#i know they have a discord server that i'm not in. even though they've mentioned it but idek

[eggmeralda]

no feeling worse than hearing there might be another group chat that you're not in

[butchsophiewalten]

03/09/24 Twitter Space Recap

Quick recap of the twitter space from yesterday. Another one with Martin, Kyle, Coral, and eventually Eva. They tried to make this another Q&A but they mostly just talked and joked between themselves. Here's a rough recap of what they talked about:

-Martin talks about how it's always difficult for him to answer questions like, "Can I get a fun fact about [Character]?", because he doesn't just have a bunch of information pre-prepared about every character in his webseries. He specifies that it's not bad to ask those questions, just that he has a hard time answering them.

-Martin tells Kyle to give his idea for what each of the Showstoppers would dress up as for Halloween, and he says, "Boozoo is a lion, Sha is a sunflower, Banny is a horse, and Bon doesn't dress up." Martin says he agrees, but that he thinks Banny could also be a pirate.

-Someone asks for confirmation on whether Chris' last name is 'Easterday' or 'Easteryear', and Martin says that it was always supposed to be Easteryear, but after the fandom caught in calling him Easterday, some of the crew caught on to calling him that, too. But "Easteryear" is what his name is supposed to be.

-Martin mentions that just the other day he was talking about Chris with the rest of the crew, and how they've worked on polishing his character arc into something they all think is much more cool.

-Martin says that they explained some lore stuff to Coral, about something that happens "very, very later," in the series, and how they were extremely upset and heartbroken over it. They mention a drawing they had posted to Twitter a few days before, of them hunting Martin down with a knife, and how that was the context for it.

-Eva talks about how Martin was explaining the series lore to Felix's new VA in the crew discord server, and how it apparently took him an hour and a half of explaining just to get to the point of explaining the car crash.

-Martin says, "Everything that happens after Brian's death, after BunnyFarm is so much! I don't know how I'm going to write all that down!"

-Kyle asks Martin how he comes up with last names for characters, because he knows that Martin never googles to find authentic or realistic American last names, and just makes them up. Kyle says that he knows "Walten" is a portmantaeu of "Walls" and "Martin", but wants to know what some other ones are.

Martin explains how he came up with 'Easteryear', saying "Back in 2020, when I was doing research for The Walten Files, I started looking for, like, show tapes of like, 70s animatronic bands. And I came up with Chuck E. Cheese show tapes, and there was this one that was called "Broadway Yesteryear", and I kept mispronouncing it with 'Easteryear, Easteryear', and I was like, 'That would be a fun last name,' and I kept it in my pocket until it was, like, useful. And then I started coming up with all the names, and shit like that. I think Easteryear and Letterson were like, the more creative ones i did."

Kyle asks him how he came up with 'Letterson', then, and Martin says, "Letterson- Letterson is like 'Letterman', but instead of Letterman, it's just 'Letterson.'

-Martin says that he's always trying to find ways to insert Brian Stells into The Walten Files, even though he's a character with absolutely no depth, and was never intended to do more than teach the audience that Bon is dangerous, but he appreciates Brian's place in the legacy of The Walten Files, with him being the first human character to speak and the first character to die, and he likes to kind of honor that by trying to find small ways to include him.

-Martin says something vaguely about Chris in season 2, which confuses Eva. She asks him if Chris appears in Season 2, because she doesn't think he does, and Martin responds, "Yeah. Yeah, he does."

-Coral is confused about how many seasons The Walten Files is supposed to have, because last they remember, it only had two. Martin explains, "There's three seasons. Season one is like, y'know. Season two is like, shorter, and it's about Sophie and Jenny, and Season three is how everything, like, ends. What happens after."

-Martin reads a question, "What character is the community's perception of most inaccurate?" and then says, "I think we can all agree that it's Jack." Kyle then says that he thinks another good candidate answer is Sophie, saying that he thinks people tend to characterize her as much more "bubbly" than she even remotely is.

-Martin takes the time to specify that there's nothing wrong with misinterpreting these characters, because we've seen so little of them in the series and it's been so long in between episodes that people are bound to come up with their own ideas of what characters are like, but that he wants everyone to keep an open mind when we start to see more of how those characters are actually depicted, because it may not line up with that people are imagining or hoping for, and how that's not necessarily a flaw with the series.

-Martin says, "The Walten Files, when we make the series, we don't create the characters and go, 'oh, he's a villain, he's that,' we create the actions they make, and we let the viewer decide whether or not this character is a good or bad guy. The characters make good and bad decisions."

-Eva says, in reference to "Bon", "You guys have not even scratched the surface. I'm so fucking excited for his character."

-Martin says, "Here's like, a message to the audience. Do you wanna know a word that can, like, fucking destroy the crew, but to you guys, has like no fucking meaning? Y'know what fucking word it is? 'Sayonara.'" The second he says this, everyone else in the space starts groaning in agony, or shouting at him.

-Eva reads a question, "If Sophie was a cat, what kind of cat would she be?" Martin does not answer, and instead posts this drawing to twitter:

-Martin talks about how, for the upcoming episodes, Kyle & Coral recorded their lines (as Charles and Susan) separately, but their dynamic is so good, that it sounds very authentically like they could've been recording in the same room. They say that they'd love to record some audio in a call together at some point, but that it'd be difficult to coordinate around Coral's timezone.

-Eva reads a question, "Would Jenny like My Little Pony, if so, what would her favorite pony be?" Martin answers, "Uh, she would definitely like Applejack, in my opinion."

-Martin reads a question, "Will any of the episodes take place past the Relocate Project?" and answers, "Not in season one, but in season two, I think all the episodes take place after BunnyFarm."

-Martin reads a question, "Will you guys get a new band for The Walten Files after Sweet Tuesday?" and answers, "Uh, No, I don't think so. We don't talk to Sweet Tuesday."

-Martin reads a question, "How would Rosemary's sister react to hearing about Rose going missing?", and answers, "They weren't close, but I think she would be very-" and then Coral interrupts him, going "Rosemary has a sister?" to which Martin responds, "Yeah, it isn't brought up in this season, but yeah, she does have a sister. But they're very- they're not close. They don't have a very good relationship, so. Uh, it's Laura Peony."

-Eva asks, if Susan would be like a cool aunt to the Walten kids, and Martin says, "Yeah, she would be."

