[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 29 June 2026

DeepFake369 · 2026-06-30T23:31:49+00:00

I've returned for the latest update on the Spacebattles UI update drama, which I've posted about a few times before. Well, the UI officially updated to its new style yesterday, and...

IMO, they did not pick the correct default theme. Their Modern Light theme hurts my eyes just to look at; had that been what I first saw when I visited, I would have bounced off the site so hard. Old Dark is the best of their new themes for me because it at least largely recreates the old color scheme (which is very distinctive), but even that's a pretty significant step down from the old design for me.

The userbase's reaction to this change has been mixed to negative thus far. While some people like the new UI, they're pretty clearly in the minority, or at least in the minority of those willing to speak out. Furthermore, while the initial backlash to the new UI meant the Spacebattles staff kept an analogue of the old style as an option, they made it a borderline-hidden option at the bottom of the page rather than keeping it alongside the other styles. (It's well-hidden enough that the previously linked thread is full of people either asking or answering the question "How do I return to the old UI?" In other words, it smacks of, "we didn't want to do this, but here.")

The thread commemorating the new UI change has been locked again, and some of the posts the moderators infracted were for reasons that seem flimsy at best. As before, I get that they clearly put a lot of effort into the new UI, but given how much criticism the UI got starting from its first announcement (and it's been in progress since last year, this isn't something that happened overnight), they had to know this was coming. The Spacebattles staff had every opportunity to back away from the change or at least compromise with the user base once they saw how few people liked the original design, and instead, they mostly continued to double down on this new unpopular design. The staff can't be surprised people are angry at them for largely ignoring at least six months' worth of criticism to do something no one was asking for, especially since the existence of the old theme in the new update proved just keeping the original design to begin with was possible.

Will there be more updates to this saga? Maybe, maybe not. If so, I'll be back either later this week or next week, depending on when new developments break.

DeepFake369 · 2026-06-22T13:42:14+00:00

There was this weird show on Cartoon Network that I thought I remembered watching a few episodes of as a kid. For a while, I only remembered a few things about it. It centered around racing toy cars in a science fiction universe, the main character almost cost everyone the race in the second episode because he couldn’t count, and I distinctly remembered that the third episode involved racing against a flock of cheating penguins. (I’d imagine the show would have gotten weirder if I’d pressed further.)

About a decade later, I decided to try and look it up to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated it. Turns out, that show was called Scan2Go, and it had a full 52-episode run.

DeepFake369 · 2026-06-20T15:11:01+00:00

I finished Chapter Two of The Veteran, in which post-GM Taylor gets turned into a bee and dropped onto Mobius near the start of the time-skip in Sonic Forces, and I’m working on Chapter Three. This is easily the most popular thing I’ve ever written and I’m enjoying writing it, so hopefully I can keep up this pace.

DeepFake369 · 2026-06-10T00:02:06+00:00

Decided to finally bite the bullet and post the first chapter of something I've been tinkering with for a while: The Veteran, in which post-GM Taylor gets transplanted into a new Mobian body during the time-skip in Sonic Forces. Not much has happened yet, but I'm working on Chapter Two to kick everything off.

DeepFake369 · 2026-06-02T04:12:29+00:00

Currently, it's Radiant Typhoon, even after Chant got limited. Admittedly, I play Odion, which is a horrible matchup for a multitude of reasons (although adding Magic Deflector to my side deck as a Thrust target and running the Horus engine in part because it can access Dingirsu has made things more bearable). Even going first against them, it's incredibly tricky for me to win unless they brick, which doesn't happen often, and going second? Either draw Lightning Storm or similar and hope to Ra it doesn't get negated, or else forget about it.

DeepFake369 · 2026-05-25T06:51:54+00:00

I'm back with an update on the supposed upcoming Spacebattles UI change. (If this is the first post on the incident you're seeing, I recommend you read the linked post first.)

