Hanamae Haru Asks Chat to Sign Advice With a Disliked Food in Ranked Street Fighter 6

REJECT — Hanamae Haru, a streamer with REJECT, opened a nine-and-a-half-hour Street Fighter 6 ranked session on Saturday by setting a new rule for her chat: anyone giving instructions or advice should end the comment with the name of a food they dislike. The goal for the day was promotion to Platinum 2 with Elena, using only the skills she already had.

Haru said she had spent several days troubled by her own weakness and had sorted the comments she gets into categories. Advice that fit the flow of play, or answered a question she had asked, was welcome. Off-target remarks and drive-by jabs were what she meant to mark out with a tag, she said, and she wanted a way to tell them apart without losing the useful advice. “Let’s think about it together,” she told viewers.

“Once everyone started writing what they dislike, my heart stopped feeling prickly at all. Thank you.” — Hanamae Haru, as chat filled with disliked foods

She tried two formats on the spot. First she asked chat to begin such comments with the line “I’m dumb so I don’t know, but,” a phrase that filled the chat within minutes. She then asked for a disliked food in parentheses at the end, and chat answered with cilantro, celery, bell pepper and more. She called the first format fun but too much to ask of everyone, and settled on the food at the end, a rule she said she would run for a few hours. She also asked viewers not to write comments that hurt others and to hide or report any they came across.

The play itself was slow to warm up. Haru said Drive Impact counters would not come out at the start and joked about it, and she said she had watched a couple of higher-ranked Elena players and noticed a combo she wanted to learn eventually. Around the 35-minute mark she turned to cross-up attacks, which she said she had never practiced, and called them a goal to work toward rather than a requirement. Ranked matches began about 50 minutes in.

Chat cheered a win nearly eight hours into the stream. At the close, Haru read out the 12 Super Chats and Stickers, thanked viewers and drifted into a talk about grilled beef. Reading a supporter’s message wishing her promotion to Platinum 2, she said she had not managed it that day and would keep trying. If she streams on Sunday, she said, it will start around 1 p.m.