LAST EDITED ON Oct-09-23 AT 03:17 PM (EDT)
 
which I guess I could also have called "More Randos, More Troubles", now that I think about it. Anyway! Hey, you remember that time I randomly ran across an intriguing character browsing Danbooru and fell down a humongous rabbit hole? Well, it, uh... yup. It happened again.

This is Ina. She's a priestess of the Ancient Ones, as you can probably tell from the eldritch tome and the tentacles. She's also an incredibly chill and sweet-tempered homebody who is just about the last person who would ever drown the world in madness and blood, so if that was the Ancient Ones' plan when they chose her, uh, they fucked up.

OK, that second sentence isn't really part of her character description, but it's a good summary of the way she actually comes across in practice. She's a virtual YouTuber, and like a lot of VTubers, she has a persona that's sort of one part scifi character, one part professional wrestler, and which plays relatively little actual part in her day-to-day performances. Most of the time she functions like a more-or-less normal YT streamer, except the visual aspect is a Live2D-animated avatar.

I didn't know any of that when I first ran across that picture of her on DB. As you'll see if you click through to the full-size version, they use the name of the agency she works for as the copyright tag on pictures of her, and at first I thought it was a weirdly-title mobile game or something. I mean, there's one called Blue Archive, why not? But no! No, as it turns out, it's something simultaneously more and less straightforward than that.

The English-language branch of Hololive is kind of a surreal corner of the universe, even by the relatively liberal standards of the Japanese entertainment industry. They're sort of idols--the lineage is plain to see; their agency structures their interactions with the public along the same lines, for instance. Every now and then they even do straight-up idol things, albeit with a CG twist, since they can't perform "live" in the traditional sense.

The rest of the time, though, they're basically regular YouTube streamers, like I said. They spend most of their online time streaming video games, chatting with subscribers, and generally cocking about. A few have other sidelines based on particular skills they have. Ina, for instance, is a high-grade artist, so much so that she drew the introductory splash banner for the first-generation HoloEN unit, codenamed "Myth". As such, she has frequent drawing streams, which are chill even by her standards, since they mainly consist of her mumbling self-deprecating remarks ("uh... how do draw again? oh no") while making magical things happen with a drawing tablet.

I stumbled across all of this a couple weeks ago, and have been backfilling my understanding of what's going on mostly from clips and best-of compilations, since watching three years' worth of actual streams would take... well, three years. By an interesting coincidence, the first HoloEN generation, Myth, debuted only a few weeks after I wrote the original Trouble With Randos post--their third anniversary is next week--so while the first five were just finding their feet and getting established, I was buried in a different avalanche, the one that led to Gallian Gothic.

I'm kind of sorry I missed it, because I get the impression that Myth's first year was a real lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon--that they were something of an experiment on the company's part, one that no one on the outside really expected to succeed, but they came along at just the right time. They debuted at the end of the first pandemic summer, when the western world was starting to realize that this thing was going to go on for way longer than they promised us, and the numbers suggest they helped get a lot of people through that winter.

And I can see why, because behind the culturejammed high concept and the slightly unsettling parasocial dynamics of following a real person presented as a fictional character, they're all so goddamn charming. I mean, I spend at least a quarter of my watch time thinking about how the tech works (and I know at least one of them does too, which is kind of fun), and I enjoy them the most when they're paying the least attention to the kayfabe, which is probably not what the company behind them intended? But yeah. I'm on board. Like the man said, the street finds its own uses for things. :)

At present, there are three EN generations, the most recent of which, codenamed "Advent", just debuted a few weeks ago. At the moment, the standout of the batch to me is Koseki Bijou, who looks like a magical princess, has the voice of a little girl, and chooses violence at every opportunity in the games she plays. She established her bona fides during her first time streaming Armored Core 6, when the game started to load out to a cutscene when she met the mission objectives but there were still enemy units on the map, prompting her to squeak in dismay,

"Wait! I wanna kill more people! I wanna kill more people! I wanna kill more people, I'm not done!!"

Yeah. The Force is strong in Biboo. :)

I know much, much less about the other branches than I do about the English one, except that there are way too many in the Japanese one for me to keep track of (because there are, like, six or seven generations of them going back at least six years), and that the Indonesian ones seem to have a reputation for being completely bonkers even within the organization as a whole. I mean, one of them is a zombie idol who is literally named Kureiji Ollie and speaks at about 10,000 words per minute in three languages at once, which, you know, it's hard to beat that for bonkersitude.

At this moment, I have only the vaguest idea whether or how most members of Hololive would ever turn up in UF, but I figured I'd put this post here instead of in General anyway, because what the hell, I ought to know how these things work around here by now. :)

--G.
"Gryph, did you unseal another ancient tomb of evil?" "Well, I mean, it worked out fine when I opened yours."
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-07-23 AT 05:14 AM (EDT)
 
Oh goodness, yes, the *vtuber rabbit hole*! It was only a matter of time after the vocaloid one, really~

There’s a BUNCH of companies, but the major ones you’re most likely to run into as a casual are Hololive, Nijisanji, and VShojo. VShojo mostly lives on Twitch, but you’ll see a LOT of clips on YouTube. I especially suggest IronMAvatar and Bae verbally
>drawing a blank had me busting up.

I occasionally get the feeling that Nerissa might be even older than that. I realize recorded media are largely atemporal and some of the kids these days are ironically into the '80s, but even so, some of her references feel to me suspiciously like they come from an approximate contemporary.

>Side-note here: If you follow Hololive long enough, you'll hear the
>terms "seiso" and "yabai." "Seiso" basically translates as "neat and
>clean, tidy trim" and is used to describe the rules that idols in
>professional groups are expected to abide by (ex: No dating, no
>swearing, no drugs, no tattoos, etc) and can be fired immediately for
>violating.

Heh. Since I coincidentally came to HoloEN by way of one of the members who, just coincidentally, very rarely if ever swears, I didn't realize at first that they didn't have a rule about that. Didn't take Calliope too long to set me straight on that account. :)

>"Yabai" is sort of the flipside and translates as "risky"
>or "dangerous," which in the context of vtubers means doing all those
>things that idols would be forbidden from doing. Hence the running
>joke in Hololive to insist that they're "seiso idols" when caught
>acting "yabai."

As Ina puts it, "I'm seiso because I say so."

--G.
"'Dear Calli, my friend plays the recorder better than you.' Hey, fuck your friend. ... I'm sorry, that wasn't fair to your friend, I just, I got so upset."
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I occasionally get the feeling that Nerissa might be even older than
>that. I realize recorded media are largely atemporal and some of the
>kids these days are ironically into the '80s, but even so, some of her
>references feel to me suspiciously like they come from an approximate
>contemporary.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised, the (estimated) age range of talent at Hololive is rather wide, so Nerissa would fit in with Marine down at the "eternally 17" end.

>Heh. Since I coincidentally came to HoloEN by way of one of the
>members who, just coincidentally, very rarely if ever swears, I didn't
>realize at first that they didn't have a rule about that.
>Didn't take Calliope too long to set me straight on that account. :)

If you hadn't started the thread with a pic of Ina, I might have guessed you were speaking of Mumei or Fauna. Or perhaps Irys, though there is a reason that the fans have coined the term "YabaIrys." But yeah, Calli is most definitely not seiso and I doubt even forcing her to use a swear jar would fix that.

>As Ina puts it, "I'm seiso because I say so."

Ina's a cinnamon roll, she's too sweet to be yabai.

>--G.
>"'Dear Calli, my friend plays the recorder better than
>you.' Hey, fuck your friend. ... I'm sorry, that wasn't fair
>to your friend, I just, I got so upset."

"Breaking news, literally 70% of the chat are saying '144p Calli.' SHUT THE FUCK UP! Everyone gets that I'm 144p, you're not a special snowflake for noticing! Shut up! Anyway, I hope you guys are having fun enjoying the Worms tourney."

