Toy is a term I've been using among friends(It's Mirai, it's always Mirai) lately. A term I can use, talking from anything old video game remakes, to character designs, negatively or positively. Of course this doesn't help me when I want to use the term publicly. Saying something is a toy invokes a lot of different often contrasting ideas. So for the sake of clarity, I want to share my definition.

Also to be clear, I'm going to be talking a lot about remakes and remasters, but this isn't about them. Anyone who has read my writing already knows how I stand on these topics. This is about the term.

What is a Toy

What is a toy in this context? In modern times what we call a toy could be a complete, sophisticated building system, or something that is a hobby all into itself. When I'm saying toy here, I mean something older.

Toys, as they were, for thousands years(Kinda glossing over the Cup and Ball tbf). Concept, reduced down into a caricature representing their most important traits. A policeman distilled down to a hat, a firefighter distilled down to the color red. Vague shapes without limbs. A wooden toy knight, cherished by a medieval child.

A toy isn't trying to be the thing it's representing. It's a symbol. A toy is an streamlined proxy. An idealized Memory. A fantasy.

AEW All-in was great. AEW PPVs are always great. Few things are sure in life. Death, Taxes, and the upcoming AEW PPV will be way better than you're currently expecting. Even the "bad ones" are stand head and shoulders over the average WWE PPV.

Going into this show, for my money, the two best stories going were. The first would be Danielson vs Swerve, which would be elevated by it's very intense yet plausible stakes, and the fact it dovetails into Hangman and Swerve's (increasingly one sided) r...

Discord is truly a wretched app, and with each update they add more and more needless buttons, noise, and nonsense, likely at the behest of some talentless facebook middle manager that they hired, who makes more in a year than you've made in your entire life.

While nothing will fully stop the rapid enshittification of discord (and frankly other platforms), but we can mend the papercuts.

... At least on desktop.

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I was so excited to see the release of Funeral Song for the Elemental Lords, that despite it coming out 6 minutes before our Monday Super Turbo stream, I was determined to play it. I rushed through me and CaliScrub's weekly FT10(okay it's like 2 FT5s with two different characters but like whatever, it's Ken and Ryu vs Gief), going 10-4(but it was close) in the hopes of playing the game sooner. Once we were done, I shrank down ST into the corner of the screen and got to work.