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batboyblog · 6 months ago

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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #19

May 17-24 2024

President Biden wiped out the student loan debt of 160,000 more Americans. This debt cancellation of 7.7 billion dollars brings the total student loan debt relieved by the Biden Administration to $167 billion. The Administration has canceled student loan debt for 4.75 million Americans so far. The 160,000 borrowers forgiven this week owned an average of $35,000 each and are now debt free. The Administration announced plans last month to bring debt forgiveness to 30 million Americans with student loans coming this fall.

The Department of Justice announced it is suing Ticketmaster for being a monopoly. DoJ is suing Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation for monopolistic practices. Ticketmaster controls 70% of the live show ticket market leading to skyrocketing prices, hidden fees and last minute cancellation. The Justice Department is seeking to break up Live Nation and help bring competition back into the market. This is one of a number of monopoly law suits brought by the Biden administration against Apple in March and Amazon in September 2023.

The EPA announced $225 million in new funding to improve drinking and wastewater for tribal communities. The money will go to tribes in the mainland US as well as Alaska Native Villages. It'll help with testing for forever chemicals, and replacing of lead pipes as well as sustainability projects.

The EPA announced $300 million in grants to clean up former industrial sites. Known as "Brownfield" sites these former industrial sites are to be cleaned and redeveloped into community assets. The money will fund 200 projects across 178 communities. One such project will transform a former oil station in Philadelphia’s Kingsessing neighborhood, currently polluted with lead and other toxins into a waterfront bike trail.

The Department of Agriculture announced a historic expansion of its program to feed low income kids over the summer holidays. Since the 1960s the SUN Meals have served in person meals at schools and community centers during the summer holidays to low income children. This Year the Biden administration is rolling out SUN Bucks, a $120 per child grocery benefit. This benefit has been rejected by many Republican governors but in the states that will take part 21 million kids will benefit. Last year the Biden administration introduced SUN Meals To-Go, offering pick-up and delivery options expanding SUN's reach into rural communities. These expansions are part of the Biden administration's plan to end hunger and reduce diet-related disease by 2030.

Vice-President Harris builds on her work in Africa to announce a plan to give 80% of Africa internet access by 2030, up from just 40% today. This push builds off efforts Harris has spearheaded since her trip to Africa in 2023, including $7 billion in climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation, and $1 billion to empower women. The public-private partnership between the African Development Bank Group and Mastercard plans to bring internet access to 3 million farmers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria, before expanding to Uganda, Ethiopia, and Ghana, and then the rest of the continent, bring internet to 100 million people and businesses over the next 10 years. This is together with the work of Partnership for Digital Access in Africa which is hoping to bring internet access to 80% of Africans by 2030, up from 40% now, and just 30% of women on the continent. The Vice-President also announced $1 billion for the Women in the Digital Economy Fund to assure women in Africa have meaningful access to the internet and its economic opportunities.

The Senate approved Seth Aframe to be a Judge on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, it also approved Krissa Lanham, and Angela Martinez to district Judgeships in Arizona, as well as Dena Coggins to a district court seat in California. Bring the total number of judges appointed by President Biden to 201. Biden's Judges have been historically diverse. 64% of them are women and 62% of them are people of color. President Biden has appointed more black women to federal judgeships, more Hispanic judges and more Asian American judges and more LGBT judges than any other President, including Obama's full 8 years in office. President Biden has also focused on backgrounds appointing a record breaking number of former public defenders to judgeships, as well as labor and civil rights lawyers.

#Thanks Biden #Joe Biden #kamala harris #student loans #student loan forgiveness #ticketmaster #Africa #free lunch #hunger #poverty #internet #judges #politics #us politics #american politics

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centrally-unplanned · 2 months ago

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IRL (In Real Life) - Buffydom Propaganda And The Internet-That-Was

It is 1997. You just got back from the latest Hot Topic run to restock on whatever the most raven-black bomb of Manic Panic they have on the shelves is, so you can do double-duty bleaching your hair in the shower while watching a CRT TV precariously mounted on the lip of your sink. On that TV is the Season 1 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you are obsessed. Unfortunately for you, no one else in Bowling Green, Ohio, shares your passion for a CW WB show about vampire hunting teens who purposefully fumble their line deliveries. You are alone, and you have shit you gotta say about it to someone, anyone, who will understand.

Fortunately for you, the marketing team at ye old WB anticipated that their audience would be a bunch of fucking nerds, and boy do they have a solution to your problem! Welcome to the Bronze:

A while back I stumbled upon the inexplicable existence of "IRL (In Real Life)", a 2007 documentary about the community that formed around the aforementioned Buffy fan discussion forum/chatboard. Officially running from around the launch of the show until it switched over to UPN after its fifth season (with the forum dying a dramatic death in the process), The Bronze was a highly active center for the Buffy fandom, which generated several spillovers into real life. In particular, it was famous for the creatives and even actors on the show occasionally posting on the forum, which culminated in members of the community organizing a yearly party in Los Angeles where posters would fly out and be joined by said cast and crew. This documentary charts its culture & history via interviewing an array of its members.

As always, I am not here to give the blow-by-blow; instead, what is the narrative this documentary is trying to sell?

My previous documentary write-up was about nerd culture in the 2010’s; newly ascendant, growing confident in its own values and looking to justify that to itself, wealthy and with a developed enough ecosystem for crowdfunding to create professional, polished documentaries of its own heroes. None of that is true for IRL. Filmed on whatever camcorder/potato hybrid proto-Ebay would cough up from its zero-bid listings in a series of hotel rooms and people’s living rooms in 2003-2004 after the forum had died, this is the era of nerd culture at its most conflicted and insecure; mocked by the mainstream and unsure if it should be proud of that fact or deeply ashamed of it. And this documentary wears this conflict right on its sleeve; one of its opening lines is a confident assurance to the audience of “don’t worry, we aren’t like those nerds”:

Throwing Trekkies under the bus in the process, cold! Particularly given how it proceeds to barely even blink before pivoting to explaining their hobby of running “WITTs”, multi-day-long collaborative roleplays:

You are exactly those Trekkies my dudes; you weren’t just at the devil’s sacrament you were hosting it! "WITT" stands for Whedon Improvisational Theatre Troupe, you can't recover from that guys.

(I love how “dozens” is large by the way - it was for the internet in 2001, right?)

Anyway, beyond documenting the forum and its members, the conclusion this documentary wants you to hold is that the Bronze was a special place of real community, and it is a community of “normal” people, who made real relationships. And in particular, that internet relationships can be just as real as those found in meatspace, that these relationships transcended the digital and entered the physical; and that this is what fandom can be about.

I want to start with the ways that narrative was correct within the context of the time. I can actually explain that Klingon comment! I have one extant interview with the director of the film, Stephanie Tuszynski, and she put her motivation as follows:

FFN: What made you decide to study Buffy fandom, particularly the Bronze, for your documentary? ST: The idea to do a documentary film about the Bronze actually came to me very early on, because "Trekkies" came out in the late 1990s so I was already a Bronzer at that point. And when I saw it I started throwing things at my television. I was incensed. That wasn't a documentary about the fandom experience, it was "hey let's find the most extreme examples possible and have a freak show!" It infuriated me […] It reinforced every awful stereotype about media fans while purporting to be objective.

It wasn’t a random example - the 1997 documentary Trekkies set the “standard” view of fandom as extremist oddballs, and Tuszynski specifically wanted to counter that. It was the early 2000’s after all, nerd stereotypes were strong, you had to fight them explicitly! In a society where there is strong background hostility to one’s identity, you will attempt to normalize it using known reference points; and certainly the people on these forums were more “normal” than the stereotypes admitted to because that entire binary framework is a dead end.

