#The Big Short (2015)

[naneki-maid]

I met my wife on Match.com. My profile said, “I am a medical student with only one eye, an awkward social manner, and $145,000 in student loans.” She wrote back, “You’re just what I’ve been looking for.” She meant honest.

The Big Short (2015)

[aeterna-auroral-avenger]

RG filmography movie suggestions 10/18

The Big Short Live Commentary (recommended once)

As a person who works in a very tiny, small town bank and as a person with a forensic accounting degree, when I watched the trailer, I was completely fascinated with this. Pretty sure I learned about this in my forensic accounting classes, so I'm glad I'm finally gonna watch a movie about it!

Also, RG with brown curls? ohmygosh...

Block #bigshortwatch to avoid spoilers

[christianbalefanatic]

Christian Bale as Michael Burry in The Big Short (2015) dir. Adam McKay

(christianbalefanatic gif)

[camyfilms]

THE BIG SHORT 2015

Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.

[horsegirl]

Looking over my personal records (letterboxd) to answer the favourite movies from each year ask game makes me feel like I’ve hardly watched any movies… I need to drop out and focus on watching movies

[gu6chan]

man........ i start thinking about my black butler days and a new rp blog of this one comes calling back to me like the devil

[radioregine]

between my older bestie obsessing over the man from uncle movie trio & my newer bestie obsessing over challengers and me agonizing over depicting the shift in some of my ocs from love triangle (ew, overplayed) to hinge poly relationship ... 2024 is the year of the fake tumblr throuple

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Big Short (2015, Adam McKay)

01/09/2024

[margotrobbieuniverse]

The Big Short - 2015

[allaegoriest]

i miss 2019 everybody misses 2019 if we concentrate hard enough we can shift the world consciousness i promise

[magnusmodig]

rough childhood headcanon qs / @clxscdeyes / no longer accepting !

╰┈➤ 7 . how old was your muse when they realized they had childhood trauma?

||. one whole "today years old" post!ragnarok and hela's reveal. Except, even then, according to the movie, not really because Thor is still in heavy denial about all of it where Odin is concerned. I've spoken a bit (here) about how Thor adores his family; he idolizes them and views them through blinding rose-colored glasses, (especially when they're deceased) and that is especially true of his circumstances.

So, very often times when the truth clashes with the rose-colored view of them (namely: his father), Thor does one of two things: find a way to justify the words or action with the surrounding context of the time to make it make sense (e.g., well he scolded me harshly because i was talking back), or avoid it altogether. (this is his go-to. no talking about it; thor would rather not right now, so he does not.)

Key example being: he would rather focus on how his father changed his ways, and the Odin that he knew and grew up with was a man who had turned away from pursuing war for war's sake, and was instead one who valued peace and life. He would rather focus on that aspect of Odin, and take in the broader picture of Odin's life. REGARDLESS of the fact that what Thor is deeply, personally affected - not with the realization that Odin changed his ways once upon a time - but by the fact that he lied to him, manipulated him, and controlled and shaped every aspect of his being, for Thor's whole life, JUST to avoid another Hela. Someone who Thor is not, could not be farther from, and never knew about, because Odin (apparently) kept the matter of his true first-born a closely-guarded secret and seemingly would have continued to were it not for Odin's death, Hela's escape, and Ragnarok all coinciding at the same moment in time. And this, all because Thor rationalizes it as "well, I wouldn't want to be remembered and judged based on the person that I used to be. I should extend that same kindness to my father, because he too, changed." (x10 because now Odin is dead. And it's in poor-taste to speak ill of a dead man.)

The problem namely being: Thor only talks about things when Thor decides it's time to talk about things ; when he is ready. ...but as this is a topic that ripple effects down to Thor's core, good luck getting him to open up about it, even just with himself.

