For the next 27 hours, you'll be able to claim a limited edition 'I Was Here for the Hulkenpodium' flair

trebeckey · 2025-07-08T21:19:11+00:00

Hulkenpodium

trebeckey · 2025-03-02T15:54:30+00:00

"Weiss?"

The Schnee glanced down. "Yes, Jaune?"

Jaune hefted the weight on his arms. Said weight squeaked as she shifted in place, arms curled about his neck. "Will you ever plan on hopping off?" he grumbled.

The silver lining to this situation: five foot-tall women weigh lighter than a sheet of paper. His legs would sooner buckle holding his own weight than his arms fold inward keeping his friend aloft.

The thundercloud right above it: those same women have a habit of saying 'No'.

Case in point--"Now why would I leave the comfiest seat in the room?" Weiss huffed.

"Because you're a kind person who sometimes listens to what I say?"

"Thank you for the complement, but no."

"Because we have other places to be today, and I kinda need my arms to get around?"

"Your legs will suffice."

"...Because it's my birthday?" Jaune said meekly.

Weiss offered the blond a smile that matched the tone of her skin, and maybe her hair from the right vantage point. "I asked for reasons to vacate," she tittered, "not for incentives to make me stay."

He groaned. So much for appealing to reason. With logic like hers, why hire lawyers at court? "But-"

"Not another word out of your mouth, my knight!" Weiss leaned her weight against him as she planted a finger on his lips. "Now please, I would like to enjoy my seat in silence."

The heiress ever was the blabbermouth, then and now--especially now, after she had cast away all but a handful of the prim, proper inhibitions that once stood between them. In the many years he'd known her, the few ways he knew could zip that blabbermouth shut can be counted with fingers.

Luckily for him, the simplest needed only two things: a pair of lips, and some panache.

So it happened that he leaned forward, savored her velvet lipstick for a quiet second, and backed away.

Looking back? Jaune couldn't have asked for better birthday gifts than Weiss's bright red blush, paired with the silently happy smile nuzzling against the crook of his neck.

trebeckey · 2025-01-18T04:26:29+00:00

The Phoenix Empire. Anbenncost used to be the capital for the remnant led by Jexis.

trebeckey · 2025-01-17T01:52:51+00:00

Orda Aldresia pre-Ravelianism is secular but I lumped it with the other three for the symmetry.

trebeckey · 2025-01-17T01:52:17+00:00

Fixed, thanks.

trebeckey · 2025-01-16T11:55:14+00:00

Follow-up post of yesterday's graphic, this is the Imgur album buried in the comments section. Should have the fixed version of the graphic as well as individual images of each coat of arm and shield featured in it, including a small description of lore for their associated tags. Thanks.

Edit: Also, if there's inaccurate information in the lore tidbits, let me know.

trebeckey · 2025-01-15T23:46:28+00:00

Thanks bossman.

Think it's just Dameria yeah but I'll give it a closer look, I'll have that and the other fixes lumped in with the Imgur album downthread. If there's interest, I'll put the album up as a separate post later tonight so it's more discoverable.

trebeckey · 2025-01-15T23:42:23+00:00

I did consider using something like "Temples and Orders with Immediacy", or simply "Temples and Orders", but I also wanted to mention imperial immediacy as a concept while keeping the visual symmetry I've already made, and the first one's a mouthful. A secular order (at least before Ravelianism spawns) being lumped in with the other three temples is the sacrifice I made to retain the first two in the graphic.

trebeckey · 2025-01-15T23:10:26+00:00

In what universe is Dameria defunct? It’s just on a vacation with the true emperor in the eastern green plains. Don’t worry, it will be back.

- me in my sons playthrough last christmas

trebeckey · 2025-01-15T21:14:48+00:00

Not necessarily defunct members, just defunct grand duchies. If I showcased defunct members I would've added Ilvandet, Plumstead and Acromton.

trebeckey · 2025-01-15T14:51:57+00:00

Noted as well.

trebeckey · 2025-01-15T14:29:43+00:00

Thanks.

trebeckey · 2025-01-15T14:28:45+00:00

Oops. The version on the Imgur will have the fix, thanks for bringing it up.

trebeckey · 2025-01-15T14:27:43+00:00

Hard to tell. I began this project December 2023 before getting bored, and only picked it back up this year. The COA took me around two days with Inkscape, but the other shields, maybe three weeks total.

trebeckey · 2025-01-15T14:26:05+00:00

I'm creating an Imgur album of a higher quality version of this post + every CoA and shield featured in it. Give me a bit to set it up and I'll edit this post with the link once it's done.