More importantly to the narrative is the online aspect, “making friends on the internet”. Another find I have is a blog post from a professor who used the film in a class; and in the film’s narrative of “people with no one ‘irl’ to share their hobby with finding friends online” triggered a debate around if the online relationships are “taking away” from in-person relationships that are presumed to be more valuable. A debate that still rages to this day over social media! But the contours were different back then, the internet was presumed to be niche, ancillary, and relationships made online in a completely separate box from “in person” friendships. The documentary goes to great lengths to explain that they were a real community because that idea is so contested. Ironically, they do this by emphasizing that they met up in person, hung out, attended each other's weddings, etc; as if only by meeting up in person could the relationships be validated as real? But you can’t truly fault them for meeting their implicit critics halfway in making their case.

So what can I fault them for?

*****

I was perpetually amused when watching the doc that they included two married couples in the filming, and for both one of the spouses would talk and the other would sit there, in silence, the entire time. Maybe they were members of the community and just not talkers; maybe their lines got cut in post. But what I kept thinking was that they were there selling normality to me; married couples are just inherently less oddball, less threatening, and in the era where “nerd = virgin” just less nerdy. Like with the Klingon line, there is an intentionality to the “just like you” vibe.

Which, as mentioned with the extensive forum roleplay, inevitably breaks down once the reality of forum activity is dug into. And I buried the lede here - you may have seen the title of the “longest” roleplay was “RTBS Soul Restoration Project”, but what does that mean? RTBS was a forum member’s name, and well:

Oh yeah, we are saving our friend from “a fate worse than death: worshiping Britney Spears” - welcome to 2001 baby! This is peak “nerd wars” stuff, the normies hate our shit so we hate the normie shit right back. Which is exactly how nerd culture was in the 2000's. I am not at all throwing shade at their tongue-in-cheek roleplay, resplendent in the ludicrously purple prose and asterisk-laden action descriptions as required by the early internet; but it sits in clear tension with some of the other messaging in this film. Leave Britney alone guys!

The documentary highlights a number of common practices from the forum - people doing daily greetings, the way that it being one unending massive chain of posts with no threading or topics meant people would mass-tag individual people to respond to and form “circles” that way - but there are things it leaves out. I did what any normal person would do after watching this documentary and read through over a year of archived posts on The Bronze to understand the community - but man did I not have to, as on literally the first page of my archived link I see:

And through God’s good grace that second link is archived:

Yes there are pictures at the link, and yes later on it does compare Buffy’s cleavage to the Mona Lisa. (The Giles link is not quite functional, but I was able to find it; sadly it is not nearly as thirsty)

I also found these “onboarding” sites for new members. Remember, this forum was the official forum, which meant there were no community mods or ability to “pin rules”, it was pure anarchy - so advice filled the gaps. And one of the bigger ones, in its *sighs and rubs forehead* blue font on black background, warns against “hottie posting” aka talking about how hot say Angel is, not because it isn’t allowed, but because it is like “pointing out the sky is blue” - it is so common that it will just get washed out.

It might seem like a similarly sky-is-blue comment to note that this forum was heavily about shipping, hotness discussion, fanfiction, and the like. Of course it was, right? These website “senior members” were trying to minimize it, police it, but it broke through constantly and also simmered under the surface through discussions and RP’s from my own review of the forum. The documentary, however, spends incredibly little time on it. Brief mentions of Angel fics, and no mention (iirc) of discussion of how hot the women were at all. Because once again those details really don’t fit into the narrative it is trying to sell.

At one point in the documentary someone notes how diverse all the friends they met in this community were? Which I broke out laughing over. In one way it is not wrong, I get it! Midwest college kids meeting people from all over the country, ages 40 to 14, talking about something no one in their podunk town understands. But on the other hand, you could not come up with a more standardized slice of humanity if you tried to rig it. Everyone here is an American+ with computer access in 1998, it is a grab bag of sys admins, nerd creatives, and comp sci majors. I did a random sampling googling the people interviewed to see what they are up to now, and literally a third of them are librarians. Even their fashion is like God played a prank on this director; not even a 2000’s anime con panel lineup is this stereotypical in the combinations of alt-goth lit girls and nerdcore computer bros.

The evolutionary process of joining this forum -> liking it enough to go to the live meetups -> liking that enough to participate in a documentary about it was a pressure cooker spitting out only a certain kind of person. Which is truly fascinating to see on display! This is the internet-that-was; and it bleeds through the grainy film despite the director’s efforts at times to the contrary.

Though even then it was only a very specific slice of the internet-that-was, because this is a very special breed of Online; namely, the professionals.

*****

Something that is decidedly not typical of The Bronze as an online community is that, as mentioned before, Joss Whedon and other creatives posted on the web forum, answering questions and also just playing around, and how that led to in-person parties where both forum members and cast/crew attended - the Posting Board Parties, or PBP’s. At these they hosted fundraisers, talked about the show, and in the documentary one girl reverently describes with incredible Repressed Lesbian Energy her experience of seeing Eliza Dushku dancing next to her. The PBP had a panel of party organizers, admission systems to keep out the “undesirables”, budgets, the works.

All this the documentary shares openly; it is a peak moment where the digital becomes real in a transcendent way, opening doors analog reality never could. It is also a cold-sweat-waking nightmare story from the lens of a modern Hollywood social media manager; one person in the documentary tells the tale of how one time lead actress Allyson Hannigan posted her phone number on the forum asking people to leave her cute voicemails. The person in question immediately called, and got Hannigan herself instead of the voicemail, so they chatted for a bit (The guy telling this tale is obviously lovestruck; his wife is sitting in typical silence next to him). Today this would be a code-red, nuke your phone situation; but the circle was so cloistered, and the rules so unwritten, that no one cared in these early years.

What they share less openly is all the drama that went into this event. They wax nostalgic about how the parties brought them together, but what isn’t mentioned is the church schism it caused, as the moment cast from the show started attending the party it got mobbed by outsiders. By its ~3rd year there were approximately 400 guests but only ~50 or so were from the forum. They had a huge fight about it, the head of PFP planning committee - “Morbius the Vampire”, who was later jailed for financial fraud btw - told the dissenting faction why don’t they just throw their own party if they hate his so much, and so they did. There was more fighting about it, and eventually they held a peace summit at an LA joint called Mel’s Diner to merge the two factions together. (My source for this is a book, which I will link later)

Hilarious, for sure, but while so much of what we have discussed is “proto online nerd communities”, this part is most decidedly not. The typical web forum absolutely cannot replicate the experience of roleplay-posting your way into shaking hands with Joss Whedon and having a shitfight over party budgets in LA. But most posters never got to attend these parties, of course, this didn’t mean much to them. While for those who did, you cannot help but imagine that this played a gigantic role in making them all become a “real” community. And care enough about that circle to, well after the forum was gone, schlep to a hotel room to be interviewed for a documentary about it. Participating in a documentary is always, in some way, an exercise in selection bias; but here the pruning is turned up to 11 - this is a very elite slice of a very unique fandom experience.

