Universal Chat Thread

[Mr EliteL]

4th of July of course I don't celebrate in that way for Independence Day, but today we got together with my brother and fiancé for a meal out we usually do for birthdays, and at this time of year it's for both ours (mine and my brother's which was 29th June). Just so happened to be on the 4th, but it most certainly would be for this very day if my grandfather was still alive. A third reason but possibly bigger as it would've been his 100th birthday, holy--*ahem*, was a good day anyway. May you guys over there in the US enjoy not only today, but tomorrow too.

[Dragon Lord]

Ah, that's right. What merchandise are you hoping to see, assuming none was specifically announced yet?

Nothing in particular. The first wave of merch isn't really anything that interests me, so hopefully down the road we'll get more that will interest me. Right now I'm mainly interested in the Gura nendoroid. There will also be scale figures of all of the girls too, so I look forward to seeing what that Gura figure will end up looking like.

[Moonface]

4th of July of course I don't celebrate in that way for Independence Day, but today we got together with my brother and fiancé for a meal out we usually do for birthdays, and at this time of year it's for both ours (mine and my brother's which was 29th June). Just so happened to be on the 4th, but it most certainly would be for this very day if my grandfather was still alive. A third reason but possibly bigger as it would've been his 100th birthday, holy--*ahem*, was a good day anyway. May you guys over there in the US enjoy not only today, but tomorrow too.

How old did your grandfather live to?
Also, at the time I initially read this post I shit myself thinking for a second your birthday was on July 4 because you only mentioned the date of your brothers, and I was thinking to myself "I'm sure his birthday isn't today..." and stopped thinking I was crazy when I checked your profile to see when it actually was.

Ah, that's right. What merchandise are you hoping to see, assuming none was specifically announced yet?

Nothing in particular. The first wave of merch isn't really anything that interests me, so hopefully down the road we'll get more that will interest me. Right now I'm mainly interested in the Gura nendoroid. There will also be scale figures of all of the girls too, so I look forward to seeing what that Gura figure will end up looking like.

I expect Gura will sell out like crazy, considering she reached 3 million subs on YouTube a few days ago. Judging from that I get the impression she's the EN equivalent to Coco?


What's everybody doing with their day? I haven't quite decided what I want to do yet myself.

[Dragon Lord]

There really isn't any kind of equivalent to Gura in Hololive, or really any vTubers any where. She's the first to reach 3 million subs, has done so less than a year after debut, and no other member of Hololive (JP, IN or EN) has even reached 2 million subs yet. Gura has been a compete firestorm since her debut.

Before Gura debuted, there wasn't even a single member of Hololive that was over a million subs on YouTube. She debuted and three months later she surpassed all the other Hololive girls in subs, being the first one to ever reach 1 million on YouTube. Since then, not only has Gura continued to grow at a rapid pace, but the rest of Hololive has benefited from her popularity and exploded in growth. Granted to a lesser extent, but there's several of the JP girls over a million now, and I think all of the EN girls are over a million too

It just takes one spark (Gura) to start a fire (popularity of Hololive over the last year).

[Moonface]

I'm surprised Coco wasn't even at 2 million, since the impact of her departure announcement and the impact she had on Hololive made me think she would've been bigger than she actually is.

Is there any reason Gura was the one to explode more than the rest? Is it mainly down to her content or character design, a whole package thing that just comes together in all the right ways, or is is also a bit of stars aligning at the right time for her?

[Dragon Lord]

Nah, Coco was popular (she was the largest Superchat earner in all of Hololive), but subs wise she wasn't the biggest. Her impact is more of what she did for Hololive as a whole. Like I mentioned before, Coco speaking both Japanese and English made it so she was able to really bridge a gap between Hololive and Western fans, and without that, Cover Corp likely never realizes what kind of potential the English side has to offer (and by Gura's numbers, we can see that's a decision they most definitely do not regret). So a lot of fans are very thankful to Coco for putting in all the work she did and making HoloEN a possibility. Though she quit Hololive, Coco does have an alt YouTube account where she actually streams with a facecam, so it was kind of cool discovering that channel and being able to see what she actually looked like. Not many vTubers out there reveal their faces (I know of a few Indie English vTubers who have, but Hololive members are usually much more secretive about their identities).

Gura's popularity is a mixture of things. She had over a million subs on her previous channel before she left it to join Hololive, so a lot of her old fans obviously recognized her and followed her as Gura. Then there's the perfect mixture of her being a huge meme queen (especially her knowledge of vintage memes) and knowing how to play the room. She's an entertainer through and through and her immense growth shows that.

And I should say that other EN members have been making noise too. While Gura gets most of the attention for her numbers, Kiara just recently announced that she's the official ambassador for Tales of Arise in North America. For those who might not get what that means, it means Bandai Namco hired Kiara to promote the game and she also gets to show off exclusive footage/information about the game on her Livestreams. So that's pretty huge news, and great for her because like me, she's a major JRPG nerd so getting to be the ambassador of a Tales game is pretty exciting for her. I look forward to seeing if any of the other EN girls ever get hired as an ambassador for a game like this. I know Kiara is a huge Atelier fan, so it'd be pretty hype to see Koei Tecmo do the same with her when Atelier Ryza 3 eventually happens.