[wellnesscard]

my outfit is realllllly cute today too btw

[christianbalefanatic]

Christian Bale wearing a leg brace in New Orleans, Louisiana as he starts filming The Big Short (March 23, 2015)

Re: Christian Bale as Michael Burry in The Big Short (2015) dir. Adam McKay

[kalmeria]

haircut time hhehehe (the recent case of merubrain mighttttt have sth to do with it)

[genericpuff]

Tbh at this point you should just make your own webcomic app/website because it would probably be 100 times better than whatever going on with webtoon right now.

hahaha it wouldn't tho, sorry 💀

Here's the fundamental issue with webcomic platforms that a lot of people just don't realize (and why they're so difficult to run successfully):

Storage costs are incredibly expensive, it's why so many sites have limitations on file sizes / page sizes / etc. because all of those images and site info have to be stored somewhere, which costs $$$.

Maintenance costs are expensive and get more so as you grow, you need people who are capable of fixing bugs ASAP and managing the servers and site itself

Financially speaking, webcomics are in a state of high supply, low demand. Loads of artists are willing to create their passion projects, but getting people to read them and pay for them is a whole other issue. Demand is high in the general sense that once people get attached to a webtoon they'll demand more, but many people aren't actually willing to go looking for new stuff to read and depend more on what sites feed them (and what they already like). There are a lot of comics to go around and thus a lot of competition with a limited audience of people willing to actually pay for them.

Trying to build a new platform from the ground up is incredibly difficult and a majority of sites fail within their first year. Not only do you have to convince artists to take a chance on your platform, you have to convince readers to come. Readers won't come if there isn't work on the platform to read, but artists won't come if they don't think the site will be worth it due to low traffic numbers. This is why the artists with large followings who are willing to take chances on the smaller sites are crucial, but that's only if you can convince them to use the site in favor of (or alongside) whatever platform they're using already where the majority of their audience lies. For many creators it's just not worth the time, energy, or risk.

Even if you find short-term success, in the long-term there are always going to be profit margins to maintain. The more users you pull in, the more storage is used by incoming artists, the more you have to spend on storage and server maintenance costs, and that means either taking the risk at crowdfunding (ex. ComicFury) or having to resort to outsider investments (ex. Tapas). Look at SmackJeeves, it used to be a titan in the independent webcomic hosting community, until it folded over to a buyout by NHN and then was pretty much immediately shuttered due to NHN basically turning it into a manwha scanlation site and driving away its entire userbase. And if you don't get bought out and try your hand at crowdfunding, you may just wind up living on a lifeline that could cut out at any moment, like what happened to Inkblazers (fun fact, the death of Inkblazers was what kicked off the cultural shift in Tapas around 2015-16 when all of IB's users migrated over and brought their work with them which was more aimed towards the BL and romancee drama community, rather than the comedy / gag-a-day culture that Tapas had made itself known for... now you deadass can't tell Tapas apart from a lot of scanlation sites because it got bought out by Kakao and kept putting all of its eggs into the isekai/romance drama basket.)

Right now the mindset in which artists and readers are operating is that they're trying way, way too hard to find a "one size fits all" site. Readers want a place where they can find all their favorite webtoons without much effort, artists wants a place where they can post to an audience of thousands, and both sides want a community that will feel tight-knit. But the reality is that you can't really have all three of those things, not on one site. Something always winds up having to be sacrificed - if a site grows big enough, it'll have to start seeking more funding while also cutting costs which will result in features becoming paywall'd, intrusive ads, creators losing their freedom, and/or outsider support which often results in the platform losing its core identity and alienating its tight-knit community.

If I had to describe what I'm talking about in a "pick one" graphic, it would look something like this:

(*note: this is mostly based on my own observations from using all of these sites at some point or another, they're not necessarily entirely accurate to the statistical performance of each site, I can only glean so much from experience and traffic trackers LMAO that said I did ask some comic pals for input and they were very helpful in helping me adjust it with their own takes <3).

The homogenization of the Internet has really whipped people into submission for the "big sites" that offer "everything", but that's never been the Internet, it relies on being multi-faceted and offering different spaces for different purposes. And we're seeing that ideology falter through the enshittification of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. where users are at odds with the platforms because the platforms are gutting features in an attempt to satisfy shareholders whom without the platforms would not exist. Like, most of us aren't paying money to use social media sites / comic platform sites, so where else are they gonna make the necessary funds to keep these sites running? Selling ad space and locking features behind paywalls.