-Martin reads a question, "Was "Bon" planned from the start, or did you come up with him later?" and answers, "This is really good! Okay, so, Bon was always a character, but, uh, the idea of "Bon" as a ghost, it was born after episode 3. But this character always existed, just not in this way.

-Martin says, "'We know Jack used to make sandwiches for his employees, who was the one that always got sandwiches, and someone who almost every time didn't get one?' Um, the one who almost every time didn't get one was probably Richie."

-"I like the idea of Richie just being a lazy piece of shit, and he would just like, hide in the bathrooms so he can just smoke and do shit, and Jack would just ominously stand next to him until he notices, for just minutes and minutes."

-Martin says Susan is 6'2, and that Jack is "a few inches" taller than her.

-Eva reads a question asking if Sophie & Jenny would keep their relationship a secret because of the time period. Martin says, "Okay, no, I don't think they would keep it an entire secret, I don't think they'd be like, 'oh, dude, we can't say it,' I feel like they would just be, like- I feel like they would just- they don't feel the need to like, tell it to people. They don't feel the need to be like, 'oh, we're girlfriends,' y'know?"

-Martin and Coral joke that Sophie wouldn't even know what homophobia is, growing up around so many other queer and accepting people. During this conversation, Coral says, "Charles is like, the ultimate lesbian." (I assume they meant 'lesbian ally'? but this is way funnier.)

-Martin has spent much of the space repeating a joke about Jack telling Rosemary to "make [him] a sandwich", stemming from a conversation about how funny it would be if Jack in the series was just this terrible person. He jokes now, approaching the idea a little more seriously, that Jack would say that to Rosemary as a joke, and she would give him an absolutely terrifying death glare.

He says it'd be funny if Jack made the same 'make me a sandwich' joke to Rose, and she went, 'oh okay!! ^_^', to Jack's surprise, and then came back with a sandwich that is just a "gallon of salt" in between two slices of bread, and she forces him to eat it.

-Coral tries to answer a question about whether or not Richie would sell weed, and Martin interrupts them to say that he thinks Richie would try to sell weed to the BSI crew, and they would be like, 'yeah, no thank you.'

-Someone asks if Susan would like the Showbiz Pizza animatronics, and Coral says they think she would like them from a technical standpoint.

-Coral reads a question, "How did Susan find out she was a lesbian?", and says, "I feel like she never 'figured out', it was more of a case that she always felt like that and didn't care what anyone else said," to which Martin agrees.

-Martin reads a question, "Does Sarah Evelyn have a favorite animal?" and says, "How the fuck do you remember Sarah Evelyn? She was just like, an animator on Bon's Burgers, that's it. I don't know." Coral corrects him, saying that she was a writer, but agrees that it's really funny for people to remember that character at all.

-Izzsplash, Jenny's VA, joins the space! She's recovering from Covid.

-Martin reads a question he really likes and seems excited for, "Will we ever see a clip of Jenny angry?", but answers it by quoting the same "Make me a sandwich!" joke he's been quoting for the entire space.

-Martin reads a question for Izzy, "How has your perception of the character of Jenny changed from the first time you voiced her to now?" Izzy answers, "That is a good question! I think, when I first met Jenny, I was like, 'that girl looks silly,' but now that I've talked to everyone and like, really, like- after BunnyFarm, I was like, 'this is not just a silly, that's- that's an actual, like, good friend, person. Like, she's a lot- there's a lot more to Jenny than people thing. I'll put it there. She's not just a silly- she is silly! She can be '/j', but she's also '/srs'.

[thecrazyphantom]

Just some interactions that happened to me a couple of years ago.

The person I'm referring to is probably stalking my account as I post this 😕

(This is just a vent of mine, you can skip if you don't want to read it ❤️)

Btw both of us are Female(well idk what they are but they're afab)

I was so uncomfortable trying to respond to them saying this, let alone in response to my photo.

When they broke our friendship (In a very cringe way btw. I can elaborate if anyone asks) they told me how I "treated them horribly" even though I was the one who constantly just had to deal with their Bullshit when they texted me.

They'd also constantly oversexualize all the female characters I Roleplay/I like

Ex: Saying that Peko has (AND I LITERALLY QUOTE.) "phat juicy tits".

When we had a Simp channel in our Discord server That was Yk... Dedicated to fictional characters.. or people in their class they thought were pretty. They posted a photo into it of Me in a Byakuya Cosplay looking down at the camera and then started going on and on about how they'd give me everything they owned and such and it made me so uncomfortable that I couldn't even response logically so i just sent "<3" and didn't respond to the text.

They would also talk constantly about their AUs and stuff about The Cuphead show. I rlly did like a lot of what they talked about since I liked Cuphead the Game and have a very open mind to others Aus. But the thing was was that I had openly talked about how I didnt want to watch the Cuphead show because I just didn't like the voice acting ((Well they've got good voice acting, good Animation, and funny plots , but I just don't think the Cuphead cast should have voices. But I did watch the show after all this, and it was pretty good)). But i just remember that one day I was getting tired of them talking about Cuphead and I texted them "I don't mean to be rude but can you stop sending Cuphead content? You're slowly making me dislike it 😕" (that's the exact quote), and then they got annoyed and was like "that was the only direct cuphead thing I've sent" And I ofc denied that bc I don't rlly loose interest in things through only one message unless it's controversial. And I wasn't gonna deal with pulling up all that evidence so I just said "Omfg *name*" "Nah I'm done with discord" and they instantly started to "im so sorry" bomb but I told them I wouldn't talk to them until I calmed down bc I was just pretty grouchy at the moment. When I came back I sent some words abt me calming myself down again, then said "I apologize for my outburst". And bam we were somehow friends again????

What was even worse was that they did this all in front of our mutual friend (well at the time it was mutual, now they're just my friend ^_^) that they were at the time dating.

