#2017/03/13

[toskarinarchive]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon’s financial shell game let it create an “impossible” monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

For the pro-monopoly crowd that absolutely dominated antitrust law from the Carter administration until 2020, Amazon presents a genuinely puzzling paradox: the company's monopoly power was never supposed to emerge, and if it did, it should have crumbled immediately.

Pro-monopoly economists embody Ely Devons's famous aphorism that "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Rather than using the way the world actually works as their starting point for how to think about it, they build elaborate models out of abstract principles like "rational actors." The resulting mathematical models are so abstractly elegant that it's easy to forget that they're just imaginative exercises, disconnected from reality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

These models predicted that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power. Even if they became a monopoly – in the sense of dominating sales of various kinds of goods – the company still wouldn't get monopoly power.

For example, if Amazon tried to take over a category by selling goods below cost ("predatory pricing"), then rivals could just wait until the company got tired of losing money and put prices back up, and then those rivals could go back to competing. And if Amazon tried to keep the loss-leader going indefinitely by "cross-subsidizing" the losses with high-margin profits from some other part of its business, rivals could sell those high margin goods at a lower margin, which would lure away Amazon customers and cut the supply lines for the price war it was fighting with its discounted products.

That's what the model predicted, but it's not what happened in the real world. In the real world, Amazon was able use its access to the capital markets to embark on scorched-earth predatory pricing campaigns. When diapers.com refused to sell out to Amazon, the company casually committed $100m to selling diapers below cost. Diapers.com went bust, Amazon bought it for pennies on the dollar and shut it down:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18563379/amazon-predatory-pricing-antitrust-law

Investors got the message: don't compete with Amazon. They can remain predatory longer than you can remain solvent.

Now, not everyone shared the antitrust establishment's confidence that Amazon couldn't create a durable monopoly with market power. In 2017, Lina Khan – then a third year law student – published "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," a landmark paper arguing that Amazon had all the tools it needed to amass monopoly power:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

Today, Khan is chair of the FTC, and has brought a case against Amazon that builds on some of the theories from that paper. One outcome of that suit is an unprecedented look at Amazon's internal operations. But, as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Stacy Mitchell describes in a piece for The Atlantic, key pieces of information have been totally redacted in the court exhibits:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/amazon-profits-antitrust-ftc/677580/

The most important missing datum: how much money Amazon makes from each of its lines of business. Amazon's own story is that it basically breaks even on its retail operation, and keeps the whole business afloat with profits from its AWS cloud computing division. This is an important narrative, because if it's true, then Amazon can't be forcing up retail prices, which is the crux of the FTC's case against the company.

Here's what we know for sure about Amazon's retail business. First: merchants can't live without Amazon. The majority of US households have Prime, and 90% of Prime households start their ecommerce searches on Amazon; if they find what they're looking for, they buy it and stop. Thus, merchants who don't sell on Amazon just don't sell. This is called "monopsony power" and it's a lot easier to maintain than monopoly power. For most manufacturers, a 10% overnight drop in sales is a catastrophe, so a retailer that commands even a 10% market-share can extract huge concessions from its suppliers. Amazon's share of most categories of goods is a lot higher than 10%!

What kind of monopsony power does Amazon wield? Well, for one thing, it is able to levy a huge tax on its sellers. Add up all the junk-fees Amazon charges its platform sellers and it comes out to 45-51%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Competitive businesses just don't have 45% margins! No one can afford to kick that much back to Amazon. What is a merchant to do? Sell on Amazon and you lose money on every sale. Don't sell on Amazon and you don't get any business.

The only answer: raise prices on Amazon. After all, Prime customers – the majority of Amazon's retail business – don't shop for competitive prices. If Amazon wants a 45% vig, you can raise your Amazon prices by a third and just about break even.

But Amazon is wise to that: they have a "most favored nation" rule that punishes suppliers who sell goods more cheaply in rival stores, or even on their own site. The punishments vary, from banishing your products to page ten million of search-results to simply kicking you off the platform. With publishers, Amazon reserves the right to lower the prices they set when listing their books, to match the lowest price on the web, and paying publishers less for each sale.

That means that suppliers who sell on Amazon (which is anyone who wants to stay in business) have to dramatically hike their prices on Amazon, and when they do, they also have to hike their prices everywhere else (no wonder Prime customers don't bother to search elsewhere for a better deal!).

Now, Amazon says this is all wrong. That 45-51% vig they claim from business customers is barely enough to break even. The company's profits – they insist – come from selling AWS cloud service. The retail operation is just a public service they provide to us with cross-subsidy from those fat AWS margins.

This is a hell of a claim. Last year, Amazon raked in $130 billion in seller fees. In other words: they booked more revenue from junk fees than Bank of America made through its whole operation. Amazon's junk fees add up to more than all of Meta's revenues:

https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/AMZN-Q4-2023-Earnings-Release.pdf

Amazon claims that none of this is profit – it's just covering their operating expenses. According to Amazon, its non-AWS units combined have a one percent profit margin.

Now, this is an eye-popping claim indeed. Amazon is a public company, which means that it has to make thorough quarterly and annual financial disclosures breaking down its profit and loss. You'd think that somewhere in those disclosures, we'd find some details.

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Amazon's disclosures do not break out profits and losses by segment. SEC rules actually require the company to make these per-segment disclosures:

https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3524&context=lawreview#:~:text=If%20a%20company%20has%20more,income%20taxes%20and%20extraordinary%20items.

That rule was enacted in 1966, out of concern that companies could use cross-subsidies to fund predatory pricing and other anticompetitive practices. But over the years, the SEC just…stopped enforcing the rule. Companies have "near total managerial discretion" to lump business units together and group their profits and losses in bloated, undifferentiated balance-sheet items:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2021/dec/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragons

As Mitchell points you, it's not just Amazon that flouts this rule. We don't know how much money Google makes on Youtube, or how much Apple makes from the App Store (Apple told a federal judge that this number doesn't exist). Warren Buffett – with significant interest in hundreds of companies across dozens of markets – only breaks out seven segments of profit-and-loss for Berkshire Hathaway.

Recall that there is one category of data from the FTC's antitrust case against Amazon that has been completely redacted. One guess which category that is! Yup, the profit-and-loss for its retail operation and other lines of business.

These redactions are the judge's fault, but the real fault lies with the SEC. Amazon is a public company. In exchange for access to the capital markets, it owes the public certain disclosures, which are set out in the SEC's rulebook. The SEC lets Amazon – and other gigantic companies – get away with a degree of secrecy that should disqualify it from offering stock to the public. As Mitchell says, SEC chairman Gary Gensler should adopt "new rules that more concretely define what qualifies as a segment and remove the discretion given to executives."

