uhh so what was up with altare’s t4 stream? i don’t need the full details or anything since he clearly put it behind such a high paywall for a reason but the thumbnail looked dramatic.. i hope they’re not being screwed by management yet again ;-;
Not gonna be overly specific but Goldbullet’s LEGO handcam this morning also had a little bit where he talked about future projects, some frustrating setbacks and delays with perms and management. He has some very special stuff planned that he is brimming with enthusiasm to put out. I’m just going to guess that something Altare was working on has fallen through and the blow to his heart has been deeper than usual, needing to vent but unarchiving the vod. Leader has done guerrilla unarchived sadboy streams before in his T2, so it’s probably just another speedbump hitting him on the Hollowstars road of life.
On-topic but off-topic I guess (sorry for this being kind of all over the place) –
I don’t have Altare’s T4, but I’m starting to suspect that the upper management shuffle that happened in the middle of the year/summer on the StarsEN side is still rough. (That’s not new: mid year is usually when Cover starts advancing people/hiring new people/etc. in all the branches and management.) Like, the birthday merch issue that Altare and Flayon had mentioned seems to have gone through, with Axel’s set being only 3 items (God I feel so bad for him…he made the best of it but it’s hard not to think about how disappointed he sounded during the Hookah Haze stream about not getting to give the Axelotls what he envisioned…). Altare having a T4 menshi where he more than likely vented about project delays and management might mean that the problems HoloEN were having this year has now crashed into StarsEN.
But it’s definitely noticeable that, of all of the boys, Altare and Axel seem to have really been hit the hardest with project problems this entire year. It’s just…so weird that those 2 get these problems but VG and Armis don’t. Both seemingly can’t do stuff with their own lore without going through management, projects/events involving them gets delayed, and it’s almost like they’re the testing ground for stuff for the newer EN gens (EX: I noticed that, by and large, VG and Advent had their 3D after talks right after their personal/gen showcases using their at home 3D…while Axel had his a day later and the HQ one was 3 days after, while Altare didn’t have one at all really, and both just started using their at home 3D at random. Maybe that was their choice because they’re just like that, I don’t know, but 2 gens in 2 different branches doing the same thing where they didn’t before makes me think not.) Hell, it seems like they wanted to do separate HQ and VG anniversaries this year (I’d guess cause last year was so fucked they appreciated having VG with them, but now a year later they felt more OK with it being the two of them), but were shot down for some reason. Thank whatever God that they both still have Toramane though. He clearly cares about them and both have implied that he fights for them a lot. (I also really hope the both of them convince Axel to do a personal merch drop to get around the birthday merch problem.)
Keeping my fingers crossed that 2025 is a better year for both of them most of all, and I think it will be since them feeling this way is usually what lights a fire under their asses to make it better. (Also sorry for the rambling. I just want the best for Shiny Spicy….)
Axel’s also recently mentioned that he’s struggling with how he and Altare are struggling with the additional stress of being first, but I’m also going to butt in to mention more issues that aren’t exclusive to ShinySpicy.
It’s just…so weird that those 2 get these problems but VG and Armis don’t.
VG and ARMIS have absolutely had similiar issues as of late.
Delayed covers that were supposed to come out with an event: Bettel (August 19th), Axel (Birthday)
Cancelled birthday covers: Hakka, Goldbullet (not explicitly stated, but he originally said he was going to have one)
Multiple music projects in a row cancelled mid-production: Axel, Hakka
Delayed merch: Bettel (August 19th)
The ARMIS Halloween stream is also EXTREMELY suspicious, given that the format was similiar to their half-anni and White Day streams. Before that stream, they (mostly Jurard) also cut themselves off with the “we can’t say too much” they usually use for more official streams. Cover even paid for their Halloween costume assets. It’s like there was supposed to be some sort of Halloween merch drop or other announcement that ended up not happening.
That being said, I’m not surprised if ShinySpicy are extra tired of dealing with being jerked around from management causing last-minute issues. Give the boys the ability to produce things, Cover.
