The Culture: Jeffro Explains To Dunder Moose "Why RPGs are Fake, Broken and Dumb"

You do not want to miss this one, folks.

8pm Central Time, folks. Be there.

My Life In Fandom: Space Battleship Yamato 2205 Coming Soon!

It's coming.

Translated (via Google): "Space Battleship Yamato 2205 New Departure Later Chapter -STASHA- February 4, 2022 (Friday) Theater screening starts! Blu-ray special limited edition released at the same time!"

This is the Bolar Wars arc. Expect some serious melodrama and maybe a few changes from the original version (as we saw with 2199 and 2202) as Earth's Hero Ship goes on another voyage.

And if you haven't watched 2199 or 2202, now's the time. Amazon has them on Blu-Ray and DVD, and streaming should be an option (legally or otherwise). There is a manga option if you prefer.

Space Battleship Yamato is one of the classics of Japanese space opera, right there with Captain Harlock and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, so put it up there with George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry's space operas in terms of genre literacy outside of the literary form.

Yes, there's a preview. Alas, it's entirely in Japanese.

Expect a great series. Yamato delivers.

The Business: The Need For Detachment By Livestreamers

An Australian Twitch streamer that I am familiar with went off on a 30 minute rant last night about parasocial relationships with regard to herself. I'm not going to name her because this post isn't about her, but about a very stupid pattern of behavior I see from wannabee dancing monkey types that see being a full-time livestreamer on Twitch (et. al.) or a full-time YouTube power-user as a viable career path.

The problem is that these streamers fail to maintain professional distance with their audience. They cultivate and monetize this audience through the illusion of a personal connection, conversing with their audience via the chat channel on a frequent and regular basis as if they were personal friends, like a latter-day Oprah Winfrey. Then they get shocked when that audience expresses parasocial behavior that they become uncomfortable with.

The error is sharing personal information with an impersonal party. It is borderline unethical if it is done specifically to form an emotional relationship for the purpose of extracting resources from them at a profitable rate of exchange. Too many wannabee professionals, wanting to be the next Ninja, Dr. Disrespect, or Pewdiepie, make this very error.

"But that's the hustle!"

Hololive called and said you're full of shit.

The professional VTubers--Hololive and their rivals like Pikamee--fully understand that entertainment is a business, and therefore the need for professional detachment. Being a non-real avatar and persona greatly aides this, but the fundamental part--the cornerstone--is the observation of Operational Security. In short, bitches need to shut the fuck up about inappropriate dicussion topics and act like the professionals they say they are. Then they wouldn't need to rant about parasocial relationships and boundaries.

No, aforementioned Aussie girl isn't the only offender, and it's not only women that do this. It is, however, something that's nigh-exclusive to people who put their real faces on camera and play that up to their advantage. It's also not a major issue with folks who are legit doing this as a hobby, maybe one that pays for itself, and not as a revenue stream to pay the bills; a lot of folks I follow don't have this issue because they're hobbyists with day jobs and are not wanting to be dancing monkeys.

It's almost exclusively a problem with real-face would-be professionals that willfully manipulate an illusion of personal connection to gain and grow an audience.

It is also a self-solving problem; let them face the consequences of willfully and recklessly forming personal connections for business reasons, however violent they may be. It will serve as an abject lesson as to why you don't act like a scheming grifter playing on the emotions of a target to long-con them out of their wallets. While the VTubers still have their weirdo problems, they remain far more managable due to that professional detactment and unreal presentation; it's about time that the rest did that too.

The Business: Digital-Only Not Long-Term Viable

People are acting crazy. We've got companies that run streaming services digitally editing old movies and shows to conform to whatever Woke insanity is the flavor of the month. We already have instances of digital books being editted or deleted by the same companies. In short, the promise of digital media--especially streaming--is now showing clearly the downsides that detractors have long said to lurk in the background.

Now that the subtext is the text, as it were, it's time to recommit to (re)building and maintaining a physical media library and the means to display it. For books, this means Returning To Tradition and putting hardcovers and paperbacks back on those shelves. For films, videogames, television, and audio this means buying or burning to disc and keeping machines on hand that can play them (and yes, this means also the means to repair them or duplicates to replace them).

