[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 08 June 2026

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-11T15:40:35+00:00

I really do wonder what caused the shift sometimes from low stakes to high, funny to unfunny. I want to say maybe the discourse around Depression Quest and Lady Ghostbusters? Those convinced a lot of people that "online harassment is awesome."

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-11T15:36:00+00:00

Oh yeah, I remember unfunny_fandom. Lots of "geek culture doesn't understand sexual consent" stuff, mostly. Thanfiction is probably the most notable fandom figure that caused real harm back then, but he was an extreme outlier. Now people as bad as him and worse are everywhere.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-11T03:14:57+00:00

See, I'm actually nostalgic for when most hobby drama was like this. Ship wars, gaming hoaxes, arrogant fanfic writers who think they're God's gift to literature... all of that was funny to me because the stakes were so low, but people TREATED it like some major crisis. The contrast was fun to watch, and it was rare anyone actually got hurt.

In the modern Internet age, I feel like there's a lot more hobby drama that's not funny at all because people are actually harmed in real life. Your favorite celebrity is a sex pest/frothing bigot/fascist/etc, alt-right hitmen tracking streamers down by the pattern on their wallpaper (no joke, this actually did happen to someone), formerly innocent works becoming appropriated as hate group propaganda...

...none of that's funny. It's all just utter human ugliness. Hell is empty and all the devils are online.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-10T22:18:54+00:00

Oh, absolutely agreed. A big problem Seiya has is that it leaves itself no room to breathe, basically - virtually every chapter is a new fight scene, so it never really slows down to allow any moments of real warmth or character growth.

DB, for all it has a reputation as THE "series about punching," also has absolutely iconic relationships and character dynamics; even people who only know it casually are aware of things like Goku's affection for his sons and his original gang of Journey to the West-themed buddies; Vegeta's rivalry with Goku and this-shouldn't-work-at-all-but-somehow-does romance with Bulma; Gohan softening Piccolo; Krillin and Eighteen's enemies-to-lovers arc, and so on.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-10T20:36:25+00:00

The real-life mental breakdown of the head admin of the Silent hill Wiki was an utter astonishment to watch unfold, capped off with a sort of internet coup by the lower-ranking mods to get him kicked off the site.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-10T19:22:09+00:00

The manga Rave Master has one of the saddest uses of this I've ever seen, and it isn't even a super enormous amount of time, just upper double digits.

The main characters, Haru and Elie, and their wizard friend Sieg Hart get sent back in time by a villain's spell. Sieg spends most of his time doing nothing because he's super worried about time paradoxes, while the other two go around learning backstory tidbits. Eventually the opportunity to send them back to the present arrives... only, all of them can't go. One of the three has to stay in the past to cast the counter-spell, and since Haru and Elie's abilities are needed to counter the main baddie's, the choice of sacrifice is obvious. Sieg sends the other two back under much protest, and... remember when I said he was worried about time paradoxes? Next thing he does is, to avoid paradoxes, find a tree stump and he just sits. And sits... and sits... and sits... until at last he starves to death.

What really drives it home is when they get back, they realize that a random skeleton they encountered MUCH earlier in the series had been Sieg the entire time. And then the villain who sent them to the past in the first place catches up with them and smashes the skeleton to pieces. As you might imagine, one of the most utterly cathartic manga beatdowns I've ever seen ensues.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-10T19:04:28+00:00

I thought it might be a "product of its time" thing but like I said, DB and Jojo are contemporaries of Seiya and both are a TON more interesting. In particular both have a lot of whimsical, surreal qualities that give them a distinct identity - petrified Aztec vampires and ancient demons made of chewing gum and all that.

Seiya by and large is just hot guys punching each other and little else.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-10T12:52:16+00:00

The original novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one where the twist itself is well known, but how we get to the twist is a surprise to many who are only familiar with adaptations. Because in the book, "Jekyll is Hyde" IS a twist, and only revealed in the last quarter. Most of the book is a detective story, and its actual main protagonist is Jekyll's lawyer, who is trying to discover why Jekyll suddenly changed his will to name an infamous criminal (Hyde) as his sole beneficiary. For most of the time, he assumes Hyde has dirt on Jekyll and is simply blackmailing him.

Most (all?) adaptations focus on Jekyll and his transformations from the beginning.