>>I occasionally get the feeling that Nerissa might be even older than
>>that. I realize recorded media are largely atemporal and some of the
>>kids these days are ironically into the '80s, but even so, some of her
>>references feel to me suspiciously like they come from an approximate
>>contemporary.
>
>I honestly wouldn't be surprised, the (estimated) age range of talent
>at Hololive is rather wide, so Nerissa would fit in with Marine down
>at the "eternally 17" end.

Without going TOO far into "forbidden knowledge" she's definitely at the upper end of the scale. She's been...*around* for a while.

>>Heh. Since I coincidentally came to HoloEN by way of one of the
>>members who, just coincidentally, very rarely if ever swears, I didn't
>>realize at first that they didn't have a rule about that.
>>Didn't take Calliope too long to set me straight on that account. :)
>
>If you hadn't started the thread with a pic of Ina, I might have
>guessed you were speaking of Mumei or Fauna. Or perhaps Irys, though
>there is a reason that the fans have coined the term "YabaIrys." But
>yeah, Calli is most definitely not seiso and I doubt even forcing her
>to use a swear jar would fix that.

I think Kiara might swear more, but englush is her at LEAST second language and I've noticed and heard that ESL folks tend to swear more, possibly because their minds don't really associate the words as cussing.

>>As Ina puts it, "I'm seiso because I say so."
>
>Ina's a cinnamon roll, she's too sweet to be yabai.

Ina has her moments, she just doesn't swear. :)

>>--G.
>>"'Dear Calli, my friend plays the recorder better than
>>you.' Hey, fuck your friend. ... I'm sorry, that wasn't fair
>>to your friend, I just, I got so upset."
>
>"Breaking news, literally 70% of the chat are saying '144p Calli.'
>SHUT THE FUCK UP! Everyone gets that I'm 144p, you're not a
>special snowflake for noticing! Shut up! Anyway, I hope you guys are
>having fun enjoying the Worms tourney."

I love how Calli can turn it on and off like that~ It's especially neat when she does it singing. One verse us all sweet and cute and the next is *rage at the machinery which grinds hopes and dreams into duuuuusssstttt*. I can't think of any of the other girls who can quite match that sudden flip, off the top of my head.

>>She is that kid we all knew in high school who was cool as hell right
>>up until the moment she tried to talk to someone. :)
>
>God, is Calli a Texan Komi-san?

Not quite; I mean, she's capable of speaking to people, she's just not good at it. :)

>The joke is that she's twelve, and some of the things she doesn't know
>about, man, you'd really think she actually was. :)

The flip side of the joke is that her birthday is February 29, so maybe she's actually 51. :)

>She *wanted* to do all of the songs she's sung in karaoke before, but
>it turns out that was over 200, so she cut it down to one hundred. :)

I'm sad that I missed the last quarter or so of the stream, but I mean, it was like five in the morning...

(And then, naturally, someone called with an Unscheduled Crisis Activity at 10:30. Everyone's fine, but at the time it was like aaaaauuuuublblbhglbh.)

>Uruha Rushia, who got
>hit HARD with the Idol Scene backlash and then didn't help anything by
>talking to a gossip guy about it all, resulting in her termination.)

Yeah, I gather she didn't graduate so much as get erased from all the official photos of the Politburo.

>>>On the Indonesian side, Risu is adorable, yet probably lewder than
>>>she’s technically allowed to be, in Indonesia - her Nonstop Nut
>>>November’s are legendary.
>>
>>...
>
>It's not as bad as you probably think. It's *probably* weirder though.

Is it a pun thing? Like, it's literally about tree nuts, or threaded fasteners, or something?

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>Uruha Rushia, who got
>>hit HARD with the Idol Scene backlash and then didn't help anything by
>>talking to a gossip guy about it all, resulting in her termination.)
>
>Yeah, I gather she didn't graduate so much as get erased from all the
>official photos of the Politburo.

No, that'll be Hitomi Chris. There was another, Mano Aloe, who was supposed to be in JP Gen 5, and actually debuted with them, but they still remember and reference her. Hitomi Chris apparently debuted, but three weeks later was terminated, her existence scrubbed, and even the contract with the *artist who drew her concept art* was terminated. Rushia's - okay, the term is 'Talent', but 'The talent behind Rushia' feels wordy and 'Rushia's Talent' doesn't sound right at all - anyway, the person, also joined VShojo afterwards, as well as maintaining her own separate pre-existing vtuber identity. (I'm only saying this because basically nobody is trying to actually keep it secret, much like KSon) so she's doing fine, and she has a great many clips in existence, and even shows up in the backgrounds of music videos such as those Marine has done. Mano Aloe's...person is doing okay as well, though she's remaining independent. For Hitomi, all we have now, as far as I'm aware and can find, is a frankly adorable character picture and a three minute clip from her debut. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/virtualyoutuber/images/4/42/Hitomi_Chris_-_Full_Illustration.jpg= (Remove the = when you click it, I don't remember how to make an image link not embed. If that trick even still works.)

>>>>On the Indonesian side, Risu is adorable, yet probably lewder than
>>>>she’s technically allowed to be, in Indonesia - her Nonstop Nut
>>>>November’s are legendary.
>>>
>>>...
>>
>>It's not as bad as you probably think. It's *probably* weirder though.
>
>Is it a pun thing? Like, it's literally about tree nuts, or threaded
>fasteners, or something?

Yeah, she made a video every day talking about nuts, because she's a squirrel. :) The first year. Then last year got...stranger. I fear of what's going to happen this time.

Possibly the thing Korone is most famous for is her view on yubis, and whose property they are.

"Hippity hoppity, your yubi is now my property."

On the subject of HoloCure (mentioned below), Risu is THE goddess of money farming if you run the right build. She has some inbuilt skills that make her Super Effective.

...just don't do what I did and try to up her G-rank beyond 21, since it stops having an effect at that point. No, I certainly do not her at level 160-something...

Oh no, another one into the rabbit hole.

>Another is Phase Connect, with the two members that I’m most
>familiar with being Pipkin Pippa and Tenma Maemi.

Loathe as I am to talk down a talent in an environment like this, all I will say about Pippa is that she's a 4channer and leave it at that.

The last company you're likely to run into for EN is IdolCorp. Rin Penrose really works the Youtube Shorts game.

--

As for Hololive...the girls have been talked about enough aside from mentioning IRyS, who's one of the truest bilinguals, one of the best singers in the company, and a sneaky Yabai (unintentional) comedian.

So instead I will attempt to shill the boys, because the Holostars have some great talents also. Axel's an Australian dingo gladiator who's even funnier when collabing with outside Holo people like rpr (an ex-pro Apex player who's an ascended fan of vtubers). Gavis Bettel's an actually funny jester who does funny comedy bits outside random games.

Unfortunately my actual favorites from that branch both just graduated (Vesper Noir and Magni Dezmond), but if we want to break kayfabe they're both back on their previous identities so the loss is salved, at least a little. Vesper was a fellow Old Man with refined tastes and one of the best chat streamers they had. Magni Dezmond was also one of their more creative talents with some unique stream ideas.

Yeah, I didn't talk about Holostars because I don't really know much about them. The only one I followed was Grampire, and man. I would LOVE to know why him and Maglord left.

Vesper had SUCH good chemistry with everyone he collabed with.

I thought I could get into Flayon, but, I dunno. Maybe I just need to do some more of his streams and get a better feel for him...

We'll never get a true straight answer. However, if you've watched them long enough and pay attention to the rest of the company, you can infer a lot.

