#Betting Culture

[slots-a-fun]

The Grand Opening of the Jockey Club Las Vegas

Step back in time to an evening of glitz, glamour, and high-stakes excitement that marked the birth of an iconic Las Vegas legend. The grand opening of the Jockey Club Las Vegas was more than just an event; it was a spectacle

A Night of Glitz and Glamour that Sparked a Vegas Legend Las Vegas, a city that thrives on extravagance and entertainment, has witnessed countless grand openings, but few have left an indelible mark quite like the inaugural night of the Jockey Club Las Vegas. It was a gala that would go down in the annals of Sin City’s history, setting the stage for a legendary establishment that would captivate…

[crowskullls]

I couldn’t be a minecraft creator because if I was doing freaky gay roleplay with my friends and then got called siblings I would just end it all

[khruschevshoe]

You know, it's rather interesting to me that Taylor Swift's parasocial relationship with her fans is honestly more akin to a YouTuber than a writer's. When I scroll through her tag on tumblr/Twitter, it's far more regarding the connection to her personal life/relationship developments than the actual metaphors/fictional story she might be telling. Everything comes back to how her songs reflect back on her relationships with Joe/Matty/Travis/Jake/insert ex-boyfriend here. And what fascinates me about it is that even though she complains about it, she leans into that very perception because it strengthens the parasocial bond.

The marketing for TTPD so clearly being about Joe Alwyn and the songs to Matty Healy. The marketing/video for Red TV so CLEARLY being about Jake Gyllenhaal, with so many of the new lines in All Too Well specifically being digs at him (I'll get older but your lovers stay my age, casting an actor that looks like him for the video, specific lines in I Bet You Think About Me). The fact that songs like Getaway Car and Bejeweled and Gorgeous and London Boy and Lavender Haze being picked apart at time of release and long after for signs of relationships crumbling. The way she uses surprise songs in relation to her relationship development with Joe/Matty/Travis. The damn TTPD "stages of grief" playlists where she deliberately undid/changed the meanings of old songs just to keep her audience speculating on her love life.

It's not sexist to point out that her wielding her love life is a marketing tool and that the strongest connection to her audience isn't the strength of her writing/the composition of her music- it's her deliberate crafting of a connection between her music and her personal life, leaving the audience invested in her music as an extension of Taylor the Person/Girlfriend rather than Taylor the Artist.

[louisbxne]

VICTORIA MONÉT at the Renaissance World Tour

BEYONCÉ performing Déjà Vu at the 2006 BET Awards

[sbrown82]

Babyyy, now THAT’s how you do a tribute! 🤌🏿🔥

[lgbtlunaverse]

Thinking of the Nie disciple that told Nie Mingjue it was Meng Yao who stayed behind to clean up corpses on the battlefield today.

Nie Mingjue didn't just randomly stumble upon poor lil meowyao eating bread in the novel, he was already looking for him to thank and reward him for his work.

That's what makes it so fun that nieyao's first conflict will end up being about someone else taking credit for Meng Yao's work.

And I'm sure that Nie Mingjue's actual opinions on plagiarism are a lot more nuanced, all we really get from him in this scene is "well you shouldn't kill someone over it!" which leaves a lot of room for what punishments he thinks are appropiate. But I bet that it isn't occuring to him in this moment that the only reason he knows Meng Yao at all, the only reason he got such a capable deputy, is that he noticed someone was taking care of the dead and cared enough to want to know their name. And then the Nie disciples didn't lie to him. The disciple he asked could have said "it was me, Zongzhu" to rise in the ranks himself, but he didn't. He went and asked others, who all also could have taken the credit, but they didn't. Someone saw Meng Yao working and decided to be honest about it and that simple decision is the catalyst for Meng Yao becoming Nie Mingjue's deputy.

Meng Yao can't just work hard to get results, others have to acknowledge that work. If they don't, it's as if he didn't do anything at all.

[grotesque-butler]

sure, what you do with fictional characters normally says absolutely nothing about who you are as a person, because it’s fiction and fiction is a great place to explore new ideas and dynamics. but i think there comes a point where it can say something about who you are, especially when you are expressing such violent hatred towards a morally bad or morally grey character who is actually a lot more complex and nuanced than everyone seems to think. there comes a point where it all becomes performative, like, “look at me!! look at how i fucking hate this awful character’s guts and want him dead, that makes me good, right??”

except it doesn’t. 

i won’t go into the topic of how morality is mostly a social construct and there’s really no “morally good” or “morally bad” but like…… some of y’all need to chill. seriously. and i feel like a lot of it just shows how little reading comprehension and media literacy these people have. they see a character do something they find morally reprehensible, and they immediately think that the character is 100% bad, inhuman, and deserves nothing more than the worst. it’s black and white thinking. they lack the concept of nuance. 

if you’re not old or mature enough to comprehend the subject matter and morals of a media’s story, don’t get into that media! don’t get into the fandom. or, at the very least, don’t go around playing morality police on a subject you are not mature enough to grasp yet. 

i miss when fandom was, y’know, for fans of something, instead of people just butting into spaces they’re not equipped for or don’t belong in just because it’s “trendy” at the moment.

on a less serious note though, i do find it funny that people get THIS heated and violent over fictional fucking characters. pixels. concepts. dolls used to tell a story. you do know they’re not real right?? 

[wishchip106]

imaging Erik making a chess board for Charles the day before cuba so he can surprise him with it after they defeat Shaw

he sculpted each piece perfectly using the skills Charles taught him and even engraved a message on the back of board that only he and Charles could understand

a few weeks after Charles was released from the hospital he finds the board tucked away in the closet they shared together

he flips the board over to reveal the message “Rage and Serenity” engraved into it with a small heart at the end

Charles puts the board back where he found it and never looked at it again for eleven years

[oxtoxtoxto]

You know, Carrie probably stuck around in the public consciousness in a much more active way on Earth Bet than it did in our own universe.