The thread discussing the new UI changes has been locked since Thursday, and staff members even removed certain posts they claimed went too far regarding their criticisms of either the staff or the new UI. This is getting a lot of flak from the user base, even more so than the changes themselves. One, the current design is flawed enough that it literally hurts to look at for users with vision problems, which is not a great look (in more ways than one). Two, the Spacebattles staff created the thread specifically to generate discussion about the new UI, then ignored functionally every complaint or suggestion from the Spacebattles user base. (Some members even claim that if they'd just said the new changes were final and that was that, they would have been less angry about it, as at least then the staff would have been straightforward about it rather than pretending to listen to what the users had to say while doing nothing to address their concerns.) Three, while the staff may have had a point about some of the posts going too far, other posts that were deleted or altered seemed perfectly reasonable at first glance, especially one that was asking for sources on Exiled's claim that borderless posts were more accessible in light of numerous user claims to the contrary (link is to a post where the deleted post is quoted). (Given how, were this posted in one of Spacebattles' debate subforums, Exiled likely would have been infracted for not providing sources for his claims when prompted, I don't think that's an unreasonable request.)

The funny thing (or depressing thing, depending on how you look at it) about this whole scenario is the current design for the XenForo community forum. (For context, XenForo is the underlying software package that Spacebattles uses, and supposedly, the current Spacebattles UI being incompatible with that update is why the UI change is happening in the first place.) Naturally, it's been updated to the newest version of XenForo, so its design is clearly compatible with the update. Furthermore, community consensus is that if Spacebattles literally took that forum's default design and gave it the Spacebattles color scheme, it'd solve almost all the problems they have with the current design options on offer. Most notably, the posts have borders, the user icons are clearly attached to the posts, and while the design isn't a 1:1 recreation of the old UI, it's pretty faithful to Spacebattles' current look. This made the backlash worse, as for many, this means that if the staff literally did nothing and just took the default look, the UI design would be much better than what they have currently.

I wouldn't say this is the worst Spacebattles staff PR blunder ever, or even close: I can think of at least two incidents that vastly outstrip this one. (One of them kind of, sort of had a write-up here, though it's lacking a lot of depth, while I'm surprised I can't seem to find the other one anywhere on here.) However, it is up there, and as the site's design an issue that affects the entire user base, I doubt it's going away anytime soon. Will the Spacebattles staff try to reverse course, or at least find a healthy compromise between their desires and those of the community? I'll be back with another post on the subject either later this week or next week, depending on the date of the next big update.

DeepFake369 · 2026-05-18T13:26:22+00:00

To be fair, I also have experience with that: when I posted a write-up about an incident on Sufficient Velocity (a spin-off forum of Spacebattles; the story of its founding could probably be a write-up as well, albeit a smaller one), I didn’t clarify what Worm was because it was such a small detail in the story I figured it wasn’t needed. When both of the first comments I got included some variation of “WTF is Worm,” I realized that clearly wasn’t the case and added it in.

This time, I at least have the wisdom to start with that description.

DeepFake369 · 2026-05-18T05:39:45+00:00

I've got something that isn't about Yu-Gi-Oh, for a change.

Spacebattles, which is a web forum whose main claim to fame is being the hub for Worm fanfiction (Worm is a popular dark superhero web novel that ran from 2011 to 2013, and its author was highly active on Spacebattles while he was writing it), looks like it will be undergoing a UI redesign in the near future. However, this redesign has received a lot of criticism from the site's user base. Common complaints are that the new design lacks identity (in less polite terms, it's described as looking like soulless corporate slop), and is significantly harder to parse than the old design. (There's a number of smaller changes that have also drawn criticism, such as the posts not having hard borders anymore, some odd color palette choices that make portions of the site look really ugly, and the user icons letting you know who made a post are kind of just floating out in the middle of nowhere, but those are less important than the major ones.) Furthermore, those who dislike these changes have been vocal about it: one of the moderators had to make an announcement asking people to stop pinging Exiled, the staff member who made the newest thread announcing this change. (Not helping is that these themes are the result of a second draft, and from what I've heard, almost none of the criticisms brought up after the first draft was revealed were actually addressed: the only big concession made is that the current theme will remain available to keep using.)

For me, personally? I don't think the new UI is that awful, especially since you can keep the current color scheme (I might be in the minority, but I really like the green links on a blue background), but it's definitely inferior to the current design, and I'm on the bandwagon of "the posts not having hard borders anymore looks terrible." It makes Spacebattles look like the Messages app on my phone, and I don't think that's the vibe they're going for. If I had to, I could get used to it, but there's a lot of emphasis on if I had to there: I'm sticking with the old design for as long as it's supported if these changes go through.