We love gramps but it's undeniable that Vesper was a menhera. He loved streaming but not so much all the other homework they get as corpotubers. Doubly so since Hololive is committed to their idea of being an idol company. While Vesper certainly got better at singing, it still wasn't anything he particularly liked doing, nor dancing. We can also look at post-Covid Japan being open and we can see that Cover likes having the non-local members in Japan for 2-4 months out of the year now, so they can record anniversaries and birthday streams and also have the opportunity to collab with JP members. We also know how poorly Vesper's trip went and how unprepared he was, between not having his meds and being a flaky introvert whose social battery had run low. While it's likely further trips would have gone better, especially given time to research how to get his meds brought in with the right forms, it still wouldn't have been expected to be a great time for him. (Consider Aqua or Pekora having to spend months in the US or something and cry/laugh.)

On top of that, he's someone who clashed with management enough in the past to have to be disciplined for it. AND he was one of the members getting screwed the most by draconian JP copyright laws.

As for Magni...management clashes/permissions are going to play a big factor there. A lot of his unique skits like Judge Magni never got follow-ons because management denied it. For the content that he wants to do, that takes a toll. Combine that with game permissions again and that's not really a surprise. His personal channel was also still doing better than him as Magni, so he had a fallback.

I had no idea about a japan trip, huh. Don't know how I missed that.

Though I take minor issue with the idol company thing; If they really fully cared about that, for the EN side at least, they probably wouldn't have hired Ame. She.....she tries. She's gotten much better! But I think her comfortable register is kinda narrow...Botan likewise isn't...amazing. And of course there was Coco. I think more modern Hololive is generally more interested in *entertainers* than singing and dancing. Ame seems to do it because she likes it, same with Coco's karaokes. Has Botan ever sung that wasn't an arranged/group thing? If she has, I can't think of it off the top of my head.

But yeah, I think singing and/or dancing is a *bonus feature* for hiring practices with Hololive as of gen 4. Maybe it's still a major factor, but they'll still go for folks who don't/can't so long as they're entertaining.

Everything else you said though, yeah, that's definitely grounds for it. Which is super too bad, cuz, like said, Vesper was great. God, just his stories about his life were all golden.

(Incidentally, I keep hearing that term, but I don't know what it means, what is menhera?)

>Though I take minor issue with the idol company thing; If they really
>fully cared about that, for the EN side at least, they probably
>wouldn't have hired Ame. She.....she tries. She's gotten much better!
>But I think her comfortable register is kinda narrow...Botan likewise
>isn't...amazing. And of course there was Coco. I think more modern
>Hololive is generally more interested in *entertainers* than singing
>and dancing. Ame seems to do it because she likes it, same with Coco's
>karaokes. Has Botan ever sung that wasn't an arranged/group thing? If
>she has, I can't think of it off the top of my head.
>

That's sort of the point. Ame sucked at the start, but she was willing to try. If Vesper is vaguely trying but didn't enjoy the process or wants to give up, that would be a contributing factor. (Incidentally Coco still sings post graduation every few months, especially now that she also doesn't give nearly as much a shit about copyright as she used to have to.)

>(Incidentally, I keep hearing that term, but I don't know what it
>means, what is menhera?)

It's a loose portmanteau of "mental health-er" with JP origins. Someone suffering from mental illness/in need of mental health care. The bigger holo example used to be Rushia.

There's an associated fashion trend and some other stuff but they're not strictly quite as relevant when it's being used in the vtubing/streaming space.

Hah! Well, it had to happen eventually!

For your (and anyone else's who finds themselves intrigued) entertainment, there's a -completely and entirely free and will always be free- game that's now on Steam called HoloCure: Save the Fans. It's...basically Vampire Survivor (for those not familiar, it's a 2D sprite timed horde-spawn where you control a character at screen center, and enemies just charge towards you mostly slowly; each one you kill drops an exp pickup and maybe a healing item or some coins, and leveling up lets you choose from random weapons/items to either add to your arsenal or upgrade if you already have 'em) but with the cast of HoloLive. Even if you (like me) know -basically nothing- about this phenomenon (besides it being amusing and chill and adorable, etc.), the game is fantastic. The creator and the artist/animator is apparently one of the (or he's the lead, can't recall which) animators for River City Girls, who is a -huge- HoloLive fan by all accounts. Everything in the game is a reference or an in-joke, and each of the VTubers that are represented so far (which is most of them I gather) have a unique set of skills and main weapon, and the pick-ups and enemies are references to them and their fanbases. It's a joy to play, and it goes in relatively short bursts.

It even has a chill-time low-budget "house" sim game inside the game! I haven't messed with this too much, but it's got a rhythm-based fishing minigame, a different one for cooking, you can decorate the house. It is damned impressive as just an "extra" in another game.

Highly recommend, and absolutely free to both get and play!

>Hah! Well, it had to happen eventually!
>
>For your (and anyone else's who finds themselves intrigued)
>entertainment, there's a -completely and entirely free and will always
>be free- game that's now on Steam called HoloCure: Save the Fans.

Now that I've learned something of the subject matter, I'm genuinely unable to decide which is more entertaining: watching actual Hololive members play this game and get the references to themselves and their colleagues, or watching YT gamers who have never heard of Hololive play it and be like "this game is great but whaaaaaaaat the fuck is going on."

I can't with the game itself, because I find its particular flavor of gameplay incredibly stressful and disorienting for some reason, but it's fun to watch people who can actually cope with it playing it.

>It's...basically Vampire Survivor

I feel obligated at this point to note that all of these games are, ultimately, descendants of Robotron 2084. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Probably the best example of the Myth unit's "serious" work is the track that could be considered their anthem, "Non-Fiction". The fingerprints of Myth's first two years, struggling to see their audiences and themselves through the depths of the pandemic, are all over those lyrics. They've also performed a more conventional idol-style song, "Journey Like a Thousand Years", which is more specifically about the fact that they weren't able to all get together in one place until well after their first anniversary as a unit.

Also very much in this category is "Reflect", Gawr Gura's image song, which is--at least on its face--about her character's backstory as a (possibly "the") survivor of Atlantis.

For contrast, here are a couple of fan animations of in-stream conversations involving Calli, Gura, and energy drinks, which more accurately convey a flavor of what they're like under normal circumstances. :)

--G.
"... healthy... caffeine... 'adults'... daily?"
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-13-23 AT 04:38 PM (EDT)
 
In case I've piqued anyone's interest who wasn't far enough down the hole to know this already: This week is HoloEN Myth's third anniversary. Their collaborative event is tomorrow, but the individual members' anniversary streams started happening today. Kiara went first, then Ina, and Calli's starts in a few minutes, at 10 Eastern (the VOD will be at the same link afterward). Gura and Ame don't have placeholders up for their individual streams yet, though I presume they're going to have them sometime later in the week.

For what I'm guessing are Logistical Reasons having to do with the fact that they live all over the dang planet and several of them only just recently got home from traveling to Japan for the "Splash Party" summer event, the group event this year is a relay, starting on Calli's channel and ending on Ame's. I assume each one is going to raid the next, or whatever they call it on YouTube, at the end of her segment, so the audience doesn't have to migrate by hand.

As a fun bonus, Ina posted a time-lapse of her process of drawing the illustration for her third-anniversary merch. Spoiler: There is a very great deal of flipping the canvas around. She does that a lot. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

When I posted the above, the placeholders weren't up for the anniversary relay streams yet. Now they are, so, what the hell, posts are free.

5 PM Eastern/2 PM Pacific: Calli
6 PM Eastern/3 PM Pacific: Kiara
7 PM Eastern/4 PM Pacific: Ina
8 PM Eastern/5 PM Pacific: Gura
9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific: Ame

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>At this moment, I have only the vaguest idea whether or how most
>members of Hololive would ever turn up in UF, but I figured I'd put
>this post here instead of in General anyway, because what the hell, I
>ought to know how these things work around here by now. :)

Calli works for "Death-sensei," though "apprentice" is more like gofer who does some lite reaping on the side, perhaps dealing with some of the guys that the goddess would prefer not to meet with. She's technically on a "training" mission to Midgard, but really it's more a prolonged holiday to get her to chill out a little. And no, nobody's entirely sure how she ended up on Funkotron or why she got signed to cut a rap album, but the girls in the office like the sound and Death is just happy she's having fun.

