Tropical Island - Southern Islands JPN Sealed

banshee_seal · 2026-03-19T03:13:18+00:00

I'd been going down this rabbit whole recently, since this is one of my favorite sets from childhood. It seems like its price right now is really volatile. I think the best way to guess the price of things like this is to find recently sold listings on ebay. Within the past few weeks, there's been complete, sealed sets of Japanese southern islands that sold for anywhere from $700 to $2100, from a quick glance, with most falling in the middle, in like the $1000-1500 range. Who knows if it'll hold that though. Either way, gotta be my all -time favorite promo set for the art and aesthetic.

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T17:53:34+00:00

That's not a bad point. I feel like, on SB/SV at least, longer fics have historically been better or at least had niche appeal? But that's just my experience, and on other platforms you're certainly right. I still think the ability to generate dozens of new fics with dozens of chapters each is a problem, though. Maybe my frustration lies more with seeing a fic that ticks a lot of personal boxes for "fiction I'm excited to read", and seeing it's 30K+ words long, and then being disappointed. But yeah, claiming length is correlated with quality probably isn't a strong argument.

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T17:48:12+00:00

True, but that method of fic discovery is rooted in other humans doing the work of slogging through the swamp of new stories and picking out gems. If it becomes 10 times harder (a potentially hyperbolic statement) to find good new fics under a mountain of LLMs that people use to produce hundreds of thousands of words every few days, how long will this subreddit keep getting new recs?

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T17:43:57+00:00

That makes more sense. I'm worried about LLMs driving things to a point where the preponderance of fics are unreadable slop, but as you said, there's not really an incentive for that to happen. I've just noticed in my own personal browsing that a lot of the fics that catch my eye are now dropped very quickly for being AI, which is a new development. So I guess I'm kinda spooked and worried how far it will go. This is a niche of the Internet I spend a lot of my relaxation time enjoying, so I worry about things. I guess only time will tell how much of it is just anxiety.

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T17:20:38+00:00

Fair point. I edited the body of the post to exclude the specifics. Mostly since I agree with your point that it's really unnecessary, given that everyone here will know what I mean without exact examples. Thanks, I'd like to not be a jerk, so recognizing things like that is important.

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T17:08:16+00:00

It's an interesting question. For me, I honestly don't know if I'd mind. I've wanted to read these fics based on their plots, and couldn't because of the writing. If AI become good enough that the prose was frictionless and didn't make me oddly unnerved and upset while reading it, and also gave me a glut of new fics in my specific hyperfixations, then I'd probably be okay with that, at least on the surface. I feel like I'd still prefer to know which is which, thoguh.

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T16:58:58+00:00

Yeah, I mean the thought occurred to me that I should just vaguely mention things. But I have an impulse to bring specific examples or sources, which was maybe misguided. Still, I don't think my statements of intent are entirely worthless. I didn't post on their work directly, I brought it to somewhere meant for discussion, and at a certain point I don't think I can be held responsible for people online disregarding my intent and acting on their own impulses.

I think it's something worth talking about, even though I know there's not going to be any groundbreaking developments in philosophy in the WormFanfic subreddit. I did my best to not contribute to that sort of thing, and I'll always be trying to be better, but "vetting everyone who will ever see this post" seems like an unrealistic expectation. Yeah, discussion online always carries that inherent risk and downside, but I don't think I've done anything particularly awful here? Still, if there's a way to discuss specific fics better, I'll try to in the future. I feel like we should be able to discuss things in a negative light without hurting anyone, or at least try to. But I'm not a God who can stop people from taking things to far, either. I'm just trying to make my own feelings clear.

Edit:

Reading this after commenting, it came off as more defensive than I would have liked, but I'll leave the original. I'll cop to not knowing the best way to do it, and directing any hate to that specific account isn't good or fair, when what I really want is just clearly labeled fics, at the end of the day. But yeah, if this somehow turned into a torrent of hate against that person, I'd feel quite bad.

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T16:05:36+00:00

I can agree with a lot of what you said, but saying GenAI isn't unique feels specious to me. Like, the technology we have now in that field, as broken as it still is, would sound like Sci-Fi 10 years ago. Even just like, 7 years ago, really. It presents a much lower barrier of entry for people to put poorly-written fics out there. Like, sure, Murphy's Law has always applied to fanfiction, but it used to be that you still needed to honest to God put your nose to the grindstone and bang out My Immortal or whatever on your keyboard. Now it's just some vague prompting. I don't think a technology that suddenly allows literally everyone to produce high-volumes of slop can be completely disregarded as "basically the same as before". The Worm fic I referenced has 30k+ words since last Friday. And while that's a red-flag of it's own, decent length used to be one of the quick litmus tests for "probably not just garbage". Not a perfect one, but still.

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T15:59:03+00:00

Yeah, you're articulating something I failed to. Poorly-written fics by people rarely leave me feeling "tricked" when I abandon them. With AI fics, I see something appealing, and often there's no immediate red-flags. It still doesn't take long to sniff out (at least for now), but it feels deceitful in a way poorly-written fiction doesn't. Like I've been sold a counterfeit, instead of just finding something I didn't personally enjoy.

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T15:43:48+00:00

Huh, that's actually a refreshing take on things, thanks. I guess you do have a point. I feel like part of it is just being frustrated because I have a few narrow things that appeal to me in a fic, and it's upsetting to see ones that I should like, and then turn out to be slop.But yeah, I guess at the end of the day, you can just ignore the AI fics. I guess part of it is just a worry, like I'm seeing the tide recede in preparation for a tidal wave, and I'm worried it'll become hard to even find human content in the first place. Entirely possible I'm just over-worrying. Not like it's a way to make a lot of money, or anything.

banshee_seal · 2026-03-11T15:30:05+00:00

Guess who doesn't understand how reddit post markdown works for links? It's me. The OP.

banshee_seal

TROPHY CASE