#but it's a damn good song so it doesn't have to pay a PENNY in rent

[serendertothesquad]

odd squad forever?

Until the end of time, baby!

[ddejavvu]

Whipped!Hangman would:

Tell everyone to "Be nice to them, or you're all dead. Every single one of you. Especially you, Big Bird." He emphasizes the last part with a point to Rooster

Let you win at pool because you look so happy when you win and he doesn't have the heart to actually win

Give you seashells he finds

Win you a prize at a claw machine. He would literally stand there the whole night and empty out his wallet if it means he gets to see that smile when he gives the plush

Give you flowers. Idc idc, he so would

Listen to you talk and talk and talk

Send you songs that remind him of you

save your contact with a little '<3' after your name

no bc around his team members he's a whole different person than he is with you, and that's not to say he's not 'himself' around you, but he knows his friends need to be threatened into good behavior so he runs ahead when you meet them with the nastiest glare on his face like i fucking dare you to act out and lets you grab his arm if you're a little nervous to meet everyone :'))

hangman is the reigning pool champion but everyone else must be super bad bc he always loses to you?? he's really not even that good at pool, you don't know why he keeps making the stupid mistakes he does... oh well! he's asked you to teach him your methods, so you'll have fun giving him pointers <3

hangman probably never collects seashells, because he's too impatient to sift through the sand for him and there's always better stuff to be doing, like chasing a frisbee, catching a football, diving into the waves is he a dog? but he always collects seashells after you're dating, he spots one by his foot and he's like woah y/n would love this. and he just sticks it right in his pocket for you, presents the little thing in his giant palm later with a smile, like here y'go darlin'. Ain't it pretty? It made me think of you.

HNNGGH PLEASE :(( penny puts in an arcade machine in the bar to make more money, and it's proooobably rigged, but you can't prove anything >:( anyways ofc hangman doesn't know this, and penny didn't think anyone would put that much effort into the machine for a stupid pink bear, but $30 later (all paid in ones) he's about to smash the glass to get the poor thing out and you beg penny to just let him have it already 😭 she's like yk what i can buy a truckload of cheap stuffed animals with that $30. sold. so she fishes it out for him and is like ohh must be bugging out. i'll fix it. take this in the meantime. and he hasn't held it for a second before he turns around and gives it to you :')) he's all sheepish like wish I could'a won it for you. Guess I just paid Penny off, huh? I hope you like it anyways. and you sleep with it every night to make him feel better, you tuck it between the two of you when you cuddle up to his chest :')

he brings you flowers all the time!!! he's a real southern gentleman, if you ask what they're for he says 'just because' or 'just for being you' :')

he has one of those expressions where he zones out while listening to you talk and you can totally tell he's not paying attention to you anymore, he's looking at you all dreamy the same way babies look at chocolate 🥹

jake hangman country boy seresin only listens to country music. that's it. he'll send you any honky tonk song under the sun if it describes a sweet, pretty love interest, if there's anything positive at all in the song he's sending it like morning, darlin. this made me think of you <3

THE <3 !!!!!!!!! rooster's the first one to see it and his brow furrows and he goes 'hangman, who is that?' and jake snatches the phone away from him so fucking fast, snapping at him to stop snooping on people, it's rude. but bradley's seen it now, and he'll be damned if he doesn't torture the info out of hangman. within minutes everyone knows hangman's got a girl, and it's only a matter of time before you're discovered <3

[elf-kid2]

Modern Witchers

So this contractor drives into this tiny town, way out in the sticks, in the kind of beat-up white van used by many tradesman, and allegedly favored by murderous kidnappers.

He's got white hair that you're not sure is bleached or not, strange eyes short manners. Maybe (probably) he kinda gives you the creeps. White van, stranger-danger, big guy with muscles, and all. Bad vibes.

But you've got a problem, no denying: there's SOMETHING in those woods that doesn't belong there, and recently, when the local boys went to DO something about it... that SOMETHING went from killing livestock, to killing people to. And you know, once those types of creatures get a taste for human blood... best to deal with it sooner, rather than later. Hence, the out-of-town contractor.

