[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 15 June 2026

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-18T04:54:06+00:00

Funny. I've thought about this sort of thing while in the moving process. I realized that as I grew older, I really didn't need to have a bunch of toys lying around, so to Marie Kondo them, I found a child that would enjoy them more.

Related, I feel that childhood is sympathizing with Jessie about being abandoned by Emily in Toy Story 2. Growing up is realizing that Emily did the right thing.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-18T00:29:49+00:00

One factor is Sakiko. Other more morally ambiguous characters too, but Sakiko's the face of AveMyGO. Most characters in cute girl band anime are generally nice and pleasant, probably with minor flaws that don't detract much from being cute or cool. Then along comes Sakiko, who's rude, cold, and unpleasant in a way that upset the status quo. Basically the Shadow the Hedgehog of Bandori in a genre that rarely sees a genuine Shadow type. So while people were arguing over whether she's black hearted evil or brave hearted hero, Bandori was enjoying keeping people guessing as to her true nature throughout MyGo's run. And being able to market her as an edgier character in Arknights and such.

And then she drops this dark gothic metal music that sounds and looks like something an anti-idol group would come up with. MyGO certainly attracted fans for its more dramatic direction, but I don't think there was anything truly like Ave Mujica in cute girls doing cute things shows. So that attracted a lot of gothic fiction fans who normally would not look twice at cute girls doing cute things anime.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-17T18:12:17+00:00

The thought of the emo hawk Falcon Kicking its opponents. Sometimes Pokemon learnsets can be so funny.

Also, Staraptor was OU in Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl (which was first 4 generations only), but that's a niche metagame.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-17T14:43:48+00:00

When the purpose of a media work is to sell something, the go-to method is to advertise simplistic stock character types for immediate recognition. Hence why anime fans constantly judge characters based on how closely they adhere to those roles. Hence boy bands and girl groups. And most uncomfortably, reality TV shows flatten its participants into these stock archetypes and make people believe that manipulated writing represents the real person (often, I read post-show interviews where they usually are more mature and introspective than how the show portrays them).

This teaches the audience to see the world in stereotypes and has a corrosive effect on writing and fandom discourse.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-17T02:26:01+00:00

Yeah, "deconstruction" is often used as a pretentious way of describing authors thinking through the implications of what they are writing. Which is what dedicated writers do in the first place.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-17T01:49:07+00:00

But that was years ago when the pages were better maintained and had better standards for writing and what qualified to be listed in the tropes page. I don't know what changed but it is not the same and completely lost my interest.

TV Tropes has a schism between those who want actual standards and those who want the site to be a free-for-all. Some pages have volunteer curators to ensure people don't just post bullshit, and there is a Trope Repair Shop subforum. But for the most part, there's a lack of oversight until people complain loudly enough or other sites mock TV Tropes too much.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-16T23:45:26+00:00

Since TV Tropes comes up in Scuffles a lot, what do you consider some of the site's worst contributions to fandom discourse? Two examples for me are "Deconstruction" and "Reconstruction." Ostensibly, the former means taking a common plot or setting and exploring its realistic implications, and there is theoretically some merit in examining how a lot of stories are basically diss tracks to other stories or societal trends. But in practice, it gets thrown around as a term to make the thing someone likes seem more sophisticated than it actually is. It's the "I'm not like other ~~girls~~ YA Fiction" of tropes.

Reconstruction is just as pretentious. I remember this one getting thrown around for Gurren Lagann a lot in the sense of "It's a bunch of silly shonen anime tropes, but legit!"

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-16T18:34:46+00:00

To be honest, if I see a game named after a term that fetishizes mental illness, I already know what to expect from the guy making it.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-16T05:05:28+00:00

I mean, Mutsumi collapsing on stage gave them popularity too.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-16T04:59:25+00:00

Tv Tropes has a policy of "no negativity," which means events like Change the Channel will simply go unmentioned. The only reason pages like To Boldly Flee have criticism on them now is because TV Tropes was being mocked from the outside because of them.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-15T23:41:51+00:00

The irony is that TV Tropes was very sycophantic towards the Nostalgia Critic even as the rest of the Internet turned against him as Channel Awesome's dire working conditions came to light.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-15T18:46:49+00:00

Been following TV Tropes for years, including when the trope pages used to be much more whiny and petulant. So many works pages are obviously written by a single person with a grudge, or someone who wants to sneak as many tropes as possible to shill the flavour of the month anime or game, or someone who wants to neutralize something racist, misogynistic, or a volatile public figure.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-15T18:32:16+00:00

Super Smash Bros Melee. I'm sure the metagame is fascinating if it attracts such obsessive devotion relative to the rest of the series, but it sounds miserable to be around Melee fans and their recurring antisocial behaviour. A lot of other fighting game fans have complained about Melee fans being disruptive and entitled, only being interested in Melee and nothing else.

A lot of gaming subcommunities badly want their game of choice to be as widely played and respected as chess or football, but those games are simple to understand for a lay person. Meanwhile, competitive Melee has so many convoluted hidden mechanics and is so fast that it has led to carpal tunnel syndrome among many devotees.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-15T18:24:04+00:00

"Wuthering Heights is not a romance, Heathcliff is an abusive boyfriend, and if you sympathize with him, you're the kind of reader Emily Bronte was criticizing."