*****

I have one deeper level to go on this thread, somewhat buried in time today, that further shaped the participants here: “Whedon Studies”. The 2000’s was not the birth of media studies as an academic discipline; but it was the birth of fandom-driven media studies, and Buffy was nearly unassailably the leading light of that movement. Academics hosted entire conferences (and inexplicably still do!) on Buffy, Firefly, etc; almost all from the lens of gender & media, as Buffy’s brand was deeply entrenched in that deconstructive milieu. This movement would die a fiery death during the 2010’s shift in media & gender politics, and when the controversies around the toxic working conditions on the set of Buffy/Angel led to Joss Whedon’s near-total expulsion from creative pursuits. The whole edifice is, in a deep way, “cringe” for many of its former participants today.

But what is relevant for our story is that director Stephanie Tuszynski was a full member of that movement; while composing this film she was, for example, giving talks like these at conferences devoted to the Buffyverse:

God that is a lot of talks. This film itself was her thesis project for her I believe philosophy masters, and in our scant interviews lists other fandom-academic film projects she wanted to tackle (which as best I can tell fizzled out later). And the interview subjects were often participants in the same space as well! Academic-types doing media studies with a Buffy bent, or things like culture writers for new media outlets. One of them, writer Allyson Beatrice, even published a book about the Buffy fandom that was in regular bookstores:

To quote the blurb:

A hilarious collection of true stories from Allyson's days as one of the Internet's leading cult TV fan gurus, her mind-boggling escapades include meetings with network executives in dark steakhouses to try to save doomed TV shows and one hastily arranged wedding for two committed Buffy fans.

I highlight this not to say that academics cannot make documentaries, they certainly can. What I am saying is that if you point your camera at career Buffyverse writer Allyson Beatrice, and label her as a typical forum member giving you the hometown everygirl perspective on the community, you are, however unintentionally, lying to your audience. In its quest to give you the just-like-me Buffy fandom experience, what this documentary elides is that it is often giving you the lens of people who are fans of Buffy as a career. Those people are going to be bringing very different experiences to the table - of course they are concerned with sanitization, with nerd culture debates, the works. That is their bread-and-butter trade.

This dynamic bled into the forum’s day-to-day; there was a very clear hierarchy of “veterans” and “top” posters, who organize the live parties, have deep roots in the community, and even the ear of the show team...and everyone else. Particularly because as mentioned there were no rules on the forum, but since that can’t actually function in practice they self-generated community rules and thus their own leadership class. Cliques and groups were common and named, and veteran posters even had formally designated groupies:

I had also by this time become a groupie. I so enjoyed one particular Bronzer’s posts that she allowed me to become the seventh of her groupies. It was through groupie-dom that I got my first taste of firsthand WITT: several Bronzers, on the occasion of the birthday of she-to-whom-we-group, each took turns grabbing the microphone and praising the day that she was born. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we did this. But it was fun, and very funny, too, as we each took turns waxing melodramatic off the top of our heads. And from work, no less.

The source for this by the way is a 400 page ethnography of The Bronze posted by academic who did *cough* “field research” there; I am sure their membership in the “Bronzers Adoring Darla” fangroup was purely for comprehensive data collection purposes.

And to emphasize, I am not saying this is problematic or anything - the groupie things were all in good fun, best I can tell. I simply aim to showcase how the Bronze wasn’t just a baby version of online fandom forum dynamics; but also a baby version of e-celebrity mechanics. Something the documentary does not even attempt to touch on because that would be something normal people would not understand.

*****

All of the above may have come off like one big roast, and it is a little bit, but as I have mentioned before every documentary is propaganda. It is just impossible to have a tight film building a narrative out of the pieces of letting people speak to the camera without that narrative being but a slice of the truth those people want you to know. The Bronze web forum was a very special place to these highly invested fans, and this documentary is not lying to you about that.

But it is also a big part of early internet fandom! The Bronze was famous at the time, and it is right there at the beginning of so many shifts; the first generation of non-technical internet users, a new era of ‘fantasy’ media with the trappings of prestige and social critique, a boom in critique-as-community, and more. I very much want the full picture of that community; who made it up, what did they want from it and what did they get from it, and so on. No film could offer the full picture; this film’s homebrew rawness gives a valuable piece of it, and I enjoyed it for that. I just aimed here to draw out not only what the broader, more accurate dynamics of The Bronze were, but also the cultural question of why the film focuses on what it does, hides what it refuses to show, and what that says about 2000’s internet & nerd culture. Hopefully I succeeded in that.

And also to have fun looking at some incredibly dated Buffy fandom bullshit. May it have been fun for you too! {hugs you and waves goodbye}

#essay #buffy the vampire slayer #history of the early internet #Yeah I have no excuse for the length on this one - sometimes you just wanna be self-indulgent

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linkhundr · 1 month ago

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So NFTgate has now hit tumblr - I made a thread about it on my twitter, but I'll talk a bit more about it here as well in slightly more detail. It'll be a long one, sorry! Using my degree for something here. This is not intended to sway you in one way or the other - merely to inform so you can make your own decision and so that you aware of this because it will happen again, with many other artists you know.

Let's start at the basics: NFT stands for 'non fungible token', which you should read as 'passcode you can't replicate'. These codes are stored in blocks in what is essentially a huge ledger of records, all chained together - a blockchain. Blockchain is encoded in such a way that you can't edit one block without editing the whole chain, meaning that when the data is validated it comes back 'negative' if it has been tampered with. This makes it a really, really safe method of storing data, and managing access to said data. For example, verifying that a bank account belongs to the person that says that is their bank account.

For most people, the association with NFT's is bitcoin and Bored Ape, and that's honestly fair. The way that used to work - and why it was such a scam - is that you essentially purchased a receipt that said you owned digital space - not the digital space itself. That receipt was the NFT. So, in reality, you did not own any goods, that receipt had no legal grounds, and its value was completely made up and not based on anything. On top of that, these NFTs were purchased almost exclusively with cryptocurrency which at the time used a verifiation method called proof of work, which is terrible for the environment because it requires insane amounts of electricity and computing power to verify. The carbon footprint for NFTs and coins at this time was absolutely insane.

In short, Bored Apes were just a huge tech fad with the intention to make a huge profit regardless of the cost, which resulted in the large market crash late last year. NFTs in this form are without value.

However, NFTs are just tech by itself more than they are some company that uses them. NFTs do have real-life, useful applications, particularly in data storage and verification. Research is being done to see if we can use blockchain to safely store patient data, or use it for bank wire transfers of extremely large amounts. That's cool stuff!

So what exactly is Käärijä doing? Kä is not selling NFTs in the traditional way you might have become familiar with. In this use-case, the NFT is in essence a software key that gives you access to a digital space. For the raffle, the NFT was basically your ticket number. This is a very secure way of doing so, assuring individuality, but also that no one can replicate that code and win through a false method. You are paying for a legimate product - the NFT is your access to that product.

What about the environmental impact in this case? We've thankfully made leaps and bounds in advancing the tech to reduce the carbon footprint as well as general mitigations to avoid expanding it over time. One big thing is shifting from proof of work verification to proof of space or proof of stake verifications, both of which require much less power in order to work. It seems that Kollekt is partnered with Polygon, a company that offers blockchain technology with the intention to become climate positive as soon as possible. Numbers on their site are very promising, they appear to be using proof of stake verification, and all-around appear more interested in the tech than the profits it could offer.

But most importantly: Kollekt does not allow for purchases made with cryptocurrency, and that is the real pisser from an environmental perspective. Cryptocurrency purchases require the most active verification across systems in order to go through - this is what bitcoin mining is, essentially. The fact that this website does not use it means good things in terms of carbon footprint.