Isn’t Orthodoxia supposed to be Flay’s birthday cover? If yes, that was delayed by two months.
Gibby teased recording a cover in his schedule back in May – is this the cancelled birthday cover?
It seems HallowARMIS was supposed to promote Halloween VPs that aren’t there. It may have been too close to their anniversary (two and a half weeks), but the White Day and Holo expo VPs were released much closer than that. Hell, ARMIS repurposed their delayed White Day VP promotional stream into April Fools because they all went to Japan for Holo expo. I don’t want to blame Tavi for the stream delay but he insisted on watching Taylor Swift. Hotel, flight and concert tickets were already paid with his own money whereas Cover paid for his trip and accommodation to Japan. He (and Jurard because they were booked in the same flight) were cutting it close. I also believe we would’ve gotten the ARMIS April Fools stream anyway.
Biggest L on upper management for holding the boys back. They’re becoming more like those Kpop idol agencies who are putting some of their talents on the basement.
Honestly feels like they’re abandoning the branch. Have we even gotten any big events on the JP side? I feel like I’ve seen so much more on the girls’ side. Is there anything fans can do on our end?
I just want them to go do the projects they really wanna do on in their other lives so we can support them enough to feel safe enough to keep going. I hate seeing them so miserable because they cant do what they want
Sorry for butting in but I couldn’t let this pass.
Like, the birthday merch issue that Altare and Flayon had mentioned seems to have gone through, with Axel’s set being only 3 items
Ruze’s birthday merch is 3 items too: a mat, a dice tower, and a pin badge. Shinri and Gibby were the last birthdays in StarsEN with 4 items, and theirs were last June. Ruze’s birthday was one month before Axel’s. I think it was telling that Ruze shilled his birthday merch during the unarchived karaoke portion of his birthday celebration, and not during his handcam which was archived. But that could just be me.
Should it really count as 4 items when one of Shinri’s (6/22) items is a voice pack? Flayon (6/5) has a proper 4 items + 1 voice pack for sale, though, and is notably more expensive at $120. Goldie, Jurard, and Octavio all got a proper 4 items with a bonus voice pack for the set. Altare (1/29), Hakka (4/21), and Bettel (5/17) are all 3 merch items + 1 voice pack, like Shinri.The super weird thing about Axel’s birthday is that he doesn’t have any sort of voice pack, either for sale or as a set bonus.EDIT: Some more weird observations that I don’t know are related:Altare, Hakka, and ARMIS are all ~$75 for the bundle.The last 3 TEMPUS birthdays (Bettel/Shinri/Axel) are ~$60 (58/65/60)ARMIS + Axel all have a $9 pin as a merch item.
(Comment OP) Axel’s set lacking a VP can more than likely be chalked up to how busy he’s been and probably just choosing not to do a VP this year. His b-day set has also always been on the cheaper side on purpose (per him), so I won’t say it’s totally weird…but his and Ruze’s merch were definitely affected in the same way. If Altare’s merch drop he keeps hinting at goes well and using Bettel’s daki as an indicator, maybe more boys will do self-funded merch more often (especially since Axel seemed so defeated about his ideas getting tossed).
This is waaaaay out there, but I’ve been wondering if Cover has been testing rolling back on birthday merch (judging how some of the sets from both the girls and boys have been scaled down from previous years) and now putting more emphasis on anniversary and talent funded merch. Mostly cause StarsJP has got better anniversary sets in 2024 (Rikka’s is a good example) and HoloEN are now doing more individual anniversary merch where they didn’t before.
Makes sense for the VP. I just presumed it was mandatory. Then again, we all assumed that gloves for handcams have been mandatory since the start, but it wasn’t formally a rule until IrYs painted her nails on handcam. Cover’s weird with its “unofficially official” stuff.