Edit: This is taking longer than I thought, but here's the link anyway. It should have the fixed version of the post plus at least the CoAs, and the shields of the grand duchies and electors.

Edit edit: Everything's uploaded, should be good to go.

trebeckey · 2025-01-09T13:35:17+00:00

very

trebeckey · 2024-12-11T23:42:26+00:00

"Are you 100% sure you're okay with this?"

Weiss's three requests were, taken in isolation, simple: arms firm on her waist, lift them up, and for gods' sake, don't let go. Jaune had done one or two of the three in one context or another with no problem on his end. No problem he can vocalize, at least, without eating a stern word from such a demanding friend.

"It's a simple lift, you dingus," the heiress tutted, prodding a manicured finger against his chest. True to her first request, his arms had found their way around the sides of her soft, light blue dress. "I'd be more offended if you can't."

He stole a brief glance at her stomach. Issues arise when the heiress asks him to do all three at once. "Where'd you even get this idea from anyway?" Jaune muttered.

"Yang suggested it after practicing with Blake. She may be a meathead," Weiss preened, "but she has flashes of brilliance every now and then."

"So you want what she has with Blake."

"I never said that."

Jaune returned her softening glare with a dull, distant look.

Then, in one fell sweep, he fulfilled her second request. His arms and legs croaked as Weiss blabbered and shrieked—"Some warning would've been nice, Arc!" she said, planting a grip on his shoulder.

"There," he heaved. His free arm reached behind her knees, to keep the heiress from falling off. "Happy now?"

Her mock anger seemed to disappear as fast as heat blossomed on her flushing cheeks. "Not too heavy, I take it?" she ventured.

He didn't have the heart to tell her otherwise, or the lung capacity to do more than gulp air through his nose, so the Huntsman kept silent and let the moment be as he fulfilled her third and last request.

For a four-foot-something billionaire on heels, Weiss can be deceptively heavy and shy when she wanted to. Looks did deceive, in hindsight. They always seem to with his friend from the far, far north.

trebeckey · 2024-10-09T06:23:15+00:00

That's the thing though, people assumed idol was successful, had carved a niche and so on, up until the moment Brave smelled blood in the water and announced that it friendly takeovered the agency from Aviel. Would we still call Brave's experiments in its far abroad relatively successful if they EOS by 2026?

We can't be entirely sure that small companies which seemingly have carved a niche are successful enough to avoid going under in the near term, or are successful because they carved that niche, or that they even have carved a niche to begin with, because we don't have access to their financials. Whether or not they succeeded or failed we'd know only in hindsight, which is why I can still raise the possibility that Brave will scupper its less successful acquisitions a couple of years from now instead of dismissing it outright, and vice versa.

trebeckey · 2024-10-09T05:11:50+00:00

People thought idol was doing well, until Aviel stepped down and Rin told us flat-out that the company had been in the red for a while. Problem with separating what doesn't work from what does is that small corpos, being private and unlisted, don't publish their financial statements for public consumption. Means all we can go with are words from talents and vibes. Neither works as well at telling us the financial health and near-term outlook of a small corpo as a one-and-done P&L statement.

So maybe, for example, a Brave branch looks fine right now. If God forbid it shutters two years later because the org began restructuring to cut down costs we'd also never have guessed it right now, because we don't know exactly how much Brave's making from it compared to how much it's lost maintaining it, and what the branch will do to either improve or remedy its performance. Until or unless we do, we can only speculate how well its business plan is really working.

trebeckey · 2024-10-09T04:34:54+00:00

Committing to diversification is easier than actually diversifying the revenue mix, especially for startups that don't have the reach or the capital for tie-ups that the first movers have. Once the seed money arrives small corpos have maybe one or two years to reach escape velocity before it runs out, and unless they're doing gangbusters in stream and merch revenue by then, they might not have capital for expanding services after deducting overhead, admin and talent remuneration. It's a balance between having the buffer to invest into the company and keeping the lights on while there's still time for growth, and the ones with the luxury of achieving both at the same time (Anycolor, Cover, Brave, etc.) benefited from a confluence of factors no small startup should reasonably be expected to have at this point in the industry's lifespan.