And if you do buy on digital platforms, you need the means to actually own and use what you buy. GOG makes this easy; you can just download the files to a local drive and form there do whatever. Steam does not make this easy, and I'm not the one to ask on how to do it as I don't know. Breaking your Kindle ebooks out of your Kindle device so you can put them on external drives is also something you ought to look up. (Ditto any other DRM-enabled ebooks you have.)

Remember that if your entertainment needs an Internet connection to function, you don't own it- you rent. That can be cancelled, temporarily or permanently, at any time and you have nothing if you have no connection (or electricity). Putting everything you use to inform and entertain yourself into digital resources that you don't control and have close at hand means that you risk having it seize from you easily.

Put the books back on the shelves, the discs back in the racks, and keep files on local drives in your home. (Get a generator and keep it ready to use at a moment's notice.) This is how you ensure you have media for the long-term, because streaming wasn't here yesterday and it may not be here tomorrow. Don't lose what you love to a transient trend.

My Life In Fandom: Dairugger XV Free & Legal Via Bandai

Bandai's giving away the classics, but it's a slow drip. Recently completed is the entire original run of one part of Voltron: Dairugger XV.

If you're familiar with the Vehicle force, then you're going to see some differences. The captain and executive officers are reversed, the team has a more typical presentation for the genre and period, and it's a different--but familiar--premise; you'll see that the 80s adaptation was very much an exercise in Flanderizing the source material and seriously dumbing it down.

So come see it with new eyes. Too bad Beast King Go-Lion isn't so available, but maybe in the future that will happen.

My Life In Fandom: Harlock Free & Legal At Bandai's Channel

Things are tense right now. People be acting up, talking crazy, and glowies be glowing good and bright. Close the door, log off the socials, and have a good time with a classic out of Japan: Space Pirate Captain Harlock!

Yes, this is free. Yes, this is legal; Bandai uploaded it for one and all to enjoy (and to push the brand new related merch, a desktop miniature of this film's version of the Arcadia). Enjoy it, and if you like this film then seek out more Captain Harlock and Leijiverse stuff like Queen Esmeraldas and Galaxy Express 999.

Oh, and play Super Robot Wars T because Harlock is in it.

Narrative Warfare: They're Slicing Away Towards Normieville

I should not be surprised, but nonetheless it is so tiresome to see tech companies bend the knee to the Woke. This time it's DLive, and not only did they nuke Nick Fuentes off the site but they did the same to Owen Benjamin and attempted to do so to Ethan Ralph. I wouldn't be surprised to see Red Ice's channel there get that unwanted attention soon.

BitChute, located in the UK, is getting the same treatment from the SJW orgs there like Hope Not Hate.

This is exactly the Repressive Tolerance that Alexander Macris wrote about the other day at Substack, and it's happening exactly as I said yesterday: they're taking out the targets furthest from Normieville first. This is called "slicing the sausage", and it's a Narrative Warfare technique that seeks to redefine what is "far right" by (a) destroying the actual furthest target and (b) redefining the new, closer, range's far end as "far right" to justify the Repressive Tolerance repression ramp ups to their destruction.

It's a weaponized and well-targetted version of what happens when they eat their own. They "eat" the target furthest away. This is meant to isolate and intimiate those closer into compliance, keeping them quiet until the campaign has the time and resources to destroy them in turn. Atomization of targets is a necessary prerequisite, socially as well as physically; the lockdowns did the latter, and deplatforming does the former.

Now take away the ability of small businesses to compete and thus exploit the opportunities that the voids created by this destruction, funneling everyone into Big Corporate, all with the approval and complicity of the government, and you see a fascist--corporatist--takeover that would make the fascist states of Spain, Germany, or Italy of nearly a century ago blush (and Stalin--supposedly a very different best, but not--smile at).

It's a Death Cult, folks. Normieville is the final target: YOU are the final target.