But why not use something like Patreon? I can't tell you. My guess is that Patreon is a monthly recurring service and they wanted something one-time. Kollekt is based in Helsinki, and word is that Mikke (who is running this) is friends with folks on the team. These are all contributing factors, I would assume, but that's entirely an assumption and you can't take for fact.

Is this a good thing/bad thing? That I also can't tell you - you have to decide that for yourself. It's not a scam, it's not crypto, just a service that sits on the blockchain. But it does have higher carbon output than a lot of other services do, and its exact nature is not publicly disclosed. This isn't intended to sway you to say one or the other, but merely to give you the proper understanding of what NFTs are as a whole and what they are in this particular case so you can make that decision for yourself.

#käärijä #whew its a long one sorry #but hopefully useful #and intended entirely to inform

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brostateexam · 2 years ago

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One of the recent trends on TikTok is an aesthetic called “night luxe.” It embodies the kind of performative opulence one usually encounters at New Year’s Eve parties: champagne, disco balls, bedazzled accessories, and golden sparkles.

“Night luxe” doesn’t actually mean anything. It isn’t a reaction to wellness culture, nor is it proof that partying is “in” again (has partying ever been “out”?). It’s just one of many aesthetic designations for which the internet has contrived a buzzy, meaningless portmanteau. Rest assured that night luxe will likely have faded into irrelevance by the time this article is published, only for another meme-ified aesthetic (i.e., coastal grandmother) to be crowned the next viral “trend.”

The tendency to register and categorize things, whether it be one’s identity, body type, or aesthetic preferences, is a natural part of online life. People have a penchant for naming elusive digital phenomena, but TikTok has only accelerated the use of cutesy aesthetic nomenclature. Anything that’s vaguely popular online must be defined or decoded — and ultimately, reduced to a bundle of marketable vibes with a kitschy label.

Last month, Harper’s Bazaar fashion news director Rachel Tashjian declared that “we’re living through a mass psychosis expressing itself through trend reporting.” There is, I would argue, as much reporting as there is trend manufacturing. No one is sure exactly what a trend is anymore or if it’s just an unfounded observation gone viral. The distinction doesn’t seem to matter, since TikTok — and the consumer market — demands novelty. It creates ripe conditions for a garbage-filled hellscape where everything and anything has the potential to be a trend.

TikTok plucks niche digital aesthetics out of obscurity and serves them up to an audience that might not have known or cared in the first place. While aesthetic components were once integral to the formation of traditional subcultures, they’ve lost all meaning in this algorithmically driven visual landscape. Instead, subcultural images and attitudes become grouped under a ubiquitous, indefinable label of a “viral trend” — something that can be demystified, mimicked, sold, and bought.

#long reads

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thewadapan · 4 months ago

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Spent today checking out The Amazing Digital Circus and Murder Drones, and god, the kids today have it so good when it comes to this sort of content. When I was a teen, I was obsessed with Red vs. Blue and RWBY, which I think it's fair to say are the equivalents of the time, and the sheer gulf in terms of writing quality and production value is stunning. I hear there were some rumblings of unprofessional conduct from the production company, which would hardly be surprising considering this is yet another guys-working-from-their-basement success story, but much bigger companies with much shittier business practises consistently put out much worse content than this.

The Amazing Digital Circus is definitely the better show of the two, thanks to its slam-dunk premise and some great writing from Gooseworx. The producers have talked about aiming to fill a perceived gap in the market between kids' cartoons (The Boss Baby) and adult animation (Bojack Horseman), and I think they have successfully threaded the needle to create a very unique tone. There's a sense of these works existing totally outside the mainstream media machine; they're not getting BBFC rated, but you just know millions of kids are watching them. It's on YouTube and the fact that it looks like some Frozen Spider-Man kids' slop just means da parents won't question what their kids are watching.

But truth be told, there's nothing objectionable about the content of The Amazing Digital Circus whatsoever. It's unusually metatextual and loosely apes the aesthetics of much darker media, touching on slightly more existential themes than your typical kids' cartoon, but it still has a lot in common with those same cartoons. The zany characters are all fairly one-note, and the emotional arcs of the episodes are honestly quite straightforward. The second episode in particular has an absolutely textbook plot structure to it. It's a far more self-assured and traditional style of writing than you ever see in this kind of independent work—certainly far more so than Murder Drones, which is written by an insane person.

More than anything, I'm reminded of how I felt watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica: that it's a very solid work of fiction, but that the people who'd get the most out of the work are isolated teens struggling to make the transition into adulthood. Certainly if nothing else, the fandoms of these shows must be bringing a lot of kids together around the world. I adore this soundbite from Goose: "Above anything else, I just wanted it to feel kind of lonely." You see Pomni's worldview shatter, she suddenly finds herself in a body that feels completely wrong, and she has to construct a new kind of belonging for herself.

As for Murder Drones, that show's absolutely fucking nuts, yo. The writing is at once painfully basic and utterly incomprehensible. If someone just sat down and explained the plot straightforwardly, it would be fantastically boring. But man, the presentation, the sheer delight the animators seem to approach every scene with...! I'd say it's clearly trying to use "the characters are robots" as an excuse to expose da kids to some absolutely shocking levels of gore, much like the Transformers movies, but midway through the series it starts straightup swapping the oil and wires for blood and bones and you've got to respect that.

The writing itself is so excruciatingly irony-poisoned that it goes beyond cringe and somehow wraps back around again to being sincerely funny. The show kind of wants to have its cake and eat it in terms of constantly lampshading how flat and cliché the emotional plotting is, but also clearly aiming to genuinely tug at the heartstrings and whip fans into a frenzy. And it kind of succeeds, I think! The way it veers between bizarrely high-effort implementations of memes, seriously cool fight scenes and horror visuals, and big emotional moments is very disarming. If The Amazing Digital Circus is an attempt to faithfully rework the American-cartoon formula for a slightly older audience, Murder Drones aims to crib the aesthetics of high-school cartoons while actively rejecting every traditional narrative technique used in those stories. Which means it's kind of bad, which means it's also kind of great.

If it's not already, then within a couple of years it will be deeply cringe to have ever been into Murder Drones in particular or (to a slightly lesser extent) The Amazing Digital Circus, in much the same way that everyone seems embarrassed to admit they were ever a Homestuck fan. But like with Homestuck, I feel like these series are genuinely pushing at the frontiers of storytelling in a way that's commendable and might inspire new kinds of writing once the fans grow up.

ENA is also pretty good, for the record.

#murder drones #the amazing digital circus #tadc

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astroismypassion · 4 months ago

Text

✨PART OF FORTUNE IN SIGNS AND HOUSES SERIES: 11TH HOUSE✨

Credit: Tumblr blog @astroismypassion

ARIES PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Aries and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via launching or joining a tech startup, focused on innovative technologies or disruptive business model, via work in community organization or activism, via work in digital marketing or social media management, via providing consulting services to businesses or organizations, advising them on innovation strategies, product development or new market exploration, via work in crowdfunding or fundraising. You feel abundant when you align with social causes, focus on group dynamics and embrace innovation.

TAURUS PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Taurus and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via work in investment management, focusing on building and managing portfolios that provide stable returns, via art colleting, dealing or curation focusing on pieces that have enduring value, via work in interior design, via work in hospitality management (in luxury hotels, resorts or event planning). You feel abundant when you embrace sustainable and ethical practices, when you practice patience and persistence.

GEMINI PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Gemini and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via engaging in activism, advocacy work, via work in public relations, graphic design, via creative writing, screenwriting, content creation, teaching, tutoring, joining or starting a tech company focused on innovative products or services. You feel abundant when you are focused on community, collective goals, when you stay versatile and adaptable.