Kiara's the owner and operator of a franchise of fried chicken shops called "KFP" (Kentucky Fried Phoenix) that appeared suddenly and grew so fast that even Genom said "Whoa, calm down now." Death has taken an interest in her recently as she's been reported (and verified) as dead twice, once even involving the destruction of a starliner by antimatter annihilation, yet she popped back up almost immediately without a dent in the fender.

Ina works for the BPRD as a research assistant in their library, dealing with research involving various tomes, texts, and arcane literature. How she got there, who she is, and what sort of sandwich she likes are total mysteries to the staff. All they know is one day she was there, the books seem to like her, and the Head Librarian is happy for the extra help. She's also a regular at Strangefate Books, initially to the displeasure of the management and staff who know she's hiding something of dire proportions, but have since made peace with her presence such that she and Raven meet up twice a week for tea and quiet reading time.

Amelia is not a renegade Time Lady or a time cop from some future agency, she's even stranger as a young woman from the 19th century who "accidentally" got her hands on a vortex manipulator from a Time Agent (or rather what was left of his arm). Until recently she had lived in a flat in Merylbone, London as a consulting detective who worked cases both independently and with Scotland Yard involving the strange and unusual. Or she did until Earthdome clamped down, after which she appeared in New Avalon seemingly the same day and offering her services to the NAPD the next. There are whispers that she's at the center of something far above and bigger than even the IPO knows about, but nobody knows what and she's not saying.

Gura is Amelia's roommate and that's about as much as most people know. The detective found her while investigating a series of attacks and thefts from patrons on Oxford Street, in this case ransacking a fish store and feasting on some of the inventory. She's since "domesticated" her and got her at least speaking Standard and dressing in something more than rags, but all attempts to trace her origins have come up empty and nothing about her (DNA, biometrics, dental, etc) turns up in any of the galaxy's databases. The one attempt to probe her telepathically nearly ended in disaster, with the consulting telepath only able to glean one word for their troubles: "Atlantis."

Cut it, print it, make it into a story. I want this.

For most of everyone else, you could probably just kind of slot them into the appropriate settings for their canon backstories and the like. A bunch would likely be from Cephiro, some Salesian’s, some Catians, I forget if there’s canid people, (wait, I just remembered there are, Sirians?) but there’s like four dog girls. Anya Melfisa, who is a blade, feels like she’d fit with the....El Hazard aligned bunch. HoloX being a group of interest for ACROSS, Council being either Cephiran or God attached...Mel is a vampire, Choco, and Towa are demons, Kanata an angel...And more than a few could probably just be Vocaloid or Art of Noise contemporaries.

I’ve found that finding a place or setting for a character will often cause the actual story pieces to fall into place on their own, sooner or later, for me at least.

>I forget if there’s canid people, (wait, I just remembered
>there are, Sirians?)

Yeah, you know, from Sirius, the Dog Star? ;)

--G.
I feel like I should award my 1990s self an audible rimshot for that one.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Hahaaaa, yeah, that's why I figured that one :3 I only remembered because of that ollld Rita and Runt short somebody wrote~

> I forget if there’s canid people, (wait, I just remembered there are, Sirians?)

In a derelict story I have one named Kururon Roy, who is an instructor at the WWWA Academy and is rumored to have had some interesting things in his past, possibly with that signet ring he wears. I mean, there's not even a U in his name why would he have it?

Eh, it's probably nothing.

--
Jen Dantes - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lady of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

Interestingly, some of these are pretty close to the shadowy fragments that have been kicking around in my head; others, not so much. :) Mainly that's because my two remaining brain cells can't agree about whether they should be in the main UF timeline, OWaW, or both. :)

>Calli works for "Death-sensei," though "apprentice" is more like gofer
>who does some lite reaping on the side, perhaps dealing with some of
>the guys that the goddess would prefer not to meet with.

Heh, I could see Tel sending Calli to handle the crazy death cultists who periodically try to summon her. They're all expecting someone like Forseti, and instead they get someone who a) looks like a pink-haired anime waifu but b) chooses more violence than they were even expecting. I bet half the time she doesn't even bother putting on her standard junior reaper uniform and just shows up in her tracksuit, or the Yakuza outfit from the "Q" MV. "Yo. The fuck's wrong with you guys, you gotta keep doin' this shit?"

>And no, nobody's
>entirely sure how she ended up on Funkotron or why she got signed to
>cut a rap album, but the girls in the office like the sound and Death
>is just happy she's having fun.

Went to Tomodachi, thought she was applying for a job doing night security at Vocalo World, accidentally got hired as a holoidol. Didn't figure it out until far enough into training that it would've been rude to quit.

>Kiara's the owner and operator of a franchise of fried chicken shops
>called "KFP" (Kentucky Fried Phoenix) that appeared suddenly and grew
>so fast that even Genom said "Whoa, calm down now."

Isn't the K just for Kiara? That seems like the kind of thing they would lean on for the humor value of being Legally Distinct.

Also, fun fact: there is an actual chicken breed called the Phoenix. I'm sure the Hololive people knew that, particularly since said breed is German in origin. :)

>Death has taken
>an interest in her recently as she's been reported (and verified) as
>dead twice, once even involving the destruction of a starliner by
>antimatter annihilation, yet she popped back up almost immediately
>without a dent in the fender.

For bonus points, she has no connection whatsoever to the Phoenix Entity; she's an actual phoenix, the mythical resurrecting bird. How, then, is she also a person?

Sandstar! I mean, obviously.

>She's also a regular at Strangefate Books,
>initially to the displeasure of the management and staff who know
>she's hiding something of dire proportions, but have since made peace
>with her presence such that she and Raven meet up twice a week for tea
>and quiet reading time.

I feel like Ina isn't the type to hide anything, even the fact that she's a servant of the Ancient Ones. I mean, they moderate her stream chat. :) It's more that she's had to get people like the BPRD and Raven used to the idea that the Ancient Ones--at least, her Ancient Ones--aren't actually, like, bent on eating the universe or anything weird like that. They're just... y'know, chilling in their unknowable angles and stuff. It's not their fault insane death cults keep calling on their power to do unneighborly things. They don't have any real control over that, if somebody knows the right ceremonies and whatnot it just happens.

>Amelia is not a renegade Time Lady or a time cop from some future
>agency, she's even stranger as a young woman from the 19th century who
>"accidentally" got her hands on a vortex manipulator from a Time Agent
>(or rather what was left of his arm). Until recently she had lived in
>a flat in Merylbone, London as a consulting detective who worked cases
>both independently and with Scotland Yard involving the strange and
>unusual.

So here's an interesting thing. Amid the vast plethora of Sherlock Holmes-related follow-on works that have been written in the decades since Arthur Conan Doyle's death, there is a series of short stories by pop culture writer Michael Mallory starring Dr. John Watson's second wife, who is mentioned once in Doyle's original stories (when Holmes, unusually narrating one of the later stories himself, remarks that at the time the adventure being chronicled happened, Watson had "deserted me for a wife"). The second Mrs. Watson's name is never mentioned, only that he had one. In Mallory's stories, her name is Amelia.

Now, I'm not for a moment suggesting that Amelia Watson the VTuber is the same character. That would be absurd, even though she's a time traveler--she's too young, and also pretty clearly single.

It wasn't unusual for parents in Victorian/Edwardian England to name one of their daughters after her mother, though...

(On the other side of the fourth wall, I wonder whether anyone at Cover knew about Mallory's Amelia Watson and named their character after her as a deliberate wink, or if they just liked the ring of the name and it's a random coincidence.)