You might be onto something with the anniversary stuff, especially when you look at the girls. Cover puts emphasis on group dynamics, so people often end up watching multiple talents within a gen. Having all the talents in a gen offer merch within the same pre-order time frame might convince some people to buy more stuff than they usually would since you’d save on shipping. It’s never really worth it to buy just a single item in a birthday set, so you might skip out due to the shipping costs. But if you like one item from Talent A and one from Talent B, and they release stuff at the same time for anniversary, you can pick up both in the same order and feel fine about it. Can’t do that for birthday releases.
They did pair up the boys fairly well to encourage birthday merch combinations, especially during the first year when it was 8 Tempus members, they really pushed all the boys as one group collect em all.
just a heads up for next time. if you are trying to post a comment with even a smidge of formatting on it, DO NOT TOUCH THE EDIT BUTTON ONCE YOU POST IT.
no idea why but edited posts aren’t able to maintain their formatting in any way
(OP) I was confused for a second but you’re completely correct, Ruze’s only had 3 pieces of merch as well. (I realize that I kept thinking the sticker sheet was a separate piece of merch, not the set bonus that it actually is.)
I also thought the Armis Halloween was weirdly lacking an announcement when it seemed like one would be happening. My guess is whatever it was was just delayed since none of them seemed all that mad during and surrounding the stream.
Either way, I want next year to be good for all the boys. I want all of them to thrive and have fun, especially Shiny Spicy.
Ruze was the most obvious telegraph of wanting a dice set and bag, but as others pointed out at the time, they would probably only give him permission for the same three dice that Fauna had in her birthday set, and he would probably rather give nothing than give something substandard.
This one is super annoying, especially since the dice tower was $41! That’s on the pricier side for a birthday item. Fauna’s dice set was $21 for 2 d20, a d6, and a small bag. Surely they could have done a 7-piece dice set for around $40 or so.
The thumbnail and title set off alarm bells for me too but from the looks of it it sounds like he got very vulnerable with people about management like the other anon said and projects in general. I can see the reasoning behind wanting to be transparent with people paying that much money to support you. If he gets seasonal depression I can see something like that hitting him hard too.
I saw a couple people offering him words and art of encouragement which is nice, I hope he sees just how much people are cheering him on
he’s been vocal about his discontent with management recently. he might have gone into more detail about it. altare rarely openly shows his discontent. if he’s openly talking about management negatively in every day streams, it must be bad
What? Altare complains about dumb management stuff all the time. I still remember him saying something like “I told them to their face to stop wasting my time” when they kept dragging their feet with the BOI perms
While I can definitely agree with Altare since every talent has complained about management (especially with perms issues), there are times where I’ve thought his complaints about them sound like the problem is/was actually with him and he doesn’t want to admit it, or he didn’t offer a good replacement solution to the problem.
Y’all are basically like the people who speculate about Kiara being difficult behind the scenes when it’s actually because she’s the only one who openly talks about whatever’s going on with her projects.
I’m really glad for our dynamic with Axel. I know he appreciates being able to be silly and razz his audience and that they’ll match his energy and do it back. And that if he wants to be calm and chill, the Axelotls will do the same.
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Shinri on break ueueueue
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Hakka cuuuteeee~
(I don’t have any idea of what it says tho)
https://x.com/AC_09_18/status/1853395679638675514?t=LxFetzKiURgZiz1shnONIQ&s=19
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i am so far gone but hearing shinri say fuck so often is.. i need to sit. i’m down horrifically. this is not the time to be simping.
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geeple borple ryona
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Did not expect geepling that borple to be so highly controversial…
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it’s just 1.5 hour of slapstick but slightly hornier
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Paddling his ass while he’s tied up like a pinata
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he’s not worth the effort
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Geeple borple neglect play
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we lock his rubber hose cartoon ass in a padded room and a straitjacket and watch him bounce off the walls
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uhh so what was up with altare’s t4 stream? i don’t need the full details or anything since he clearly put it behind such a high paywall for a reason but the thumbnail looked dramatic.. i hope they’re not being screwed by management yet again ;-;
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And then what? A plan to rescue them in the name of “I HOPE they’re not being screwed by management”. Let me know the plan.