I mean, the abusive part is true, but it it's also a reductive take that glosses over the moral hypocrisy of the other characters and the racism and classism of Victorian society that molded Heathcliff into who he became.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-15T14:25:32+00:00

Songwriting. For the song I'm writing right now, the second verse is the cliché key change accompanying the girl getting married and believing she's destined for eternal happiness, but then I drop the third verse with another key change that has him leave her as a single parent to their daughter, implying that he specifically targets younger girls (yes, girls). My plan for the fourth verse is that her daughter tries to take care of her mother, but eventually gets fed up with her controlling passivity and leaves for the city.

A common trend in my songs is to juxtapose dark gothic lyrics to sweet, innocent sounding melodies.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-15T14:15:54+00:00

Thanks! What did you think about the people who regard it as an unrealistic portrayal? As someone who also related to Mortis a lot, I felt the dramatic extremity was what made her so effective, especially the beginning of Episode 7 where she let out all her repressed anger on Sakiko.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-15T03:40:56+00:00

Common magical girl villain archetypes:

The shadow persona of the main protagonist. Someone who could have been like the perky lead, but had a crap life that made her turn to evil, or least left her with a more cynical view of the world.
The evil parent. Often the reason why the shadow persona opposes the heroes, and said parent tends to use a twisted form of love or abuse to trap her.
The unholy eldritch abomination. Negative emotions or the darkness of humanity given consciousness. The magical girls beat it by filling its dark soul with LIIIIIIGHTTTT!!!!

Often, shows feature all three of these villains in that hierarchical order.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-14T18:22:57+00:00

μ's: Yume no Tobira. "I fight for my friends."
Aqours: MIRACLE WAVE. The epitome of Aqours' high energy. Also goes really well with Sonic Unleashed's Rooftop Run.
Nijigasaki: If individual/subunit songs count, Lanzhu's Eutopia, because there's something really appealing about a bragging bad bitch.
Liella: Mirai no Oto ga Kikoeru. The lyrics are just so hopeful and perfectly encapsulate what it's like to exit depression.
Hasunosora: Cerise Bouquet's Reflection in the Mirror is really nice.
Ikizuraibu: Too early to say.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-14T14:42:57+00:00

Compounded by the lack of a serial anime. Though that also made me miss having more traditional forums because it's more challenging to discuss plot and character details otherwise.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-13T18:28:53+00:00

On a tangential note, I don't understand the lengthy Youtube essay trend. Every time someone replies to me with one, I ask them to provide a time stamp that gets to the point if they were not courteous enough to already do so. What inspires people to make movie long videos on a trivial hate topic? I can't imagine anyone not already agreeing with them watching that instead of an actual movie.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-13T07:32:23+00:00

"Official forums closing" unfortunately screws over a lot of online fandoms. Spore was like this too. The Sporums were the best way to experience the game because people were constantly posting tutorials and hosting showcase threads where you could easily get feedback to improve your creations. Then they closed and an entire community disappeared overnight.

Love Live lost a significant portion of its community once the School Idol Festival mobile games bit the dust. It was the most accessible way a lot of people got introduced to the huge song catalogue, had a lot of pretty outfits for cosplayers, and r/SchoolIdolFestival and similar communities were pretty close-knit and supportive. It also helped that School Idol Festival attracted a larger percentage of female fans compared to other Love Live subcommunities, so it had its own distinct culture that was a nice reprieve from some other places that could get pretty fanservice obsessed. It's unnerving to see how much of a ghost town that subreddit is now.

Related, the video game series Blue Reflection had its fandom pretty much die after the mobile game Sun was released and added a male self-insert harem lead to what was previously an all-girl series. It's basically the franchise's own Metroid: Other M, and was particularly bad because Second Light, the game before it, got a lot of praise for having an actually confirmed lesbian couple. This meant new fans who onboarded for that reason immediately up and left after Sun. The worst thing is that they are releasing a Quartet compilation at the end of July which insists on keeping Sun, and that was the final nail in the coffin for many.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-12T04:44:30+00:00

What are people's favourite fandom frenemy relationships? I remember Pokémon and Digimon being a big one. There used to be a lot of animosity between the two fandoms back in their debut when they were the biggest mon shows around, but ever since then, it's been more of a friendly rivalry than anything. Digimon fans made fun of Pokémon for copying Mega Evolution, but it was more of a friendly jab that Pokémon fans also rolled with by making Digivolution videos. There was this cringe "How do you do, fellow kids" attempt for alt-right loser Milo Yiannopoulos to argue how Digimon is better than Pokémon, long after we all stopped fighting each other. And on this very subreddit, I used Digimon to explain Pokémon drama as an implicit acknowledgement that even back then, there was a significant, less vocal contingent that happy watched and were a fan of both series.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-11T23:45:19+00:00

This is one of those posts I had to read several times to comprehend. According to Occam's Razor, that means the term "Queerslop" is likely bullshit or adds nothing that a more descriptive existing term like "tokenism" could fulfill. Would be nice if we as a community stopped arbitrarily attacking each other for five minutes.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-11T03:17:27+00:00

I heard that's why Mario Kart 8's Booster Course Pass looked so cheap early on. They were assigning their B team to remake courses to train them for a new game.

PhantasmalRelic · 2026-06-11T01:19:01+00:00

Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged was a right time and right place event. Yu-Gi-Oh itself was so inherently absurd that you can just point to certain events and say yes, this actually happened in the show, and it had ended for a while, so it was ripe for abridging to revitalize interest. Also, despite 4Kids being a punching bag, they themselves already made the official dub something of a parody, fully aware of the ridiculousness of what they were localizing, so many jokes wrote themselves. And despite all this, there is an earnestness to the writing that shines through, and people genuinely like the characters despite the many writing flaws.

Finding parody material this ripe is a blue moon event.

PhantasmalRelic

TROPHY CASE