My Life In Fandom: Obsolete Season Two Coming In December

Bandai Namco has a second season of Obsolete coming to YouTube.

Which means now is the time to catch up, which you can do here for free.

This is some Real Robot stuff, so don't expect Happy Fun Time, but neither are we going to Tomino Town. Rather, this is more of a proper Cyberpunk mood and aesthetic; if you've been wanting some more Masamune Shirow (ala Appleseed and, of course, Ghost In The Shell) but you're tired of waiting for him to get his groove back then this is your jam. Short episodes to, so you can put your playlist up and watch them during your coffee breaks.

Mecha Ain't Dead.

My Life In Fandom: Doog Eternal Easter Eggs & Shark Gurl Dominates YouTube

This is your feelgood post for the day, courtesy of Hero Hei.

Yes, that indeed refers to HololiveJP's Korone, the happy dog girl, and her hilarious playthrough of DOOM Eternal. Good on the devs to slip this Easter Egg into the DLC; it's cheap, it's easy, and its return of goodwill for effort spent is huge.

And in further good news, HololiveEN's breakout star Gura should be about 950K subs on her channel by this post. She could break 1 million by Halloweeen easily, and that means a big success story for HololiveEN, Hololive as a company, and VTubers everywhere because it demonstrates that there is huge underserved audiences out there for VTubers to tap. (By comparison, Project Melody is considered big at about 3.5K viewers on Twitch, as is Ironmouse.)

And despite some simmering jealously by certain actors, the demand for entertainment like what Hololive provides is clearly evident and underserved worldwide or Hololive and its competitors such as VOMS (Pikamee's agency) wouldn't be cleaning up like it's dinner for twelve at John Wick's place.

It ain't all bad out there, folks.

My Life In Fandom: So They Decided To Cancel Some Hololive Girls

Talking Hololive, but not the new EN girl cohort. No, this is about two of the most popular veterans. First, a video summary of the matter.

Two of Hololive's biggest stars--Akai Haato and Kiryu Coco--are on suspension for three weeks. The offense? While looking over their traffic on screen, they mentioned Taiwan as if it were a separate sovereign country. Casually, like it was nothing, they said so and there were Mainlanders watching.

You can count on Mainlanders being sensitive about this thanks to decades of ChiCom propaganda, especially if they have the time to binge on Hololive and get around the Great Firewall to do it, due to being beneficiaries of Party largess. Those Little Emperors dutifully do their 50 Cent Army trick and engage in a Point-and-Shriek Swarm Attack as if they were Dangerhair SJWs (I'll get back to that below) and cow Cover Corp. into suspending them. They aren't done, like any Cancel mob they are going for broke and trying to get these pillars of the company fired on pain of being expelled from China.

Cover Corp should just let Beijing punt them out of the Mainland. It would be a far better business move, nevermind the ethics, for Cover to abandon China, make the ChiComs do it to them to save face, and get the PR boost from backing their talent over a bunch of noodle-armed punk bitches who never had "No" said to them other than a Party Boss.

Then they could make a major pivot to the Western world, which would allow them to significantly expand their presence therein, and soon wholly replace any revenue lost just by playing to the rest of the world sentiment against the ChiComs.

And if the Taiwanese government were smart, they'd lay out a welcome mat.

But that's just me. I'm just some random science fiction author and historian on the Internet. I could be wrong.

What I'm not wrong about is how this behavior is identical to the Social Justice Warrior playbook, and I am absolutely certain that the trio of books written on this can be readily and easily applied to this situation and thus allow Cover Corp to swiftly and effectively resolve this situation to the satisfaction of everyone that matters (i.e. not the ChiComs, who are paper tigers).

This should not be a surprise any observors of the current state of Mainland society. A generation of Little Emperors have come to age, and they are fragile as cracked glass, especially the sons of Party officials and other insiders. They have no problems freely making use of what other countries offer them, but demand obedience to the Party just the same no matter where they are.

This is not unusual. They do this to everyone wanting to do business in the Mainland or with Mainlanders.