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Not gonna be overly specific but Goldbullet’s LEGO handcam this morning also had a little bit where he talked about future projects, some frustrating setbacks and delays with perms and management. He has some very special stuff planned that he is brimming with enthusiasm to put out. I’m just going to guess that something Altare was working on has fallen through and the blow to his heart has been deeper than usual, needing to vent but unarchiving the vod. Leader has done guerrilla unarchived sadboy streams before in his T2, so it’s probably just another speedbump hitting him on the Hollowstars road of life.
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On-topic but off-topic I guess (sorry for this being kind of all over the place) –
I don’t have Altare’s T4, but I’m starting to suspect that the upper management shuffle that happened in the middle of the year/summer on the StarsEN side is still rough. (That’s not new: mid year is usually when Cover starts advancing people/hiring new people/etc. in all the branches and management.) Like, the birthday merch issue that Altare and Flayon had mentioned seems to have gone through, with Axel’s set being only 3 items (God I feel so bad for him…he made the best of it but it’s hard not to think about how disappointed he sounded during the Hookah Haze stream about not getting to give the Axelotls what he envisioned…). Altare having a T4 menshi where he more than likely vented about project delays and management might mean that the problems HoloEN were having this year has now crashed into StarsEN.
But it’s definitely noticeable that, of all of the boys, Altare and Axel seem to have really been hit the hardest with project problems this entire year. It’s just…so weird that those 2 get these problems but VG and Armis don’t. Both seemingly can’t do stuff with their own lore without going through management, projects/events involving them gets delayed, and it’s almost like they’re the testing ground for stuff for the newer EN gens (EX: I noticed that, by and large, VG and Advent had their 3D after talks right after their personal/gen showcases using their at home 3D…while Axel had his a day later and the HQ one was 3 days after, while Altare didn’t have one at all really, and both just started using their at home 3D at random. Maybe that was their choice because they’re just like that, I don’t know, but 2 gens in 2 different branches doing the same thing where they didn’t before makes me think not.) Hell, it seems like they wanted to do separate HQ and VG anniversaries this year (I’d guess cause last year was so fucked they appreciated having VG with them, but now a year later they felt more OK with it being the two of them), but were shot down for some reason. Thank whatever God that they both still have Toramane though. He clearly cares about them and both have implied that he fights for them a lot. (I also really hope the both of them convince Axel to do a personal merch drop to get around the birthday merch problem.)
Keeping my fingers crossed that 2025 is a better year for both of them most of all, and I think it will be since them feeling this way is usually what lights a fire under their asses to make it better. (Also sorry for the rambling. I just want the best for Shiny Spicy….)
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Axel’s also recently mentioned that he’s struggling with how he and Altare are struggling with the additional stress of being first, but I’m also going to butt in to mention more issues that aren’t exclusive to ShinySpicy.
VG and ARMIS have absolutely had similiar issues as of late.
Delayed covers that were supposed to come out with an event: Bettel (August 19th), Axel (Birthday)
Cancelled birthday covers: Hakka, Goldbullet (not explicitly stated, but he originally said he was going to have one)
Multiple music projects in a row cancelled mid-production: Axel, Hakka
Delayed merch: Bettel (August 19th)
The ARMIS Halloween stream is also EXTREMELY suspicious, given that the format was similiar to their half-anni and White Day streams. Before that stream, they (mostly Jurard) also cut themselves off with the “we can’t say too much” they usually use for more official streams. Cover even paid for their Halloween costume assets. It’s like there was supposed to be some sort of Halloween merch drop or other announcement that ended up not happening.
That being said, I’m not surprised if ShinySpicy are extra tired of dealing with being jerked around from management causing last-minute issues. Give the boys the ability to produce things, Cover.
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Isn’t Orthodoxia supposed to be Flay’s birthday cover? If yes, that was delayed by two months.
Gibby teased recording a cover in his schedule back in May – is this the cancelled birthday cover?