Witchers specialize in hunting monsters, after all.

Better to put together a fundraiser to pay the (frankly, outrageous) fees now, then to have to pay all that later, plus the surcharge for beasts that've killed multiple people, plus pulling together the funds for more funerals.

A stitch in time save nine, as the saying goes.

He's got a musician hitchhiking with him, which you weren't expecting. Some hapless hitchhiker with a dufflebag over his shoulder, and a guitar on his back, who got lost on the way to Vegas, or Nashville, or wherever it is starry-eyed musicians go to Make It Big, these days.

Auntie said that any hitchhiker with sense'd be better off walking down a lonely road, instead of getting into a van like that, driven by a man like that. But I guess it takes all kinds of kinds, and that musician hadn't been murdered yet, so make of that what you will.

Anyhow, the musician started busking in the farmer's market-- some decent covers, a few original songs, and some kind of surprisingly catchy jingle for the contractor who'd given him a lift into town. It was pretty good; live music is always a treat when you can get it, and it'd been a while since the last Bluegrass Festival.

He knew how to charm people, work the crowd, how to ask for "donations to the fine arts" without being irritating about it. People dropped cash, and pennies, and quarters, into his open guitar case, at any rate.

I reckon he scraped together at least enough for lunch, form himself'n his friend. Witchers are surly and stingy as anything, y'know, so I wondered why he wasn't covering the meal, with how much he'd charged for slaying the monster...

...But I overheard mention of how he'd had to get that van fixed up at Joe's Auto-Mechanics, over by the old factory in the valley-- and everyone knows that Joe's Auto'll charge three times what the repairs are worth, with parts that cost ten times as much as they oughtta. Lord knows, those scammers'd be out of business, if there were any better options within 50 miles of their shop!

And that is why if you think your truck's getting ready to break down, you should try an' make sure it breaks down closer to home. And also why I figure it makes sense that even a Witcher'd be short on cash, after dealing with 'em.

Anyway, the Witcher spoke with the Sheriff, and he went out monster-hunting that night.

Meanwhile, that hitchhiking musician was playing at the local bar, and let me tell you-- he was pretty damn good! Played a few drinking-songs, and the kind of songs you can't play in front of the kiddos at Farmer's Market, played some catchy tunes that had people dancing and clapping along...!

I particularly enjoyed the murder-ballad about the woman who turned into a vengeful fire-monster when she found out her man was messing around with other women. Very clever wordplay, "flames of desire lighting up your funeral pyre!" Good stuff.

Then the Witcher came in-- fresh from the contract, and half-covered in mud and blood! Barkeep wouldn't even let him sit down until he'd hosed off the worst of it, out back!

Musician-- Jaskier, he called himself-- raised a toast to a successful hunt, and another to monster-hunters who let loving families sleep safely, and rowdy drunks stumble home un-eaten, and soon enough somebody was buying that Witcher a drink, and the barkeep gave him a plate of food on the house, and it was good times all around!

Beats toasting newly-dead friends, and drinking to forget the monsters at the door, any day.

The thing is, this is a small town. Not a lot of people come visit, and if they do, they're generally staying with family. Which is to say, there aren't any motels around here.

Now, that contractor, that Witcher, he'd asked around, beforehand, about what was available, in terms of overnight accomodations-- which, let's be honest, isn't much around here. Come morning, I saw that beat-up van parked outside the Rosebud Bed & Breakfast.

Now Rosebud's is a nice place, a respectable establishment, but we all know they've had some trouble since that big storm last month, when a tree smashed through the roof! Las I checked, that Bed & Breakfast only had the one bed fit for guests to sleep in!

Might've been a rather one-sided bidding war, or a tight fit, with two out-of-towners vying for a roof overhead, that night. But that's none of my business.

Jaskier the musician left town with the Witcher-- Geralt Rivera, I think the name was-- same as he came in. Well, makes sense that he wouldn't want to stay long enough to put down roots, a young musician on a mission to see the world and/or become rich and famous.