(I don't even remember if they sent more cuphead and I'm not even gonna dig for it)

All I know is that that could've been easily resolved by either just saying something along the lines of "I'm sorry I'll try to send them less" or even being like "Cuphead is my Hyperfixation, just like how your hyperfixation is Danganronpa"

They'd also text the gc that me and my friend were in that they were going to commit Slick-a-Slide and then disappear for weeks on end. So ofc me and my friend would be worried and get in a depressive state because we were under the false narrative that they Unalived, just for them to come back after a while and just brush it off. Each time we asked if they were okay they would always be like "Yeah Sorry my mom just took away my phone." And for a while I started to speculate that they were just in a Mental hospital but they never mentioned it (and they Kinda told us EVERYTHING that happens in their life/day/week.) So not only were they treating me wrong, they were dragging my friend into it and Worrying them. (This happened multiple times while they were dating, so I can't even imagine the levels of depression that could've spiraled my friend into. Like having to hear your lover say they were going to commit, then go offline for a long time, is actually petrifying.)

This is a small one but I also remember that a couple weeks or months before they broke ties with me, We were in a server with all of their friends (+my friend and I), they texted the public channel asking if anyone wanted to call, and when I said that I was down to call that literally responded something along the lines of "someone who isn't Phantom" and then they kicked me shortly after I responded with a sad emoji. That made me lose all left over respect I had for them. My friend confronted them on how that wasn't too nice to say, and then they got kicked too.

Also this is off track but imma bring it up since I'm currently obsessed with Korekiyo, but the way they Roleplayed Korekiyo made him seem like he's some Holier than thou character that could pretty much read minds and just tell what they were doing prior ((for example a character could make and excuse to walk off to give something to someone they're currently seeing and come back to Korekiyo and they'd respond "Oh were you giving something to *name*?")). Idk this just made me not like Korekiyo for a while after they broke ties with me.

Anyways that's all my ranting for now. Pip, Ace, whatever you're going by rn. If you see this, please get off my page, for you've made me dread each second and more that you've talked to me ;) ❤️

[northwest-cryptid]

I will openly admit that to this day my biggest disappointment in indie vtubers and being an indie vtuber was that vtuber teams were not nearly as cool as they could have been because no one knew what made a team good in the first place.

If you don't know, a Vtuber team is essentially a small collective of streamers (roughly 3 - 5) who would work as a sort of "team" or group. They'd collab and promote one another and often had their own discord servers or ways to keep in touch with the various different members.

Now, lets say you're a sane everyday person, who is actually friends with your fellow team members. You wouldn't say; go around bad mouthing them for clout, backstabbing them and trying to assimilate their audience into your own after they prove to be more successful. You likely wouldn't plan "mandatory" meetings and then get mad at them when they refuse to show up because they've not had a day off from their actual paying job in over 5 months and they're literally so sick they can't get up the stairs to their computer and would rather spend their time with their significant other. You certainly wouldn't tell them they should voice their concerns about a big group change to everyone and then immediately double back on what you said when the rest of the group decides to ostracize them for having a bad opinion even though you just told them their thoughts are more in line with the goal of the team.

Right?

If you can't tell, as someone who has been in a handful of teams I've become somewhat jaded by them. They're a great model for actually promoting one another, having constant collabs so you don't need to constantly stream alone, and generally having some kind of group atmosphere which helps raise popularity since I can promote you even when you're not streaming, and you can promote me when I'm not streaming. However this doesn't work in reality because too many people are too focused on their own personal ambitions and are far too willing to jump into the fire of drama and throwing-each-other-under-the-bus bullshittery.

If it wasn't extremely clear, everything I mentioned above is shit that ACTUALLY has happened to me. I've never in my life had to say, verbally, aloud; in a call with other adults "I am going to hang up, because I am sick; I have not had a day off in months, and you call me here to yell at me over shit that doesn't even matter. Grow up, and learn that you do not hold power over others; if you want to make mandatory meetings, control my voice and my content, and tell me what I can and cannot do; you can pay me. I will leave my paypal in the general chat." Until I was in a team.

So what goes wrong? It can't just be that people get a taste of being popular and suddenly throw it all away, right?

... I mean. Yea. It sorta can be.

I'm not going to say this is exclusively what always happens all the time, but I will say it was what I saw happen the MAJORITY of the time. Essentially, it becomes fandom bullshit levels of cliche-y real quick.

You will inevitably have some members of the team who are more popular than others, and some who are by proxy less popular. Some might be better at holding a more dedicated and consistent audience while others, despite having more numbers on twitter; can't actually get numbers on their streams.

If you've made it this far, buckle up because I'm going all in here.

To properly explain this whole ordeal I'm going to walk you, yes you; through what it might be like to be part of a Twitter Indie Vtuber Team and you will see exactly why it never worked.

So if we're going to join a Vtuber team we need to be a Vtuber, the fun part here is that it literally doesn't matter who or what you are. You might be someone who cares deeply about lore, plot, and character; you might be more like me and not really think that matters so much as putting on a show for your audience. You might be somewhere in the middle. Maybe you're a sci fi character, maybe you're high fantasy, maybe you're some really generic anime character; guess what? None of that matters because Twitter Indie Vtubers teams fail to understand one huge guiding principle behind Vtuber teams, Classification.

See, I think the biggest issue I saw in the way Twitter's Indie vtuber teams (god that's getting exhausting to type, is it getting exhausting to read yet) ran things, was that they HATED Corporate Vtubers. Like, they HATED them. You couldn't bring up any of them, it doesn't matter how humble or how popular or whatever. Mention Vshojo? You're the devil. Mention Hololive? You're worse than the devil.

So what's so bad about that?

Let me put it like this, what do Vshojo and Hololive have in common that the majority of Indie Vtubers on Twitter do not?

They're successful at earning a living by streaming. Simple as that, they're doing something right. What are they doing right exactly? Well I'd love to find out but I can't discuss it with anyone because if I bring up corporate vtubers it's seen as a horrible very bad no good thing to talk about. We HATE Corporate Vtubers here and if you talk about them at all you're out buster, that's that.

But wait, going back to what I was saying about Classification, why is that important? Well simply put it makes things easier to understand for the audience. It keeps things coherent and it all just makes sense.

Here's a quick example, let's look at some Vtubers and you tell me if you think you know which ones are in a team together;

One of the Vtubers is a Lion. One of the Vtubers is a Crow. One of the Vtubers is an Isekai Protagonist (Generic, no definition) One of the Vtubers is a Harem Anime Protagonist (again, generic) One of the Vtubers is a Demon. One of the Vtubers is an Angel. One of the Vtubers is a Robot. One of the Vtubers is a Starship Captain. Lastly, one of the Vtubers is a Bear.

