a cat pic on a technicality.
I'd happily buy a print of this for my kitchen, if it was available.