Amazon is the poster-child for monopoly run amok. As Yanis Varoufakis writes in Technofeudalism, Amazon has actually become a post-capitalist enterprise. Amazon doesn't make profits (money derived from selling goods); it makes rents (money charged to people who are seeking to make a profit):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profits are the defining characteristic of a capitalist economy; rents are the defining characteristic of feudalism. Amazon looks like a bazaar where thousands of merchants offer goods for sale to the public, but look harder and you discover that all those stallholders are totally controlled by Amazon. Amazon decides what goods they can sell, how much they cost, and whether a customer ever sees them. And then Amazon takes $0.45-51 out of every dollar. Amazon's "marketplace" isn't like a flea market, it's more like the interconnected shops on Disneyland's Main Street, USA: the sign over the door might say "20th Century Music Company" or "Emporium," but they're all just one store, run by one company.

And because Amazon has so much control over its sellers, it is able to exercise power over its buyers. Amazon's search results push down the best deals on the platform and promote results from more expensive, lower-quality items whose sellers have paid a fortune for an "ad" (not really an ad, but rather the top spot in search listings):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

This is "Amazon's pricing paradox." Amazon can claim that it offers low-priced, high-quality goods on the platform, but it makes $38b/year pushing those good deals way, way down in its search results. The top result for your Amazon search averages 29% more expensive than the best deal Amazon offers. Buy something from those first four spots and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average, you need to pick the seventeenth item on the search results page to get the best deal:

https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3645/

For 40 years, pro-monopoly economists claimed that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power over buyers and sellers. Today, Amazon exercises that power so thoroughly that its junk-fee revenues alone exceed the total revenues of Bank of America. Amazon's story – that these fees barely stretch to covering its costs – assumes a nearly inconceivable level of credulity in its audience. Regrettably – for the human race – there is a cohort of senior, highly respected economists who possess this degree of credulity and more.

Of course, there's an easy way to settle the argument: Amazon could just comply with SEC regs and break out its P&L for its e-commerce operation. I assure you, they're not hiding this data because they think you'll be pleasantly surprised when they do and they don't want to spoil the moment.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Image: Doc Searls (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/4863121221/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[transspeciesculture]

We keep mentioning how transspecies as a term has existed long before the radqueer & transID communities formed, and started claiming it as part of those communities despite it's actual usage within nonhuman/fictional/unusual human species identifying spaces and objections from said spaces.

As a sort of quick thing to back this up, here are some examples before the year of 2020 (estimated beginnings of the radqueer/transID community)!

All of this excludes troll posting/mockery, and is focused on NH/FICT community's discussions. Some additional content warnings are provided for some of the e-mails, however.

This is not extensive, feel free to show us any other finds (excluding alt.horror.werewolves e-mails, we've already scoured trough everything. There is actually more mentions via that, but all from the same person).

Mentions of term:

01 - "Gender-bender" e-mail, 1999. Included in this section due to the unclearness of if the original author of the e-mail identifies as otherkin or transspecies personally.

[Link] [Link 2] [Archive] [Archive 2]

02 - "On cosmic surgery and personal identity" e-mail, 2005

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

03 - "Da Jakkal's work revisited" e-mail, 1999. Warning: has some outdated terminology/beliefs.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

04 - "Re: Introduction" e-mail, 2002

[Link] [Archive]

05 - "Re: Shifters: in need of Help." e-mail, 1999. Warning: thread has mentions of an un-nameable native American creature.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

06 - "Re: Musing of the Week" e-mail, 1999

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

06 - "Re: define were" e-mail, 1997. Warning: thread has mentions of an un-nameable native American creature. (This is the second time we've have to issue this CW. Sucks.)

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

07 - "Re: Fun with Faith" e-mail, 1997. Same warning as above, unfourtunately.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

08 - "Re: Questions on Were's/Shifting/etc" e-mail 1997. Same warning, a lot of early instances of the word being used seem to all be from this one being, sorry.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

09 - "Re: Slithering into AHWW" e-mail, 1997

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

10 - "Re: Odd Dreams" e-mail, 1998

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

11 - "Shifters: WereBreeds" e-mail, 1999. Warning: has some outdated terminology.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

12 - "On the appropriation of trans narratives by therianthropes" article, 2013. Contrary to the title, it is supportive. It does mention the native creature again due to excerpting an AHWW member's ramblings, so thread with caution.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

13 - "An Introduction to Animality" article, 2009

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

Usage of term for clear self identification (flags and symbols are included):

01 - "Re: A question to everyone out there" e-mail, 1997. Warning once again for mentions of an un-nameable native American creature, and questionable identity that may or may not be considered cultural appropriation (we have no place to say as we are not native). Still, it is an clear account of identification with the label and experiences that'd come to be associated with it.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

02 - "Chewing and biting (and intro)" e-mail, 1999. The poster at the time of posting already specifies that they do not identify with the label anymore, but used to.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

03 - "Transspecies Pride stamp" flag/pride graphic, 2017.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

04 - "Transspecies Flag" flag, 2018

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

05 - "Why I call myself Transspecies" personal article, 2018

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

06 - "Gender: Furry II (Now With More Scales)

[Archive]

07 - "Real Dragons: Transspeciesism" article, 2001

[Archive]

[marleneoftheopera]

Actresses playing Christine in both POTO and LND:

Sierra Boggess: Vegas 2006-07, London's 25th Anniversary, Broadway 2013, 2014 (POTO), London 2010-11 (LND)

Celia Graham: London 2002-03, 2005-07 (POTO), London 2010-11 (LND)

Mira Ormala: Oslo 2018 (POTO), London 2011 (LND)

Anna O'Byrne: World Tour 2009, London 2012-13 (POTO), Australia 2011 (LND)

Claire Lyon: World Tour 2012-15, 2019-20 (POTO), Australia 2011 (LND)

Meghan Picerno: World Tour 2019, Broadway 2019-23 (POTO), US Tour 2017-18 (LND)

Celinde Schoenmaker: London 2015-17, Greece 2020 (POTO), London Concert 2023 (LND)

Manon Taris: Paris 2016 (POTO, cancelled), World Tour 2023-24 (LND)

[themaveriqueagenda]

it's trans+ history week, so i finally have an opportunity to make a detailed post about maverique history.

so here it is:

a detailed timeline of maverique history.

31/05/2014 — @queerascat coined maverique as "a non-binary gender characterized by an unconventional and unothodox internal sense of self and the interrelationship between that sense of self and society"

15/06/2014 — queerascat reworded the definition as: "a non-binary gender characterized by autonomy and inner conviction regarding a sense of gender which is unorthodox, unconventional and entirely independent of conventional concepts of gender". they created the maverique flag on the same day.