CANCER PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Cancer and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via pursuing a career in early childhood education or childcare, nursing, caregiving, mental health services, via work in family and parent education, pursuing culinary arts or catering, engaging in art and design. You feel abundant when you focus on community, social connections, embrace technology and innovation, promote security and stability and use your intuition and emotional intelligence.

LEO PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Leo and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can find abundance by managing a charitable organisation. You can earn money via work as a creative director or manager, overseeing projects in fashion, advertising or design, via writing, blogging, content creation focused on inspirational and motivational themes, via work in charity or fundraising, work in teaching (drama, art, public speaking). You feel abundant when maintain confidence in your vision and abilities, when you embrace charisma, leadership and when you pursue a creative career.

VIRGO PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Virgo and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via work in tech support, quality assurance, systems analysis, work in non-profit management, pursuing teaching or training roles, engage in environmental research, when you organise workshops or seminars on practical skills, health and wellness. You feel abundant when you focus on health, wellness, when you network, collaborate and when you use technology.

LIBRA PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Libra and Virgo Sun people in your life. You can create wealth by creating and selling DIY kits or tutorials. You could also learn digital or 3D art. You could sell photos on sites like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock. You earn money via event planning, specializing in weddings, social events and community events, work in legal services, such as family law, meditation or contract negotiation. You feel abundant when you embrace collaboration and partnerships, focus on aesthetics and creativity.

SCORPIO PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Scorpio and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via holistic healing, alternative medicine, energy work, via astrology, metaphysical studies, spiritual counselling, via biotechnology, healthcare technology, environmental technology, via work in cybersecurity, data analysis or investigative journalism. You feel abundant when embrace deep, transformative work, engage in financial and strategic roles.

SAGITTARIUS PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Sagittarius and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via career in diplomacy, teaching, lecturing, work in tourism industry, work in educational publishing, work in broadcasting or journalism, work in editing or translation. You feel abundant when you engage in social and humanitarian causes, focus on education and communication, when you embrace international cultural perspectives.

CAPRICORN PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Capricorn and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via real estate development, work in corporate training and development, taking on leadership roles in non-profit organizations that focus on social justice, community development or environmental sustainability. You feel abundant when emphasize practical, realistic approach, when you use network and social connections.

AQUARIUS PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via streaming on platforms (Twitch), participating in esports or creating gaming content. You earn money via scientific research, when you create or support educational programs that focus on skills for the future (digital literacy, innovation), when you create content that explores futuristic concepts, technology trends or social change using platforms like YouTube, a blog, podcast. You feel abundant when you focus on technology and future trends and when you stay true to your unconventional nature.

PISCES PART OF FORTUNE IN THE 11TH HOUSE

You feel the most abundant when you have Pisces and Aquarius Sun people in your life. You can earn money via storytelling, work in holistic healing fields, massage therapy, via painting, writing, music or film, via offering spiritual or life coaching services. You feel abundant when stay true to your intuitive insights, embrace spiritual and healing practices and when you focus on humanitarian and compassionate work.

Credit: Tumblr blog @astroismypassion

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taegularities · 1 year ago

Note

hi, could you maybe write something for STARS BEHIND WAVES?

maybe about how they’re doing right now? (fluff, maybe suggestive?)

I really really love this story of yours:)))

Do you think you’ll write an epilogue someday?

(No pressure, i’m just really obsessed with this story)

Have a nice day/good night;)

fic: stars behind waves

pairing: jungkook x reader warnings: kissing, suggestive, his wandering hands and crude mouth lol, this is literally one of the softest couple i have and i love them so much, mention of fear of heights, oc is scared of a river :'), jealousy <3 pure fluff and bliss and love!! wc: 3.1k lol a/n: thank you for the request!! definitely one of my fav fics 🥺 i don't think i will be able to write an epilogue :( but rest assured, they're the happiest they can be. also, i really kinda love this lil drabble, so if you do, too, lmk hehe <3 a/n 2: i just found this in my drafts from when we were playing the amc game a couple months ago lol. hope you enjoy. is also unedited, so be gentle with me lmaoo <3

–

“Maldives.”

“God, no,” you reject, “sounds gorgeous, but. I can't deal with the heat anymore.”

Jungkook clicks his tongue, fatigued from the unproductive day, but agrees, “Okay. Maybe you’re right. We’ve seen our fair share of…”

The last words turn into a mumble, drifting when his attention does. He scrolls on, big eyes glued to the bright screen. He’s been changing tabs for hours now; between travel destinations and booking sites, he’s exhausted himself.

Several three-digit-numbers have burned themselves into your brain from comparing a dozen vacations; planning such a thing is tedious.

You saved money for this. Working your ass off throughout the year, putting extra effort in overtime hours to visit a place you’ve only dreamed of thus far. Jungkook graduated, and you promised you’d steer towards an unforgettable summer.

His shifts at the bookstore were tiring, too. One too many times you called during lunch break just to meet a groggy voice. The late dinners at home transpired similarly quiet, his eyes similarly fatigued.

Then he’d cling onto you at night; he found your warmth solacing. Would tug you in, smack his lips. Yawn against your shoulder before slipping into dreamland, uttering a couple last mumbled “I love you”s and pouty, whiny “Don’t wanna work”s.

Summer couldn’t come faster.

But so couldn’t dinner.

“Maybe we should think about it another time,” you say. “I’m getting hungry.”

Jungkook drops the attached laptop mouse dramatically, shoving it away as he leans back on his chair and declares, “Thank fuck. I’m starving.”

“Should’ve just said something.”

Dinner is relieving to the two of you; having used up all words for today, you eat in peace, each enjoying your meal. Jungkook, reaching for his glass of water, looks up at you once, bowl half empty.

His eyes land above your clavicles, right where the charm dangles. Sparkles. The stars he promised you almost two decades ago. He can’t believe it’s barely been two years since the summer occurred when he found you again.

Time has passed; the two of you reunited with ease.

Spending days and nights together doesn’t come without fights — occasionally, you snap at each other, reminding the other of lonely times, spitting words that soon turn into regret.

But those arguments, as natural as sunlight, pass quickly and give way to comforting words, lips on scarred cheeks, hands over warm bodies.

Even when you were younger, you’d make up softly, comfortably. Would apologise and seek an unknown spot on the island, starving for a distraction. You’d find yet another shell without pearls in it; would try to make things right.

Jungkook remembers one day particularly well; surprising how well it fits this very moment.

Back then you’d hiked up a hill, dizzy in the damp summer heat. You cursed at Jungkook for dragging you along when you’d suggested an effortless, pleasant afternoon at the small market.

Halfway through your journey, you feared you’d gotten lost. You didn’t meet people anymore. The forest grew more tense. You kept your eyes and ears open for snakes or bears or whatever might linger here.

You only felt a sliver of hope when you heard water splashing nearby, hoping it was a lake or the ocean. But what you found instead filled you with far more discomfort.

Not because the river that you found on top wasn’t very narrow or harmless. Neither because it ended in a waterfall that fell for quite a while and then continued the same river, meeting the ocean somewhere.

No, you felt terrified because you knew what Jungkook would want to do.

“Let’s go back,” you immediately blurted.

But he was already on his shit, shaking his head with a twinkle in his dark eyes. You pulled at his tee, ready to turn at your heel and roll down the hill. Jungkook, however, pushed your hand away, freeing himself from your touch.

“No. Let’s cross this.”

