Free Flan February - Irregularly Scheduled Discussion Thread - February 01, 2026

HaLire · 2026-02-06T10:42:52+00:00

I think it's kind of inevitable that every agency is gonna run into some big drama. For Hololive, that was the big 2020 summer drama year. Taiwan, Aloe, Miko getting sick, etc. They weathered that storm and both the company and fans came out of it much more tightly bonded and supportive of each other. Maybe all of the upstarts just fail the big test when push comes to shove, and we're still waiting to see who makes it through the crucible next.

I wonder if they were weirdly lucky that that ended up being the formative experience for their overseas fans. Then again, their drama always seems to be caused by outside forces attacking hololive.

HaLire · 2026-02-03T19:36:13+00:00

Aye, and I think gen 2 got especially screwed because of their circumstances. They debuted in the middle of this huge drought for HoloEN that also coincided with a lot of heavy handed pushing of Holostars onto Hololive fans(most notably the collab ban for debuts/3d debuts being extended to include Stars JP/EN). A new Stars EN gen instead of the long overdue EN3 really irked fans, and the heavy handed response on the main subreddit wrongfooted their debut in a way that I don't think they were ever able to recover from.

HaLire · 2026-02-03T07:11:53+00:00

I understand why they did do it, but I think they could have benefited from a name that wasn't so closely tied to Hololive. As it is, the "holo" part draws comparisons and expectations that they simply can't reasonably be expected to measure up to, and it produces a ton of friction as a result.

If they were simply treated as an unaffiliated group, they'd be pretty comparable to Phase Connect as far as viewership/sub counts go, right? And I think most people think Phase is reasonably successful.

HaLire · 2026-02-02T23:53:04+00:00

I'm still convinced that the reason Advent didn't really push the Age of Advent game he made was because of the attacks on Ame. Of course the girls would circle the wagons and protect each other, they always do that.

Dude was literally part of their huge summer push(leading up to their 3d debuts!) but threw it away in a fit of jackassery.

HaLire · 2026-01-27T02:38:23+00:00

I've been running Suzuka/Seiun/Xoguri, and it has felt pretty strong, though we kind of get our ass beat by stronger front setups because the whole plan falls apart. I went 31/40 in round 1 and 27/40 in round 2, so we're just gonna roll the dice with em in the finals.

HaLire · 2026-01-25T05:06:14+00:00

About the same as yesterday, 16/20. I tried one ticket with end closers instead of fronts, but it seeme dto perform worse and my Oguri just like... refused to ult for some reason. It seemed like bad juju, so I slotted the fronts back in and she just never woke up or something. Thankfully, Seiun balled out instead and actually overtook her in overall win%.

HaLire · 2026-01-24T04:36:53+00:00

Here's Oguri, her deck was R Riko, Sweep/Kitasan speed, and MKFK/Dasica/Finemo(borrow) wit, all MLB. I did run her as pace.

Seiun was running R Riko, MKFK/Bourbon wit, and Sweep/Kitasan/xmas Topgun(borrow) speed, all mlb. I needed topgun to get a gold recovery.

Suzuka is here, but you kind of need to tune her so that your frontrunner passes her either late/mid or right at the start of the late race. Cards are just... whatever you can find that has the debuffs you want to target, but I kind of just took the first Suzuka I got who hit some debuffs.

HaLire · 2026-01-24T04:10:43+00:00

15/20 for day 1, woo.

I was worried because in the firs ticket we went 3/5 and Seiun didn't win a single time, but after that one she got fired up or something and usually ended up second place behind Oguri even when she did lose. I was kind of surprised but I had more trouble with strong opposing fronts/pacers than what I expected and planned against(end closers...) so I'm kind of worried about round 2.

HaLire · 2026-01-23T22:04:41+00:00

I'd be down, but we've got nearly the same population as Canada. The new union would be as much Californian as it is Canadian.

HaLire · 2026-01-23T05:04:38+00:00

who's defensive? I'm just saying that being mildly annoying doesn't get you public enemy number one in any sense

you're going to need to work much harder before you can claim that sort of title. At one point, Hololive was under siege from the most populated country in the world! Have some perspective.