Now if you look at these Vtubers, and you had to group them into teams; how would you do it?

Logically you might group the Isekai and Harem protagonists together, they could have a Vtuber group for generic anime protagonists and they could actually make a joke out of putting a spin on their respective tropes.

Then you could pair off the Demon and Angel, the Robot and the Captain since they're both sci fi, and lastly you could group the Lion, Crow, and Bear since they're all animals right?

Well to put it super bluntly and not try to dox myself with how much I've said in this already, none of those examples were made up. All of those are actual Vtubers I've met during my time on twitter. Fun fact: they were all in the same team. Yes, all of them. Then they split off into smaller teams because they learned the team was too big and the audience split too thin.

But why does that Classification actually matter? Well it matters for the same reason being a Vtuber in the first place matters.

You see, if you're going to be a Vtuber you need to ask yourself why you're wanting to be a Vtuber over any other type of streamer.

Seriously, give that a thought for a second.

For me it was pretty simple, it started with not wanting to put my face out there. I got generally tired of how many people would comment on how I was dressed or how my hair was that day, or the fact I have a big nose; or just... whatever they felt like saying about ME that day. I'd play a ton of games I wanted to show people, things I actually enjoyed and wanted to bring to others. Yet no one cared about what I was streaming, they were all too caught up on how I look, and how do I look? Well, extremely everyday normal person-looking.

No seriously. I am not really someone who's like, "cool" or "handsome" or whatever. I don't look striking in any noticeable way. This isn't some fishing for compliments attempt either I'm being real, there's nothing about me on a GOOD day that says "I'm worth looking at" and yet people would always comment on SOMETHING and it normally wasn't about me looking good.

However if you turn off your webcam you DO get less engagement. This is just a sort of proven thing, so you need SOMETHING to represent yourself right? For me that was an easy fix, I could use a Vtuber avatar and in doing so I figured maybe I could rep some of my Native culture while I'm at it.

Later down the line I met some cool people who were more character focused, they enjoy the idea of playing a character and ultimately growing and changing that character as they streamed. It was something I felt forced into by the Twitter community at large so I always tried to come up with SOMETHING for the character, but everything felt forced (because it was) and bad (because it was) so I would often quickly drop any characterization before it even hit the stream.

Okay so let's say you personally have the ambition of playing a character, you want something closer to Hololive or Holostars, where your character comes from a place, has an occupation; a goal, a reason for streaming beyond just "I stream because I want to make money as a streamer for whatever reason." Alright cool let's see where that goes right?

Now remember, as Twitter Indie Vtubers we HATE Corporations and we will not be looking at how Hololive does this right at all. Instead we will constantly remind people about our character without ever really doing anything with it.

Yes. This is how it was done.

Say you meet someone who was an Angel. Maybe they were an Angel who was kicked out of heaven because lol they play too many video games XD (please excuse my cringe I'm doing my best to emulate shit I actually ran into here). So okay cool I'm not going to say that's NOT a valid character I guess. Alright so they're streaming because they like playing video games, what does being an Angel have to do with anything exactly? Well they'll tell you their entire lore dump of a backstory, they'll remind you they're an Angel, and they'll likely have some kind of definition of the difference between them as an Angel who got kicked out of heaven and fallen angels who... you know, basically the same thing BUT IT'S NOT.

You might ask again, what does this have to do with ANYTHING. Why does it matter? Why does them having a backstory, having this persona; why does it matter? What are they doing with it? Is it worth all the investment in a backstory and lore; or would it simply be enough to just explain "yea I'm an Angel and that's why I look like this" or whatever?

And Again they'll remind you of their backstory, they'll explain all their lore; and you'll find that this literally DOESN'T MATTER.

But then all the big corporate vtubers have backstories and lore, so we should too right?

Well... about that.

Can we, and now listen; I know... we HATE corpo vtubers here... but can we take just a second to look at WHY they have those backstories and lore and such?

Okay so here's the thing, if we look at the Hololive English branches we can see some specific things, first off Classification is a big one.

HoloMYTH? Grim Reaper, Phoenix, Cthulhu; etc (I'm not going to explain how a Shark or literally just Watson who is somehow a time traveler fit in here ask COVER man.)

HoloCOUNCIL? Warden of Time, Basically Mother Nature, The Embodiment of Chaos; again we have characters who are the COUNCIL of things like Space, Time, Civilization, Nature, Chaos; etc.

Council would later become PROMISE but I digress.

Now I'm not honestly too sure about Advent? But that's mostly because I haven't really looked into them much admittedly they're very hit or miss with me personally, but I got nothing against them and wish them the best.

What I'm saying here is, Classification matters! Everything from theme to color schemes and names comes into play. The one in charge of Nature? Ceres (a planet) Fauna (...yea I don't need to explain how that one ties in). The Warden of Time? Literally named Kronii (obviously meant to be similar to the word Chronos and such).

A lot of this is pretty self explanatory but my point here is everyone is designed to fit together like a D&D party. Everyone feels like they belong in the team. It's not just a random Cyborg, an Angel, some random Bear, and an Isekai Protagonist all bumming out in a discord call going "oh man I have no idea what to do today so we're just chatting lol"

So if you're an Indie Vtuber who understands Classification you're likely going to look for other people who fit your general theme and identity. But this can be difficult because of either one of two reasons.

One being that no one seems to fit your general classification. If you're too unique or too specific to a setting, time period, or general genre it can be hard to find others who fit into that with any level of similarity.

The other being that TOO MANY people seem to fit your classification EXACTLY. If you're a random God of such and such, and you find other god Vtubers, you likely find other people who are literally the same thing you are. Same goes for Angels, Demons, Anything Anime, Most forms of Object Heads or Robots or Cyborgs.

The biggest problem I see with the second is that no one wants to be anything short of "the best" at what they are. You're not just an assassin, you're the best assassin to ever live; well shit now you can't be in the same team as the OTHER best assassin to ever live.

But what if you were?

See this is where I think Indie Vtubers don't have the ability to laugh at themselves nearly as much as they should.

Because I personally think it would be really funny to have two people in a vtuber team who are the same thing, but from different backgrounds. Give us Spy x Family but as a Vtuber Team and I think it would be fucking hilarious.