You knew it. He was bold and idiotic enough; an adrenaline junkie the way you couldn’t be. Even cliff diving took you a good while to tackle and then longer to get used to. He taught you and kept doing so every year, because you’d enter the island with a newfound fear of heights each time.

“Uhm,” you said, raising your hands in defence, “I do not think so, dude.”

“But loo—”

“No. *No, I—”

You were so close to the edge, though probably not enough for the current to pull you in. Maybe you just hallucinated the proximity, too. Because thinking about it in hindsight, there was probably nowhere that much of a danger for you.

But you still weren’t ready to die yet.

So you ripped your eyes open further, panicking a little when he stepped into the water along with his terrible crocs. You clamoured, voice higher than ever, “What the fuck are you *doing?”

And maybe you would’ve kept your stance and ran away if he didn’t smile back at you like you were nowhere safer than with him. A reassuring grin, secure and certain.

You guess you were already hopelessly in love with him then. Not to mention that you still constantly lost yourself in the kiss you’d shared on your porch this spring. Your very *first kiss…

And you still craved more ever since. Only, Jungkook had never given you more after that.

It didn’t help when he held out a hand, remaining teasing yet sweet with a tilted, crooked smirk. His stance, firm in the water, lured you in although you definitely weren’t one to be risky like this.

But somehow, he could still convince you. Forced a frustrated sigh out of you, pulling you in like a magnetic force as you neared the river. You could see the other side not too far from you, but in your fear, the distance seemed endless.

“C’mon. We got this,” he promised, his voice drowning in the sounds of the current. “If we die, we die together.”

You rolled your eyes. “Shit, you really think you’re poetic.” You climbed over a rock, taking off your shoes, holding them in one hand as the other clutched his fingers tight from the first moment, like a reflex. “You watch too many dramas, gosh.”

He held you in a careful grip. You were smaller then, and his seventeen-year-old body, a strong result of regular gym sessions, withheld the water far better than yours. You, as opposed to him, almost dropped to your knees wading forwards.

You stepped on a somewhat sharp rock under the white waves, but he wouldn’t let you drift away. His attention remained on you. Halfway across, he said, “Here.”

He took your arm and pulled you close, slinging it around his torso, enabling a stronger grip. He was an ass and gentle friend at once — because he scared you on purpose a moment later, acting as though he was slipping.

And just when you yelped once more, watching him squint an eye at the volume, you swore at him thoroughly. You mewled words you hadn’t heard in your voice before, and he laughed, stating, “That reminds me of a school trip.”

“What,” you panted, out of breath, “goddamn school trip.”

“We went to a climbing park, and like… this girl,” he sucked in air through his mouth, tired, too; and you held your breath, “this girl from my class was literally trembling. I— I helped her over a distance until she felt secure. But…”

He groaned, struggling a bit. Or maybe he just acted like he did, you didn’t know. You were more focused than before, that was for sure.

“She was screaming just like you,” he finished.

Suddenly, you weren’t that frightened anymore.

You even forgot that you’d feared death just a moment ago. Your chest burned green.

You asked, “Right. And… and you were holding her like this, too, huh?”

“Kind of.”

“Cool. Co—”

You were out of balance. One blink passed, and you tumbled, immediately digging your nails into his shirt and his skin. His hands saved you as you placed your free fingers onto a stone automatically, one shoe sliding off your fingers.

The river carried it away from you until you couldn’t see it anymore, and you furrowed your eyebrows, mouth wide as you yelled, “No!”

“Forget it, we just need to move!”

“It wasn’t me who fucking suggested this!” you snarled, gritting your teeth.

Your knees shook. You stared ahead — just a couple feet more.

“I got you,” was all he answered, “almost there.”

And when you finally were, you were still cursing, pushing his body away. Under your breath, you murmured a dozen words, and Jungkook, wiping soaked hands at his shorts, couldn’t stop chuckling.

His hair was damp, outrageous when he pushed it back, but it couldn’t distract you this time. Instead, you threw your remaining shoe at him, watching him dodge it with an amused wide grin.

You couldn’t be bothered with his jokes; he was being irritating. There was literally nothing over here. Who knew if there was a way to get off this hill from here at all.

Knees still liquid, you targeted a tree and took a seat underneath it. You caught your breath, observing him as he sniffled and picked up your shoe. You felt empathy for his shorts; he still dragged his hands over them, leaving dark, wet stains.

Then, he dropped down next to you. Nudged your shoulder and said, “Come *on. That was fun.” A beat of a pause as you moved your head to glare at him. Then, “Don’t look at me like that!”

“*You,” you started, face close to his, a finger pointing at his chest, “were almost gonna organise a funeral.”

“Please. Nothing was gonna happen to you.”

“No. Your *own.”

He laughed again. “You’re so cute.”

“Shut up.”

You exhaled. In truth, it hadn’t been that bad. Looking at the river from here, you truly were far enough from the edge, and the water had barely reached your knees. But the thing he said…

You searched for a way to make things less awkward; to not let him know that you were seething with envy. A harmless question came to mind, subtle as you inquired, “Was I at least a little braver than that… classmate?”

He lifted his head in thought, humming.

“Hmm. No.” Your shoulders slumped. How rude. “Hard to judge, though. It took us only a few minutes here, and it took her *hours to cross the climbing park.”

You didn’t tell him that sometimes, you were supposed to take hours. Not everybody was as athletic as him. Hmph.

“You helped her all this time?” you asked.

“Half of it at least.”

You shouldn’t have been jealous. Not bothered by how casual he made it sound, how he nodded… it was all whatever. But also—

“And then?” you dug. “You drove back to school and acted like you hadn’t just bonded?”

“Uhm…” Your heart dropped. Typical first love, typical first frustrating feelings. Your young heart was a lot more feeble. “Something like that.”

But you understood.

“Oh, Jeon…”

“It was just a kiss after lunch, okay. That day, and never again.”

Ah, you hated this. So he could kiss someone else, but not you aga—

No. Stop. What dumb thoughts.

“Okay. Good for you,” you told him, back to your prior tone.

Damn it.

You stared at the abandoned shoe between the two of you.

Shit, how were you gonna go back with one of your initially two Nikes on your feet? He’d have to carry you. At least you put both your socks in the one shoe you didn’t lose…

“Don’t act that way,” Jungkook spoke through your thoughts, patting your knee, “it was a lot more fun with you. She kept saying she wanted to go home and that messed with my own experience.”

“And yet, you kissed her.”

“Yeah, well. Happens.” He rolled his eyes. His voice was still casual and soft; perhaps he didn’t notice the storm in your pupils. “But I’ve had better kisses.”

Or maybe he did notice. Maybe that’s why he was saying that.

You hoped for a certain answer, but still tried, “Oh? Have you kissed more girls since spring?”

Oops. Okay, you didn’t want to ask so explicitly. But up until spring, he had never kissed anyone. And your heart fell into your ass, shoulders relaxing when he admitted, “No. Just her.”

Your eyes were wide now. You ogled at him, and then down to your drying legs again. Suppressing a smile, you nodded; and when you stared up at him anew, he was watching you intently.

Carefully, with tenderness in his gaze.

And he was close. You were half certain he’d kiss you again because for the tiniest moment, his eyes flitted down to your lips. But to your chagrin, the day and summer ended like this — mouth untouched.

He wouldn’t do more until years later.

Instead, he said, “I guess that was the last thing we still had left, right? Think I know this island inside out by now.”

“Probably,” you said, your voice hoarse. You cleared your throat, swallowed. “Would be cool to explore more with you, though. Outside this place, I mean.”