18/06/2014 — tearun suggested maver as an equivalent to man/woman and rique as an equivalent for boy/girl, the latter was never heard of again due to it sounding like "reek"

19/06/2014 — someone suggested mav as an equivalent to boy/girl, @whatdoesenbymean suggested Mv (pronounced "mav") as a title

21/06/2014 — after some confusion, queerascat reworded the definition one last time as "a gender characterized by autonomy and inner conviction regarding a sense of self that is entirely independent of male/masculinity, female/femininity or anything which derives from the two while still being neither without gender nor of a neutral gender"

22/06/2014 — the @maveriques blog was created

24/06/2014 — maveriques posted a CMYK analogy to explain maverique

28/06/2014 — maveriques posted a list of proposed maverique terms

29/06/2014 — someone suggested Mv (pronounced "miv") as a title

06/07/2014 — queerascat uploaded a video about their label change and the term maverique in their youtube channel

12/03/2015 — maveriques clearly defined maverique as not an umbrella term

11/10/2015 — queerascat posted a gender tag video from a maverique perspective on their youtube channel

13/10/2015 — someone suggested maveriquine as an equivalent for masculine/feminine

~2015/16 — there was discourse on aliagender and aporagender being racist, and that maverique was a good term to use instead because it was coined by a Black person, queerascat pushed back against this

31/07/2016 — maverine was suggested as an equivalent to masculine/feminine

18/11/2016 — @moonstruck-melts suggested the earth and sun symbols for maverique, and @feekins suggested pluto as a symbol

03/02/2017 — @the-christian-closet suggested the comet symbol for maverique, mistaking it for an alternative sun symbol

05/02/2017 — maveriques posted a poll asking how people feel about the sun as a maverique symbol

12/02/2017 — maveriques posted the results, with most maveriques liking it but having reservations

24/02/2017 — courage-archive-deactivated2018 / sneer posted the symbol with the two extending arms

17/07/2017 — veriquinity was suggested as an equivalent to masculine/feminine

~2021: the maverique subreddit was created

06/01/2022 — renée yoxon went on the fifty shades of gender podcast to talk about being maverique, trans, nonbinary and genderqueer

06/2022 — reddit user ChaoticStrange suggested a maverique visibility day on 31/05 and others agreed

16/01/2023 — renée yoxon briefly spoke about being maverique on the gender reveal podcast

18/06/2023 — @themaveriqueagenda on tumblr was born

20/08/2023 — themaveriqueagenda on instagram was born

[lovelyjasmari]

Twisted Wonderland Reaction Part 17 ~ Special Edition

Hello everyone! 

So…it’s been a while since I’ve made one of these. Almost 2 years to be exact. But after book 5 forever changed how I engage with twst (for better and worse), I haven’t really been up to doing reaction posts anymore. Also after book 5 I actually began focusing more on the jp server since there were many things in the official translation that I found…lacking to say the least. 

But when twst jp released this mv on April fools day, I just knew I HAD to talk about it! I’m actually surprised more people aren’t. Probably the biggest thing about this mv is that in a lot of ways the narrative of book 5’s ending has changed now we have context to how NRC Tribe performed. I’ve seen a lot of posts on the bird app saying things like it makes sense now why they lost the VDC. 

I will say, this is definitely NOT a perfect performance. But as a former dancer with WAY too much time on their hands, I decided to analyze this.

So for context, Ive done a mix of ballet and jazz for eleven years, from age 4 to 15. Even though I gave up going to classes, I still did para para and anime dances with my friends. And in 2017, I decided to return to dance and have been dancing consistently ever since. I’m mostly versed in ballet but I still do some jazz, hip hop and took up kpop last year. To judge this fairly, I watched the MV several times, four times per member, (do the math and feel free to judge me). And with that, here are the things that stuck out to me the most. 

He is beauty, he is grace, HOW HE HELL DID HE NOT KICK EPEL IN THE FACE?!

Synchronization/symmetry 

The lack of synchronization was the first thing I noticed, ESPECIALLY in the first 30 seconds. The footwork is sloppy and Deuce and Ace in particular aren't as sharp with their moves as the other five. Rook seems to be the only one doing the choreography correctly because one point at 0:25 (and again at 3:31) where he bends his knee higher than the others and thanks to those fuckass uggs standing out so much, I couldn’t unsee it. At 1:03, 1:07, 2:07, and 3:00 Ace’s form is noticeably off as well.

And this may just be a personal hangup of mine but I found lack of symmetry between the boys at 1:14 very odd. Like, I don’t know how I can describe it but the way Epel tried to take center stage during his and Vil’s duet gave me the impression that wasn’t originally in the routine. At 1:13 there’s a split second where you can actually see Vil looking down at Epel like “...wut?” I immediately thought about that moment right before they go on stage where Epel offers to take on Vil’s solo’s because he looks so weak but Vil refuses. I wonder if Epel trying to take center like that is a callback to that exchange. Unfortunately, since the boys were perfectly symmetrical for the rest of the song, it stands out as awkward all the more. 

Kalim and Jamil

Lowkey, Kalim and Jamil both carried this performance after Vil. The little magic with the mic was a super nice touch and Kalim shines the most during the dance break. He seems to be having fun with it despite being in agony. What’s interesting is that after Ace and Deuce, Kalim is the most out of sync but he pulls it off well since I can tell he’s been on the stage before. Both he and Jamil are natural performers. 

Vil’s movements

So, this has been something of a headcanon of mine but it seems to have been proven correct with this mv. Vil has always struck me as someone who probably has a lot of classical dance training but little training in other styles like hip-hop or jazz. His movements are very graceful and elegant but almost…too elegant? I don’t know if that makes sense but they seem very smooth for this style of choreography. And because he’s in the center the most, it stands out the most.

AND THAT FUCKING GRAND JETE!!! Absolutely flawless but it feels SO out of place here! I will give him credit though, that is one of the most difficult jumps to pull off in ballet, and the fact he did that in fucking 5-inch heels right after the most mentally and physically traumatic episode of his life, it’s beyond impressive. And the fact he landed perfectly and so seamlessly moved into his final solo is even more remarkable. Still, that was the most jarring element of this choreography and I think it would still be out of place even if this was a “perfect” performance. 

Now here’s where I potentially piss people off

All in all this is a perfectly imperfect performance. Being completely objective and not taking my love for these characters into account, I honestly still don’t see how they lost. Well, I understand why but it still is fucked to me. I can understand Vil feeling like NRC Tribe didn’t perform their best since they were exhausted and hurting from dealing with his overblot. I can also understand that they were probably a lot more polished in rehearsal. But here’s the thing,  for a group of amateurs, I would probably expect this quality of performance even if they hadn’t had to deal with Vil’s overblot.