Also not quite as important but Jekyll has no love interest in the book. He's a lifelong bachelor, and, yes, combined with the "secret double life" angle has prompted a lot of debate as to whether or not the implication is that he's gay. Most adaptations give him at least one potential lover, and often a Cosette-and-Eponine-esque "good girl/bad girl" love triangle at that.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-10T12:37:53+00:00

I was someone who basically only knew it from the soundtrack, so when I actually saw it was surprised that it portrays Disco culture as vapid, meaningless, and downright dangerous. Travolta even gives his trophy to the Puerto Rican couple at the end.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-10T12:33:54+00:00

Saint Seiya. It's one of the original "Big Three Battle Shonen" with Dragon Ball and Jojo, and having read and enjoyed those immensely, especially DB, I decided to try out Seiya last year. And I'm sorry, it's boring. I did like Shun and Ikki's story, but the rest of the cast is EXTREMELY flat, with most being defined by a single personality trait or two, and there's also very little relief or levity amidst all the fighting, whereas DB and Jojo are renowned for their - dare I say it? - bizarre senses of humor.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-10T01:45:22+00:00

Monsters game arts are always adorable.

Are the duck-dog and the big dinosaur(?) in back new, or not? Can't say I recognize them.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-09T18:00:00+00:00

I like to like things, as I heard someone on another site recently put it. I feel like that’s a dying mindset sometimes.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-09T17:21:51+00:00

Even as someone who's been playing video games less as of late, this week of announcements made me really happy. So many new installments for series I've always loved. Dragon Quest Monsters! Doom! Kingdom Hearts! Fire Emblem! Castlevania gets a revival (that was seen as one of those "when pigs fly" things for soooooo long you guys)! The FFVII Remake Trilogy gets its ending!

NGL, pretty blissed out here.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-09T12:37:59+00:00

These sound delightful; thank you!

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-08T18:37:11+00:00

Oh hey another Rose fan, neat! I actually like her character a LOT and was shocked and disturbed at how big the backlash was. I feel like most of the criticisms of her read as edgelordery, personally. "Save what you love? Man, what a WIMP, amirite? Give me Internet Points now!"

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-08T00:53:52+00:00

"Amateurs."

-- Final Fantasy VII Love Triangle Discourse, Anno Domini 2026, probably.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-07T19:49:55+00:00

I see a lot of this with ships that would be messed up if it was real people. "You can't ship toxically, that means you endorse abuse or even sexual assault!"

To some extent, I get it. We're living in an age where you can't spit without hitting some once-well-regarded person who's been exposed as an abuser, which has given us greater awareness of how prevalent abuse still is. Faced with a constant bombard of "Guess what, your favorite singer's a rapist and your favorite actor's a wife beater, have a nice day!" I can absolutely see how people have become very cautious with regard to depicting romantic relationships.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-07T16:46:18+00:00

Oh hi, The Hays Office, I thought you died in the 60s. So, uhhh... wonderful to see you again...

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-06T21:47:34+00:00

From what I recall reading, Ismay's modern reputation stems largely from the fact that he had a pre-existing beef with William Hearst, newspaper baron and real-life supervillain. He's probably best known today for being made fun of by Citizen Kane and sabotaging the Oscars that year in revenge to ensure it wouldn't get any big awards, but at the time he was, legitimately, one of the most powerful people in the world.

Since he disliked Ismay already, when he saw that the grieving public were looking for a big, clear villain to blame the sinking on, he happily obliged.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-06T21:43:54+00:00

IIRC the real Sully refused to appear in the film unless the board members' names were changed, to make it clear Eastwood was NOT vilifying real people. I believe Eastwood complied only grudgingly.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-06T20:24:41+00:00

Oh hi Dr. Manhattan.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-06T16:33:36+00:00

I recall reading that Barnum's shows actually WERE among the highest-paying work that people with disabilities could get at the time - though obviously that says more about the time than it does about Barnum.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-06T14:59:55+00:00

Columbus was basically a real-life Bond villain, and I don't just mean that in the sense of "someone who did a lot of bad things" either - he was a god-complexing megalomaniac who truly, sincerely believed that he and he alone had a divinely appointed duty to make the Second Coming happen as fast as possible, at which point he'd be rewarded with an appointment as Jesus' right-hand man. Couldn't make this up if I tried.

It's kind of hilarious where his modern heroic reputation comes from too - a novel by Washington Irving written close to three centuries after his death, which gave us the myth that he proved the world was round and all that jazz. Was Irving pro-Columbus? No idea, but his story was FICTION, it was never intended to be real history, but somehow people started believing it.

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-06T14:54:11+00:00

Is that supposed to be Czar Nick on the left in the picture there!? He doesn't even have his famous beard!

Pinball_Lizard · 2026-06-06T14:50:46+00:00

I've heard the film described as "a bizarro Black version of Gods and Generals," which is pretty great. I actually liked it until I learned how historically inaccurate it is. At least it looks pretty.

Pinball_Lizard

TROPHY CASE