The Witcher, Geralt, did good work with the monster, too. I guess that's why they're the experts... Some folks are talking about having what's left of the beasty taxidermy'd, did you know? Might make a decent tourist attraction, or a decoration for Town Hall, or something. I don't know.

Anyway, all that's to say... don't let anybody tell you there's not still a need for Witchers, in the modern day.

[dzpenumbra]

9/25/22

Here's a good idea. Let's take all the good music. You know, all that shit we all feel nostalgic and warm about? That we love so dearly and have amazing memories attached to. Lets make it so that anyone isn't this car company or this insurance company cannot fucking play it or else they will get sued. That way we really make sure that people associate these songs with this fucking brand of car. It's really important we make sure that this music stays limited to those who can afford to pay homage to their mentors. I mean why the fuck would we let people play meme song mashups as a background in a professional skateboarder's official part? We would be losing out in all this revenue! I mean, if you really think about it... if you really stretch it... he's really stealing from the musicians!!! He's making ad revenue off the musicians! GUYS WE CAN'T BE HAVING THIS! Think of the musicians!!!

So that ad revenue, fuck it, lets do math, okay. So from what I'm seeing it's between $0.01-$0.03 per ad view, so let's just go with $0.02 (though I'm absolutely sure Dan has got to be 1 cent, I mean they've gotta save the 3's for like celebrities and companies and shit. So naw, we're going with $0.01 per ad view. It's saying on google that you expect to make like $3-5 per 1000 video views. So 21K people watched this video in the last 12 hours, that's $65. I just got so damn lost in math, looking at youtube income websites and shit. Good lord it's just all fuckin japanese to me, I'm trying to understand it but got it's just like so many fucking people with their hands in the pot that it's hard to tell what's going on. YouTube takes their big ol' cut, you get what you get. Then the record company knocks at the door.

You see, their local patrol drones have automatically sensed that sound patterns in your video are identical to their proprietor's legal dominion. I mean, when you filter out all the additional content. And really get to the core of why people are going to a weird West Coast East Coaster Skateboarder's channel. The music. We gotta get this music here, I mean where the fuck else are we gonna find Beautiful People/All I Want For Christmas mashup. Oh I don't know, just search "beautiful people all I want" and literally the first thing that pops up is a video of it with 4.4 million views. Let's fucking cut the shit, this clearly isn't a market substitute. Listening to Kristoff Krane's "AL7ONE" as a background song for a weird artsy video, or a skate video, or something... That is obviously not a market substitute. Are we really pretending that it is? How did so many people get fleeced by this?

The big kicker, the musicians don't even see the money from this. It's the middlemen lining their pockets all the way down. YouTube takes a big chunk, the record labels take a big chunk, then the musicians get pennies. So I wonder... how much of that $65 that Dan could have made if he had monetized the video would actually have gone to the musician who made it. Or would the revenue just be shifted over to the musician's official video? You know, the video that doesn't have a professional skateboarder skating over it? You know, the video that has 4 million views and is literally just a combination of two different famous songs' stems over spliced music videos and live performances? That original content? I mean, don't get me wrong, I do think they're both art forms and both deserve respect as such... but... Please tell me I'm not the only one seeing this.

How the fuck is a skate video not a separate unique artistic expression from the music within it? It's just mind boggling that we're still doing this. We need a much better system for getting musicians paid than this, it's just fucked. I am saying this as a goddamn musician too, let's not get things all mixed up. I was primarily a musician for a long time. I decided art would be a more practical financial life decision! XD Get these fucking labels out of the damn picture, what the fuck are they doing, just hoarding venue and radio connections and farming musicians to bleed dry over their entire career, even after they fucking die? And they take the lion's share for this? The non-musicians make most of the money in music. And this shit is happening on YouTube too, obviously, with all kinds of content creation.

This is really pissing me off, sorry. My mind is just swimming with outrage right now. Like... fuck the hell off already. You are getting your music exposed to a new audience. We're not trying to sell a fucking truck with your song. We are not aligning your song with a political party. We are paying tribute to something we love. We are sharing it with a new audience who would otherwise not be searching for this because they didn't even know it existed.