No seriously, imagine for a moment that there was a 5 person vtuber team, 2 of the members of the team were from different backgrounds, they could be anything; for the sake of generic bullshit let's say one is like the top Angel from heaven, the other is the top Demon from hell. Except they both seek to keep this information secret, "only their chat knows" except the other 3 people in the team are VERY much aware, for literally ANY reason it doesn't matter how they know, it just matters that these two are such stupid idiots that they're constantly showing their hand in such specific ways that the other wouldn't see.

If you have the improv skills necessary, and the ability to laugh at yourself; you suddenly have a very VERY potentially funny team on your hands.

Imagine them playing Phasmophobia, one of them (doesn't matter who) points out the ghost must be a demon, they know all this information about demons, clearly this is a demon; they wouldn't be wrong about this. The other, also knowing this information (either because they're well researched on demons, or because they ARE one) is suspicious of how they know all this and doesn't know how to call them out so they try to one up them by providing MORE information in an attempt to see how much they ACTUALLY know, only now the first person is starting to question how THEY know so much. Meanwhile everyone else in the collab is dying and neither of them acknowledge this until it's brought up as a last ditch effort out by one of the two when asked a particularly difficult to answer question and they just respond with "OH SHIT THEY'RE DYING!" Before running off to save their team members. THAT'S GOOD BANTER BAY-BEE!

But see, this requires classification, an understanding of everyone's characters; and enough similarity to play off each other's characters.

So what about if you can't find anyone? You join into a random Vtuber Team and hope for the best.

Alright so you join into a group with 4 other people, so far things seem fine, everyone is nice enough; you likely sit in a discord call and talk about life; become closer friends, discuss what kind of games you like to play. You know, general normal people stuff.

Then a few days later you get a message about doing a collab, you don't have many viewers at this point; maybe 4 - 5 regulars who show up and actively chat. Good people, you are excited to sort of introduce your audience to your new team, and get to meet their audience. You might even be a little stressed because you only have about 100 followers on twitter and they have well over 1,000 so you expect a much bigger turnout on their end.

The stream collab starts, you notice there's maybe 3 people watching them, you are one; they are another. Which means they only really have 1 viewer. You tell yourself this is because the stream just started.

Then a half hour goes by, the only viewers showing up in their chat are from your team. Mutual friends, other streamers you know; they trickle in now and then but you notice neither of you are particularly popular. That big four digit follower count seems to all be just for show. Likely coming from a basis of follow for follow vtubers and the like. Looking at their twitter you notice they don't get much interaction outside of the team there either.

This sort of puts your mind at ease, it feels more comfortable knowing you're not somehow accidentally jumping ahead to having an audience of hundreds to entertain.

That is until you begin to notice a shift in the way you're treated by your team. It's very likely you'll be asked to do more collabs, they'll absolutely swing this as it being a matter of keeping the team together; or because you're fun to be around. However during streams you'll often be put on the back burner, you'll be brought into collabs but never really engaged with. You'll never be raided by your fellow team members. This is because you have a small, but real following.

You'll find that when you're unavailable it's suddenly a big deal, you'll see words like "mandatory" or "regularly scheduled" popping up to make it seem like you SHOULD be there, it's part of being in a team. You'll be told to "act professional" if you have a disagreement with someone, whether this is over something like gender, sexuality, or even other basic respect issues. You'll be asked to stream with people you don't like.

When it comes down to it, if you show opposition; you'll be told that the majority of the team disagrees with you, but they won't want you gone. They won't oust you from the team, because they know your audience will still most likely follow you out. They don't want that.

So they'll keep you around as long as possible, until you make too much noise; or say something they don't agree with a little too loudly. Once they believe they've done enough collabs, and gotten enough of your followers to follow them; they'll kick you aside and find someone else to do this to.

They will even turn on each other; I've gotten messages from people, months and even sometimes years after leaving a team. These messages all say similar things; they always start with an apology; and then go into talking about how they were either too naive, too scared, or just too confused to understand the manipulation and crowd mentality they were being indoctrinated to.

The key reason behind all of this is because you are never actually a valued friend, you're an additional audience member; you're a viewer, who has more viewers to bring to the table.

But clearly that was just a bad team, they're not all like that; that's true; that's genuine. So you go back to the drawing board and put it out there that you're in the market for another team, probably a bit more picky this time than you were last time to be fair. I couldn't blame anyone for being such after going through something like that.

You'll find another small group of people who don't know each other, who don't have anything in common other than a want to be successful; and likely who are willing to throw the weakest link under the bus to replace them with a fresh set of eyes and a new audience to grow their follower count.

But what happens if it DOES work out? What about when it's made by friends? What about when the people streaming don't actually hate each other?

Well then you still have to contend with burnout, with setting up times to stream together; with the sheer amount of work it is to work as a singular unit rather than as a "stream whenever you want" solo vtuber.

This can be difficult for some people. I remember having times when we'd plan group collabs and then my chronic pain would act up and I couldn't make it. Some would make it out to be a big deal, others would be understanding; either way it was a bit of a let down. Then you'd have the issue of not just everyone having the same games but the same interest in playing them at the same time. Then you'd have issues with if someone is getting more popular, or if there's a difference in ideas for how the group should be handling things.

At what point is it a team and not just a group of friends?

So alright, what do I think? Personally?

I think if you want to have a success vtuber team you should find some method of Classification; even if it's really weird and out there. Give us something to unify you all to the same group. Then you should decide on whether or not as a whole you're a character driven group or a streamer driven group:

Character Driven = investing in the characterization of your avatars, the in character interactions they may have; the "story" or "plot" that exists around them being a key feature of the streams.

Streamer Driven = investing in the streamer behind the characters, the connections of the individuals, their audiences; and the games they play.

Think Hololive vs Jerma.

Jerma doesn't have an anime he uses to explain his more characteristic properties of himself, because he doesn't really need that in order to come out on a stream and go "hey guys it's me, Jerma; the funny white dude on the internet." He can just do that and you already kinda get it because he's invested a lot in you knowing who JERMA is.

Meanwhile every Hololive stream opens with a catch phrase or a sort of characterized opening. Some more elaborate than others; and some even going so far as to call out their generation/team. They DO have an anime, and various other productions that run alongside the streams that serve to amplify them as characters, and even their inside jokes and developments within streams will loop back around to becoming elements of their anime counterparts.