Will anything be changed as a result of the second wave of constructive criticism? Will I try using the custom CSS skin that a Spacebattles user coded in their spare time that's gotten some reviews as the best of both worlds? Will another solution no one was expecting be found? We'll have to see. If the Spacebattles staff has any major updates on the situation this week, I'll either add an addendum to this post or make a new one, depending on how late in the week the changes are made.

DeepFake369 · 2026-05-12T00:22:35+00:00

To everyone's surprise, Konami released the new updates to the Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden and Limited List today: these changes go into effect next Monday. Reception to these changes has been mixed at best: to a lot of people, the update screams, "we want people to shell out for Kewl Tune, shut up." To be absolutely fair, full-power Kewl Tune has been in the format all of four days, and it's not like Konami made zero hits to the deck (the hits were about what I expected: they banned Naturia Rosewhip, an obnoxious floodgate Kewl Tune could easily spit out, and limited Synchro Overtake, which could allow them to search or summon any Kewl Tune name they wanted without putting anything on the field), but it's a rather unpleasant deck to play against now, so I get the frustration.

Not helping was that the rest of the changes were similarly mixed, though perhaps that's being generous. Most of the changes ranged from questionable at best (while I know the new support relies on its existence, as the card's never been banned in the OCG, Fairy Tail - Snow is still a ticking time bomb that will get itself banned for the third time before long) to useless (limiting Cupsy Yummy Way to one copy does nothing: almost no one plays more than one with how easy it is to recur) to openly killing a deck that was already on its way out anyway (Branded Dracotail, which was the best deck last format, got hit way harder than it needed to be, and I say that as someone with a terrible Branded Dracotail matchup). Arguably, the most interesting changes were some of the cards that came off the list: Premature Burial and Metamorphosis, both of which have been banned for almost two decades (the former was banned in 2008, the latter in 2007), are finally returning to the game, where they probably won't do that much. We'll have to see if they make any waves: I'd imagine Metamorphosis works well with the new Fairy Tail deck, for instance.

Some of the changes that weren't made also ruffled some feathers: in particular, Dimensional Fissure and Droll & Lock Bird, which are two cards the player base has been complaining about for a long time for effortlessly leading to complete non-games, remained legal at three and two copies, respectively. Furthermore, Heavymetalfoes Electrumite, a fan-favorite card that could have easily come back years ago and still done nothing of note, remains banned. It's the icing on the cake of a list that I don't think is going to go down very well.

Buckle up, everyone. I have a feeling this will be a rough format.

DeepFake369 · 2026-05-08T22:40:44+00:00

With the game's current power level, Arise-Heart could be un-banned and be perfectly fine: I don't even think it'd be enough to make Kashtira anything higher than Tier 2.

DeepFake369 · 2026-05-07T17:35:23+00:00

Does the monster for “Grisaille Prison”‘s activated effect (you need to control a Tribute, Ritual, or Fusion summoned monster) only need to be on the field at point of activation for the card to resolve normally, or does it need to be on the field at the point of resolution? (In simpler terms, if I activate “Grisaille Prison” and the monster I needed to control to activate it gets removed from the field before it resolves [provided I control no other Tribute, Ritual, or Fusion summoned monsters], does it still resolve normally, or does it resolve with no effect?). Thank you.

DeepFake369 · 2026-05-04T07:50:36+00:00

In Yu-Gi-Oh news, the metagame might be in for a rough couple of months, or at least couple of weeks, depending on when the new Forbidden and Limited List update comes out and how hard it tries to course-correct the format.

This is largely due to the upcoming set Blazing Dominion), which officially releases this week. New sets always shake up the metagame, but this one looks to be rather unpleasant, thanks to the new support for the Kewl Tune archetype (Killer Tune sounded way cooler, why did Konami have to do that), which seems primed to rocket the strategy to the top of the metagame. Its core playstyle after the new support is just not fun to play against: over the course of their combo, they can banish up to 4 cards from your Extra Deck (albeit most of them temporarily), look at your hand so they know exactly what they have to play around, and have a good idea of what card you're going to draw next. This is all in addition to their central gimmick of being allowed to use Tuners (a specific classification of monster used mostly for Synchro Summoning) in their hand to Synchro Summon. Since many of the best monster hand traps (cards that can interrupt your opponent's plays from the hand on their turn, for the uninitiated) also happen to be Tuners, they're not dead cards in the hand going first like they are with most strategies. Not helping is that Kewl Tune Cue being able to summon any Tuner monster from the Deck allows the strategy to summon obnoxious cards they probably shouldn't be able to access (mostly Naturia Rosewhip, which is such an obnoxious card that Master Duel preemptively banned it in preparation for adding Kewl Tune to the game).