What has gone unnoticed by too many is the psychological similarity between these young future Party leaders and Western SJW Death Cultists. We're seeing exactly the same psychology play out. Yes, part of this is due to sharing an ideological root; yes, there is some active mimickry of Western SJW methods. That's not to be dismissed, but I posit that what we're seeing is in fact identical psychologies expressing themselves wearing different skins (literally and metaphorically) and that is why this Swarm Attack mobbing of these Hololive girls is identical to Western SJW concern trolls doing the same thing to targets that trigger them.

In all cases, the mobbing comes because the target violated the attackers' precious Narrative--a secular heresy--and has to be severely punished in a public and humiliating way. This is not only to terrify others into compliance, but to appease the temper tantrum thrown by the attackers' doing their Veruca Salt impression.

That's what this is all about: a psychologically weak people, coddled well past the point of acceptability by their elders and community, until they reach adulthood and are further infantilized by a political ideology as infantile as their psychologies, and therefore unable to perceive being exploited by their betters as well as unable to accept such a possibility even if they could. They are the perfect Useful Idiots.

And since they only have power when being used as proxies by people who are not psychologically fragile overgrown toddlers--by literal and figurative parents--they can be defeated much as you would any other tantrum-prone child: ignoring them.

Their complaints should be defaulted to a round-file, to dev-null, the trash bin, and never see human eyes at all.

The sooner corporate officers find not their balls or their souls, but their ability to detect good customers from bad, they'll find their footing and dump the Chinese market. The Mainlanders are Bad Customers, and therefore are unworthy of any non-Mainland company's time.

Neither Kiryu nor Akai did anything wrong or unethical. They merely stated a fact of reality, and just like gravity reality of political status doesn't care what you think of it.

Carry on, ladies. You're hilarious.

My Life As A Gamer: Nintendo Direct Today

In case you missed it, Nintendo had a direct event today. YouTube was one of the places they streamed it live. They deleted it after the fact, but the games covered were big titles for core fan (Paper Mario) and those who love pet battling (Bakugan).

If that's your thing, rejoice.

Narrative Warfare: Deer Humiliation Follow-Up

The following comes from Anonymous Conservative's blog post today.

In the comments yesterday, about the story of the transgender who identifies as a deer being promoted to an oversight position on a social media platform, Uncompliant writes:

Stories like this lend real credence to your argument, AC, that Cabal controls hiring and careers. People all over struggle to find jobs. But now we read that being a transgender gets you a job and, importantly, self-identifying as a female deer does not disqualify you from getting a job. Amazing. Promoting these sorts of stories are, of course, helpful propaganda to spur the mentally weak into considering transgenderism.

That tripped the old memory of the cognitive neuroscientist who showed up on 4Chan. He said, decades ago he had been hired on with a team of PhDs, to a research project on monkey social behavior. He later realized it was a Glowie project which had gone on to infect all of our culture, from movies to news stories.

He said they discovered and documented how primate brains were wired to mimic whoever they saw in a leadership or dominant position, and it happened in many without thought or conscious awareness. They saw a leader, and whatever that leader did, they absorbed it unconsciously and began doing it themselves – and wanting to do it themselves.

He said they concluded it evolved as a cognitive shortcut, so rather than have to expend all sorts of brain power to think and understand, you could just look at those who succeeded, and do what they did, and that would kind of lead you to the same successful outcome.

And now we have a culture where people who are more dysfunctional than anyone else could possibly be (so dysfunctional they should be unable to attain any type of success), advertise their dysfunction openly, accomplish no real accomplishment or apply no real effort, and all of a sudden life-successes, resources, and societal accolades, and even leadership positions over mere plebes, just fall in their laps, as the unseen hand lifts them effortlessly up the ladder ahead of everyone else.

Then picture social media influencers, who don’t show years of hard work building important things for no immediate pay or recognition, but rather show that you snap a couple of pictures, act vain and narcissistic, and millions of dollars and national accolades rain down on you instantly.