First off, while the choreography is rather simple from a dancers perspective, it can be pretty complex for beginners. For one, it requires a lot of synchronization to look correct. But as a beginner, perfecting synchronization alone can take months and, in larger groups, sometimes even longer. If NRC Tribe can look like this after only ONE MONTH of training, taking into account only three out of seven of them have dance experience, that’s extremely impressive.

To give an example, last year at my dance school for our end of the year showcase, the K-pop class did a cover of TWICE's Can't Stop Me. Because our class is made up of students with varying levels of experience (some none at all), it took us the better part of eight months to learn. We had to learn everything in groups of three before we could learn and practice together. And even then, we still fucked up a lot because none of us are professionals and some of us were dancing for the first time. Look at this video and tell me if you could learn this in only ONE month. Vil, can you train me please?? XD

And that brings me to the next point, the experience of all the members. Now, in Rook’s most recent birthday vignette, he mentions learning ballet and in book 5 we see Epel and Deuce taking ballet lessons. But in ballet, as a beginner, your earliest lessons are going to be almost exclusively barre work and depending on age, you might not do center work/combinations for weeks. I’m going to assume Vil is really the only one with solid dance training with Jamil and Kalim also having the most experience just dancing in general. As for the others, they were going to need a lot more training if this was going to look more polished. ESPECIALLY Ace and Deuce.

As for having to perform right after beating OB Vil’s ass, again I was expecting to see A LOT more noticeable errors. And knowing what they all just went through honestly makes me admire this all the more. The thing is, it’s easy to be beautiful when everything is right and perfect in your world. But being able to smile even when you’re struggling and your heart is breaking is even more beautiful still. Personally, I don’t think I could perform even half as well if it were me. 

It’s unfortunate that we don’t have a MV of Neige’s performance so I could do a fully fair analysis. But if we look at all the evidence, it seems to me that NRC Tribe still gave a better performance. And I think the true tragedy here isn’t even that NRC Tribe lost since I think that was always a given considering the dynamic NRC and RSA has.

The true tragedy, I think, is that Vil could be convinced that this perfectly imperfect performance was still inferior to Neige’s. But I’ll leave that for another time. 

[stickybasementobject]

Johnny Depp Horror Icon

01. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

02. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

03. Ed Wood (1994)

04. Sleepy Hollow (1999)

05. The Astronaut's Wife (1999)

06. The Ninth Gate (1999)

07. Corpse Bride (2005)

08. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

09. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

10. From Hell (2001)

11. Secret Window (2004)

12. Dark Shadows (2012)

13. Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

14. Transcendence (2014)

15. Marilyn Manson: Kill4Me (2017)

16. London Fields (2018))

17. Tusk (2014)

18. Yoga Hosers (2016)

[autumnslance]

LynMars's FFXIV Write 2024 Master Post

We're back again! The list and links for all of my completed prompts for this year's FFXIV Write. Stats and ramblings about writing will go under the Read More cut. Eventually these will be revised in some manner and tossed onto Ao3.

Asterisks again mean there's wolship nonsense happening.

01. Steer - Vignettes of less sociable times over Aeryn's life. 02. Horizon - WoL at the end of Ultima Thule, EW 6.0. 03. Tempest - WoL returns to Amaurot to contemplate, EW 6.4. 04. Reticent - C'oretta & Dark Autumn have a chat. Sort of. 05. Stamp - Aeryn finds a memento while cleaning, post-EW 6.0 06. Halcyon - Tanzel, Emelia, & understanding grief. Backstory. 07. Morsel - Zenos heading to Camp Broken Glass, EW 6.0. 08. Free Day! 09. Lend an Ear - Emperor Varis is very much alone. StB patches. 10. Stable - Hydaelyn as the avatar of Light. Endwalker. 11. Surrogate - Weird West AU. Unexpected new roles for the Strikers. 12. Quarry* - Dominants AU. Thavnair comes to Tural's aid. DT 7.0. 13. Butte - Dark Autumn versus seedkin in Xak Tural. DT 7.0. 14. Telling - WoL reflects on Emet-Selch's expected reaction. EW 6.0. 15. Free Day! 16. Third-Rate - Aeryn's annoyed by the Unbound. DT Role Quests. 17. Sally - Dark pays a final visit to a traitor, post-StB 4.1. 18. Hackneyed* - Aeryn, Thancred, & terrible literature. 19. Taken - A young wood warder tries to save his sibling. Backstory. 20. Duel - Wuk Lamat's challenge does not go as expected. DT 7.0. 21. Shade - WoL ruminates on some of their ghosts. Thru DT 7.0. 22. Free Day! 23. On Cloud Nine - A chocobo & her Warrior of Light. End ShB 5.0. 24. Bar - 2 different adventurers starting out. Legacy & ARR. 25. Perpetuity - Aeryn, Deryk, & questions of faith. EW 24man raid. 26. Zip - C'oretta helping out Hamon at the Coliseum. Technically DT. 27. Memory - In a future, music makes Iyna remember. EW Patches. 28. Deleterious - Aeryn & Shale discuss regulators & history. DT 7.0. 29. (Free) Deleterious 2* - Thancred & self-recrimination. ShB 5.0. 30. Two Heads are Better than One - Gulool Ja Ja muses. DT 7.0.

Previous years: 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Ended up a touch Aeryn-heavy this year, though Generic WoL, various NPCs, the other OCs, forays in the FC's AUs, and some supporting family cast members make appearances. There's even a callback to a previous FFXIV Write entry. Lots of Endwalker and Dawntrail due to recency bias, but it manages to span the spectrum from backstories through various expansions.

I only did 1 Free Day, due to having 2 solid ideas I ended up writing for that prompt. It was right at the end of my annual birthday vacation week, so I was pretty rested (may also be why they're among the longer entries!). Unusually, the rest of that week's works are not any longer than the others.

I'm also still working on some original writing, though, so that did cut into fanfiction time.

Below 500 words: #2 Horizon (347), #3 Tempest (415), #7 Morsel (499), #10 Stable (400), #13 Butte (477), #14 Telling (355), #17 Sally (464), #20 Duel (499), #24 Bar (462).

500 - 1,000 words: #1 Steer (944), #4 Reticent (581), #5 Stamp (588), #11 Surrogate (964), #12 Quarry (844), #16 Third-Rate (564), #18 Hackneyed (577), #19 Taken (915), #21 Shade (764), #23 On Cloud Nine (728), #25 Perpetuity (958), #26 Zip (592), #27 Memory (810), #30 Two Heads are Better than One (500).

Over 1,000 words: #6 Halcyon (2,479), #9 Lend an Ear (1,326), #28 Deleterious (1,099), #29 Deleterious 2 (1,231).

