To take this entirely too seriously because “[media] sucks now, when it used to be so good!” is like nails on a chalk board to me: all media mostly sucks and has always mostly sucked, but how much of [given media type] stands out as excellent from the sea of low-grade dregs that’re always being churned out just varies from year to year and for the most part I can’t help but feel the amount of good media in any given year is on average increasing and reaching new peaks more regularly.

So memes aside, I can’t help but feel like “modern anime sucks” is something that’s been being said forever and has at times been true, but currently isn’t. I mean like there is awful slop and there’s consistently been awful slop running all the way back forever, but the past few years have had some of the most gorgeously animated and all around good series ever. Like Sakamoto Days, Dandadan, ZOM 100 (and the same studio is coming out with Witch Hat Atelier some time this year which I am very excited for), Frieren, I personally don’t like a lot of things about Dungeon Meshi but it’s still highly acclaimed and objectively a great adaptation, and so on. Even something like Solo Leveling is mindless slop but it’s extremely pretty and inoffensive mindless slop with an amazing soundtrack.

How many series from the 2000s were as good and memorable? There definitely are some, without question, but I feel like people look at a handful of iconic, lasting series coming out of an entire decade and hold them up as what it used to be like, yet when I go back and look almost all of the stuff that was airing alongside that is all like the worst moeblobs you’ve ever seen, ecchi shit, and bottom of the barrel shonen action slop, and if you go back and watch it was run through with just rampant misogyny and random homophobia and a lot of that was inserted into even the “good” iconic series back then too. I mean that’s still, obviously, a problem but goddamn if it didn’t used to be so much more rampant and worse in general.

Like if Frieren were made back in the early 2000s it would probably somehow be made to be a harem anime centered on Stark who’d be the “real hero” and be given all the big dramatic moments that Frieren has in the real version, and either Frieren or Fern would probably have been given that awful extremely affected raspy mewling voice that the worst anime always makes some female character have that’s supposed to sound “innocent” or some shit and make all the misogynistic otaku hogs squeal and buy dakimakura and vinyl figurines. And also it would be 90% OC filler slop, cut most of the characters in favor of new, worse ones, and completely mangle all the themes and plotlines.

Gotta have those big numbers with big numbers of dice being rolled to set off players’ undiagnosed gambling addiction.

Yeah lmao, it’s the only game I’ve played that gives Shadowrun a run for its money there.

vehicles themselves often have high toughness

They have toughness instead of armor now? I’m recoiling in disgust. I liked 5e’s vehicles.

Your strength is either half or less of the target’s toughness, less than, equal to, greater than, or double.

I remember it being a simple equation even in 5e, something like 3+T-S, capped at one and six IIRC.

All of this sounds so much worse. I mean I’ve always hated every TTRPG or wargame edition change from one I was already familiar with, except for Pathfinder 1e to 2e which was great, but this sounds particularly bad. It’s like when I looked at Magic the Gathering 15 years ago after having last played it in the 90s and just hated every change they’d made.

You can have titans, primarchs, and aircraft in 2,000 point games.

What the fuck. Like I remember flyers being given normal rules in 6e, but the rest sounds wild. Do the superheavies still have X strength attacks or did they at least get reigned in?

If you’ve played any time between 3rd. and 4th., you’re probably familiar with changes not occurring for years.

5e was when I started, but that was all true then too. Extremely slow to update things, with a lot of army lists being one or two editions old at that point. I remember hearing relatively positive buzz about them starting to issue updated army lists in 6e, but never really got back into it.

What have they changed? I haven’t played since 5e and haven’t looked at the rules since 6e.

What the fuck, there’s not even a rudimentary firepit to control it and he didn’t even bother to clear flammable debris away from the pile of burning wood.

The vast majority of poly relationships I’ve seen have basically just gone “two people who are intensely in love with each other but also one or both want to sleep around -> one of them gets replaced in emotional importance by someone new -> the replaced party ends up deeply hurt that someone they love doesn’t give a shit about them anymore.” It’s happened to friends of mine, it happened to my ex before we started dating, and then she did it to me in turn. In fact, I’ve only ever seen one long-term stable polycule and even having barely any contact with them all I see is the ridiculous amount of effort they all put in to maintain that relationship with one another.