Welcome to Karen's website!

I'm gonna be a bit of a doomer here so let me try and set my cards on the table. I like Magic the Gathering. I like Modern. I like when WOTC tries some new things here and there. I even liked both of the Modern Horizons sets for the most part! I don't feel like I'm a crusty boomer here complaining that these days you can't cast an honest Tarmogoyf or whatever.

As of time of writing, we've gotten our first look at the new Lord of the Rings set, with a few cards revealed and a new mechanic hinted at. I think it's a really bad sign for how the game is going to end up.

We got The One Ring, another Karn wishboard card for all the tron players like myself that I wish they just quit doing; Mount Doom, another legendary land that a bunch of rakdos midrange players will slot into their manabase because it's basically free anyways and the extra damage might be fine; we got Reprieve, an upgraded Remand but colorshifted to white with a name that screams "this is a pre-print into modern before it goes into standard"; we got a 1 mana 1/2 with the text "that player loses the game" on it. We originally heard some talk that this wasn't going to be a Modern Horizons-type set where the powerlevel is through the roof, and while I still generally trust that, the fact that WOTC feels more than comfortable printing tons of these new roll-fillers in a set completely mired in licensed IP feels like a mistake.

I recently talked to a roommate about the Modern Isekai Anime and why I'm not too much of a fan, where the general flavor trappings of the show are heavily influenced by fantasy-themed MMORPGs. I mentioned that it has a lot of similarities to a lot of high school slice of life shows, in that a big draw of the setting is convenience - that a lot of basic things can be shortcut with "Because they go to school", or in the isekai case "because we're in an entirely new world". They also draw on a lot your memories of that thing in order to make you feel closer to the setting than you might otherwise be, sure you might have never been in a high school club exactly like this one, but you've probably been to high school and have at least been in proximity to a school club and know the general experience. Isekai also do this, but to me the wink and nod falls completely flat because I never played any MMO, I honestly barely played any video game that wasn't Pokemon until 2016-ish. It's a wink and a nod to an experience and sentimental feelings I just don't have.

This is what the set is to me. A wink and a nod to all those fun memories we all definitely have about reading and watching the struggle over The One Ring™️, rather than the less important, lamer, and harder to imagine shared experiences like playing fucking Magic the Gathering. Who's ever played that game and enjoyed it? Don't you want some Licensed IP Sealed Product instead?

The lesson learned here is that we simply were not mean enough to WOTC over the Walking Dead Secret Lair. They should have ended up with a non-functional DDOS'd shop page and people yelling at them at all times. We were 500x too kind to WOTC, the company.

This set will probably sell very very well, have Mark Rosewater and Gavin Verhey give some nice kind reasons why it's good for the game to continue doing these sets, and I'll hate every second of it.

Takuji Mamiya fucking sucks. I hate him. I hate his incel-ass so much. Die. Die die die. Please.

Combust. Garbage. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

This show sucks, like, it really really sucks. It sucks in the "this is actively obnoxious in like 5 different ways" way. A show that really cannot let the audience simply understand and recognize the basic, cookie cutter tropes it has to offer, but must actively explain them in detail in case the whole thing flies over your head.

Hey, did you notice? The main love interest has blonde hair and looks a bit pouty, could you hazard a guess as to what kind of personality she has? What, you wanted to experience her personality, figuring out who she is as a person, like you're getting to know her as someone meeting her for the first time? Of course you didn't! You needed to be explained, in no uncertain terms, that she's a tsundere. And that the MC's friends are a hardcore otaku and a strict martial arts person.

Honestly, I don't think I can buy enough weed to let me stomach watching through this uninterrupted. I wanted to write more but I'm feeling it too much, fuck this show.

I'm still gonna watch it.

Congratulations, Queen Eliabeth II, for joining Fate Grand/Order today.

Crunchyroll just announced it acquired online store RightStuf. The biggest thing of note here, outside of the blatant monopolizing of the field of legal anime and how attrocious things are going to become, is a link in the article for the "FAQ Page".

Hold on a fucking second this is just about the porn. Literally. This entire main FAQ page is about the fact that due to their merger with Crunchyroll, RightStuff will not be selling porn. It's "Hey we bought this company" and "We bought this company, so they're no longer selling porn".
I don't think I have to mention this, but porn is in fact, good. It's not bad. It's a positive thing. And here's another example of a giant corporation being so utterly terrified of their "brand" being "tarnished" by "naughty" stuff that they slice off a big chunk of a company to do so.
It's yet another reminder that this is a good reason to pirate. You should just pirate stuff. If you like something, you should either have a physical copy, or have a digital copy downloaded somewhere nice and secure. Otherwise, it might as well never have existed at all.

nazuna nazuna nazuna

Happy fucking birthday Iori Minase.