Shortest: #2 Horizon Longest: #6 Halcyon

Total: 20,382 words. Not my shortest but far from my longest. Comparing with the previous years, I can see a clear improvement in my grasp of both NPC and OC voices, and more confidence in general.

Even so, "Butte", "Sally", "Bar", and "Zip" were the hardest for me this year, and I may need to warm up to them. I love "Halcyon" for a lot of reasons, and am also fond of the lighter offerings in "Duel" and "On Cloud Nine." I like a lot of the others, particularly when trying to get into NPC heads (even if they're really weird places to be ffs, Zenos).

Not too many shippy entries this year, one of them for one of the AUs, one mostly talking about it rather than seeing it, but I like "Hackneyed" a lot as it's been awhile since I've written about Aeryn & Thancred's literary tastes (and opposite ways of treating their books).

These will eventually be revised and added to Ao3, and then we await next year!

[jennyfromthebes]

hi!! i know you've posted some favorite liveshows before but as someone who gets easily overwhelmed choosing shows off the Archive i'd love to hear some more of your fave shows to listen to!

Hi!! Here's a handful of recs, but if you want a more specific vibe feel free to send another ask and I can definitely give more :)

2023-07-13 (Four-piece band configuration) is maybe my all-time favorite for sentimental reasons, since that was my first tMG concert ever. Primarily Bleed Out and The Sunset Tree, with a banger solo set of Jam Eater Blues/Commandante/From TG&Y/The Monkey Song. Crowd energy is really high and there's some delightful banter and interactions!

2017-11-11 (Four-piece band configuration) is a slightly older but still fairly recent one. Since they were touring Goths at the time, it's a pretty Goths-heavy setlist, with my all-time favorite rendition of Shelved, also featuring a really cool solo Night Light and a gorgeous full band rendition of Snow Crush Killing Song!

2021-08-06 (Five-piece band, with fifth goat Erin McKeown) is notable for being the first show back after a year and a half of lockdown, and the energy is palpable. Live debut of a lot of Getting Into Knives, featuring an unreleased song and one from the first tape, and overall really fantastic and high-energy from both the band and the audience. This show is the one I reach for when I've had a bad day.

2009-06-13 (John solo) was the first of two shows back-to-back at Zoop, and while I shy away from describing any shows as "definitive", the Zoop shows are big in the same way Bottom Of The Hill shows are big. This one features a really great range of older and more obscure songs, and if you like this one, there's another show directly following it!

2014-06-15 (John + Peter duo), speaking of Bottom Of The Hill, this is a favorite BotH show! They play the entirety of Taboo VI: The Homecoming, and to this day I've still never listened to the actual Taboo VI tape, just this performance. It's the third of three consecutive shows at BotH, and all three are worth a listen for sure, but this one is my go-to recommendation.

2024-03-01 (John solo) is probably one you've seen me recommend before. This solo show from earlier this year was at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and the atmosphere of it is haunting and gorgeous. The acoustics of the cathedral make a lot of these songs just immensely powerful - there's something about this Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod that makes me cry pretty much every time I listen to it.

Additionally, no talk of live tape recs is complete without shouting out Emerald's live comps! You might know Emerald as The Sticker Lady, or if you've spent a few hours in queue with her, just an absolute delight of a human being and one of my favorite people in this community - she's seen tMG probably a hundred times, and each of her themed compilations are lovingly made with great skill and artistry.

(ETA: also worth including here, What's the Live Music Archive?)

Hopefully this is a decent enough rec list! I tried to keep a decent assortment of shows without being too overwhelming with options, but again, please feel free to drop another ask if you want more specific recs or anything. Happy listening!!

[draftpink]

SOPHIE - WHOLE NEW WORLD (OIL OF EVERY PEARLS UN-INSIDES OUTTAKES)

O1. WHOLE NEW WORLD/PRETEND WORLD (SECTION 1 ROUGH)

02. FEELINGS (NINA SIMONE COVER) [OCT 2017 DEMO] with CECILE BELIEVE

03. PONYBOYPLAYTIME (PONYBOY VOX OUTTAKE)

04. PONYFACE (MONEY INSTRUMENTAL)

05. FACESHOPPING (ORIGINAL AND RE-PROD. SOPHIE MESS EXTREME OTT 2 CLEANED)

06. IS IT COLD IN THE WATER (CLEANER AUDIO 2)

07. INFATUATION (MORE BALANCE PUMP TRY 2)

08. EFGH (LASER ALT/OUTTAKE]

09. IUG (PRETEND WORLD/SHOPFRONT OUTTAKE]

10. IMMATERIAL (FEBRUARY DEMO 2)

11. HOASSDALL

12. IT'S OKAY TO CRY (CLEAN MORE PROD 5 IT FOR AUDIO BELLS AND MORE)

13: KGJ83GN93

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M_waPocZdQGCOcKLYuxPqoAyEG7lwoNR

[dreamzvelvet]

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 Dreamcatcher

Dreamcatcher (드림캐쳐) is a K-pop girl group made up of seven members: JiU, SuA, Siyeon, Handong, Yoohyeon, Dami and Gahyeon. They debuted officially on 13 January 2017, with the single "Chase Me". The group is formed by Happy Face Entertainment company and the official name of their fandom is "InSomnia".

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 The group's history:

Inicially, the group debuted on 18 September 2014 under the name MINX with the single "Why Did You Come To My Home?" It was only formed by JiU, SuA, Siyeon, Yoohyeon and Dami. They had a completely different concept from now, which was a cute concept. It didn't work out, so they re-debuted with all seven members this time, forming the well-known Dreamcatcher, that has a very unique concept in the whole world of K-pop.

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 The members:

Stage name: JiU (지유)

Birth name: Kim Min-ji (김민지)

Position: Leader, Lead dancer, Lead vocalist, Visual

Birthday: 05/17/1994

Age: 30 years old

Zodiac sign: Taurus

Height: 167 cm (5'6 ″)

Weight: 49 kg (108 lbs)

Blood type: B

Animal that she represents: Bunny

Solo song: Cherry (Real Miracle)

Favorite color: Pink

JiU was born in Daejeon, South Korea. She has a younger brother and is the oldest member of the group (unnie).

Stage name: SuA (수아)

Birth name: Kim Bo Ra (김보라)

Position: Main dancer, Leader rapper, Vocalist

Birthday: 08/10/1994

Age: 29 years old

Zodiac sign: Lion

Height: 162 cm (5 ft 3¾ in)

Weight: 43 kg (94 lbs)

Blood type: O

Animal that she represents: Elephant or Bird

Solo song: No Dot

Favorite color: Red

SuA was born in Changwon, South Korea. She has an older brother and is the fastest member to learn the choreographies. Her personality is brilliant, she's friendly and outgoing, always laughing and making everyone around her laugh.