>Or she did until Earthdome clamped down, after which she
>appeared in New Avalon seemingly the same day and offering her
>services to the NAPD the next. There are whispers that she's at the
>center of something far above and bigger than even the IPO knows
>about, but nobody knows what and she's not saying.

Ame, like Ina, could easily exist in either the main UF timeline or OWaW. Heck, if she lives in London in 332/S-1946, she could easily be John and Amelia Watson (the Elder)'s granddaughter without invoking time travel. Living in her grandfather's old flat, reading all the random books and papers his eccentric friend left behind, poking around in strange corners of Britannia, finding a weird old watch somebody sealed in a wall of an old convent school in darkest Wales for some inscrutable reason...

... Lena did promise to hit up everyone she knows who knows something about messing around with time...

>Gura is Amelia's roommate and that's about as much as most people
>know. The detective found her while investigating a series of attacks
>and thefts from patrons on Oxford Street, in this case ransacking a
>fish store and feasting on some of the inventory.

Heyyyy, wait a second, I've seen this video. :)

>all attempts to trace her origins
>have come up empty and nothing about her (DNA, biometrics, dental,
>etc) turns up in any of the galaxy's databases. The one attempt to
>probe her telepathically nearly ended in disaster, with the consulting
>telepath only able to glean one word for their troubles: "Atlantis."

At which point the question arises: the ancient space empire, or the lost continent on Earth? (Turns out that's kind of a trick question but hey ho.)

If she lives in an era where DNA analysis is a thing, that wouldn't answer any questions to do with "has she ever been sequenced before?" but it would turn up some very interesting things in a straight-up analytical sense--like the fact that her shark traits are a set of extremely sophisticated mods performed very, very early in her life. Like, before-she-was-born early. Unfortunately, no one remembers enough about Atlantean culture to understand what that means.

I mean, I do, but the trick then is finding a way to present it to the reader, since no one inside the setting does, including Gura herself. And it's kind of a moot point if she's introduced in the OWaW branch, since that kind of analytical technology doesn't exist then. Well, G's omnitool might be able to do at least a rough-draft version, but he probably wouldn't try it. Pretty significant invasion of privacy, even if it wasn't a huge diversion from his "don't do anything obviously futuristic in front of people" policy.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Interestingly, some of these are pretty close to the shadowy fragments
>that have been kicking around in my head; others, not so much. :)
>Mainly that's because my two remaining brain cells can't agree about
>whether they should be in the main UF timeline, OWaW, or both. :)

Well, at least in one of their cases, "both" is always the answer.

>Heh, I could see Tel sending Calli to handle the crazy death cultists
>who periodically try to summon her. They're all expecting someone
>like Forseti, and instead they get someone who a) looks like a
>pink-haired anime waifu but b) chooses more violence than they were
>even expecting. I bet half the time she doesn't even bother putting
>on her standard junior reaper uniform and just shows up in her
>tracksuit, or the Yakuza outfit from
>the "Q" MV. "Yo. The
>fuck's wrong with you guys, you gotta keep doin' this shit?"

"I hate weekend Satanists, don't you?"

>Went to Tomodachi, thought she was applying for a job doing night
>security at Vocalo World, accidentally got hired as a holoidol.
>Didn't figure it out until far enough into training that it would've
>been rude to quit.

So yeah, this all started as a much longer, more detailed post that I nuked after I realized it was turning into a novella on its own. But originally Calli getting the Joe Black treatment was part of a plan by Tel to kill the two metaphorical birds with a single stone: Get info on the recent reports of a "mortal" that has been confirmed atomized yet refuses to stay dead and get a junior employee some much-needed time away from the job before she nails her resignation letter to the door with her scythe. And that's how Calli ended up standing outside the office, file folder in one hand and corporate credit card in the other, with her boss' voice ringing in her head not to return until she's either solved the mystery or she stops radiating murderous rage.

>Isn't the K just for Kiara? That seems like the kind of thing they
>would lean on for the humor value of being Legally Distinct.

It is, I blame neuron misfire.

>Also, fun fact: there is an actual chicken breed called the Phoenix.
>I'm sure the Hololive people knew that, particularly since said breed
>is German in origin. :)

Huh, learn something new every day.

>For bonus points, she has no connection whatsoever to the
>Phoenix Entity; she's an actual phoenix, the mythical resurrecting
>bird. How, then, is she also a person?
>
>Sandstar! I mean, obviously.

That's actually way less messy than my half-baked plan to try to shoehorn her into the established pantheon.

>I feel like Ina isn't the type to hide anything, even the fact that
>she's a servant of the Ancient Ones. I mean, they moderate her stream
>chat. :) It's more that she's had to get people like the BPRD and
>Raven used to the idea that the Ancient Ones--at least, her
>Ancient Ones--aren't actually, like, bent on eating the universe or
>anything weird like that. They're just... y'know, chilling in their
>unknowable angles and stuff. It's not their fault insane death
>cults keep calling on their power to do unneighborly things. They
>don't have any real control over that, if somebody knows the right
>ceremonies and whatnot it just happens.

Perhaps unconsciously following Yagoo's mandate that HoloMyth and all those "generations" that followed have a common theme, the one I came up with when originally writing this post was "mystery." What is the story behind Kiara's seeming invulnerability, who is Ina really, where did Gura come from, and how does a time-traveling detective figure into all of this? And all of that was inspired by the fan-video Myth's Bad Ending which is worth a watch because all of the Myth girls have given it their seal of approval and some even expressed interest in collabing with the creator.

As for Ina's patron/master/boss/etc, I came to decide it would be somebody like our buddy Hermaeus Mora from over in the Elder Scrolls universe or his UF equiv. That she's pretty much as she appears, not really "evil" or all that threatening, but she's working (willingly or otherwise) for somebody who's known for having schemes within schemes and you can never be sure what he's up to until it's already unfolding.

>So here's an interesting thing. Amid the vast plethora of Sherlock
>Holmes-related follow-on works that have been written in the decades
>since Arthur Conan Doyle's death, there is a series of short stories
>by pop culture writer Michael Mallory starring Dr. John Watson's
>second wife, who is mentioned once in Doyle's original stories (when
>Holmes, unusually narrating one of the later stories himself, remarks
>that at the time the adventure being chronicled happened, Watson had
>"deserted me for a wife"). The second Mrs. Watson's name is never
>mentioned, only that he had one. In Mallory's stories, her name is
>Amelia.
>
>Now, I'm not for a moment suggesting that Amelia Watson the VTuber is
>the same character. That would be absurd, even though she's a time
>traveler--she's too young, and also pretty clearly single.
>
>It wasn't unusual for parents in Victorian/Edwardian England to name
>one of their daughters after her mother, though...
>
>(On the other side of the fourth wall, I wonder whether anyone at
>Cover knew about Mallory's Amelia Watson and named their
>character after her as a deliberate wink, or if they just liked the
>ring of the name and it's a random coincidence.)

I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if Ame herself was aware and either wrote it into her initial bio or brought it up to the folks at Hololive when they were crafting the character.

>Ame, like Ina, could easily exist in either the main UF timeline or
>OWaW. Heck, if she lives in London in 332/S-1946, she could easily be
>John and Amelia Watson (the Elder)'s granddaughter without
>invoking time travel. Living in her grandfather's old flat, reading
>all the random books and papers his eccentric friend left behind,
>poking around in strange corners of Britannia, finding a weird old
>watch somebody sealed in a wall of an old convent school in darkest
>Wales for some inscrutable reason...
>
>... Lena did promise to hit up everyone she knows who knows something
>about messing around with time...

Ame herself has sort of simplified things, saying she is John Watson's granddaughter...but she's also just one of an infinite number of Amelia Watsons who are out there running around. You know the Doctor's own timeline as shown in "The Name of the Doctor" and how it twisted and meandered within itself? Yeah, well that's simple compared to the kudzu mess she's turned her own personal timeline into. She hasn't so much broken the "Laws of Time" as she has bent them over a table and gone to work on them with a crowbar.