And all over a plethora of weaker minds subconsciously begin examining all of them, and developing a deep psychological desire to exhibit the most obvious traits they exhibit. It is fascinating how they are setting up hundreds of millions with neurons designed to fail and be unable to succeed, and none of the victims will ever figure it out, or be able to stop them.

(AnonCon does Wall-o-Text on the regular; I took the liberty of cutting up the source wall into more digestible bites and linking to yesterday's post so you can scroll down--way down--to read the comments yourself.)

It's weaponized Monkey-See, Monkey-Do.

This works. Advertising and marketing wouldn't be a billion-dollar industry for a century now--and it has been a century--if it didn't. The praxis of psychology is propaganda, and advertising is propaganda, so weaponizing it would inevitably result in it being turned to Satanic purposes by inverting everything a functional civilization requires to be at all and turning it into a vehicle for annihilation.

As stated previously, this inversion also works to conceal the network that makes this dysfunction persist. While it's literally playing Point Deer Make Horse with us (and it is, all but literally, right now) it's putting people in their network into positions they want covered. By removing merit as a criteria, any bungler who kisses sufficient ass can be elevated; most of the network relies on the network for advancement, as they are routinely incompetent in themselves, so by humiliating the general population and demoralizing them the network conceals itself in the rising pool of piss-poor performers united only in keeping the rest under their boot.

If AC is correct, and he usually is, then we can expect an explosion of dangerhaired weirdos and converts thereto to push up into public view at Twitch while they're normie-looking counterparts quietly reshape company policy to favor them first, then the whores (i.e. Alinity will have to work harder for that special treatment), and drive out anyone with the sense God gave a diseased and retarded Rhesus monkey. It will take the form of a Preference Cascade; so it won't come immediately, but down the road all of a sudden it's Clown World: The Streaming Site and any pretense of it being about gaming will be gone- and by then you can count on YouTube being non-viable as well.

The way the network runs is to not be public-facing about this until the backend is secure, but the network is also filled with incompetent bunglers. If it weren't for its size, the network would not be able to work at all; this means that there are effective ways around the problem. Start with cutting Twitch out of getting your money; don't use Turbo, don't subscribe to streamers directly (Twitch gets a cut), don't use Bits (ditto)- find another way to give streamers you support your money that cuts Twitch out. If the streamer doesn't have any such options, push for it; most will be happy to accomodate you. (Yes, it will likely be PayPal or some other compromised method; we have to work with what we've got.)

DLive and Mixer are not ready for prime-time yet, but they exist and will be happy to pick up Twitch and YouTube's slack. I'm on DLive nightly for the Killstream, so I'm already there; Mixer has Microsoft issues, but if they are serious about taking advantage of Twitch's inevitably upcoming mistakes they'll refocus on strictly gaming and brand accordingly- and stay that way.

So don't despair over the Fake Deer. It's a sign that corporate cancer is real, and Twitch has it bad, but if it kills Twitch that's not the end. And remember:

Narrative Warfare: The Fake Deer Signals Far Worse To Come

Author and friend of the Retreat Brian Niemeier wrote a post his blog today on Twitch's new Head Witch of the coven that is their Trust & Safety Council.

Translation from the Death Cult ritual cant: pic.twitter.com/36Fbf0Efvg

— Brian Niemeier (@BrianNiemeier) May 20, 2020

This is, in itself, as comedic as it looks. What people are missing is that this is the signal for an upcoming campaign intended to humiliate its users, a campaign of witchcraft, and witchcraft requires witches to work. The enemy, for whatever reason, has to signal to a target that the attack comes before it's done; this announcement is just such a signal, and the appointment is meant to be to put willing operators of a machine into position before turning it on.

There are several videos covering this man's confession of an eagerness to wield that power against his enemies--against us--and despite Twitch's claims that he has no power to ban or restrict users, the reality is that Trust & Safety is taken as gospel by the enforcers and acted upon without question. Few of them do more than mention his connection to, and affiliation with, the Anti-Defamation League.

This, folks, is why he is there. He's the link to the ADL and its vast network of media-savvy influencers and narrative-shapers.