So, once you've figured that out it's not really too difficult.

As long as you're willing to grow as a unit and pick each other up when someone gets ahead, without feeling a need to stab each other in the back or throw each other under the bus; you're solid.

If you're character focused, I strongly recommend you focus on your extended universe, explain to me who your characters are not by taking time out of the stream to stare me in the eyes and say "my character is blah blah blah" but by SHOWING ME through bumpers, skits, or other media. Make comics, make short video bumpers and tiktoks or something I don't care. Just don't sit there on stream EXPLAINING shit at me, because trust me I will tune out I do not care it is not an interesting way to convey who and what you are.

If you're character focused I need you to prioritize SHOW don't TELL.

If you're Streamer focused then I think you have it a lot easier, because you can prioritize getting to better know your audience, their preferences for streams/collabs, and you can get to know each other and use the information above to best sort out who should be pairing off for the best experiences for both you as a streamer and your audience as viewers.

I do believe these two things can mix well.

If you want a really solid example of EXACTLY what I mean, look no further than my (streamer focused) interaction with Nea (character focused)

A lot of the time our interactions work just fine because she understands that I am a streamer before I'm a character, and meanwhile I'll comment on her being an Ice Cream Lion before ever bringing up who she is outside of streams (at least while on streams, we're good friends outside of streams and I know her as her obviously). We're not in a team together but we collab plenty and consider each other to be good friends. We do our best to help one another get ahead in very casual ways and don't seek to bring each other down because we don't hold jealousy or envy towards one another's followings.

And yes, it REALLY is that simple to get along.

The core problem with Twitter's Indie Vtuber scene is that drama and bullshit gets attention and they crave attention over long-term proper collaboration and friendship. I don't doubt for a second that if Nea ever hit it big time and became a full time streamer she wouldn't hesitate or shy away from streaming with me and collabing with me all the same and you better believe that I'd be the exact same.

I used to often talk about applying to corporate vtuber agencies and I always said that if I was to ever get accepted I'd fight tooth and nail to be able to collab with my friends in hopes of getting them in front of the audience they deserve to have.

But yea that's it, that's the big keys to successful Vtuber team right there;

Classification helps a TON.

Be good to one another, don't allow yourself to succumb to the jealousy and envy of seeing one of your friends and team members gaining popularity faster than you.

Actually being good friends does help a lot too.

Actively support one another.

[rabbit-of-mugenri]

I wonder, what do you ship in Len'en?

Oh hey, you're the one who made the Fanfic Discord server right? This is Starrot Vanity! And I finally made a Tumblr for Len'en stuff 'cause the hyperfixation is back I caved in and wanted a larger space for my headcanons/AUs that Discord couldn't provide. You've asked me this question before, but for the audience at home (also so I can elaborate on some of them):

Ooookay, so, this is a bit of a complicated question to answer, since the ships I'm interested in on a relationship analysis level and the ships that I find think would make a good couple are two separate circles. Not to mention there's a third, equally separate circle consisting of ships that aren't actually ships in the romantic sense, more in a platonic/"they have a really good dynamic" sense.

So I'll split this into threes parts: Ships That are Good, Ships That are Interesting (but please for the love of God don't emulate the behaviours of these ships they're unhealthy as fuck), and Platonic Ships.

(Also content warning in the second section for abusive relationships and Suzumi being Suzumi)

Ships That are Good

AkaYabu

This is just a pure, simple "idiots in love" ship, with a dash of "no homo" since they're just friends. So what if they tuck a homie in bed, give their homie a little kiss sometimes, that's just what bros do!

...As you can see, the main conflict in this ship is that both of them think the other sees them as just a friend, alongside their own denial about being in love. Doubly so in Hooaka's case: Why should Yabusame be interested in them when they have Tsubakura? Hooaka can tell the two have a deep, complex relationship with each other, and they don't want to intrude. Which leads to...

YabuTsuba

Oh boy, these two. Yabusame has a deep, unwavering loyalty to Tsubakura that neither know exactly why. Tsubakura's especially confused by this, but at the same time they need that. After all the pain and suffering and death they've gone through, they need someone who's just there. never asking why like everyone else.

(As for how these two ships are resolved, usually one is more down played than the other. So for example, if the focus of something is on YabuTsuba, then Hooaka simply sees Yabusame as a friend. Occasionally though, I'm reminded that Yabusame has two hands.)

TsuruTen

This one's interesting, since it's essentially YabuTsuba in reverse. Or, to put it another way, Tsurubami is (ironically) a more human Yabusame. Whereas Yabusame's reasons for staying by Tsubakura is shrouded in enigma, Tsurubami's reasons for staying by Tenkai is much more simple: Tenkai represented a alliance with Azumaterasu, a barrier workshop rumoured to have been founded by a god.

But Tsurubami began to feel that Tenkai represented much more than that; Tenkai was a way to starve off the loneliness that came part and parcel with ruling Mugenri. Tenkai added colour to their world, and soon Tsurubami realized that they didn't want to use them as a pawn, they wanted a friend.

Ships That are Interesting (but please for the love of God don't emulate the behaviours of these ships they're unhealthy as fuck)

HibaTsugu

So like, there's no canon basis as to how badly Hibaru treated Tsugumi, but in my headcanon it's pretty badly my dude.

Both of them are old as balls, but while Hibaru has seen shit, Tsugumi was oddly spared from most of the horrors living for hundreds of years has. Perhaps out of luck, perhaps out of a preference for plants over people. They heard of Tsurubami and their dictatorship, though, and they weren't fond of that.

Neither was Hibaru. And so, the two of them paired together in an effort to take down the Senri Shrine. Along the way, the two became friends, possibly even more.

And then the final confrontation happened, wherein the pair learned the truth behind Mugenri, its purpose. Hibaru's response? Snap Tsugumi's wings and leave them behind.

Adding on to this, Hibaru's got like a thousand years of moral decay to work with, versus Tsugumi's somewhat sheltered life. How fine were things, truly?

Suzumi + Shitodo (SuzuAo, SuzuAka, SuzuKuro)

Sure, Tsubakura-sama was their main target, but Suzumi can work on multiple projects at once. And, well, hurting those close to them also counts towards Tsubakura-sama's suffering, doesn't it? Since Yabusame's too...strange in a way that Suzumi doesn't like, that leaves the Shitodo family.