Also the watch originally belonged to Kronii, but Ame seems to disappear any time she tries to ask her about it.

>Heyyyy, wait a second,
>I've seen this video.
>:)

Yeah, I sort of mixed that together with bits of the Shark'd animation which also goes with the idea of Gura having just washed up on a beach without a stitch of clothing on her and no idea how the whole "currency can be exchanged for goods and services" business works on dry land.

>At which point the question arises: the ancient space empire, or the
>lost continent on Earth? (Turns out that's kind of a trick question
>but hey ho.)
>
>If she lives in an era where DNA analysis is a thing, that wouldn't
>answer any questions to do with "has she ever been sequenced before?"
>but it would turn up some very interesting things in a
>straight-up analytical sense--like the fact that her shark traits are
>a set of extremely sophisticated mods performed very, very early in
>her life. Like, before-she-was-born early. Unfortunately, no one
>remembers enough about Atlantean culture to understand what that
>means.
>
>I mean, I do, but the trick then is finding a way to present it
>to the reader, since no one inside the setting does, including Gura
>herself. And it's kind of a moot point if she's introduced in the
>OWaW branch, since that kind of analytical technology doesn't exist
>then. Well, G's omnitool might be able to do at least a rough-draft
>version, but he probably wouldn't try it. Pretty significant invasion
>of privacy, even if it wasn't a huge diversion from his "don't do
>anything obviously futuristic in front of people" policy.

Considering her association with Ame and how permeable the walls between the UF-verse, OWaW, and others appear to be at times, it's difficult to say where she really came from.

>>Mainly that's because my two remaining brain cells can't agree about
>>whether they should be in the main UF timeline, OWaW, or both. :)
>
>Well, at least in one of their cases, "both" is always the answer.

True. Probably also the case for Ina, I mean, her master(s) exist(s) outside mortally-understood time and space.

>>"Yo. The fuck's wrong with you guys, you gotta keep doin' this shit?"
>
>"I hate weekend Satanists, don't you?"

"These assholes won their court case, so they're marchin' today..."

>So yeah, this all started as a much longer, more detailed post that I
>nuked after I realized it was turning into a novella on its own.

Aw, but... novella!

>get a junior employee some
>much-needed time away from the job before she nails her resignation
>letter to the door with her scythe.

CALLI
(narrating herself as if streaming)
This fucking job, man, I swear to God. What other job does it literally make your performance review better if you snap and go on a killing spree?

>>How, then, is she also a person?
>>
>>Sandstar! I mean, obviously.
>
>That's actually way less messy than my half-baked plan to try to
>shoehorn her into the established pantheon.

It does kind of pin her to a particular era, though, since Sandstar didn't exist before the 2100s. Unless she, too, has become Unstuck in Time.

>And all of that was inspired by the fan-video
>Myth's Bad Ending which
>is worth a watch because all of the Myth girls have given it their
>seal of approval and some even expressed interest in collabing with
>the creator.

YouTube really, really wants me to see that, based on how often it turns up on my front page and in post-video recs. I have so far not taken it up on the offer, since I have a general policy of avoiding Bad Endings.

>As for Ina's patron/master/boss/etc, I came to decide it would be
>somebody like our buddy Hermaeus Mora from over in the Elder Scrolls
>universe or his UF equiv. That she's pretty much as she appears, not
>really "evil" or all that threatening, but she's working (willingly or
>otherwise) for somebody who's known for having schemes within schemes
>and you can never be sure what he's up to until it's already
>unfolding.

I figure there are two ways it could go: either that way, or the route that the Ancient Ones are less like Lovecraft's Great Old Ones and more like his Outer Gods (Azathoth et al.)--hugely powerful but not possessing any intelligence or will of their own to speak of, such that their attitude toward the mortal world is completely shaped by their agents there. The latter scenario makes Ina something like Nyarlathotep, a cosmically lesser being who is yet in a sense "over" the Outer Gods he/it serves because he/it owns an actual mind, except that Nyarlathotep is him/itself evil and Ina is not.

... Having said that, I now kind of want to see them fight. One set of blind idiot gods' corporeal servant against another, maybe with a handful of mortal investigators looking on in stupefaction, unable to comprehend that they're seeing the whole future of their universe being decided. Which fate will prevail: unending madness and suffering, or wah?

(Of course, that scenario could still play out if Ina works for old Herma-Mora. He wouldn't want Nyarlathotep's vision for the universe to prevail either; it wouldn't be any fun.)

>>(On the other side of the fourth wall, I wonder whether anyone at
>>Cover knew about Mallory's Amelia Watson and named their
>>character after her as a deliberate wink, or if they just liked the
>>ring of the name and it's a random coincidence.)
>
>I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if Ame herself was aware and either
>wrote it into her initial bio or brought it up to the folks at
>Hololive when they were crafting the character.

I read somewhere that the characters were designed years before the fact (and it lends credibility that the Myth characters' debut design sheets have 2016 copyright marks on them!), but that may only apply to the visuals. Either way, I can't imagine the talent had zero input into their development once they were cast and everything was starting to Really Happen, so you may well be right.

>She hasn't so much broken the "Laws of Time" as she has bent
>them over a table and gone to work on them with a crowbar.

INA
(mumbling to herself)
oh, that's where my crowbar went...

>Also the watch originally belonged to Kronii, but Ame seems to
>disappear any time she tries to ask her about it.

AME
I'm just borrowing it. She can have it back when I die.

MARISA
Oh, nice, I gotta remember that one.

>Yeah, I sort of mixed that together with bits of the
>Shark'd animation which
>also goes with the idea of Gura having just washed up on a beach
>without a stitch of clothing on her and no idea how the whole
>"currency can be exchanged for goods and services" business works on
>dry land.

She seems to understand the principle just fine, just not what constitutes currency. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Myth’s Bad Ending is *super* good, dude. I’m generally of the similar opinion on Bad Ends, I think, but this is....different.

I’d go into it a bit more, but I don’t think the DCForum knows what the words ‘spoiler tags’ mean.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-12-23 AT 07:05 PM (EDT)
 
>Myth’s Bad Ending is *super* good, dude. I’m generally of the
>similar opinion on Bad Ends, I think, but this is....different.
>
>I’d go into it a bit more, but I don’t think the DCForum knows
>what the words ‘spoiler tags’ mean.

[font color="white"]spoiler goes here[/font]

(obviously you need to put in some kind of framing so people know where to highlight to see it, but)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Well, a summary and basic explanation:

(Highlight past here to see)
Its a timeline where they didn’t join Hololive. There wasn’t that thing that brought the, together properly, which acted to weaken the eldritch thing in Ina-slash-strengthen her enough to keep it in check. So the evil goes on a rampage using Ina’s body, with everybody fighting to buy Ame time to do *something*. Something which ends her up in a theatre showing a YouTube video on an old film projector, with the time stamp stuck at the estimated age of the universe, where there’s several of her own lifeless bodies strewn about, and a message from herself to not try again. Current Ame rejects this, and rips the film out of the projector, which drains her own life away, the movie reverses, showing the earlier events, and move and more,the earth forming, the sun forming, the galaxy, the Big Bang. Ame falls lifeless to the theatre floor.

And the video starts playing again...maybe this time will be different. (The creator has stated that we’re living in the Good Ending).

[redacted]

Ah. Similar premise to "999", then, but more elaborate.

Mmm, I think I'll still pass for now. This is more my speed these days. Call me an emotionally fragile old man. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>True. Probably also the case for Ina, I mean, her master(s) exist(s)
>outside mortally-understood time and space.

After the first billion years, it all seems to lose meaning.

>Aw, but... novella!

Unfortunately, my muse charges me by the word and I'm a bit short this month.