Stage name: Siyeon (시연)

Birth name: Lee Si-yeon (이시연)

Position: Main vocalist

Birthday: 10/01/1995

Age: 28 years old

Zodiac sign: Libra

Height: 166 cm (5′5)

Weight: 49 kg (108 lbs)

Blood type: A

Animal that she represents: Wolf

Solo songs: Entrancing and Paradise

Favorite color: Blue

Siyeon was born in Daegu, South Korea. She has an older sister and hates shrimps.

Stage name: Handong (한동)

Birth name:  Han Dong (韓東)

Position: Vocalist

Birthday: 03/26/1996

Age: 28 years old

Zodiac sign: Aries

Height: 165 cm (5'5 ″)

Weight: ?

Blood type: O

Animal that she represents: Cat

Solo song: Winter

Favorite color: Black and White

Handong was born in Wuhan, China. She is the only member of the group who isn't Korean and has a shy personality.

Stage name: Yoohyeon (유현)

Birth name:  Kim Yoo-hyeon (김유현)

Position: Lead vocalist

Birthday: 01/07/1997

Age: 27 years old

Zodiac sign: Capricorn

Height:  168 cm (5'6 ″)

Weight: 49 kg (108 lbs)

Blood type: O

Animal that she represents: Dog

Solo song: For

Favorite color: Green

Yoohyeon was born in Incheon, South Korea. She has a younger brother and is learning Mandarin and German. The other members say that she forgets about everything all the time. She has myopia and astigmatism.

Stage name: Dami (다미)

Birth name:  Lee Yu-bin (이유빈)

Position: Main rapper, Lead dancer, Vocalist

Birthday: 07/03/1997

Age: 27 years old

Zodiac sign: Pisces

Height:   163 cm (5'4 ″)

Weight:  44 kg (97 lbs)

Blood type: A

Animal that she represents: Panda

Solo song: Beauty Full

Favorite color: Yellow, Black and White

Dami was born in Seoul, South Korea. She has a soldier brother, can fight kendo and has a strong voice.

Stage name: Gahyeon (가현)

Birth name:  Lee Ga-hyeon (이가현)

Position: Rapper and Vocalist

Birthday: 03/02/1997

Age: 25 years old

Zodiac sign: Aquarius

Height: 160 cm (5'3 ")

Weight: ?

Blood type: AB

Animal that she represents: Fox

Solo song: Playground

Favorite color: ?

Gahyeon was born in Seongnam, South Korea. She is the best at maths and is the younger member of the group (maknae).

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 Discography:

❥ Chase Me - Single - 4 songs (2017);

❥ Fall Asleep In the Mirror - Single - 4 songs (2017);

❥ Prequel - EP - 6 songs (2017);

❥ Full Moon - Single - 2 songs (2018);

❥ Nightmare - Escape the ERA - EP - 6 songs (2018);

❥ Alone In the City - EP - 6 songs (2018);

❥ Over the Sky - Single - 2 songs (2019);

❥ The End of Nightmare - EP - 6 songs (2019);

❥ The Beginning of The End - Japanese Comeback - Album - 12 songs (2019);

❥ Raid of Dream - EP - 5 songs (2019);

❥ Dystopia: The Tree of Language - Album- 14 songs (2020);

❥ Endless Night - Single - 3 songs (2020);

❥ R.o.S.E BLUE - Single - 2 songs (2020);

❥ Dystopia: Lose Myself - EP - 6 songs (2020);

❥ Eclipse TV Size - Single - 1 song (2020);

❥ Dystopia: Road to Utopia - EP - 7 songs (2021);

❥ Eclipse - Japanese Comeback - EP - 6 songs (2021);

❥ Summer Holiday - EP - 6 songs (2021);

❥ Apocalypse: Save us - Album - 14 songs (2022);

❥ Apocalypse: Follow us - Album - 6 songs (2022);

❥ REASON - Single - 2 songs (2023);

❥ Apocalypse: From us - EP - 5 songs (2023);

❥ VillainS - EP - 5 songs (2023);

❥ VirtuouS - EP - 5 songs (2024);

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Naomi Alderman’s ‘The Future’

Naomi Alderman burst onto the scene in 2016 with The Power, an explosive and brilliant feminist apocalyptic parable. Now, seven years later, she's back with a chunky, propulsive second novel about a very different sort of apocalypse: The Future:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Future/Naomi-Alderman/9781668025680

The Power was a thriller about a mysterious force that gives women the power to administer violent electric shocks – even lethal ones – from the palms of their hands. As this power races around the world, the status quo is abruptly shattered. Abusers get nasty surprises. The Saudi government topples. Parents of teenaged boys demand sex-segregated classes to protect their sons from vicious girls:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/10/10/naomi-aldermans-the-power-in-which-fierce-power-of-women-is-awoken/

In The Future, we get a very different kind of apocalypse: the imagined apocalypse of the prepper. At the core of prepperism is a fantasy: that the world will experience a cataclysm that requires the special skills and supplies of the prepper themselves. Water chemists who turn prepper fantasize about attacks on the water-supply – not because there's any special reason to expect one, but because if terrorists attack the water supply, then water chemists become civilization-rescuing heroes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/22/preppers-are-larpers/#preppers-unprepared

(And of course, if the world ends in such a way that marauding bandits rove the wasteland, eating their former neighbors, then macho, AR-15-obsessed musketfuckers get to reinvent themselves as warlords who defend the sheeple from "bad guys.")

This is what makes billionaire prepper fantasies just so weird – for most of us, it's hard to imagine how the skills of a billionaire are the one thing we'll need to see us through a crisis. But for billionaires themselves, the necessity of billionaires in rebooting civilization is so self-evident as to be unquestionable.

What's more, billionaires are convinced – more than any of us – that the world is about to end. As Douglas @Rushkoff puts it, these guys want to earn enough money to outrun the consequences of how they're making all that money. This is #TheMindset, the idea that your own position has jeopardized civilization itself, but that also, you must survive the cataclysm, because only you can survive it.

Rushkoff chronicles the real-world fantasies of luxury bunkers patrolled by mercenaries locked into explosive discipline collars in his book Survival of the Richest:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

But billionaires don't just suck at running civilization, they also suck at making up stories about its collapse. One thing that's striking about Rushkoff's ethnography of rich people preparing to outlive the end of the human race is how banal their eschatological fantasies are.

It's not that there aren't any exciting stories to tell about billionaire survival fantasies. The granddaddy of these is, of course, Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 "#MasqueOfTheRedDeath":

https://www.poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death

I published an updated version with the same title in 2019 in my novella collection #Radicalized:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/14/masque-of-the-red-death/#masque

In The Future, we get a cracking, multi-point-of-view adventure novel about billionaires prepping for the end of the world. Three billionaires, the lords of thinly veiled analogs to Facebook, Google and Amazon, each getting ready in their own way. Stumbling into their midst comes Lai Zhen, a prepper influencer vlogger with millions of followers.

