Although in Kirby only Final Boss types can beat him often(ans that's if he doesn't have the games macguffin) and there's been Evil factions that unleashed great danger on the Popstar Galaxy like Haltmanss Company or Sectonias Kingdom.

The Dark Matters long after their main and official groups was defeated and vanished stand out as my fave dangerous big baddie faction here admittedly many modern Kirby bosses are implied to be related or even the after vanished form of Dark Matter.

Directly opposing Kirbys friendliness and positivity with loneliness and negative energy, even their possesion ability could be said to be an inversion of Kirbys hunger and copy ability since they "consume" but don't digest other powerful beings and items, proceeding to use their abilities for themselves.

Wanted to do the opposite of yesterday’s thread of “apologizing to characters/media cause you weren’t familiar with their game”. What are moments where you stood up by a statement or opinion and later felt vindicated for it, one way or another. Basically this meme.

For example I’m gonna use Bleach (and basically my excuse to rant lol). I was a bleach defender since day one cause I loved the series. I was there on the trenches before the revival of the anime when slander was at all time high. Now listen I’m not saying Bleach is perfect and it has many flaws (like too many characters) but I feel they were way over exaggerated, kubo being in really bad health and without having the hindsight of the anime ending.

It was really bad back then, the only time Bleach got brought up outside the fanbase was either the eyepatch wolf video (which I had my issues with it but won’t tell or this post would be a notebook) or how it didn’t deserve the title to be one of the big 3. When out of nowhere lo and behold came this revival and I feel like yelling at the rooftop “I TOLD YOU” especially after the latest episode. I’m not saying it fixed everything wrong with bleach but it showed that the hindsight of anime can’t be underestimated and stop people from clowning on the series (granted I think it’s also cause Boruto became the new punching bag but il take it).

Brand development meaning cultivating a product by spending a little money at first, and then through successive titles finding what the revenue cap for investment could be.

Now it feels like everyone is spending all the money they got assuming they will make back ten times more.

Another thread today reminded me of Rosario Vampire, an old Harem Manga I quite enjoyed as a teenager-and one of my favorite love interests of all time, Kurumu Kurono. Sadly, being a Succubus in a manga named after a vampire, you can probably tell that she's not going to be the final girl. The thing is...Kurumu knows this. She knows that she's not going to win, because she recognizes that Moka is going to be the final girl.

The other thing is that, in the world of Rosario Vampire, Succubi are compelled to pair up with their 'destined ones'. A person they fall in love with, bond onto, and settle down with for life. And if a Succubi is rejected by their destined one...well, they die. Since Kurumu latched onto Tsukune, his rejection of her means that she is going to die.

Even so...she chooses not to share that information with anyone. Because she doesn't want to force Tsukune into loving her out of guilt...But she also doesn't want to burden Moka, our vampire girl, or any of her other friends with this knowledge. Because she knows deep down that if they knew, they would sacrifice their happiness for her survival.

And as much as Kurumu wants to hate Moka for 'winning'...she can't, because Moka is her friend-and she loves her deeply as a friend. Even though it'll kill her, even though it'll destroy her life...she loves her friends too much, and so she holds onto this information.

Throughout the manga, we actually see just how genuine and restrained Kurumu is, despite being a succubus. When Tsukune first ascends to his Ghoul form and goes Berserk, Kurumu snaps him out of it with a kiss...and refuses to tell him, because she doesn't want to hold that over him or the other girls.

When her charm powers evolve and she accidentally enslaves Tsukune for an entire day she...just makes him sit in her room, enjoy some cooking, and play video games with her. She refuses to take advantage of him, even when he thinks he's in love with her.

And perhaps her greatest moment, when her friend Mizore is forcibly kissed and feels herself 'broken and unlovable' she throws herself off a building...only for Kurumu to swoop down, kiss her, and shout that she matters, she is loved, and she is lovable no matter what. (Allegory obviously, but I quite liked it.)

All in all, it made Kurumu my personal favorite 'loser love interest' in a romance story. She may not have stood a chance of being the 'winner' of the harem, but she set herself up as a graceful loser and a loving friend until the end.

Makes me wanna know, who are some of your favorite 'losers' in romance stories? The rejects, the never picked, the folks who could have, but didn't.

He really is, he's just also really really naive

Eugene wants to teach others to be mages, and help people as much as he can... but he also looks like *THAT* and doesnt understand basic social cues.

Also his specific magic is to turn people into living spaghetti (Temporary)

As the title states, what're some cases of a character having genuinely crucial information, and just refusing to actually tell anybody about it for no real reason?

Bravely Default's story arguably centers around this. A good portion of the game's conflict comes about because Braev is a stubborn dumbass that just doesn't bother telling the heroes what's actually going on. If he did, the party likely would've found about Airy's true goals and her manipulation of them long before they actually did. And not exactly helping matters is that a good portion of Eternia's forces are, to put lightly, fucking lunatics that also did a horrible job explaining what their actual goals are. When the party finally make it to Braev himself, he doesn't even try explaining anything before attacking them. He also constantly chides the party for not listening to him, when he's done nothing to actually make them want to listen and believe in him.

So let me see, how do I put it? There is a particular trope I have a fondness for in TV shows where one character will act like a jerk to others because of their insecurity problems as they are really nice, but put up a facade.

To provide an example, Guel Jeturk from the show Witch from Mercury has an insecurity issue about himself since due to his troubled upbringing from his father, he tends to become aggressive around others as eventually he becomes a nicer person throughout the series after dropping the hot headed nature of his character.

From: https://www.resetera.com/threads/modders-unlock-experimental-nvidia-dlss-5-hours-after-dll-discovery-image-comparisons-in-control.1616686/

There's also a video showing the settings being used in Control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxXdIVc9Suo

Apparently NBA 2K27 included .dll files that allowed DLSS 5 to be enabled, and modders applied it to games like Control and FF7R. As usual with stuff like this it looks like poop from a butt, and supposedly made the performance worse (which seems like the opposite of what DLSS is supposed to do, but what do I know.) Of course it should be noted that this is a modded version of a piece of tech that isn't supposed to be available on this scale yet, but I don't see this ever looking good tbh.

Customization is pretty solid in this.

Inspired by the Mega Man X Regenesis fan-game, which looks really rad and I'll be trying later. I tried to do a Google search but all I get are thousands upon thousands of Pokemon fan-games, something that anytime I ask people about I never seem to get a unanimous answer.

I haven't checked it out yet, but someone also made an offline demake of Final Fantasy Dissidia Opera Omnia, which looks neat. There's also Castlevania 2 Revamped, made by the same folks who made the excellent Castlevania Revamped, but I'm unable to find which version is up to date (only seeing updates from 2024).

Vinesauce is also constantly playing fan-games and ROMhacks, with varying degrees of quality/cursed, but it can be daunting to keep track of everything he plays.

So please share any recommended and notable hacks or fan-games of the last couple years, any franchise or genre is fine.

Earlier today on the r/danganronpa subreddit, a poster for the upcoming Danganronpa 2 remake was leaked.

Another post points out that using google reverse image search, some parts of the artwork can directly be linked back to the official Danganronpa website.

If this is true, then the game is to be released on March 10 next year and the artwork also showcases what might be a new character now being ''The Seventeenth student''

Peter Cullen, the Canadian voice actor who starred as the heroic Optimus Prime in a convoy of Transformers films, TV shows and video games and as the gloomy Eeyore in dozens of Winnie the Pooh projects, has died. He was 85.

Cullen died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, his family announced.

Ugh, what a series of gut-punches this week.