Consider this to be a sign of worse to come. This is happening just as EA is working on an "anti-fascist" campaign in the EU to do the same thing there that we're seeing with Twitch. That the announcements are coming out now means that the behind-the-scenes scheme is done; they're operational now, and the push to make monsters out of ordinary men, to make "Yes" into "No" and other inversions of reality will soon be thrust forth like a Chaos incursion.

And yes, FanTube--in typical fashion--misses the threat and thus doesn't see the frame for what it is outside of some simpering optics-cucking.

Refuse to accept the man's frame of being female, nevermind being a deer. You cannot win if you can't declare the truth, and the truth here starts with calling this sick man what he is and condemn who he is.

My Life In Fandom: New Wataru Legally Online For Global Fans

He Is Risen! Happy Easter (for all you Western folks) and I hope you're having a good day. I won't be doing any ranting today, but instead putting something before you that you may find fun. This is the sequel of Mashin Hero Wataru, from the Bandai Spirits channel on YouTube. (Hit the CC button turn on the subtitles.)

And the original series if you haven't seen it.

I expect Bandai Spirits to upload more episodes to the playlist as their air in Japan, seeing as they're using this to get around international rights distribution issues (i.e. screwing Crunchyroll and Funimation). If only they would just follow the lead the Super Robot Wars team took and just released English-language releases via Singapore instead of relying on SJW-converged companies here, or had the balls to be like Studio Ghibli and put in contract clauses preventing it.

And yes, as you might expect, this is a kid-friendly series.

My Life As A Gamer: No One Likes Ads, Twitch

Twitch decided that it hates customer good will. Today I got an email from them regarding changes to Twitch Prime (which I get as an Amazon Prime member).

As we have continued to add value to Twitch Prime, we have also re-evaluated some of the existing Twitch Prime benefits. As a result, universal ad-free viewing will no longer be part of Twitch Prime for new members, starting on September 14.

Let me make this crystal clear: Ads are the fucking DEVIL! They are a plague to be exterminated. They have no place, never have had a place, and never will have a place in viewing or listening. Like reading, they are for BEFORE and AFTER and not DURING.

So if you've shut off your ad-block, get ready and turn it on now. Oh wait, it gets better.

All other Twitch Prime benefits, like monthly channel subs, monthly games and loot, and chat badges are not changing. You can still get channel-specific ad-free viewing as part of Twitch Prime by using your monthly subscription token on a channel that has ad-free viewing for subscribers turned on. Plus, all Twitch viewers can get ad-free viewing across all channels by subscribing to Twitch Turbo. And with your Twitch Prime membership you can still take advantage of all the other Amazon Prime benefits, like free two-day shipping and access to Prime Video and Prime Music.*

This is horseshit. The reason for Prime is to kill the bullshit. Everything else is secondary to that and without this the value is gone. At least Amazon still remembers that the core of Prime (for Amazon) is free two-day shipping for all orders. Twitch forgot that the point of Prime is ad-free viewing across the site, and is riding on the fact that Prime is a derivative benefit to get away with this change. (You're paying for Amazon Prime, not Twitch Prime; the latter IS the former.)

Fuck this. Starve, Twitch. You're disposable, expendable, and fungible; the ad-blocks got ten feet taller. You will regret this.

Midnight's Edge Talks The Streaming Wars & Its Home Video Predecessors

The world of paid-subscription services is undergoing disruption. This is just the latest iteration of a long pattern of commercial competition over home video formatting, and the below embedded Midnight's Edge podcast hits on the former topic in the context of the latter pattern. Clear away some time, get comfy, and get your learnin' on- it's time for some applied history.

Valued at 110 billion, Netflix is the undisputed king of the hill in the digital streaming marketplace. But other contenders like Hulu, HBO, Crackle and CBS All Access are also on the scene, and Disney will soon enter the fray.

To compete for your subscription dollars, they will all use exclusive content you want - meaning you will either have to subscribe to all, or choose which services and programming you will have to do without – just like in the past format wars between Blu-ray and HDDVD, or between VHS and Beta.