But once again, you couldn’t foresee that it’d be your last summer together for a long time. That you wouldn’t meet the boy bringing you the stars until you had hurt and broken enough.

And he didn’t know either; of course he didn’t. Because soon he promised, “When we’re older and richer, I’ll take you to the mountains. Okay?”

You giggled, unaware of the future. Naive and thinking you’d never separate from him, that you were destined to stay together — as friends or whatever else fate wrote for you.

So you hit his chiselled chest just lightly, telling him, “You’re gonna make me fear heights again, Jeon.”

“Nah,” he rebutted, “I’ll show you the clouds,” he pointed to the sky you couldn’t see, hidden behind the branches and leaves, “from up close.”

“Hmm,” you voiced, “the stars aren’t enough, huh?”

“They shouldn’t be. Strive for more and stuff, right?”

Right…

For a couple seconds, you just looked at him. Nodding a little, smiling, probably lovesick with hearts floating in your eyes.

Eventually, you lifted up your body, getting to your feet with a hand against the tree. “Okay,” you finally agreed, “mountains then.”

–

The charm glimmers in the light. It flashes Jungkook a little, and he blinks, moving his gaze up to your face. You’re finishing up the remnants of your soup, bowl tilted, getting to the last drops.

But your movements are slow, and you’re quiet… and he wonders whether he stayed silent for too long, too.

He calls your name softly, meeting curious eyes. His heart immediately pounds, and he says, “I was just thinking of something.”

You smile. “Figured. I was, too.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You first, though.”

“Hmm.” He lets the spoon drop, looking at the empty bowl, and then suggests with folded arms, “What do you think of the mountains this year?”

You raise your eyebrows. Look at him as if you understood. As if you recognised where his mind wandered to, and where the source of this idea lies.

And then, you prove that very point when you ask, “Were you remembering the waterfall incident?”

His lips form an O, expression sickeningly sweet and surprised.

“Were you, too?”

“Just a little. Since we said we don’t want any heat this year.”

He puffs out a breath; a slight, disbelieving shake of his head follows. Then, he simply says, “Sick.”

You kiss your teeth, nodding along. “You did promise back then. Mountains, I mean.”

“I did. And we can still totally go.”

“I’d love to.”

A brief silence envelopes the room. The pause is pregnant, the air lighter than before; and then he breaks the stillness.

“Hey… you gotta admit. You were jealous, weren’t you?”

His voice harbours playfulness, but his eyes hold a glimmer of curiosity. You can’t help but chuckle; thinking back to it, your pout was hilarious. Troubles used to be different back then — your younger self wouldn’t have survived opening the door to a half naked friend. Jungkook, toned chest out, right behind her.

A crazy summer indeed.

“You kissed me that year,” you say, “and then you kissed someone else. Teenage me was going *through it.”

You scrunch your nose, and when he does it in the middle of a laugh, too, you lose your cool. Might be due to the bunny teeth flashing. The sweet crinkles around his eyes.

But you lift off the chair, hurriedly rounding the table, lean over his body and sandwich his face between your palms. You don’t waste another moment — connect your lips quickly, mouth moving against his.

He lets out a tiny sound of surprise, but doesn’t reject you. Instead, his hands wander to your waist in reciprocation, dropping to your hips and then to your—

You gasp, tongues intertwining eagerly; you taste the freshly eaten dinner. Your keen hands hold onto his dark locks. He breaks the kiss only to get to his feet, pulling you close to his body. His head tilts, the kiss deeper. Fingers cradling the nape of your neck.

And then, as he sucks in some air, he whispers, “What was that?”

“Just…” You inhale. “Catching up. Doing what I should’ve done back then.”

“She says as if I don’t kiss her *all the time.” Soft peck against your lower lip. “Or as if I wasn’t just inside her this noo—”

“You’re so obscene, Koo.”

He snickers. “Alright. Now that we know what we want to do,” his breath is warm against your skin; you shiver, “we can book the vacay a bit later, too, right?”

Breathing is hard, speaking even more.

Your lips are parted, yearning for more. You’re irritated by the layers of clothing between the two of you — which is why you’re quick to agree, “Not opposed to a break.”

“Also,” he continues, his eyes locked onto yours, voice tinged with anticipation, “just so you know. Our kiss *was way better than whatever I did with Jiae.”

Another soft laugh escapes your lips; the name is insignificant for you. The intoxication of the moment matters; him and you. But you still jest, “Didn’t need to connect a name to that memory.”

His chuckle matches yours, voice barely above a whisper.

“I love you, you know?”

And that’s all he breathes for the next hour. Genuine confessions, tender praises — your name.

So often that you soon forget any other in the world — beyond continents and oceans.

–

liked it? then let me know!! 😁 and if you haven't yet, feel free to read the full oneshot that this drabble's a "sequel" to, as well <3

#*amc #notes for rid 🌹#anon #fic: stars behind waves #jungkook fluff #jungkook smut

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strugglingwriterwattpad · 1 year ago

Text

Walter Deville teaser

As she tightly gripped the entrance door, her heart skipped a beat as the melodious sound of her mobile ringtone echoed in her ear. With a sense of intrigue, she glanced at the screen to find an unfamiliar number glowing brightly. Without hesitation, she swiftly answered the call, her voice filled with a hint of curiosity. "Miss Stoker speaking," she uttered, her hands instinctively seeking warmth within the comforting embrace of her coat. “good evening, Miss Stoker. I am calling on behalf of my employee Lord Deville. The Lord has taken quite a liking to your recent paintings and would request to purchase every single one of them.” As she received the quick and emotionless request, a chill ran down her spine, sending shivers of anticipation through her entire being. It was a request that held the power to ignite her creative soul. Each and every painting from her recent collection flashed before her eyes, their gothic designs and dark colours dancing in her mind's eye. The numbers representing their worth swirled around in her head, filling her with a sense of exhilaration and joy. “Sir apologize for the silence. But I you sure you have the right artist. My pieces aren’t exactly the most popular pieces on the market.” She stuttered finally having the strength to enter the gallery and head to her office.

“ I am very sure mam. Lord Deville has been captivated by the pieces for some time now and has sent over a contract to your public email address.” (Y/N) eagerly unlocked her laptop and dove into her overflowing inbox, her heart pounding with anticipation. And there it was, like a beacon of hope, the subject line that caught her attention, illuminating the screen with its splendour. As her eyes met the dazzling digits of the price, a surge of excitement coursed through her veins, causing her sparkling eyes to widen in sheer delight. “this all seems too good to be true sir. I will have a read through the email and get back to the lord as soon as I'm done.”

“very well mam. We hope to hear from you soon.” As the old butler hung up the old-fashioned phone he looked back at his master with a poised nod. “it is done, my lord. Miss Stoker will read over the contract now.” In the dimly lit confines of Carfax Abbey's office, a solitary candle cast eerie shadows upon the vintage desks. The lord of the manor, an enigmatic figure, sat upright and impassive, poring over the printouts of (Y/N)'s website. “is it really here sir? Has our lady finally returned to us?” the butler spoke still keeping his emotions locked away. “it would seem so Mr. Fields.” the lord muttered. Finally, his old laptop flashed with a new email from the woman he had longed to see for centuries. “dear lord Deville. I am very pleased with the proposal sent to me. Unfortunately, the pieces have one more day in my personal gallery, but I can assure you after tonight’s event, I will have them sent of to your manor as soon as possible. I will send you over delivery reports once sent over. Warm regards Miss Stoker.” As Lord Deville's eyes scanned the message, a sly smile crept across his face. His heart, once as cold as ice, began to thaw with excitement. However, he knew better than to reveal his emotions just yet. He would keep his composure until he had his beloved back in his arms, where she belonged. As he sat in the dark, his fingers gracefully twirled the golden ring, its presence on his long finger a testament to his patience. With each rotation, the jewel embedded in the ring shimmered, mirroring the sparkle that once danced in her eyes, a memory etched in his heart.

