I watched most of the Justice collabs so far, but only around the first 30 minutes or so since they usually start pretty late for me, and then I just caught up with 10-30 min clips.
Got rekt by a cold for a week, and today I saw that they'd played L4D2, one of my favorite holo collab games to watch, so I decided to buckle up and watch the full VOD (CC POV).
During all these collabs, I always got the feeling that ERB was kind of.. detached? from the rest of the Justice girls, due to her chronic lateness, constant tech issues and general nonchalant attitude.
I figured it was just my initial ERB hate getting amplified, but since I was sitting through a full VOD, I decided to toss away the hate goggles and just objectively observe the dynamics between the 4 of them.
...aaand the stream started with ERB causing some technical hiccup sooo.. yeah.
It's very evident that CC, GG and Raora are all weebs to varying degrees, and can draw upon the endless reserve of "standard weeb jokes" ("correction", "I can fix her", anime/hololive references and jokes, lore jokes from CC and Raora etc.) in order to get some good situational comedy going, but ERB being a normie seems to struggle at vibing with that humor quite a bit. CC even steals her br*tish schtick for a joke one time. While Raora plays into her "Italian"ness and CC plays into her "German Humor" from time to time, ERB seem quite unwilling or unable to use her biggest asset - her Br*tish accent - to her advantage in generating comedy.
CC and GG have natural chemistry between them and are able to keep their bantz going at a regular pace. Raora plays along with both, and occasionally tosses some of her own jokes in as well, but she mostly plays up the "team mom" and "cute" factor rather than the comedic aspect, leaving it to the other two - so they maintain a good dynamic between them.
In this particular stream, Gigi was also blessed by the comedy gods with the specials targeting her more than anything else, allowing her to turn that into a fun running gag. I wasn't impressed with her debut and I thought "loud = funny" was all there is about her, but she's either rapidly improving or just coming out of her shell now, and in the process she's building a fun little comedy brand for herself.
ERB's attempts at humor are kinda.. weird. Like calling the Witch "hot"? Rest of the girls pretty much had the same reaction as me (???) "I guess so" and just moved on. She also attempted to play into the "getting licked" joke about the Smoker but with "I got tongued" and while GG laughed when CC made the joke, she once again just smothered the "joke" and moved on. Once when she was defending one of the girls from a horde with a Katana, she just yelled "SWORD SWORD SWORD" like 10 times while cutting down the horde.
There's like THOUSANDS of jokes or references she could've made in that situation (even as a normie, she should know some MOVIES at least) and THAT'S what she went with?
ERB is also not really great at.. "batting" I guess is the term? Where easy jokes are thrown her way by the other girls to strike at but she just completely flops at hitting them (
https://youtu.be/RKf9RKbdfEU?t=28). Even these "fail"s can be comedic moments if you acknowledge and lampshade it, but she just stays silent, and the other 3 just move on.
At one point Raora makes an Italian accent joke causing CC and GG to burst out laughing, while ERB just goes "yeah?" with no reaction.
She also doesn't take advantage of her STRENGTHS either. The British accent as I mentioned earlier, is a wellspring of all kinds of jokes, but she just never does anything with it.
She's also VERY good at mimicry, and L4D2 is like one of the BEST games to do pranks on your genmates with that skill. Imitate a crying Witch, or contradict your genmate's calls to confuse everyone and have a laugh, maybe summon the spirits of your senpai to bless you with their- alright I guess HER idea of a senpai probably wouldn't fly with the other 3.
Obviously ERB herself enjoys hanging out with Justice quite a bit. Even if she's not able to fit in well, the other girls never really stop trying to find ways to include her in their dynamic, they even highlight the few successes she has (like the gas tank "prank" on CC) so that everything's smooth, and she did get some hearty laughs out of a few moments as well.
It's just.. she treats the stream like a Discord Voice Call with friends, y'know? Like she's just there to hang with the girls, as if she doesn't have an audience watching her that wants some entertainment or even INPUT from her to the group dynamic.
In the end, ERB just isn't a good STREAMER period. Homos or no homos.