Think about it: Carrie - the novel - was published in 1974, and it was in 1987 when the active parahumans at the time decided to go public. We can assume that, because they could decide to go public in the first place, there were probably not that many parahumans around at the time, but even so, there had to be some people with powers by that point. So that's our baseline: 1987 is when people had powers.

1974 to 1987 is a little over a decade, which is a while, don't get me wrong, but it also isn't really enough time for something as widely popular as Carrie to fully leave public consciousness, like how there are plenty of books from the mid-2000s and early-2010s that sold well enough to stick around as something people are aware of and talk about in 2023.

Seeing as how the emergence of powers seemed to ramp up after 1987 in the Worm universe, it likely was not that long (late-80s, early-90s) until you had a mass casualty event which echoed the events that transpired in Carrie. Some kid in highschool going postal with powers nobody thought were possible and had no reason to expect.

I mean, shit, technically the Slaughterhouse 9 was around in 1987.

And people would want to look for some way to contextualize that, to understand horrible tragedy like that, or just find a reference frame for it, and waiting for them, as if by design, would be Carrie, which was likely not even fully out of the public consciousness by this point. A story that has paranormal elements that aren't quite mystical, where the powers are fantastical but the situation itself is almost mundane in its cruelty and ends in a lot of dead teenagers.

I can only imagine Carrie reasserted itself in mainstream culture at that point.

I never really dwelled on Taylor making a reference to Carrie back in the story. I could put two-and-two together. But I imagine her thinking that probably carries a whole lot more weight in her world, where that shit can and almost certainly has happened, then it would here, where Carrie is mainly known for being a good novel that kickstarted Stephen King's career, and where "going Carrie" is an evocative phrase, but nothing more than that.

It also makes me wonder what kind of existential crisis Stephen King would have gone through in Earth Bet. Imagine being The Guy Who Predicted The Horrors.

[marlynnofmany]

Someone should write a very practical and down-to-earth story about a dragonriding culture and how they deal with the potential for whiplash and related injuries. I just saw a gifset from a certain realistic dragon show, and watching those tiny CG riders bobbing around up there makes me concerned for the sake of their spines.

Do the saddles have backs and headrests? Does part of training involve teaching the dragon to hold its back unnaturally steady? Is there a handy magic spell to counteract inertia/gravity? Or are a number of riders lost each year to snapped necks, along with the ones who pass out from G-forces and are forbidden from flying?

[slots-a-fun]

The Inception and Vision of the Jockey Club Las Vegas

In the dazzling world of Las Vegas, where extravagance and entertainment reign supreme, there exists a hidden history that deserves to be celebrated. Welcome to the Jockey Club Las Vegas,

Unveiling the Origins of a Las Vegas Icon In the heart of the neon-lit desert oasis that is Las Vegas, a story unfolds that traces its roots to the glamour of a bygone era. The tale of the Jockey Club Las Vegas is one not only of opulence and entertainment but also of vision and determination. In this exploration of the club’s inception and vision, we take a step back in time to reveal the…

[gilgameshmash]

Can’t believe this, the mods on PHO took down my armsmaster x dauntless fanfic while keeping up a fic that’s even weirder and a lot more worthy of being take down. I think it’s because the pairing was dauntless x velocity. The mods have to be biased

[castingpods]

alright it’s time for a chambers and fogg yearning roundup: Chapter IV - Chicago 1929 edition.

Up first: a moment from Fogg that is basically just shameless flirting:

Up next: the unabashed admission that Fogg thinks Chambers has a number of positive traits, and the implication that while Chambers likes Fogg and finds him interesting, he doesn’t feel good enough for him.

UH CHAMBERS? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, MR. CHARLIE CHAMBERS WHAT. In all seriousness. The invitation from Fogg for Chambers to open up. Chambers cutting himself off from saying something ostensibly homo-fucking-sexual. If I had to guess either going to say that he would realize Chambers is queer or that he has feelings for Fogg specifically.

First of all, hurray for some feminist allies, second of all, the immediate horror and shock Chambers experiences around the idea of having a girlfriend is iconic and so queer of him.

Image ID in alt text!

[hazellvsq]

headcanon that hazel had the most parasocial beef imaginable with shirley temple. 8 year old hazel was writing hate mail to the local paper with her crayons calling the also 8 year old shirley a sellout and an industry plant. in 2010 hazel's watching nick at nite on the fifth cohort rec room tv and sees the 2 minute long shirley temple box set commercial and loses her fucking mind.

[asurrogateblog]

its interesting to me where the dividing lines of music cultures are. I feel like classic rock people mingle with the folk rock people mix with the prog rock people and we all more or less speak the same language despite our differences in aesthetic tastes. but then. the grateful dead is like. its own whole thing. a very distinct, very separate, Whole Thing. logically speaking I know I have much in common with your average deadhead, and yet, I have absolutely no idea how to interact with this genre of person. you see I don't think you become a fan naturally. they just spirit away whoever wanders off too far at the music festival and the next time you see them they're wearing a full length tie-dye skirt and selling smoking pipes in the shape of toadstools

[yuridovewing]

wc fans who got so anal about realism to the point of harassing people who drew blushing cats (yes that was a real thing) were always dumb because they were doing this for the sake of conserving the epic realism of wc, a series that was always basically about humans in cat bodies, written by someone who didnt even like cats, and where a white cat and gray cat had a tortoiseshell kitten. you dont even have to get into how these cats have organized religion either. like are you really choosing this series for that. these books.