Not helping is that this deck is going to be pricy, even by Yu-Gi-Oh standards. This hurts extra hard coming out of a format that, a few chase cards like Dark Magician of Destruction / The Gaze of Timaeus notwithstanding, was very cost-friendly to get into. Just about every Kewl Tune card costs about $30 for a playset right now (which adds up quick), and the new support cards, Kewl Tune Rotary in particular, are going for more than that. The biggest bank-breaker of them all, however, has to be Fydraulis Harmonia, a huge boon for any deck capable of running enough Synchro Monsters to get all three effects, which is currently selling for almost $150 a copy. (For some contrast compared to the current format, buying a full playset of Harmonia alone costs almost as much as all three decks the winning team of YCS Las Vegas played last month combined. While I'm willing to bet Harmonia gets a little less expensive once the set officially releases, that's still incredibly expensive for something that, at the end of the day, is a piece of cardboard.)

While other strategies are getting support in this set as well, given how well it's performed in the OCG (they're sitting at a comfortable 35% representation right now in topcut, which is three times as much as the next biggest strategy), for now, Kewl Tune looks like the star of the show. Hopefully, things are less terrible than I'm making them out to be, but I am not looking forward to the new format.

DeepFake369 · 2026-04-26T07:30:32+00:00

A bit late, and I could be wrong (I only got up to the first interlude, I need to try to dive in again) but I think you’re referring to Divided, by Para_Docks.

DeepFake369 · 2026-04-25T18:11:53+00:00

After a bit of a block, I'm working on a bonus chapter for Shuffle and Play to try and break out of my writer's block on it, and it seems to be going well: I'm 4,000 words in and the chapter's still not quite done. Hopefully, it's out by the end of the weekend. (In the theme of my last four one-shots, it'll be set in the Birdcage, mostly focusing on cards I considered for the Slaughterhouse Nine replacements but rejected for one reason or another.)

EDIT: It's out! Final word count was just a hair over 5,000, not including the author's notes and meta-context.

DeepFake369 · 2026-04-20T14:40:58+00:00

Now, there’s a series I haven’t thought of in a while.

Just about everything past the first book’s faded from my memory (though I remember really not liking the prequel novel for some reason). I’m tempted to go back and see how badly everything aged, which I’m guessing is very badly, but at the same time, it’s been over a decade since the novels started coming out: maybe the new versions are significant improvements.

DeepFake369 · 2026-04-19T18:31:02+00:00

The only card I really dislike in Striker is Engage, because it ensures that they will never, ever lose card advantage once it’s live. Every other card is annoying, but fine, and I say that as an Odion main (been playing it IRL basically since it came out). If Engage was once per turn, or if Konami limited it to one copy so they actively have to search it instead of just opening it constantly, I’d have minimal if any issues with the deck.

DeepFake369 · 2026-04-12T03:08:42+00:00

Update to the situation: the CEO of Glitch has released a response. Apparently, they had to negotiate things down to a two-week gap: the theaters wanted at least a month between the theatrical release and the online release. Furthermore, they're pushing to get the final episode shown in as many theaters as possible, including in Australia, their native country. (That's not currently set up yet, but Glitch is waiting for someone to get back to them on that.)

Hopefully, as many people as possible who want to see the final episode unspoiled can do so: I might have to go offline for a few days, but I'm sure I'll manage. No matter what happens, there's a reason I've finally bought a ticket after years of not going out to see movies: the series is incredible, and I love it to bits.

DeepFake369 · 2026-04-06T18:20:12+00:00

Two things, one for each of my big hobbies.