>CALLI
>(narrating herself as if streaming)
>This fucking job, man, I swear to God. What other job does it
>literally make your performance review better if you snap and
>go on a killing spree?

Used to be a series on Showtime called Dead Like Me that involved a newly "hired" grim reaper who finds out that the job is really just a way for certain souls to pay off karmic debt by escorting others to the pearly gates. The catch is they have to physically touch the soon-to-die to release the soul on the moment of death, else they get stuck in there and...well...it can be a bit traumatic to attend your own autopsy. One episode in particular ended with the group the series revolved around showing up to grab a group of impending corpses at an office building...right before a mass shooting.

>It does kind of pin her to a particular era, though, since Sandstar
>didn't exist before the 2100s. Unless she, too, has become Unstuck in
>Time.

I'd also toyed with giving her the Jack Harkness treatment (Not that one, ya pervs), that one of Ame's adventures through time had rendered her a living fixed point in time and thus impossible to kill.

>I figure there are two ways it could go: either that way, or the route
>that the Ancient Ones are less like Lovecraft's Great Old Ones and
>more like his Outer Gods (Azathoth et al.)--hugely powerful but not
>possessing any intelligence or will of their own to speak of, such
>that their attitude toward the mortal world is completely shaped by
>their agents there. The latter scenario makes Ina something like
>Nyarlathotep, a cosmically lesser being who is yet in a sense "over"
>the Outer Gods he/it serves because he/it owns an actual mind, except
>that Nyarlathotep is him/itself evil and Ina is not.
>
>... Having said that, I now kind of want to see them fight. One set
>of blind idiot gods' corporeal servant against another, maybe with a
>handful of mortal investigators looking on in stupefaction, unable to
>comprehend that they're seeing the whole future of their universe
>being decided. Which fate will prevail: unending madness and
>suffering, or wah?

So long as it isn't the Forbidden WAH.

>(Of course, that scenario could still play out if Ina works for old
>Herma-Mora. He wouldn't want Nyarlathotep's vision for the universe
>to prevail either; it wouldn't be any fun.)

He wouldn't say anything either way, but I'm sure he'd at least be interested in the outcome.

>I read somewhere that the characters were designed years before
>the fact (and it lends credibility that the Myth characters' debut
>design sheets have 2016 copyright marks on them!), but that may
>only apply to the visuals. Either way, I can't imagine the talent had
>zero input into their development once they were cast and everything
>was starting to Really Happen, so you may well be right.

Since -Myth- didn't make their debut until 2020, I suspect it might be a case of artists just being asked to submit a series of designs and management keeping them in a folder until they found somebody that fit the bill.

>INA
>(mumbling to herself)
>oh, that's where my crowbar went...

One of my favorite "cute Ina" moments is super chat bullying her during a drawing stream by playing tic tac toe on her forehead, her response upon realizing a shouted "Oi!" before muttering "Where's my crowbar?"

>AME
>I'm just borrowing it. She can have it back when I die.
>
>MARISA
>Oh, nice, I gotta remember that one.

And the two parted, only to realize they'd each successfully stolen the other's hat.

>She seems to understand the principle just fine, just not what
>constitutes currency. :)

I suppose if one wanted to be really generous, they could argue that what she offered was gold dust harvested from ocean water, though its value in the 25th century might be up to debate.

>One episode in particular ended
>with the group the series revolved around showing up to grab a group
>of impending corpses at an office building...right before a mass
>shooting.

Oof.

>I'd also toyed with giving her the Jack Harkness treatment >size="2"](Not that one, ya pervs)

Given Kiara's personality, possibly that one too. I mean, I could easily see her delivering his little monologue about how he avoided the death penalty that one time. "Woke up in bed with both of my executioners. Lovely couple, they stayed in touch! Can't say that about most executioners."

>>Which fate will prevail: unending madness and
>>suffering, or wah?
>
>So long as it isn't the Forbidden WAH.

... I mean it might be the Forbidden WAH.

>Since -Myth- didn't make their debut until 2020, I suspect it might be
>a case of artists just being asked to submit a series of designs and
>management keeping them in a folder until they found somebody that fit
>the bill.

Since I posted the original observation, I've noticed that even the ad graphics for Myth's newly announced third-anniversary merch have 2016 copyright citations on them, which, given that they talk about designing the stuff as part of the run-up to the event, leads me to suspect that maybe the art department just hasn't updated the boilerplate they stick on company graphics since... ever.

(Although I have heard that about the character designs before. At least the initial ones; their later costumes seem to have been devised with input from the talent in most cases.)

>One of my favorite "cute Ina" moments is super chat bullying her during a drawing stream by
>playing tic tac toe on her forehead, her response upon realizing a
>shouted "Oi!" before muttering "Where's my crowbar?"

"Sheeeeesh."

>And the two parted, only to realize they'd each successfully stolen
>the other's hat.

I'm not sure which is the cuter image, Detective Marisa or Witch Ame.

>>She seems to understand the principle just fine, just not what
>>constitutes currency. :)
>
>I suppose if one wanted to be really generous, they could argue that
>what she offered was gold dust harvested from ocean water, though its
>value in the 25th century might be up to debate.

Some of those little shells might also be valuable, at least to science.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Oof.

Yeah, the series ran on pure, unleaded dark humor.

>Given Kiara's personality, possibly that one too. I mean, I could
>easily see her delivering his little monologue about how he avoided
>the death penalty that one time. "Woke up in bed with both of my
>executioners. Lovely couple, they stayed in touch! Can't say that
>about most executioners."

One of those random bits of trivia that occasionally pops out of my brain is that the last words of Marie Antoinette were not words of scorn or pleas to the crowd attending her execution, but instead apologies to the executioner for accidentally stepping on his foot.

>... I mean it might be the Forbidden WAH.

Kinky.

>Since I posted the original observation, I've noticed that even the ad
>graphics for Myth's newly announced third-anniversary merch have 2016
>copyright citations on them, which, given that they talk about
>designing the stuff as part of the run-up to the event, leads me to
>suspect that maybe the art department just hasn't updated the
>boilerplate they stick on company graphics since... ever.
>
>(Although I have heard that about the character designs before. At
>least the initial ones; their later costumes seem to have been devised
>with input from the talent in most cases.)

Probably a bit of half and half, the studio coming up with the initial designs and then the talents chiming in to flesh them out.

>I'm not sure which is the cuter image, Detective Marisa or Witch Ame.

So yes, not only is there a picture of Marisa in a deerstalker, there's also several pics of Ame with a witch's hat. And a bonus pic: Ina as Patchouli.

>Some of those little shells might also be valuable, at least to
>science.

Hey, whatever pays the rent.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-12-23 AT 01:01 PM (EDT)
 
>
>I feel like Ina isn't the type to hide anything, even the fact that
>she's a servant of the Ancient Ones. I mean, they moderate her stream
>chat. :) It's more that she's had to get people like the BPRD and
>Raven used to the idea that the Ancient Ones--at least, her
>Ancient Ones--aren't actually, like, bent on eating the universe or
>anything weird like that. They're just... y'know, chilling in their
>unknowable angles and stuff. It's not their fault insane death
>cults keep calling on their power to do unneighborly things. They
>don't have any real control over that, if somebody knows the right
>ceremonies and whatnot it just happens.
>

I can see this set of Ancient Ones also being connected with your idea of a girl and her only-here-for-the-cuddles tentacle demon. Not that the ladies would necessarily know each other, but if Ina crossed paths with them, she'd double-take before saying something like, "Bob? Bob from Nrgl'veth?"

Peter Eng
--
Now I'm imagining an Ancient One who's the equivalent of somebody from Kansai, or a Southie. It gets weirder from there.