It seems HallowARMIS was supposed to promote Halloween VPs that aren’t there. It may have been too close to their anniversary (two and a half weeks), but the White Day and Holo expo VPs were released much closer than that. Hell, ARMIS repurposed their delayed White Day VP promotional stream into April Fools because they all went to Japan for Holo expo.
I don’t want to blame Tavi for the stream delay but he insisted on watching Taylor Swift. Hotel, flight and concert tickets were already paid with his own money whereas Cover paid for his trip and accommodation to Japan. He (and Jurard because they were booked in the same flight) were cutting it close. I also believe we would’ve gotten the ARMIS April Fools stream anyway.Report
Biggest L on upper management for holding the boys back. They’re becoming more like those Kpop idol agencies who are putting some of their talents on the basement.
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Honestly feels like they’re abandoning the branch. Have we even gotten any big events on the JP side? I feel like I’ve seen so much more on the girls’ side. Is there anything fans can do on our end?
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I just want them to go do the projects they really wanna do on in their other lives so we can support them enough to feel safe enough to keep going. I hate seeing them so miserable because they cant do what they want
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Sorry for butting in but I couldn’t let this pass.
Ruze’s birthday merch is 3 items too: a mat, a dice tower, and a pin badge. Shinri and Gibby were the last birthdays in StarsEN with 4 items, and theirs were last June. Ruze’s birthday was one month before Axel’s. I think it was telling that Ruze shilled his birthday merch during the unarchived karaoke portion of his birthday celebration, and not during his handcam which was archived. But that could just be me.
I agree that Shiny Spicy deserve better.
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Should it really count as 4 items when one of Shinri’s (6/22) items is a voice pack? Flayon (6/5) has a proper 4 items + 1 voice pack for sale, though, and is notably more expensive at $120. Goldie, Jurard, and Octavio all got a proper 4 items with a bonus voice pack for the set. Altare (1/29), Hakka (4/21), and Bettel (5/17) are all 3 merch items + 1 voice pack, like Shinri.The super weird thing about Axel’s birthday is that he doesn’t have any sort of voice pack, either for sale or as a set bonus.EDIT: Some more weird observations that I don’t know are related:Altare, Hakka, and ARMIS are all ~$75 for the bundle.The last 3 TEMPUS birthdays (Bettel/Shinri/Axel) are ~$60 (58/65/60)ARMIS + Axel all have a $9 pin as a merch item.
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(Comment OP) Axel’s set lacking a VP can more than likely be chalked up to how busy he’s been and probably just choosing not to do a VP this year. His b-day set has also always been on the cheaper side on purpose (per him), so I won’t say it’s totally weird…but his and Ruze’s merch were definitely affected in the same way. If Altare’s merch drop he keeps hinting at goes well and using Bettel’s daki as an indicator, maybe more boys will do self-funded merch more often (especially since Axel seemed so defeated about his ideas getting tossed).
This is waaaaay out there, but I’ve been wondering if Cover has been testing rolling back on birthday merch (judging how some of the sets from both the girls and boys have been scaled down from previous years) and now putting more emphasis on anniversary and talent funded merch. Mostly cause StarsJP has got better anniversary sets in 2024 (Rikka’s is a good example) and HoloEN are now doing more individual anniversary merch where they didn’t before.
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Makes sense for the VP. I just presumed it was mandatory. Then again, we all assumed that gloves for handcams have been mandatory since the start, but it wasn’t formally a rule until IrYs painted her nails on handcam. Cover’s weird with its “unofficially official” stuff.
You might be onto something with the anniversary stuff, especially when you look at the girls. Cover puts emphasis on group dynamics, so people often end up watching multiple talents within a gen. Having all the talents in a gen offer merch within the same pre-order time frame might convince some people to buy more stuff than they usually would since you’d save on shipping. It’s never really worth it to buy just a single item in a birthday set, so you might skip out due to the shipping costs. But if you like one item from Talent A and one from Talent B, and they release stuff at the same time for anniversary, you can pick up both in the same order and feel fine about it. Can’t do that for birthday releases.
