u/Zetsuji

(Sorry in advance if my English sounds a bit weird as it's not my first language.)

I think notice period is kind of a dilemma.

On one side, I think it is absolutely necessary. Firing someone on the same day, telling them not to come to office anymore, making coworkers collect their stuff etc. is just a shitty way to treat people. You basically leave someone unemployed without even giving them some time to search for another job. But at the same time telling someone months before that you are going to fire them can also create some interesting situations.

I used to work for a company in Japan. There was a coworker who was told a few months before that he was going to be laid off and management also gave him the new guy who was going to replace him and basically told him to train his own replacement. For weeks he taught the new guy everything. How to do each assignment, where the necessary files are, who he should email in which situation, what to do when certain problem happens etc. Basically all the knowledge he got from working there.

Then later we found out that during one of his last days, he brought an USB drive and copied a huge amount of company documents from the office PC.

And when I say company PC, I don't mean he sneaked into CEO's office at night and hacked some super secure computer or something. The company was just terrible with IT security. We had shared computers and basically everyone could access almost everything. If you knew where the folder was, you could just directly access it. There wasn't much separating normal employees from a lot of internal documents. So the guy basically had an open buffet in front of him and copied whatever he could. Later apparently he gave some of those documents to a competing company, probably for money.

Obviously I'm not defending stealing company information. What he did has its own legal and ethical problems. But what surprised me was how shocked the management was when they found out. You literally told this person "we don't want you here anymore" then you make him spend weeks teaching his replacement everything he knows while still giving him access to basically all of your company files and somehow you expect exactly the same loyalty from him until his final day.

Again, a proper notice period should exist. People shouldn't suddenly lose their income with zero warning just because a company decided they are no longer needed. But if you tell someone months in advance that you're getting rid of them, make them train the person who will replace them and at the same time have almost zero access control on your internal documents, maybe don't act completely surprised when something goes wrong.

This was back in 2019.

I had finally done it. I found a job and moved to Japan, the place I had been dreaming about for years. You know how some people have that one country or city they build up in their head for ages? For me, that was Japan.

And I actually made it there.

Of course, the Japan I imagined and the Japan I found were not exactly the same thing, but that is a whole different post.

Anyway, before I had even finished my first year there, corona happened.

The company I was working for laid off a huge group of people, including me. I had barely gotten used to living in the country. I was still figuring out which thing in the supermarket was actual cheese and which thing was basically dessert pretending to be cheese. I was just about to start putting myself out there, dating, meeting people, trying to have an actual life.

Then suddenly, I was unemployed.

At first I tried to stay calm. I told myself, okay, it is a pandemic. The whole world has gone insane. I am still in Japan. I already have a work visa. I will find another job.

And I did.

Then that company went under a few months later too.

That was when I really hit bottom.

My days became this miserable little loop. Wake up, play games, watch YouTube, send out a few CVs so my unemployment benefits would not get cut, then go back to playing games. I was not going out. I did not want to spend money. Even if I had wanted to, I did not really have any money to spend.

After a while, the days started melting into each other. I genuinely could not tell if it was Tuesday or Saturday. All I knew was that I was sitting in front of my computer, wasting time, and watching my life kind of fall apart in slow motion.

Then one day, while randomly clicking around on YouTube, I found that famous Sakura Miko GTA V clip.

Pink haired anime girl. Miko outfit. Playing GTA. Lamar says something, and she repeats the N word without having any idea what it means.

The first time I watched it, I just stared at the screen.

Then I watched it again.

Then again.

Because it was not just the word itself. The whole thing was funny. Her face, her voice, the completely innocent confusion, the way she was just existing in this tiny pink bubble of chaos in the middle of GTA. And then people were calling her “elite Miko,” which somehow made it even funnier.

That was how I fell into the rabbit hole.

At first you think, “I will just watch a couple of clips and move on.”

Everyone thinks that.

Nobody starts watching VTubers thinking, “Yes, this will now become a major part of my life for the next several years.”

But once the YouTube algorithm gets you, it gets you.

First it was Miko. Then Pekora. Then Marine. Then Korone, Fubuki, Aqua, and before I knew it, I was subscribed to everyone and watching streams daily.

Kiryu Coco became my first real oshi.

There was just something different about her. She had one foot in the Japanese side and one foot in the English speaking side, and she somehow connected both worlds. She was chaotic, but it was not empty chaos. It was sharp, clever, stupid, loud, and weirdly comforting all at once.

And at the time, I was sitting alone in my room in Japan, unemployed, broke, and with no idea what my future was supposed to look like.

Maybe I was just looking for something dumb to hold on to.

And I guess I found it.

Saying “Hololive saved my life” sounds dramatic as hell, and I know that. It sounds like something people roll their eyes at.

But honestly, it is not a lie.

My mental state back then was awful. I had lost two jobs in a very short period. If I told my family how bad it was, they would worry. If I told my friends, everyone already had their own problems. Girlfriend? I had broken up right after coming to Japan, so that was not a thing either.

And sometimes you do not even want to say your problems out loud, because once you do, they become real.

Hololive gave me a break from that reality.

I laughed at Miko being an absolute disaster in GTA. Marine being horny on main was practically a national emergency. Coco’s streams made me feel alive again. Pekora’s laugh was sometimes the only genuinely good thing I heard all day.

I do not want to make it sound deeper than it needs to be. Sometimes the thing that keeps you going is not a grand dream, a career plan, or some self improvement book.

Sometimes it is a blue haired anime girl with rabbit ears laughing like a maniac.

Time passed.

I got back on my feet. I found work again. I built a routine. I got out of that period.

Coco graduated, and she still has a special place in my heart. After that, Pekora, who had already been my second favorite, slowly became my number one. Her insane energy is just something else. Even now, if I am having a bad day and hear that laugh somewhere, I cannot help smiling.

I am doing fine now. I have a job. My life is stable. I am not in that dark, messy place anymore.

But Hololive stayed.

And not in a “yeah, I watch a clip once in a while” kind of way.

I am still a huge fan.

Like, genuinely, embarrassingly, unapologetically, still deep in the rabbit hole.

TL;DR: I moved to Japan in 2019 after dreaming about it for years, then got wrecked by corona, lost two jobs in a row, and ended up broke, isolated, and mentally in a terrible place. Around that time I randomly found Sakura Miko’s famous GTA V clip, fell into the Hololive rabbit hole, discovered Kiryu Coco and Pekora, and somehow those chaotic anime girls helped me get through one of the worst periods of my life. I am doing fine now, but I am still very much a Hololive fan.

Aegon feels different since he’s a distant, almost mythic historical figure by Robert’s time, and he wasn’t seen as cruel or insane like later Targaryens. He also founded the realm Robert ends up ruling, and importantly, he had a close relationship with Orys Baratheon, who is widely believed to be his bastard half-brother and the ancestor of House Baratheon. Do you think Robert would still hate him just for being a Targaryen, or respect him as a great conqueror and maybe make an exception?