Kuroji's their main target, being the one closest to Tsubakura-sama. And oh, how close they are to the real thing! How beautiful it is to see their normally aloof behaviour break down, crying and begging for their life! Alas, their only a pale imitation to the great Tsubakura, so they're soon disposed of.

Hooaka, now there's an interesting one! They play dumb, but Suzumi knows better. It's just so fun to push their buttons, see what causes them to drop the act and show a more serious side. It's like a gift only they get to see!

And Aoji, oh, Aoji. They're pretty, they're in tune with nature, they're small and quiet and just a little slow on the uptake. What isn't there to love? Just cute enough to kill.

SuzuTsuba

I...don't actually know what to add here that hasn't been said before. Suzumi is their own warning.

Platonic Ships

Hooaka and Kuroji

Man, these two. These two. They care for each other, they want to protect the other, everything the do for the other is out of love. It's just their definition of showing appreciation for the other is so covered in layers of irony and an inability to be honest that the other misunderstands and assumes that the other just hates them.

A tragedy, isn't it?

The rest of the Shitodo's

Honestly the dynamics of all the Shitodo's is just so good. They're all varying degrees of dysfunctional, but at the end of the day they all care about each other. It's just...a struggle to get any of them to admit it.

The Fujiwara's

Speaking of dysfunctional families that still love each other at the end of the day, how about Mugenri's own home-grown Fujiwara's? Possibly even more of a mess compared to the Shitodo's, since murder's on the table for dealing with family scuffles.

[mugenfinder]

Not sure if you made a post about this but, do you know where are some of the best places to find mugen characters right now? I've seen several different databases but I am unsure of what I'm doing.

Mugen Free For All has user-made collections of characters, some have dead links because they link to old sites or missing Mediafire files. But most of the links work and it's an easy to stumble over different versions of characters and so on. People also post their releases on there if you want to get into the meat of newer of stuff.

Mugen Fighters Guild is primarily about on-going or newer projects, their archive hasn't been updated in long time so it has dead direct links. Their forum is where all the new releases happen.

You'll also find some smaller sites like Infinity Mugen Team or Brazilian Mugen Team, though the creators usually upload to other sites as well. If you watch SpriteClub or SaltyBet, they should both have full lists of their rosters and stages so you can search by that and the author's names if you see someone interesting. (Granted that doesn't always work, especially if the author is Japanese, you may have to run the author AND the characters' name through a translator to Japanese to find them raw)

Thanks for asking, P.S.

AndersonKenya1 is a good site, it works like an archive where a few people are uploading characters from all over. You need an account to use it though, and I think the most bothersome aspect of the site is how easy it is to see some freaky NSFW stuff. Sure they have dedicated section for all that, but it's openly shown on the main page of the site at times. Granted nowadays, you'll see some freaky stuff just by typing MUGEN on Youtube. BUT ASIDE FROM THAT, it's alright. I just think there's WEIRD ISSUE of people really not using discretion when it comes to OBVIOUSLY FETISHISTIC CONTENT being shown publicly but that's me.

Now I didn't want to mention this in the past because I want to avoid drama-

MugenArchive is probably one of the bigger sites on-going right now? It does its job well, since people will upload stuff from other sites there for "archival purposes" like AndersonKenya.

However, users are given a Download Limit last time I checked and you can't download files 100MB if you're a "non-contributor". You can upload stuff to get points or whatever to level-up your account, but as stated, you can just contribute things from other sites.

So it's like they're incentivizing re-uploading other people's work even though usually people don't want to you do that without permission. If they were just sharing links to the works, it'd be one thing, but actively taking anything and everything for points is kind of wack. Also non-contributer users can't use the site on Weekends.

MUGEN has always had issues with people stealing others' work and taking credit or changing things unnecessarily without permission.

I stumbled onto the old website of a rather prolific author, Rikard, whose original characters are still used to this day. One of the last, possibly the final post, was an explanation that he was quitting because of people stealing his work.

I think MA's policy of rewarding people for others' work essentially, is further feeding that practice. If you scroll the site, you'll see people probably under 18 even, uploading their edits of characters by other people with asinine changes. Stuff like messing with the palettes or making them more broken.

I can recall seeing something a few months ago where an incomplete character that was privately shared in a Discord server was uploaded without the author's permission. I know about this because the character was still on the site despite everyone knowing this happened.

This isn't even going into the shady practices they've committed against the MUGEN Community as a whole. So no one can stop you from using MA, just keep in mind there's some skeletons in the garden. Though I'd recommend using it at as a last resort, really. I understand not everyone is like me and willing to spend time just digging for authors' original download links.

[greys-dawn-archive]

TGCE shenanigans

this is not a callout. we aren't interested in making callouts. you can do with this information what you want and what you will. if that means including it in your own callouts, so be it- we just won't be making one ourselves

that said, this is a collection of things that we've dealt with regarding TGCE (aka the-gender-collector-emself, aka Alex J Brimmer, aka Stormy&). we've been pretty quiet about it bc we knew ey were a large part of the mogai community and we didn't want to get harassed, nor ruin anyone's fun. however, now that more issues are coming up and others are coming forward sharing issues they've had with em, we've decided we may as well come forward about it

important sidenote: i will probably fuck up eir pronouns. this isn't on purpose, nor is it meant to be disrespectful- i use neopronouns myself! however, i'm used to thinking of people as being plural (which, TGCE is) and thus use plural they/them by accident a lot, even for folks who use different pronouns. i apologize in advance and will correct any mistakes i find, if there are any left after posting

also note that all of this is from 2019, so it's rather old news (but it's clear that nothing's changed since then, so it's still technically relevant). a lot of screenshots will also be from a discord conversation we had with someone else on December 1st, 2019

some background

TGCE was following us last year, mostly back in September. I'm actually not sure how long ey were following us before ey started sending us anons and angry replies on our posts, and we have em blocked so I don't think we can check