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They did pair up the boys fairly well to encourage birthday merch combinations, especially during the first year when it was 8 Tempus members, they really pushed all the boys as one group collect em all.
Before grad:
Magni (Oct) Axel (Nov)
Altare (Jan) Vesper (Feb)
Hakka (April) Bettel (May)
Flayon and Shinri (June)
Post grad/Armis debut:
Ruze (Sep) Axel (Nov)
Altare (Jan) Jurard (Feb)
Hakka and Octavio (April) Bettel (May)
Flayon, Shinri and Goldbullet (June)
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this thing refuses to format properly in one comment and i’m gonna mcfriggin lose it
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just a heads up for next time. if you are trying to post a comment with even a smidge of formatting on it, DO NOT TOUCH THE EDIT BUTTON ONCE YOU POST IT.
no idea why but edited posts aren’t able to maintain their formatting in any way
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(OP) I was confused for a second but you’re completely correct, Ruze’s only had 3 pieces of merch as well. (I realize that I kept thinking the sticker sheet was a separate piece of merch, not the set bonus that it actually is.)
I also thought the Armis Halloween was weirdly lacking an announcement when it seemed like one would be happening. My guess is whatever it was was just delayed since none of them seemed all that mad during and surrounding the stream.
Either way, I want next year to be good for all the boys. I want all of them to thrive and have fun, especially Shiny Spicy.
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Ruze was the most obvious telegraph of wanting a dice set and bag, but as others pointed out at the time, they would probably only give him permission for the same three dice that Fauna had in her birthday set, and he would probably rather give nothing than give something substandard.
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This one is super annoying, especially since the dice tower was $41! That’s on the pricier side for a birthday item. Fauna’s dice set was $21 for 2 d20, a d6, and a small bag. Surely they could have done a 7-piece dice set for around $40 or so.
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“mad”
Some talents are just professional unlike some others.
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Some talents have been dealing with corpo bullshit for over 2 years unlike others.
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The rule is “over 2 years” because I said so.
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The rules change next year to over 3 years
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SHINY SPICY DESERVE BETTER
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The thumbnail and title set off alarm bells for me too but from the looks of it it sounds like he got very vulnerable with people about management like the other anon said and projects in general. I can see the reasoning behind wanting to be transparent with people paying that much money to support you. If he gets seasonal depression I can see something like that hitting him hard too.
I saw a couple people offering him words and art of encouragement which is nice, I hope he sees just how much people are cheering him on
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he’s been vocal about his discontent with management recently. he might have gone into more detail about it. altare rarely openly shows his discontent. if he’s openly talking about management negatively in every day streams, it must be bad
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What? Altare complains about dumb management stuff all the time. I still remember him saying something like “I told them to their face to stop wasting my time” when they kept dragging their feet with the BOI perms
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While I can definitely agree with Altare since every talent has complained about management (especially with perms issues), there are times where I’ve thought his complaints about them sound like the problem is/was actually with him and he doesn’t want to admit it, or he didn’t offer a good replacement solution to the problem.
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Y’all are basically like the people who speculate about Kiara being difficult behind the scenes when it’s actually because she’s the only one who openly talks about whatever’s going on with her projects.
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It seems he removed the vod according to Holodex. Idk what’s up with that.
https://holodex.net/watch/zoIxPz_ANB0
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ueueueyyeeyye the ending of Axel’s karaoke 😭 Axel Love
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I just want to cover this guy in kisses, he deserves so much.
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i just wanna cut him up some apple bunnies . . .
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Damn I need a cover with Axel and Tavi STAT they sound so good together
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Both Hakka & Tavi are waiting for Axel to send his script but aniki is being shy
https://youtu.be/8hlFggj_swA?t=2687
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I fucking love Axel’s interactions with the axelotls they are so goofy with each other
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I’m really glad for our dynamic with Axel. I know he appreciates being able to be silly and razz his audience and that they’ll match his energy and do it back. And that if he wants to be calm and chill, the Axelotls will do the same.
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I love the axelotls
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Pucker up anon
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this is the best mascot fanart ever
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