>>Kiara's the owner and operator of a franchise of fried chicken shops
>>called "KFP" (Kentucky Fried Phoenix) that appeared suddenly and grew
>>so fast that even Genom said "Whoa, calm down now."
>
>Isn't the K just for Kiara? That seems like the kind of thing they
>would lean on for the humor value of being Legally Distinct.
>
>Also, fun fact: there is an actual chicken breed called the Phoenix.
>I'm sure the Hololive people knew that, particularly since said breed
>is German in origin. :)

I haven't actually watched any of this but the whole KFP line makes me want to say she's related to Mokou and Kaguya somehow.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-18-23 AT 10:44 AM (EDT)
 
It never struck me how much like Mokou Kiara is until you said that. But I suppose that comes from Mokou basically being a Phoenix herself.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-19-23 AT 04:07 PM (EDT)
 
>It never struck me how much like Mokou Kiara is until you said that.
>But I suppose that comes from Mokou basically being a Phoenix herself.

It must make the front office sweat sometimes, but I find Kiara's casual lapses into multilingual profanity simultaneously funny and kind of charming--especially when she mixes languages in the same sentence, as in her rant about her original Live2D sprite's flat butt. "From the front I look like I've got some hips, but from the side it's like question mark question mark question mark, nani the fuck?! Chotto matte eine goddamn Sekunde here??"

I never really pictured Moko swearing like a sailor in multiple languages, but the idea does have a certain appeal. I could see her doing a similar thing, but some of the languages are long-dead dialects modern speakers can't follow. :)

Come to think of it, Ina does that sometimes too, except without the swearing (my personal favorite being the occasions when she asks a video game baddie who is about to kill her character to "yamete kudastop"). In a fictional setting that buys harder into the kayfabe, I assume one of the languages she throws into those portmanteaux would be R'lyeh-go.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I never really pictured Moko swearing like a sailor in multiple
>languages, but the idea does have a certain appeal. I could see her
>doing a similar thing, but some of the languages are long-dead
>dialects modern speakers can't follow. :)

I sort of imagine that on an average day, she and Kaguya manage to sound like they might plausibly be old members of the WDF, the former sounding like a middle class girl from the suburbs while the latter sounds like a rich girl from the country club. Then they start arguing and the facade gradually collapses until an otherwise mundane squabble winds up sounding like a particularly lively act from a Tomodachi kabuki theater. This inevitably backfired spectacularly one year when they were caught in the act by some of Kaguya's students and had to lie that it actually was practice for a play. Thus that year's school yearbook included a pic of Kaguya from the annual cultural festival, her face painted chalk white as she engaged in (what else?) a noblewoman's laugh.

Just for the record, 'Yamete Kudastop' and several other Japanese/english portmanteaus are an in-joke to Kiryu Coco, who was...vocal about her dislike of them. :) Look up some of her 'Meme Reviews' and you'll see~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sC0P1TDfO4&list=PLYl3_dDKx3OJuirPlaK3D58I-7P5lXU9y Like most streamer chats, Coco's audience loved to torment her, and she them~

LAST EDITED ON Sep-28-23 AT 06:12 PM (EDT) by Gryphon (admin)
 
[link repair, nothing to see --G.]

An excerpt from what was Coco's favorite episode. She earned her categorization as EN Gen 0.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-16-23 AT 00:01 AM (EDT) by Gryphon (admin)
 
[DCF links don't work that way. Don't look at me! To quote that quintessential thespian Michael Biehn, I didn't build the f---ing thing! --G.]

One more note! If you at all want to try and check out what the holoJPs are up to and not only live through clipper channels, two of the easiest are probably Polka and Watame. Both have fully subtitled video series separate from their streams.

Legend of Polka - a 10-15 skit show every week, with occasionally her doing wacky stuff like going bungee jumping or skydiving for bigger announcements or milestones.

Watame Have a Nice Day - longer episodes that tend to be travelogues documenting her going somewhere in Japan with another holomem

Watame Did Borderline Nothing Wrong - 10-30s animated shorts of Watame absolutely doing something wrong

>Legend of Polka - a 10-15 skit show every week, with occasionally her doing
>wacky stuff like going bungee jumping or skydiving for bigger
>announcements or milestones.

Oh, I heard about this. Bae mentioned the one where they made her bungee jump off a bridge in one of her chat streams.

>Watame >Did Borderline Nothing Wrong> - 10-30s animated shorts of Watame
>absolutely doing something wrong

I feel like most of these are based on injokes I don't get, although, paradoxically, I kind of enjoy that sensation. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I feel like most of these are based on injokes I don't get, although,
>paradoxically, I kind of enjoy that sensation. :)

Speaking of injokes I didn't get, early in the odyssey I watched a clip of a couple of the EN members playing Dead Space, and one of them (I think it was Ame) made a remark that I didn't recognize until later as a small work of genius. Barging through a door into a room full of Necromorphs, she said in what I later realized was an exact replica of the chirpy tone IRyS usually uses when she introduces herself,

"Hisaac! It's Isaac!"

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-18-23 AT 04:37 PM (EDT)
 
Watame did Borderline Nothing Wrong, along with Holo no Graffiti (Or HoloGra) run mainly on in-jokes, absurdity, and especially Japanese Puns. It tends to have the problem many official things have of not really being entirely up on some aspects of a talent's, let's say 'updated' lore (IE, what they've come up with organically and with their fans), going with a more official take, but they're close enough for government work, as they say.

Though Watame will also throw in a solid 10% or so of just being horny, like with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCzVgWH7U3o This episode with Calli.

She has earned the nickname 'Wata-Oji', or 'Old Man Watame' for her...*appreciation*...of her co-workers forms. :)

(Edit to add:) OH! I guess somebody should explain the core in-joke of the Nothing Wrong series. See, very early on, Watame's internet was *extremely* bad, to the point she could barely stream and it was infact cut short. In the next 'Asacoco' "news" segment she appeared and said that she 'did nothing wrong, you know?' (Waruko nai yo ne?) and it instantly became a joke where she never does anything wrong and is never actually at fault. :)

(Hologra doesn't seem to have an official playlist, but others have made them. This seems to be the most up to date, though it's missing the latest few.) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPZferZXSpjgE_mg6mKqQRJLlRbk0Sxjp

>Though Watame will also throw in a solid 10% or so of just being
>horny, like with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCzVgWH7U3o This
>episode with Calli.
>
>She has earned the nickname 'Wata-Oji', or 'Old Man Watame' for
>her...*appreciation*...of her co-workers forms. :)

I'd just like to point out that while the ewes of some sheep species do have horns, they don't curl around like Watame's. Only rams have horns that shape. Take that as you will. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>Though Watame will also throw in a solid 10% or so of just being
>>horny, like with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCzVgWH7U3o This
>>episode with Calli.
>>
>>She has earned the nickname 'Wata-Oji', or 'Old Man Watame' for
>>her...*appreciation*...of her co-workers forms. :)
>
>I'd just like to point out that while the ewes of some sheep species
>do have horns, they don't curl around like Watame's. Only rams have
>horns that shape. Take that as you will. :)

Funnily enough, she knows this and has asked on stream if she's actually a boy sheep. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkt5yBeU82E

I want to point out: Spider encounter with Kronii animations are god-damn hilarious, even more so than original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iBH2ScqgWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8L2rJG6poU

And 2ManySnacks animations.

https://www.youtube.com/@2ManySnacks/videos

They are also excessively enjoyable.

I can't help but suspect that someone involved in Sana's character design is a fan of Douglas Adams, because Space is big. Really big. You just wouldn't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big Space is.

I'm pretty sure that the first VTuber streams I watched were Sana's Celeste streams, and they were definitely my introduction to the game. I will forever think of Madeline as "Sananana".

Councilrys has fallen! Now I, PROMISE, am your new leader!

(https://hololive.hololivepro.com/en/news/20231009-01-211/ IRyS has officially joined the remaining for members of Council as their own group)

LAST EDITED ON Oct-09-23 AT 03:16 PM (EDT)
 
(continued in "Hololive, cont'd")