When Zhen becomes romantically entangled with Martha Einkorn, the top aide and chief-of-prepping for one of these billionaires, she finds herself in possession of an AI chatbot that is devoted to protecting a very small number of people from incipient danger. This chatbot determines that Zhen is being stalked by an assassin at a mall in Singapore, and guides her to safety.

The chatbot is a closely held secret among the tech billionaire cabal. It is designed to monitor world events and predict when The Event is imminent, be it disease, war, or other cataclysmic disaster. With the chatbot's predictive powers and its superhuman guidance, the billionaires, their families, and their closest confidantes will be able to slip away before the shit hits the fan, fly by different private jets to one or another luxury bunker, and wait out the apocalypse. Once the fires raging without have died down to embers, the chatbot's billionaire charges will emerge to assume their places as wise and all-powerful leaders of the next human civilization.

As you might imagine, not everyone who finds out about this plan – including various members of the billionaires' families who are fully aware of these rich, powerful people's fallibility – is enthusiastic about it. As we build toward a looming crisis, we cycle between these family members, Zhen and her hacker buddies, and members of an online prepper community where Einkorn is a kind of provocateuse and eminence grise.

Alderman skillfully maneuvers all these power players and blocs into position before detonating the crisis that sets off the book's second act, where we get into some damned fine Masque of the Red Death territory, but clad in Tony Stark mecha survival suits and against a backdrop of total disaster.

I won't give away any spoilers here, except to say that there are lots of twists (that won't surprise readers of The Power, which had its own excellent surprises). But without delving too deeply into the fake-outs, crosses, and turns that Alderman lays, I will say that this is a fantastic and incredibly satisfying comeuppance novel that gets very deep into the ideology of wishing the world would end, and dreaming that when it does, you will finally matter.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/07/preppers-of-the-red-death/#the-event

[staydandy]

Candle in the Tomb 4: The Lost Caverns (2020) - 龙岭迷窟 - Whump List

List by StayDandy Synopsis : Hu Ba Yi, Shirley Yang and Wang Pang Zi explore a mysterious tomb in the Shaanxi region. Shirley Yang travels to the Longling Maze Grottos to investigate unusual patterns on fossil fragments. On the way, she crosses paths with Hu Ba Yi who along with Wang Pang Zi have just escaped from the ancient city. The trio become companions in another tomb-raiding adventure. (MDL)

Whumpee : Hu Ba Yi played by Pan Yue Ming (3rd from left) • Wang Pang Zi played by Jiang Chao (far left) • Thomas played by Zach Ireland Splittgerber (small top group, torch) • Zhe Gu Shao played by Gao Wei Guang (small top group, blue light stick)

Country : 🇨🇳 China Genres : Action, Adventure, Mystery, Horror, Bromance

Notes : This is a Full Whump List • Adapted from the 2nd volume in the novel series "Candle in the Tomb" (鬼吹灯) by Zhang Mu Ye (天下霸���). • End credits song : 乾坤暴躁-《龙岭迷窟》影视剧主题曲 by 潘粵明, GAI周延 • TW : Arachnophobia

Related Lists : Candle in the Tomb 1 (2016) - Full List • Candle in the Tomb 2: The Weasel Grave (2017) - Full List • Candle in the Tomb 3: The Wrath of Time (2019) - Full List • Candle in the Tomb 5: The Worm Valley (2021) - Full List • Candle in the Tomb 6: Kunlun Tomb (2022) - Full List

Episodes on List : 10 Total Episodes : 18

*Spoilers below*

03 : Hu Ba Yi & Wang Pang Zi knocked around on a ship in a storm, Pang Zi falls overboard.. Ba Yi exhausted after fighting a monster

04 : Ba Yi & Pang Zi in a fight

05 : (near end) Ba Yi & Pang Zi fall into a cave, tumbling down through a tunnel system

08 : [past] (this story with Thomas is so funny lol) Thomas slapped (Zhe Gu Shao getting shocked 😆).. poked in the stomach & force fed a medicine (all comedic) … Zhe Gu Shao & Thomas hallucinating, Thomas falls into a ravine, saved

09 : [past] (@ 1:30 this whole exchange is so funny 😆 - he's definitely one of the better english actors I've seen for a while in a chinese drama) (near end) Gu Shao spits up blood … Thomas falls & hurts his leg, Gu Shao's arm is eaten off by bugs (would totally watch a whole show of just Gu Shao & Thomas!)

11 : [present] Pang Zi captured, tied up, beat up [not shown].. knocked out … locked in a cage, bit by piranhas

12 : TW: arachnophobia @ 12:10-27:30

13 : (@ 2:05 😆 hahaha I knew it 😆) (TW: arachnophobia @ 2:14-2:22, 3:34-9:28)

14 : Ba Yi tries to hold a stone door dropping down.. Ba Yi & Pang Zi trapped in a room filling with mercury.. Ba Yi dizzy

15 : (TW: arachnophobia @ 21:18-32:53 (end of ep)) Ba Yi & Pang Zi fight a group of monsters; Ba Yi thrown by an explosion

16 : (TW: arachnophobia @ 1:30-8:16) Hurt/exhausted from fighting monster, helped to walk … passes out briefly

17 : Has to climb freestyle, barehanded up a wall with little to no experience.. exhausted … (TW: arachnophobia @ 32:16 (end of ep))

18 : TW: arachnophobia @ 1:32-2:11

[saintmeghanmarkle]

The Telegraph finally focuses on the Unsussexfuls & Misan Harriman's Photogate. The attacks on Catherine are hypocritical and disproportionate. When will media examine other past obviously botched photoshopped Sussex s with the same scrutiny? by u/wontyield

The Telegraph finally focuses on the Unsussexfuls & Misan Harriman's Photogate. 📸 🤥 📸The attacks on Catherine are hypocritical and disproportionate. When will media examine other past obviously botched photoshopped Sussex 📸s with the same scrutiny?

Original article link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/03/13/meghan-pregnancy-photo-claim-doctored-willow-tree/

Archive link: https://archive.is/2024.03.13-095528/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/03/13/meghan-pregnancy-photo-claim-doctored-willow-tree/

The OSINT work of this sub has presented evidence of the botched edited Sussex photos for years. The media, both 🇬🇧 and 🇺🇸, have continued to ignore OBVIOUS deceit on part of the Sussexes and their minions, Liebrows Scobie and Misan Harriman. The media is complicit is Sussex 📸 scams. Major news outlets have continually propped up Sussexes lies by pushing their revisionist history via lies in articles and obviously edited images. 🕵️‍♀️

See link to Negative_Difference4's previous posts about the edited Sussex willow tree pregnancy announcement photo and other discrepancies in pinned comment.