[Mr EliteL]

How old did your grandfather live to?

84 or 85 I think, he was already in a care home before then as he lost most of his memory plus probably another condition. My stepgranddad that is alive now is 89, so 73 or 74 when my father's dad went, huh. Randomly told that to myself.  
Yeah we usually do a get-together meal for birthdays but a joint one for my brother and I which falls in between the birthdays. Last year was obviously problematic and didn't do anything around that time as a family.


Interesting that Kiara gets to promote a new game, must be good to watch her play that and other games in that genre.

[Dragon Lord]

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. These vTubers are taking over and I love every second of it. I welcome our vTuber overlords.

Another day, more internet problems. We just cannot figure this problem out. Went and bought two more, heavy duty coax cables this morning to replace the two running from the splitter in the basement up to the modem and the cable box. Thought for sure that doing both of them would be good enough, but nope. The problem is still persisting. At this point, it HAS to be something on their end. We've changed every cable we can, multiple times.

I wouldn't be surprised if something is wrong with the cable running from the power pole to our house (or something wrong with the connection on the power pole itself), and they just refuse to acknowledge it and fix it. Might have to get a tech out here and then just demand that he change the cable running to the house. Don't like to get pissy with the techs, but five months of these problems is ridiculous. It's time to get this figured out once and for all.

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah I have to wonder if it's hardware related on your end or the company's end. I saw Trihex had a similar problem but it turned out his internet box was on a janky outlet in his attic and something finally knocked it loose. Regardless, I definitely hope this gets resolved within the next week or so. 5 months is absolutely absurd, and if it turns out it's their fault, I'd want to be reimbursed for the service for all those months where it's not been consistent

[Dragon Lord]

So a pair of techs came out this morning, and they did a few things for us. First of all, they changed all the ends on the coax cables because they said the ones on there were too light-duty, so that's a plus, I guess.

But more importantly, they did change the cable running from the power pole to the house, and they also did something else with the stuff on the power pole. The major thing though is that I was right, it was them all along. The tech that came out back in March/April said he tested the line from the power pole to the house, and it was 100% okay and definitely not on them. Well, these techs checked a little more in-depth. They found that not only was our signal weak, but the signal running the entire length of the street is weak. They had to schedule a maintenance crew that will come out at some point and work on the entire main line.

So I don't know if the previous tech was lying about the signal strength coming to the house, or if he never even checked it to begin with, or what, but the entire time we've been struggling with this issue, it hasn't been us. At least not entirely. The ends of the cables we replaced being too light-duty probably didn't help, but that alone wouldn't have been the reason we kept losing service entirely.

[Moonface]

I'll comment on everything said in here tomorrow but I just wanted to ask while I remember, did you hear back from that job you interviewed for yet @Dragon Lord?

[ShiraNoMai]

So a pair of techs came out this morning, and they did a few things for us. First of all, they changed all the ends on the coax cables because they said the ones on there were too light-duty, so that's a plus, I guess.

But more importantly, they did change the cable running from the power pole to the house, and they also did something else with the stuff on the power pole. The major thing though is that I was right, it was them all along. The tech that came out back in March/April said he tested the line from the power pole to the house, and it was 100% okay and definitely not on them. Well, these techs checked a little more in-depth. They found that not only was our signal weak, but the signal running the entire length of the street is weak. They had to schedule a maintenance crew that will come out at some point and work on the entire main line.

So I don't know if the previous tech was lying about the signal strength coming to the house, or if he never even checked it to begin with, or what, but the entire time we've been struggling with this issue, it hasn't been us. At least not entirely. The ends of the cables we replaced being too light-duty probably didn't help, but that alone wouldn't have been the reason we kept losing service entirely.

Christ. Now they better reimburse you for your service for those past few months. What the actual fuck

[Dragon Lord]

The company won't reimburse us for shit. They are god awful with customer service and they tend not to give a shit. Thankfully some of their technicians do care, but the company itself is horrible. Unfortunately they have a strangle hold on this area and there are no better options for internet here.

@Moonface - Yes, I officially begin going through the process on Monday. I have to go in for like 20-30 minutes to do some stuff. Drug test and a few other things, I believe, and then we'll figure out when I'll start my training then. First thing up will be about 12 hours of watching videos, lol.

[Moonface]

@Moonface - Yes, I officially begin going through the process on Monday. I have to go in for like 20-30 minutes to do some stuff. Drug test and a few other things, I believe, and then we'll figure out when I'll start my training then. First thing up will be about 12 hours of watching videos, lol.

Congrats!
If you're really lucky, they'll make you watch some of those videos again in 6 months to a year to refresh your memory on all the shit you'll probably have been doing every single day on the job anyway. Publix does that a lot of the time and it gets really tedious, especially when they don't even make new videos so you start to memorise the scripts. Ours also have questions though, but getting them wrong doesn't penalise you and again, after a couple of times you start to just remember the answers. XD
Although, there is one question I never get right on the training video for food safety, which involves temperatures because the answers are in F and I'm still not used to using that.

[ShiraNoMai]

Freedom Units are the best around, ya here? 

Glad to hear you got the job, DL! Hoping everything continues this upward trend of positivity for you