At some point we were also a mod in a server of eirs. I don't remember much that happened in that server itself, though, and we don't have any screenshots from it as far as I know. Just know that we were "close" enough to em that we modded a place ey owned before all this hit the fan

veganism stuff

note: veganism isn't inherently a bad thing. we aren't saying that. however, vegans who are extreme in their activism are. that was the point of posts we were making at the time

the first instance of anything regarding this that we can remember is probably back around september. we can't get the exact timestamps anymore due to a blog purge/shift, but i think that's about when things went down

we reblogged something criticising vegans, tagging it as "anti-vegan" specifically for others' tag blacklists. in the tags we also explicitly mentioned a negative view on extremists. this is the post in question:

shortly after this, we received an anon ask that we're pretty sure was from TGCE. here's that:

we didn't end up finding that other reply, unfortunately, and because of the blog purge + blocking it's likely long gone

-

below is another thing we have saved regarding veganism. the "us leaving" part is a reference to us leaving the server of eirs that we were modding for em, because we didn't feel comfortable being there anymore

unfortunately, this isn't all of it. we have multiple friends who received similar harassment, including one person who owned a server that TGCE was in at the time. TGCE directly told them to unfollow/not to interact- which is pretty hard, when they owned a server ey were in. to be fair i don't think ey made the connection due to the difference in platforms, but that doesn't really help much

(if we get permission to add things from our friends then we will. we have at least one screenshot regarding the above on hand)

misc stuff

we have near exact proof of em sending us an angry anon over one post. it was about a girl nearly dying over eating something spicy, with a chain of people making fun of her underneath it. some people spoke up about it, and the bottom comment (not from us) criticized the fact that people wouldn't be doing the same thing to a person of color. it wasn't a great post and i'll admit that- but eir response to it wasn't great either

here's the bottom of the post and the timestamp on it:

TGCE then commented on the post itself:

when we didn't say anything about it (likely due to not actually seeing it at the time), ey sent us an anon over it:

i guess we're "all lives matter" because of one post that we didn't even actually comment on, huh

-

other than that, we've also got this post from after we left eir server:

when asked about it i'm pretty sure ey made up some excuse for it and claimed it was because of something else, but it was very coincidental timing at best

we also got a string of other anons after all of that:

which, surprisingly... looks very familiar to more recent asks we've gotten

even though the anons from before were blocked. hmm

---

i think that's about all we've got right now, though we do have some things saved from other people's blogs. this isn't the first time ey've been accused of harassing others (including minors, which we weren't at the time but had friends who were) and it likely won't be the last, unfortunately :/

[nekonome-lilyith]

Okay long post here, about the #brings8nback tag and all that. If your sensitive to trigger topics ignore and skip over the red sentences.

Now I found out about s8n's suspension from the discord roughly an hour after his insta post. From then on out I filled my accounts with the tag, hell I had to make a new one.

Now I have three minor points and a main point.

Minor points

I had two accounts, my main and my side. Now not mentioning at's but my first account got a 12 hour suspension for telling someone to fuck off. Someone who used fouler Language in turn. Not only this it thought I was a bot.

My second account- well that one was sorta my fault. This guy at the least was claiming to have bot attacked s8n so I went OFF. Like it wasn't pretty. Guy got me suspended along with several others who went off just with more. . . mannors and class you could say. And I mean a lot of people.

So I went and made a new account (@/Riot_for_s8n) and contined with the tag. I was going for three houre with this guysm Three hours of nesr nonstop retweeting and tweetint of this fucking tag. We hit over 40K tweets

And twitter refused to let us trend

This isn't the first time they've done this to. Now I'm not speaking from my experience but from others on the duscort server because they were livid. Gods I still am. Anyways back to my main point

Twitter is biased and will attack accounts

S8n has had his account since 2008 guys. He has hit 2.3 MILLION followers, has his own merch, his own website, man has everything. He is running a business based off of his parody account. Despite all this Twitter refuses to varify him, refuses tonlet tags relating to his account trend, and has now suspended him for "Violating our rules against platform manipulation and spam"

My big question there is how? That day and hell even the months prior we haven't had any tag movement involving him, not even the normal #varifysatan one. It was just the normal "Wake up and sin" and other random things.

On this note I would like to note that someone had openpy admitted to botting him- and while I'm not 100 percent positive it is true even mentioning this is technically against rules. As someone who had to do a recatcha 3 times because twitter thought I was a bot, it's not good. Not only that this guy was having people in his comments suspended.

Now I can hear you saying "Okay cool whatever, not thst bad a crime" and your right. We all know about Twitter's nudity policy though right?

Well their are porn accounts, hell I know people who have run into child pornography on Twitter, yet those accounts remain running without a problem. Yet a parody account gets suspended and possibly banned for what?

Gods I can keep going on forever, but I probably shouldn't. It's just angering that blatant attacks like this happen. It's not just s8n but other parody acocunts struggle with things like this as well, as a few of them commented about their own experiences lightly when using the hashtag.

But yeah

[blow-ur-mind]

Season 3 Episode 8

I've falling behind again on writing my thoughts, but I'm still watching.

I enjoyed this episode minus the war bits. I found it kinda boring. I still really hope they arent going to take until the end of the season or worse until next season to explain what happened to Nicky. The preview is saying they'll be answers so we'll see.

It was a break from the usual Thanksgiving tradition episodes, but there was still a nod to it in the flashback. I liked that though especially cause we got some interactions we hardly or never get. I liked the Kate/Tess scenes and even the bits with Toby. How old is Tess though? I thought she was like 10.

This campaign stuff, there's been some good parts and Randall means well, but at the end of the day I think he won't win. I really like Jae Won though can he still stay even if/when Randall doesn't win. He was right, though I don't love him and Beth clashing. Im sure we haven't seen the end of that. I wished they'd just let Beth find another job/path elsewhere.

The William/Jesse scenes were interesting and we got backstory on their official first meeting. I still wish they didn't kill William off.

Glad we finally got some backstory on the situation with Miguel and his kids. However, their attitudes are terrible. As strange as the whole marry my dead best friend's widow/my dead husband's BF is, Rebecca did not steal Miguel. That's not even possible to do anyways, and we know they didnt get together until a decade after Jack's death and Miguel and Shelly were long divorced. I wonder what she thought about Miguel and Rebecca since she and Rebecca were best friends. I guess they've never had one big family dinner that would be a mess. I was curious about the relationship between the big 3 and their step-siblings as adults.

Still no mention of the "her" yet again.

I have a discord server for the show join here: https://discord.gg/TakBju3

I'm gonna go watch the next episode.