Excerpts: One of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s own official portraits is said to have been edited with the insertion of a large willow tree.

The claim prompted accusations of hypocrisy after a source close to the Sussexes criticised the Princess of Wales, insisting that Meghan would “never” make a picture editing mistake and would have been “annihilated” for releasing a doctored family portrait.

However, an image released to accompany the announcement of Meghan’s pregnancy with her daughter Princess Lilibet on Valentine’s Day 2021 appears to have been heavily doctored, amid suggestions that a large willow tree was edited into the shot.

Mr Harriman took the picture with an iPad from his home in London and it was shared with no indication that it had been digitally altered.In 2022, he was asked during an appearance on BBC Radio 3 podcast Private Passions how he had created the photograph and admitted: “It’s amazing what you can do with technology.”

The presenter asked him: “They weren’t actually under a willow tree, they were lying outside in a meadow, weren’t they, Harry and Meghan, when you took the photograph of them?”

Mr Harriman said the image was his “most famous virtual shoot” as he described how he had used technology that allowed him to communicate with the Sussexes and tell them how to pose, before he remotely “pressed the shutter button” thousands of miles away.

‘Sussexes’ camp are hypocrites’

Angela Levin, Prince Harry’s biographer, told The Sun: “The Sussexes’ camp are huge hypocrites.”

A tree was doctored in their photograph to create a special backdrop so how dare their camp say anything about Catherine’s?”

THIS PART IS HILARIOUS!!!*🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Meghan spoke about her dislike of having certain features airbrushed out of photographs after posing for a People magazine cover in 2017.“

To this day, my pet peeve is when my skin tone is changed and my freckles are airbrushed out of a photoshoot,” she said.

😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶

There is no suggestion the Sussexes edited the photograph themselves.

A spokesman for the couple has denied commenting about the Princess’s picture. post link: https://ift.tt/gXdz5qD author: wontyield submitted: March 13, 2024 at 12:20PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

[exilology]

"ECLIPSE" is the pre-debut project by Y/N – known more popularly as EXILE HER – in order to introduce her to the k-pop scene. the project began in JANUARY 2017 and would continue until FEBRUARY 2018. the project was created by KWON GYEONG, who had personally hand-picked y/n for this project.

gyeong stated in an interview that she, "...watched y/n perform and compete on PRODUCE 101, and i immediately knew that she was the perfect face for this project that i had been working on." y/n was already gaining some fame after placing 14th in the survival show, and gyeong was quick to recruit y/n to KQ from her original company SOURCE MUSIC. by the end of 2016, y/n would begin training at kq entertainment after leaving source music.

along with gyeong, the producer team EDENARY would also help with the eclipse project when it came to producing and composing music. the project would be split up into four different parts with each part being divided by a four colors: RED, WHITE, BLACK, and YELLOW.

on FEBRUARY 11, 2018, a full album was released the contained all the songs from the projects into one including six other new songs. the album was simply titled ECLIPSE. a music video was released for the song MY NEVERLAND as well which helped tie up the story. the music video ended with a morse code which fans deciphered as "exile her." this would later be revealed to be y/n's stage name once she debuted.

– TRACK LIST.

I MAY FALL – 4 : 03

MY NEVERLAND – 3 : 23

RED LIKE ROSES – 3 : 12

MAGNETIC – 3 : 03

MIRROR MIRROR – 2 : 55

ECLIPSE – 3 : 51

FROM SHADOWS – 5 : 21

STAR – 3 : 18

I BURN (FT. HONGJOONG OF KQ FELLAZ) – 3 : 10

RUN AWAY –  3 : 37

GOLD – 4 : 02

JUST DO IT – 2 : 33

RED LIKE ROSES, PT.II (FT. KWON GYEONG) – 4 : 02

THIS WILL BE THE DAY – 3 : 08

listen to the full album here.

– STYLING.

below the cut is a quick look at the other parts of Eclipse.

the first part of the project "ECLIPSE: RED" would be released on JANUARY 13, 2017 with the trailer "RED" which featured the song RED LIKE ROSES. along with the released of the trailer, a single album would also be released which included the song in the trailer plus another song.

– TRACK LIST.

RED LIKE ROSES – 3 : 21

MAGNETIC – 3 : 03

the second part of the project "ECLIPSE: WHITE" would be released on APRIL 12, 2017 with the trailer "WHITE" which featured the song MIRROR MIRROR. along with the release of the trailer, a single album would also be released which included the song in the trailer plus another song.

– TRACK LIST.

MIRROR MIRROR – 2 : 55

ECLIPSE – 3 : 51

the third part of the project "ECLIPSE: BLACK" would be released on JULY 17, 2017 with the trailer "BLACK" which featured the song FROM SHADOWS. along with the release of the trailer, a single album would also be released which included the song in the trailer plus another song.

– TRACK LIST.

FROM SHADOWS – 5 : 21

STAR – 3 : 18

the fourth part of the project "ECLIPSE: YELLOW" would be released on OCTOBER 21, 2017 with trailer "YELLOW" which featured the song I BURN which featured fellow kq trainee, HONGJOONG. along with the release of the trailer, a single album would also be released which included the song in the trailer plus another song.

– TRACK LIST.

I BURN (FT. HONGJOONG OF KQ FELLAZ) – 3 : 10

RUN AWAY – 3 : 37

[dl-drama-cd]

DL Magazines Masterlist

B's-LOG

2012: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

2013: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

2014: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

2015: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

2016: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12

2017: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

2018: № 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

2019: №1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

2020: № 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11

2021: № 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12

2022: № 2, 3, 4, 5, 10

2023: №4, 8, 10, 11, 12

2024: 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12

2025: 1

Dengeki Girl's Style

2012: № 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

2013: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

2014: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

2015: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11

2016: № 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

2017: № 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Otomate Magazine

Vol.01, 03, 04, 05, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32

Rejet Cluster Magazine

Vol.1, 2

Otomedia

12.2013

02.2014

06.2014

07.2014

12.2015

06.2015

10.2013

08.2015

10.2015

Pash!

august 2013

december 2013

december 2015

november 2013

january 2014

febraury 2014

june 2015

Animage

09 2013

10 2013

11 2013

01 2014

03 2014

04 2014

07 2014

Prince Animage

fall 2013

Otaku USA

06/2016

Animedia

2013: 8,10

Media Information

34/2015

2D☆STAR

Vol.13

Cool-B

#60, #88

Cool-B Sweet Princess

vol.17, vol.26, vol.28