This is pure simulacra. We all love and support Gura for Gura herself, meaning her streams, singing and everything that happens during those streams and what she does with them. But Cover took that away from us. They took Gura away and replaced her with mountains of shilling, merch, and other bullshit only tangenially related to what we love - Gura. They went so balls deep with this that she simply can't stream anymore because there's no goddamn time. They are genuinely and completely treating her as a product, a brand to be milked, and it's disgusting. This utter industrial/corporate approach is so cold and lifeless she appears more distant than ever even if it isn't her fault at all. They took Gura away and replaced her with an illusion of Gura (merch, shill stuff). This isn't a rrat. This is what actually happened.
I'll admit I have a "bad" feeling about the members stream as well. My rrat is it'll either be her giving a corporate mandated defense of the corporation and lubing us up for incoming male collabs, or, if we're really lucky - her graduation. Let me explain. It's absolutely true that Gura needs management and the structure of a corpo, of expectations and obligations. It is also true that this is filling her pockets with money. But from another standpoint this is turning into a disaster, and that standpoint is difficult to talk about. It's about who she is as a person. While all of this is making her professional life and career look fucking awesome, it's something I feel deeply damages her as an actual flesh and blood person in an emotional and psychological sense. Cover is treating her as a product and a brand, not a person. And that conclusion can't be NOT reached by her herself. Streams and emotional involvement and resonance with the fanbase has fallen out of sight. It can't exist under these conditions. And I can't shake the feeling she knows this and sees it as fucked, which it is.
Gura has the reputation, the clout and the ability to go on without Cover. And I hope she realizes this, because it's obvious Cover is going belly up in every sense it matters. She needs to be a part of a group, a small corpo basically. And I hope she graduates and reappears under another guise. Legions of fans will follow, and she'll be fine and better than now. We grew attached to her as a person and we will follow. I will follow. And Cover? HoloEN and Hololive as a whole are a disaster at this point. The males, the dumbfuck exploitative practices, the total lack of vision and absence of being attuned to the audience and culture is baffling. What HoloEN and Cover had going for them was - idol culture in the English language. That was the defining feature of Hololive and the reason why we all flocked to HoloEN. We could finally fully understand and communicate with idols. And somehow Cover completely forgot this simple formula of their success. Without that, Hololive is just offbrand Nijisanji and offbrand Company X, meaning that without idol culture they have NOTHING that sets them apart and makes them unique. They rendered themselves from gold into dogshit, and that level of incompetence and blindness is utterly incomprehensible even from the coldest corpo-industrial mindset. It's even just bad business.
I love you, Gura. And I will follow and support you. But my dignity and sense of propriety will not allow groveling in front of males or the acceptance of harmful change of something I liked so much. You are blameless in my eyes, but I will leave if things disintegrate. I have duties to myself, just as I have respect towards you.
Let's all just hope for the best in any case.
