The lunar new year holiday is upon us. Every year around this time, the internet is flooded with memes about 'gaining weight after visiting grandma's house'. Calling them memes feels like an understatement, though, as most grandmas genuinely want to stuff you until you burst. You somehow manage to finish a mountain of rice for lunch, only to be hit with a literal heap of fruit. Just as you finish that, out come the yakgwa, yugwa, and sikhye. By the time you're done with those, it's dinner time—it is a reality fueled by pure, unadulterated grandmotherly love. It’s enough to make you dread the scale when the holidays are over.

However, not every grandmother in the world is obsessed with fattening up their grandkids. They have different personalities, and some couldn't care less about your caloric intake. Some might even look at you with murderous intent, or find themselves in unfortunate circumstances where feeding you is simply off the table. Gaming, in particular, is full of such grandmothers. If you visited them this holiday, you’d likely come home thinner than when you arrived. In this era of nutritional excess, here are the TOP 5 'Grandmas who won't fatten you up'—perhaps the ideal figures for the modern person.

Coming in at 5th is Catherine, the grandmother of the Arknights operator 'Stainless' and a legendary technician from Londinium. Usually, when a grandkid returns home after struggling abroad, the standard procedure is to hear, 'Oh, my poor child, you've withered away!' followed by a fried chicken drumstick. Grandma Catherine is different. To her, a grandchild isn't someone to be coddled; they are more like a 'part' that needs to pull its weight in a harsh, unforgiving world. She doesn't check if you've eaten; she checks if your hammer work is precise and if the machinery is malfunctioning.

Her quotes make it clear that fattening up grandkids isn't even on her radar. There are no 'my sweet child' pleasantries here, just cold, hard advice like 'The quality of a part is determined by tempering' and 'Don't doze off, or the machine will bite your fingers off.' If you visit Catherine's place and dare to say you're hungry, you're more likely to have a monkey wrench thrown at you than a home-cooked meal. Her way of loving is to forge you like steel, so you’ll be smelling more industrial grease than gravy by the time you leave.

Opal, the gym leader from Ballonlea in the Galar region, looks like a kind, fairy-tale-esque sorceress at a glance. Many challengers have been fooled by her elegant demeanor and her mastery of the Fairy type, despite her being a spry 88 years old. But the moment you step into her house, you’re not getting a hearty meal—you're getting assaulted by 'quiz attacks' and 'pink brainwashing.'

There are actual victims of this. A boy named 'Bede,' who was once brimming with arrogance, was kidnapped(?) by Opal for some brutal successor training. He was put through the wringer so thoroughly that when he finally reappeared, he wasn't exactly packing on pounds; he looked haunted and sharp-edged. It got so bad that he had to bet his retirement just to escape her rote learning. She doesn't serve warm meals; she serves quizzes that drain your stats if you get them wrong, all while forcing you into a pink uniform. If you want to experience weight loss through pure mental exhaustion, I highly recommend a visit to Opal’s.

Ana Amari, an original member of Overwatch and a mother—or grandmother—figure to players across the globe. A battle-hardened veteran who continues to snipe on the front lines despite having lost an eye. She has spent her life as a soldier and a wandering bounty hunter. There was never any time for her to sit back and simmer a pot of Egyptian-style stew. Her diet is strictly MREs or convenience food; even if her grandkid visited, the best she could offer is a dented can of beans nearing its expiration date.

Moreover, while her specialty is 'healing,' her methods are rather aggressive. Complain about being hurt, and she’ll shoot you with a biotic rifle or toss a biotic grenade. Whine about being hungry, and she’ll shout, 'You're powered up, get in there!' while injecting you with a Nano Boost to throw you back into the fray. If you stay up late gaming, she’ll just put you to sleep with her Sleep Dart. Visit Grandma Ana, and you’ll likely leave with excessive adrenaline and a smaller waistline, courtesy of all those medicinal injections.

Lady Butterfly, one of the protagonist Wolf's mentors, is the very definition of a strong, strict grandmother. Watching an elderly woman dance across thin wires with such grace, it’s obvious her body fat percentage is effectively zero. If you drop by Lady Butterfly's residence in the Hirata Estate, you aren't getting a dinner table; you're getting a barrage of phantom kunai. Her mocking comment, 'Still just a puppy,' comes free of charge.

Look at how she fights. If she ate too much and grew heavy, she wouldn't be able to balance on those thin threads. She surely enforced strict dietary restrictions on her disciple, Wolf, constantly preaching that 'a shinobi must be light.' Ask for a meal, and she might just attempt an instant deathblow. Between dodging ghosts and reality, you’ll find yourself so hollowed out that you’ll lose your gut—and perhaps your soul—entirely. She’s a true mentor who teaches that the best food is the rice ball you steal. If you're hungry, just go buy some candy from a merchant.

Taking the top spot is Duchess, an agent from 'Concord.' According to her lore, she’s a mystic over 90 years old, a veteran who survived in the wasteland for over 80 years. On paper, you’d expect a wise, battle-tested grandmother who would tell stories to her grandkids and bake some makeshift cornbread. Since she even had a romantic subplot with a robot, she might have been a pretty hip and affectionate grandmother under normal circumstances.

But she can't feed us anymore. Due to the unprecedented event where the game decided to shut down service just 10 days after launch, the very world she lives in has vanished into the Andromeda galaxy. How can you get a meal from a grandmother whose house was demolished before the holiday even arrived? While characters like Bazz are being exhumed from the grave due to their unique designs, Duchess—who actually had one of the better character designs in Concord—is being left to wither away, forgotten. We grant the honorable 1st place to Duchess, the tragic grandmother whose existence has completely evaporated.