#walter deville x reader #walter deville #the invitation #horror films #fanfiction #fanfic #thomas doherty x reader #thomas doherty #vampire #wattpadwriter

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

Text

The Bezzle excerpt (Part II)

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me next in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

Today, I'm bringing you part two of this week's serialized excerpt from The Bezzle, my new Martin Hench high-tech crime revenge thriller:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Though most of the scams that Hench – a two-fisted forensic accountant specializing in Silicon Valley skullduggery – goes after in The Bezzle have a strong tech component, this excerpt concerns a pre-digital scam: music royalty theft.

This is a subject that I got really deep into when researching and writing 2022's Chokepoint Capitalism – a manifesto for fixing creative labor markets:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

My co-author on that book is Rebecca Giblin, who also happens to be one of the world's leading experts in "copyright termination" – the legal right of creative workers to claw back any rights they signed over after 35 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

This was enshrined in the 1976 Copyright Act, and has largely languished in obscurity since then, though recent years have seen creators of all kinds getting their rights back through termination – the authors of The Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High Books, Stephen King, and George Clinton, to name a few. The estates of the core team at Marvel Comics, including Stan Lee, just settled a case that might have let them take the rights to all those characters back from Disney:

https://www.thewrap.com/marvel-settles-spiderman-lawsuit-steve-ditko/

Copyright termination is a powerful tonic to the bargaining disparities between creative workers. A creative worker who signs a bad contract at the start of their career can – if they choose – tear that contract up 35 years later and demand a better one.

Turning this into a plot-point in The Bezzle is the kind of thing that I love about this series – the ability to take important, obscure, technical aspects of how the world works and turn them into high-stakes technothriller storylines that bring them to the audience they deserve.

If you signed something away 35 years ago and you want to get it back, try Rights Back, an automated termination of tranfer tool co-developed by Creative Commons and Authors Alliance (whose advisory board I volunteer on):

https://rightsback.org/

All right, onto today's installment. Here's part one, published on Saturday:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

It was on one of those drives where Stefon learned about copyright termination. It was 2011, and NPR was doing a story on the 1976 Copyright Act, passed the same year that was on the bottom of the document Chuy forged.

Under the ’76 act, artists acquired a “termination right”— that is, the power to cancel any copyright assignment after thirty-five years, even if they signed a contract promising to sign away their rights forever and a day (or until the copyright ran out, which was nearly the same thing).

Listening to a smart, assured lady law professor from UC Berkeley explaining how this termination thing worked, Stefon got a wild idea. He pulled over and found a stub of a pencil and the back of a parking-ticket envelope and wrote down the professor’s name when it was repeated at the end of the program. The next day he went to the Inglewood Public Library and got a reference librarian to teach him how to look up a UC Berkeley email address and he sent an email to the professor asking how he could terminate his copyright assignment.

He was pretty sure she wasn’t going to answer him, but she did, in less than a day. He got the email on his son’s smartphone and the boy helped him send a reply asking if he could call her. One thing led to another and two weeks later, he’d filed the paperwork with the U.S. Copyright Office, along with a check for one hundred dollars.

Time passed, and Stefon mostly forgot about his paperwork adventure with the Copyright Office, though every now and again he’d remember, think about that hundred dollars, and shake his head. Then, nearly a year later, there it was, in his mailbox: a letter saying that his copyright assignment had been canceled and his copyrights were his again. There was also a copy of a letter that had been sent to Chuy, explaining the same thing.

Stefon knew a lawyer—well, almost a lawyer, an ex–trumpet player who became a paralegal after one time subbing for Sly Stone’s usual guy, and then never getting another gig that good. He invited Jamal over for dinner and cooked his best pot roast and served it with good whiskey and then Jamal agreed to send a letter to Inglewood Jams, informing them that Chuy no longer controlled his copyrights and they had to deal with him direct from now on.

Stefon hand-delivered the letter the next day, wearing his good suit for reasons he couldn’t explain. The receptionist took it without a blink. He waited.

“Thank you,” she said, pointedly, glancing at the door.

“I can wait,” he said.

“For what?” She reminded him of his boy’s girlfriend, a sophomore a year younger than him. Both women projected a fierce message that they were done with everyone’s shit, especially shit from men, especially old men. He chose his words carefully.

“I don’t know, honestly.” He smiled shyly. He was a good-looking man, still. That smile had once beamed out of televisions all over America, from the Soul Train stage. “But ma’am, begging your pardon, that letter is about my music, which you all sell here. You sell a lot of it, and I want to talk that over with whoever is in charge of that business.”

She let down her guard by one minute increment. “You’ll want Mr. Gounder,” she said. “He’s not in today. Give me your phone number, I’ll have him call.”

He did, but Mr. Gounder didn’t call. He called back two days later, and the day after that, and the following Monday, and then he went back to the office. The receptionist who reminded him of his son’s girlfriend gave him a shocked look.

“Hello,” he said, and tried out that shy smile. “I wonder if I might see that Mr. Gounder.”

She grew visibly uncomfortable. “Mr. Gounder isn’t in today,” she lied. “I see,” he said. “Will he be in tomorrow?”

“No,” she said.

“The day after?”

“No.” Softer.

“Is that Mr. Gounder of yours ever coming in?”

She sighed. “Mr. Gounder doesn’t want to speak with you, I’m sorry.”

The smile hadn’t worked, so he switched to the look he used to give his bandmates when they wouldn’t cooperate. “Maybe someone can tell me why?”

A door behind her had been open a crack; now it swung wide and a young man came out. He looked Hispanic, with a sharp fade and flashy sneakers, but he didn’t talk like a club kid or a hood rat—he sounded like a USC law student.

“Sir, if you have a claim you’d like Mr. Gounder to engage with, please have your attorney contact him directly.”

Stefon looked this kid up and down and up, tried and failed to catch the receptionist’s eye, and said, “Maybe I can talk this over with you. Are you someone in charge around here?”

“I’m Xavier Perez. I’m vice president for catalog development here. I don’t deal with legal claims, though. That’s strictly Mr. Gounder’s job. Please have your attorney put your query in writing and Mr. Gounder will be in touch as soon as is feasible.”

“I did have a lawyer write him a letter,” Stefon said. “I gave it to this young woman. Mr. Gounder hasn’t been in touch.”

Perez looked at the receptionist. “Did you receive a letter from this gentleman?”

She nodded, still not meeting Stefon’s eye. “I gave it to Mr. Gounder last week.”

Perez grinned, showing a gold tooth, and then, in his white, white voice, said, “There you have it. I’m sure Mr. Gounder will get back in touch with your counsel soon. Thank you for coming in today, Mr.—”

“Stefon Magner.” Stefon waited a moment, then said, for the first time in many years, “I used to perform under Steve Soul, though.”

Perez nodded briskly. He’d known that. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Magner.” Without waiting for a reply, he disappeared back into his office.

ETA: Here's part three!

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/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#copyright-termination

#pluralistic #the bezzle #martin hench #marty hench #red team blues #fiction #crime fiction #crime thrillers #thrillers #technothrillers #novels #books #royalties #wage theft #creative labor

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