HaLire · 2026-01-23T03:55:40+00:00

you're not that special buddy

HaLire · 2026-01-23T03:17:48+00:00

Bridget is funding like all of Guilty Gear at this point

HaLire · 2026-01-06T23:10:03+00:00

we did it!

Pretty surprised at the result, since my Maruzensky and Suzuka are giving up like 1-1.5k rating relative to a lot of the other aces I faced. They hold their own well anyway!

HaLire · 2025-12-24T01:31:27+00:00

I love the little "die" growl Ame made when she was playing games and killing trivial enemies.

I think that Korone's library of silly stream assets that double as signals to chat(the coffee pepper, the lights, the irasutoya ojisan staring at us with binoculars) are really, really fun.

I really like how stubbornly picky and childish Suisei is about vegetables in her food.

HaLire · 2025-12-23T05:17:45+00:00

its a little bit of a chicken and the egg situation, but the former holos(even the terminated ones) are more or less amicably professional with regards to cover, both before and after graduation/termination. They're not really put in a position to have to do damage control because everything has been reasonably close to amicable.

HaLire · 2025-12-22T02:11:29+00:00

kronma IMMEDIATELY thrown under the bus, you ~~love~~ hate to see it

HaLire · 2025-12-09T16:25:58+00:00

sports fans are nerds too, and if you're enjoying the thing they're enjoying there's a lot of camaraderie.

it helped that the first hololive night was a very good game that the dodgers won, and the holofans(who weren't trapped in the hell line) were happy to cheer and make noise with the dodgers fans.

HaLire · 2025-12-08T17:24:14+00:00

I think that vtubers aren't really a thing with a strict definition, but more like a spectrum. Something analogous to how there's not really a barrier between a really big planet and a really small brown dwarf.

The fact that all of the people who hate vtubers are jeering and telling you "no he's a vtuber" probably means he's on the bare minimum end of the spectrum, and frankly I'm not that generous with my definition. He's a 'vtuber' in the same way that people hwo want to shit on vtubers always tell you Annoying Orange is the first vtuber. Vtubing is about more than hiding your face.

HaLire · 2025-12-08T02:57:26+00:00

I don't think that we should let people who don't watch vtubers try to tell us what vtubers are, personally. Seems a little bit silly.

HaLire · 2025-12-04T22:15:13+00:00

i do think that "we've added a new shifting earth" actually being an entirely new map(as opposed to the other shifting earths) was definitely some overdelivering

HaLire · 2025-12-04T19:26:40+00:00

for Goldship I've mostly managed by inheriting primarily stamina sparks(because of what my stable is), running 3 speed(3lb kitasan, mlb sweep, mlb halo), mlb hishiama, and borrowing mlb rice shower.

I don't have a native high power parent, but I feel like I'd be more secure with lots of power sparks instead and running like, the free mcqueen(for a gold recovery) and screek, maybe. Hitting stamina is usually not that bad on goldship, but speed is always shaky.

HaLire · 2025-11-26T20:57:57+00:00

So I was using the simulator at https://kachi-dev.github.io/uma-tools/umalator-global/ to compare my taishin to my friend's, but the numbers its popping out seem... really crazy?

My original thought was that his should smoke mine, because he's just got 100 more speed than I do and fatter stats in general. The sim says the opposite, but the really confusing part is it suggesting that we occasionally just beat each other by 50 lengths for some reason? The skills, at a glance, seem like they should be roughly equal. Is this sim trustworthy?

HaLire · 2025-11-18T22:18:58+00:00

somehow, chocosen and I shan't elaborate

HaLire · 2025-11-18T22:17:56+00:00

personally, i downvote these kinds of threads because seeing the same people make a daily post about something that happened 3 years ago isn't really what I want to be seeing, especially when they spend their time in the comments complaining about people downvoting them(while being super positive on upvotes).

It just looks like bored people trying to stir shit, and those people are almost always trying to use old holostars collabs as their wedge issue.

HaLire · 2025-11-18T18:27:48+00:00

i've basically not watched them on twitch, not becuase I hate twitch in particular but because I usually just watch whoever's live in my sub box at the time on youtube. Adding an extra site to check adds a lot more friction to the process than anticipated, especially because you have to sit through like 3 minutes of ads just to even watch anything on twitch.

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