In this video, we will not only discuss the current fracturing of the digital streaming market, but the past home media format wars that lead us to this point. Joining Tom and Andre, is THE authority on the matter: Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits fame.

Get Your Gundam Here! (And Real Talk on Piracy)

It's been a less than happy week in the United States (and several other places), so here's some free & legal Gundam playlists from the GundamInfo channel at YouTube.

I'd like to offer some Macross playlists, but the folks running the Macross franchise haven't been talking to the Gundam people so they don't know how brilliant having an official channel is at cutting out piracy while simultaneously pushing both the hard media as well as the related merchandise. (Or Harmony Gold keeps fucking them in the ass, but that's nothing that couldn't get solved if they were so inclined.)

The only problem is the folks running the channel and its associated site only offer playlists for a time. The Zeta Gundam list is gone, which is a shame as once an official convenience is removed a unofficial one will arise to satisfy that demand. As the Gundam franchise is an international juggernaut, that will happen sooner than later- YouTube anti-piracy measures be damned.

Licensing and paywalls won't work either. No sooner does a Netflix series go live than I can find it on Putlocker or Solarmovie in its entirety with nothing lost. That rather undercuts the appeal of such businesses, and furthermore (for commercial TV series) there are no ads wasting my time; not only is nothing lost, value gets added by the pirates in terms of convenience.

This is where I'm going with the "throw in the towel" approach; you can't beat them and still make a profit purely by showing off the goods. You got to approach your streaming/VOD business as you would running a movie theater: you make your profits on the addons (in this case, the merchandise) and your show becomes a vehicle for the merch. You think this is alien or unworkable? See that Gundam franchise? All about pushing the merch! They do that and still provide high-quality escapist entertainment to an audience that, while its core remains in Japan, is still a global one and they are not slowing down.

Artificial scarcity in online audio and video does not work!. Scarcity in anything purely digital doesn't work; it may take a while, but all that shit gets cracked sooner or later so it's worthless to bother trying. Add your value where scarcity actually means something- Meatspace. That means merchandise, live events, and other things that take advantage of limited space, resources, etc. but tie into the show or film. (Yes, I just found a justification for the convention circuit.)

As for you one-eyed shitlords, keep seeding the torrents. You're forcing Big Media to adapt to you, so keep at it as we all benefit from compelling them to be easier to use and more convenient than what you lot offer.

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: A War Story on the Edge of Nihilistic Excess

What you're looking at is Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky. This is the movie-length recut compilation of the first four episodes of Thunderbolt, introducing our protagonist and deuteragonist as well as the thoroughly insane environment that was The One Year War and its immediate aftermath. This comes from the Gundam Official YouTube channel, and there is an English dubbed version if you prefer.

The benefit of using a fictional war is that you sidestep all political sensitivities that a real one puts on the table, allowing a storyteller to show an audience what war is really like. The problem is when the creator slips past the boundaries of good taste and narrative discipline to wallow in excess that pollutes the point of the creation (which is, first and foremost, to entertain- no matter the audience). Thunderbolt is not a Superversive story, and it echoes the worst of "Kill 'Em All" Tomino's past exercises in nihilism, but I don't think it goes over that line. Up to it? Sure, more than once, but past? Not yet. It wants to hammer home how tragic this war is for everyone, from those driven psychotically mad to those forced to live with the loss of more than just limbs and everyone in between. Pure Good vs. Evil, as is common for a Gundam series, this is not.

This ain't Unicorn, but neither is it like the downer parts of Zeta Gundam. There is more of this series, but there is no compliation movie of Episodes 5-8 yet, and this film is being made available only until December 8th via the channel so catch it while you can. I guarantee that it's better than watching an NFL game, so make time for it this Sunday.

BlizzCon 2017: Of Course There's a New Expansion

BlizzCon 2017 began today. Being primarily a World of Warcraft player, I expected a new expansion announcement and I was not disappointed. For nuts and bolts and pictures galore, I refer you to WOWHead and its many posts made about as fast as the word got said in various panels this afternoon. (Have your adblocks up.) So I will just talk about the notable stuff mentioned today. HERE BE SPOILERS!