And this is especially true for a lot of budding sites that don't have the audience to support them via crowdfunding but also don't have the leverage to ask for investments - so unless they get really REALLY lucky in EITHER of those departments, they're gonna be operating at a loss, and even once they do achieve either of those things there are gonna be issues in the site's longevity, whether it be dying from lack of growing crowdfunding support or dying from shareholder meddling.

So what can we do?

We can learn how to take our independence back. We don't have to stop using these big platforms altogether as they do have things to offer in their own way, particularly their large audience sizes and dipping into other demographics that might not be reachable from certain sites - but we gotta learn that no single site is going to satisfy every wish we have and we have to be willing to learn the skills necessary to running our own spaces again. Pick up HTML/CSS, get to know other people who know HTML/CSS if you can't grasp it (it's me, I can't grasp it LOL), be willing to take a chance on those "smaller sites" and don't write them off entirely as spaces that can be beneficial to you just because they don't have large numbers or because they don't offer rewards programs. And if you have a really polished piece of work in your hands, look into agencies and publishing houses that specialize in indie comics / graphic novels, don't settle for the first Originals contract that gets sent your way.

For the last decade corporations have been convincing us that our worth is tied to the eyes we can bring to them. Instead of serving ourselves, we've begun serving the big guys, insisting that it has to be worth something eventually and that it'll "payoff" simply by the virtue of gambler's fallacy. Ask yourself what site is right for you and your work rather than asking yourself if your work is good enough for them. Most of us are broke trying to make it work on these sites anyways, may as well be broke and fulfilled by posting in places that actually suit us and our work if we can. Don't define your success by what sites like Webtoons are enforcing - that definition only benefits them, not you.

[askagamedev]

Thoughts on the Bioware restructuration/lay-offs?

I've long said that any AAA game studio, no matter how strong, is always 2-3 flops in a row away from closure. Bioware did very well with Inquisition, but Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem's sequential failures resulted in DA4 being their make-or-break release.

One factor was that 2024 was the first full year since 2012 that Bioware didn't have SWTOR on their books anymore - SWTOR went over to Broadsword in late 2023. For the past decade, all of the money earned by SWTOR (which is significant, the game isn't growing but it does more than earn its keep) was considered in Bioware's accounting. That sizable income helps offset the money being burned in other areas like ME:A, Anthem, ongoing DA4 efforts, and other internal projects (like the many failed KOTOR 3 pitches) to the accountants and executives. Without SWTOR to inject additional cash over the year, the Veilguard costs look a lot worse to the money people.

DA4 itself was a bit of a mess during development too. The development of the project that eventually became Veilguard was actually restarted at least twice - they were already working on preproduction for DA4 as of late 2015. The process was long and arduous, and the finished game was... mid? It wasn't underwhelming, it wasn't overwhelming, it was just... whelming. Veilguard also made the somewhat controversial choice to hang everything on sales and not go with post-launch DLC to help monetize further. This gamble really did not pay off. Veilguard missed its sales target by 50%, which was the third nail in the coffin. Each of these failures seems to follow the same pattern - significant dev time spent going in circles because the leadership can't commit to core elements of the game, resulting in something thrown together at the end in order to ship something.

As a result of these issues, the Sword of Damocles that dangles above every studio fell on Bioware. While Bioware remains as a label and the next Mass Effect game continues development, Bioware as a studio is no longer a stand-alone entity capable of building a full game from start to finish like it used to be. Bioware is likely no longer going to have as much of a cohesive identity like it used to - it will be a label more than anything else. If Mass Effect gets a green light for full production, they'll likely have to "borrow" a bunch of floating developers from EA's other studios to build it out, then disperse those borrowed devs to other EA projects once it ships and leave a small team to incubate the next "Bioware" project, at least until they can get two sequential big hits again and warrant a larger injection of funding to start growing again.

My heart really goes out to all of those who are affected by this - the Veilguard devs were really behind the 8 ball when they started and the current economic situation in video games isn't good. I hope that they're able to find something soon, hopefully at a studio that makes better high level leadership decisions.

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