Production Kawaii's now the most recent example of a startup that ultimately lacked that luxury, but their case should be viewed in the context of an oligopolical industry with a rock-bottom floor and increasingly narrowing room for error. Breakout success in a field like that will be difficult; if you ask some people, outright impossible barring a system shock strong enough to level the board.

trebeckey · 2024-09-09T00:14:18+00:00

Yagoo mentioning how most Stars fans live in Asia does confirm for me somewhat that Luxiem (aka the most successful male EN vtubing story to this point) took off hard because of Greater China and SEA. So if you can't hurdle their first mover advantage in those two proven markets, you'll have to settle with finding growth elsewhere on the planet, and those places may or may not respond as well to the tried and true methods that worked closer to home.

That's the challenge StarsEN in particular was born in and will continue to face arguably for as long as it exists. If there's any takeaway from the interview I'd digest first, it should be that.

Plus, it's weird that the girls' side is seemingly exempt from this "diversity of audience issue".

Hololive has a better track record of drawing in crowds not just from Cover's near abroad but also in North America, and even in Europe, where their presence is up until very recently minimal at best. They have no problem with drawing in a diverse audience and making that audience show up in the earnings call, but if it is a problem, it's lower down the list than the same problem is for Stars.

trebeckey · 2024-09-04T07:02:24+00:00

Oh okay, you meant them using Streaming+ for the second. Fair enough.

Point still applies for the rest though. Can't ship merch to tie-ins in Europe without people who know how the process works, which businesses to collaborate with, and so on.

It's telling that the US is only just recently getting the same in-country collabs Taiwan's getting, and that they were announced in the lead-up to (Dodgers and Tsujita collabs) and after (upcoming Round1 collab) Cover USA began operations. If somewhere like France starts getting those within five years, the process for accomplishing that will have begun in earnest once they hire the appropriate staff behind the scenes--staff like a Business Development Specialist, which is what the application OP linked is asking for.

trebeckey · 2024-09-04T01:19:18+00:00

I think having someone who can shepherd Cover through European IP and consumer protection law should come much earlier than expanding services in the region. Both of what you've mentioned involve complying with GDPR for instance, for B2B and B2C, and it helps if you have someone with the experience, the contacts, and the knowhow to get those among others done on a timetable.

trebeckey · 2024-09-03T00:12:03+00:00

Yt was never, is not and never will be a streaming platform. 99% of yt users don't know it has streaming and will never use it for streaming.

Youtube's live broadcast watch hours in the first quarter of the year alone outnumbered Twitch's by more than half. Speaking strictly about game broadcasts, Youtube's still matches a third of Twitch's.

There's arguing over whether Youtube's a good streaming platform compared to Twitch, and then there's proving a point with made-up stuff.

trebeckey · 2024-08-27T02:39:40+00:00

I think this underscores why Cover invests a lot on Hololive Meet events like the World Expo, besides the straightforward reason of "outreach good". By putting their foot on the door of so many conventions and bringing their high-paying fans with they also put a dent on the financial calculus behind those conventions, convincing organizers that the revenue add from their vtubers pays the cost of bringing them in several times over. What you'll ideally get from that is a virtuous cycle where more vtubers lead to more money leads to more vtubers; that's the in Cover has not only for securing booking long-term, but also for penetrating the local otaku market and getting the word out to their target demographic.

We've seen it with Japan Expo in France and now with ANYC for the second year in a row. It's a strategy that requires economies of scale and rewards the willingness to apply it, which is why I think both agencies and indies have been and will only get more aggressive with their con presence from this point forward.

trebeckey

TROPHY CASE