Battle For Azeroth is the title. The expansion goes over a Total World War between the Alliance and the Horde. The Horde loses the Undercity to an Alliance military invasion of Lordaeron that razes to the ground, while the Alliance loses Teldrassil to a Horde military assault that burns the failed World Tress to ash. Both losing fronts are pushed by to their rumps, which forms the first of the Warfront battle lines in this expansion.

The war quickly escalates, requiring not only a global search for resources (and the territory it requires), but also the need for new allies to rally to the banner and join the fight. These are Allied Races, and each side gains three at launch; more are going to be added down the road. The Horde gain the Highmountain Tauren and Nightborne Elves of the Broken Isles as well as the Zandalari Trolls of Zandalar. The Alliance gain the Lightforged Draenei and Void Elves that appeared during the Argus campaign against the Burning Legion, and the Dark Iron Dwarves are fully rehabilitated into the Alliance.

As the presence of the Zandalari implies, the search for allies brings heretofore unseen lands into the game. The Horde begin their expansion in Zandalar, having to aid the trolls there against their enemies to secure the allegience thereof. The Alliance goes to Kul Tiras and must do likewise to return that nation to the fold. Using both states' powerful navies, they scour the seas for strategic locations to secure or plunder.

These are the Island Expeditions, three-man Scenarios where Role is irrelevant. Three PVE difficulties and one PVP option. Meant to farm the new Artifact Power (Azurite, the crystallized blood of the World Soul Azeroth), which is used to empower the one new Artifact we gain (Heart of Azeroth, given at the start by Speaker Magni Bronzebeard on Azeroth's behalf) to make up for those we lose going out of Legion. We slowly gain powerup options on the armor pieces we gain (which are NEVER random in what options they offer).

Those Warfronts? They are 20-man PVE Scenarios, modeled on the play experience of Warcraft 1 & 2- you start at a Town Hall and have to build out a tech tree in order to build up an army and get into their base to kill their mans and gank their general. The first one in the Eastern Kingdoms is Stromgarde in the Arathi Highlands and the map is an all-new HD remake of the live zone map. None for Kalimdor announced yet, but we can expect it to be near the Exodar and Darkshire.

Yes, the level cap got raised 120. No, leveling won't be the chore it is now; a lot of tech rolled out specifically for Legion, as many expected, is going to be applied to the rest of the game: level scaling, zone-agnosticism (level where you like), World Quests and Emissaries, and so on. Dungeons get this too. This will be nice, because once you unlock an Allied Race via its specific quest chain (an account-wide unlock) your new man starts at Level 20 and can go wherever to adventure. If you get that man to 110, you unlock (account-wide) a unique appearance set called "Heritage Armor" and it is NOT locked to armor types.

And that's what's documented.

Undocumented, but seen in the demo available on the floor: a massive stat squish (back to Wrath levels), a massive Item Level squish (ditto), the return of castable buffs (Mark of the Wild, we missed you.), and graphics that mean you ought to upgrade your PC if you want a decent framerate. Potato people, start banking for a new PC now.

And that's about all I have to say for now. Tomorrow I'll get more information (I hope), and I will talk about the other games and features that I think will seriously change the Blizzard end of videogaming (Hint: Overwatch's voice chat will come to Heroes, WOW, and the Blizzard App making outside VOIP apps irrelevant and unnecessary because Overwatch's chat is GOOD!)

In Case You Missed It: RazörFist Arcade: ALIEN Isolation: Crew Expendable

In case you missed it, Razorfist played Alien Isolation last night to mark Friday The 13th. Admist the xenomorph survival horror, you get Razor and Terran Gell being their usual awesome selves dropping truth bombs as he answers questions from the chat. Sit back, enjoy, and be informed as you are entertained.

If you are not following this man on YouTube or Vidme, do so and ensure you'll get notified when he goes live. His livestreams are not to be missed; as with Geek Gab and Metro City Boys, the live chat is as entertaining as the stream itself. In particular, when he comments on music or comics the man has golden insights and exhibits a depth of knowledge.