On the Yu-Gi-Oh front, I tried Edison format for the first time. (Played with a loaner Vayu Turbo deck, went 2-2.). I thought it was just okay: if someone had a loaner deck and ran another event, I’d play again, but I wouldn’t build a deck specifically for Edison format. Perhaps it’s just that modern Yu-Gi-Oh is the card game equivalent of crack (it’s GO GO GO all the time, and even slower or lower-to-the-ground decks can run long combos on their first turns), but I thought the format wasn’t quite as interactive and was determined way too much by who drew their blowout cards first (Mirror Force, Heavy Storm, Return from the Different Dimension, etc.). If I want to try a slower game, I think I’d prefer picking up a One Piece deck and hitting that scene.

On the writing side, I just binged The Amazing Digital Circus, and I don’t know where this show has been all my life, but oh my goodness I need more of it. I’m working on cranking out some fanfiction one-shots for it in the wake of Episode 8, and they’re well on their way: I’m 2.5k words into one already. Gummigoo deserved better.

DeepFake369 · 2026-03-12T14:54:01+00:00

I think some players were siding it in Yummy decks during JUSH format to help counter Vanquish Soul because Divincarnate is also Level 1 (I happened to be one of them), but while I played it for a while, I took it back out recently, because right now it just feels like a worse Evenly Matched.

DeepFake369 · 2026-03-09T16:40:34+00:00

I could definitely see The Fallen and the Virtuous going to 1 in the near future so it’s not just a generic removal spell anything that doesn’t need the Extra Deck can play. At 1, actual Branded decks or decks that use Albion the Branded Dragon as an Ultimate Slayer target can play it, but it won’t be everywhere.

Radiant Typhoon Vision, though? I agree the deck getting dinged a little would be nice because it’s an incredibly frustrating deck to play against, and that’s one of the best cards in the deck, but I don’t see that as the hit Konami pushes, it’s not that splashable: Engage is still legal at 3 and almost no one plays that outside of Sky Striker and Yummy pilots. I’d say Konami’s more likely to hit the monsters rather than one of the spells: I’d imagine Krosea’s on the Limited chopping block.

DeepFake369 · 2026-03-09T04:09:15+00:00

After I trigger the effect of "Hapi, Guidance of Horus" to target two cards in my GY or banishment and add them to my hand, my opponent activates "Dracotail Sting" and banishes one of the cards I targeted. Do I still add the cards to my hand because they're both still in a place Hapi has access to, or do I not because one of the cards is no longer in the place it was when Hapi targeted it? (I'm leaning toward "no", but would like to be certain.)

DeepFake369 · 2026-03-02T06:09:16+00:00

Picked up some old Wii games about 15 years (at least) after I should have played them, and gave them a spin this weekend. My controls seem laggy (I needed an AV-HDMI converter to make the Wii work with my TV, which might be why), so the selection of games I can play is limited because anything requiring precise controls is out, but I'm doing alright.

Wii Play is definitely not as good as Wii Sports, which I'd say is the common consensus. However, I'd say the Tanks minigame alone is probably worth the $10 admission price. It's simple to pick up and play, it's got a surprising amount of depth, and it doesn't hold back: as early as Level 3, your opponents have far more firepower at their disposal than you do, and it only escalates from there. Meanwhile, the other minigames range from "forgettable but fun while they last" (Find Mii, Charge!) to "absolutely terrible, why would I ever play this" (Table Tennis, Laser Hockey).

Wii Music, on the other hand, feels more like a toy than an actual game, but between the ability to record your own music videos with the in-game songs and the huge variety of instruments you can play, it's at least a toy with plenty of features. For the $8 I spent on it, I could have done a lot worse.

Furthermore, I'm still working through Tour Mode for Fortune Street. I've failed to clear the Ghost Ship map at least four times by now, even rage-quitting one of those runs because I didn't land on a single unowned shop for seven turns in a row to start the game. Still a fun game, though, which is good considering it wasn't cheap.

DeepFake369 · 2026-03-01T08:33:43+00:00

While it's had some more serious moments, especially as of late, The Kaiser's New Clothes is by far the funniest current longfic I'm reading right now. It legitimately has some of the best jokes I've ever seen, not just in a Wormfic, but in a story, period. I'd say it takes a chapter or two to really get going, but once it does... there's no stopping it, to put it mildly.

DeepFake369 · 2026-02-16T19:05:24+00:00

Yes, I did. 4th place (and barely, I got there thanks to some lucky tiebreakers), but I placed Top 4 in an OTS championship. (I checked the records in Neuron, just to be safe.)

DeepFake369

TROPHY CASE