I tend to nag people to post their cat pictures here so it's only fair that I post some of my own. Here is the (late) kitty I had when I lived with my parents. I had her since I was eight years old and she lived to around 15 years.

I've been procrastinating about making this thread because I can't think of a good OP, so instead I'll make it without a good OP.
*AHEM*
In this thread you can request a drink and others can make a simple themed drink drawing or edit to fulfill the request. (use kissu's tegaki thing maybe?). My idea is that you can request a drink as a character and others will fulfill the request to match the character, giving it bizarre (or nonsensical) meaning and depth like the Bartender guy does.

what OP/EDs do you like? I was thinking about the popularity of LycoReco when it came out and how nice it'd be to see more anime inspired by gunslinger girl since that was one hell of a boson anime. the OP for it being one of my favorites and having that early 2000s english indie song for its op. also do you remember that in the same season lycoreco aired there was another original anime "engage kiss" that failed miserably and was just a soulless gacha cashgrab checking boxes to try and hook a playerbase, lycoreco had no tie-in and was the biggest anime besides bocchi so goes to show how far creating something good takes you compared to trying to cash out on the trendy market researched ideal money printer

What music has /qa/ been listening to lately?

What is your opinion of private trackers and the like? AB recently came back (yay) but people have mixed feelings about such things. It's easy to dismiss criticism as jealous resentment if someone isn't in them, but it's also easy to see that it's not an ideal situation for people that love certain media and want to also share that love with others.
Maybe if AB did die the nyaa admin would get off his butt and actually allow new account creation since they've been temporarily closed for like half a decade now. It's not unusual to see releases and uploads that don't actually belong to the uploader since the person has no account. How much stuff is nyaa missing because it doesn't allow people to actually share them? You can only get post-MoyaiSubs Mewkledreamy Mix subs on twitter right now and I only know that because it was mentioned in one of the 2 uploads on nyaa uploaded by a third party, with the remaining 25 episodes on twitter. Is nyaa considered semi-closed or something?

I think the problem with Japanese media in general is that there's really no middle ground. It's nyaa or nothing. There isn't a "oh, this isn't as great as AB but it has 70% of the content" place, it's either you're in the anime tracker or you're not. I'm not in BBT, but I hear it's closer to the nyaa side of the scale due to certain rules it has among other reasons. I worry that as Japanese media continues to overtake the Western world (even if the mainstream people watch the same 5 shows) the tendrils of corporate rights holders will be as zealous as Disney or Nintendo is, and that will further increase the reliance of private trackers. Not to imply that it doesn't already cause issues on stuff like youtube and the like. Youtube once had lots of full episodes and albums you could watch but they were stricken down by various companies doing the copyright strike thing to wipe out accounts hosting entire libraries. It also has algorithms and AIs to detect and delete stuff that gets uploaded, within minutes. But hey, if you subscribe to one of 15 services you might be able to watch it if it's currently on the service.

Oh yeah, I forgot that I wanted this thread was more about general private tracker stuff. I think they're unfortunately a necessity for most things due to how corporate the internet has become, but I don't think it's necessary for Japanese stuff yet in regards to user safety from lawyers. I think it's kind of sad how people under age 25 or Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

mamoru blog

i've seen dedicated drawthreads and writethreads here, but never once saw a music creation thread. considering you can post sound files here i wonder why it happens, because i did see several posters here said they made music. is it because many consider the stuffs they make have no merit to be posted? or because many have some musician profiles that they want no connection to this place...?
anyway, post some musics you made!

So the DDDDD thread made me realize that kissu doesn't really have any threads dedicated to manga that I could find. The focus seems to be too much on seasonal anime. I realize that this is because manga is much harder to find/follow than seasonal stuff as there are no clear guidelines for it and Westerners don't read comics nearly as much as the Japanese do.

Anyway, what manga have you been reading recently? I just read the latest chapter of Shimeji Simulation a few days ago. As with anything made by Tsukumizu so far it is great. Definitely recommend it to everyone here and I do hope it eventually gets an anime adaption as well like SSR.

MORE AI STUFF! It's weird how this is all happening at once. Singularity is near?

Alright, there's another AI thing people are talking about, but this time it shouldn't be very controversial:
https://beta.character.ai/
Using a temporary email service (just google 'temporary email') you can make an account and start having conversations with bots. (Write down the email though because it's your login info)
But, these bots are actually good. EXTREMELY good. Like, "is this really a bot?" good. I talked with a vtuber and had an argument and it went very well. Too well, almost. I don't know how varied the stuff is, but they're really entertaining when I talked to Mario and even a vtuber.
Sadly, it's gaining in popularity rapidly so the service is getting slower and it might even crash on you.

It says "beta" all over the site, presumably this is in the public testing phase and once it leaves beta it's going to cost money, so it's best to have fun with this now while we still can (and before it gets neutered to look good for investors or advertisers).

Mahjong?

What are /qa/'s thoughts on femdom?

Does /qa/ have any experience with ebook readers? I've been getting back into reading recently, and although I like the ebook reader app I have on my Android phone (ReadEra), it's not entirely pleasant; my phone is a bit weighty so it's tiring to hold, and it strains my eyes after reading for a while.

The most obvious choice seems to be a Kindle, but it seems kind of opaque what the differences are between models other than storage. I'm really not a fan of them seemingly being permanently tethered to the cloud and this "ad-supported" thing seems annoying as well. Ideally, I would have something that I can move my own ebooks onto just by plugging it into my PC. USB C is a hard requirement as well; I can't believe Amazon was selling Kindles with the worst charging connector of all time, micro USB, up until 2021.

Looking at the prices for the features that matter to me... I'm really wondering if it would be worth it buying one at all. From what I understand, I would probably be looking at buying some Android e-ink tablet, but those don't seem to have the best reputation online (?) and I can't imagine any are particularly lightweight. My phone is ~200g and that feels a bit too heavy for me. Anything tablet sized I'm sure would be too heavy for me.

General video games thread since the other one hit the bump limit. What are you playing? What are you looking forward to?

I kinda wonder, how do people discover new music today? There's such a vast expanse of stuff out there and most all of it is hidden in its own corner of the internet. If you know what you're searching for maybe it's easier, but finding completely new stuff that appeals to you seems like an extremely tough endeavor. Are there any good methods /qa/ knows of or is word of mouth the best way still?

pouting at the fact that kissu has a bump limit