YouTube needs to get their shit together and figure out a way to just give musicians royalties whenever their song is detected playing... which they clearly have the technology to detect it... Or they need to figure out a separate system that has to do with musicians getting paid. A parallel system, so we can go back to the old times when people weren't terrified of doing an acoustic cover of Wonderwall and leaving it open to make a few bucks off of your creative practice. There is no reason why we should be afraid of monetizing an acoustic cover of Wonderwall on YouTube. Zero. There isn't an argument here.

We need to get these record labels out of here, it's just fucked everything the hell up. People are on edge, man. The stock market is crashing, the economy's in the toilet, and these suits. I really wanna emphasize this. These people who wear suits and are quite wealthy, and are typically not musically inclined. They are raking in ad revenue off of countless thousands of different creators. For doing. Nothing. For having given that artist a studio, album distribution and some tour dates... years ago. These people are not hurting for cash. They are rarely even currently involved with the artists they siphon from. It's like the mafia or something man, weird vibes from that shit.

I really don't know why we just let them bully us with lawyers. I guarantee they ain't going to court over this. Not a 7 minute skate video. I think everyone knows it's a bluff. But YouTube didn't call them on their bluff. Those pussies literally gave them a system to file takedowns rather than stand up to them. Either that or they saw more money to be made. At this point, I'd bet a bit of both.

This shit is honestly probably why the economy is this bad. That's a huge imbalance that's making these careers less and less viable. These careers are insanely important, morale, creativity, art, music, all that shit. I can actually see in my writing how tired I'm getting. XD

I'm obviously very upset that Dan Corrigan didn't monetize his part because he didn't want to deal with being demonetized - having his income temporarily frozen because an automated bot flagged his video for asset seizure. Instead, he had to consciously redirect his viewers to show appreciation on other videos, or on Patreon or something. Because these motherfuckers decided to get greedy. And this is their playground. So we play by their rules. And we humble ourselves. And we beg our friends to put in some extra effort to help compensate us for the art we create. And we look like schmucks. And we feel like schmucks. Sad, bullied schmucks. Sorry guys, I had to demonetize it. You know how it is. So... I know this is awkward... but if you wanna help out because like... I know you just watched some ads... and that money didn't go to me... and you're here to watch my video... that I worked really fucking hard on... that I do for a living... you know, that thing, the reason you're here. Remember? If you wanna donate or something, just drop it on another video. Because I'd rather take the $65 hit than line the pockets of a hypocrite.

Maybe that was the perfect song. Maybe Dan is a genius. Maybe he picked that song because it's a monetized mashup. That person has 4 million views, thats gotta be... like $12,000 at least. If the dude who mashed up Marilyn Manson and Mariah Carey gets the ad revenue from the pro skateboarder who used the song in the video... I mean... how can you even justify that?! So does that money just go straight to Manson and Carey? Does it just bypass that mashup dude entirely?! See how fucked this is? But it doesn't even go to Manson and Carey, I would bet it goes to Interscope and Colombia, and Interscope is UMG and they flag fuckin eeeeeverything. Like... this shit is just so fucking ridiculous.

I need to get off this already. It's clearly heavy on my mind as I make the transition over to YouTube and off of Twitch. Ads are king over here and it feels like the wild fuckin west as far as music. Like watch your fuckin back, they'll nail your channel if you miss a beat. So I wanna go collect small talented independent musicians like Pokemon and make massive playlists for streams. Like 4-6 hour or more playlists of good ass music by honest super-talented musicians from all over that refuse to go with record labels. That just want their music in a good place - shared by friends with friends - and being appreciated, not peddled by businessmen or used to sell a grooming tool.

Let me channel Jesus here, flipping the tables at the Temple.

That was a big moment for me. I had never read about that before. It makes me anxious. It makes me feel like people still act like that. And it scares me to be someone who would speak out against it. Because it doesn't end well for people who do. And I really hope people are getting better than this. That was a very long time ago, thousands of years. We don't have to like... keep being like this. We can find a way for everyone to get what they need, to be happy. To all have a roof over our heads, and food, and water, and loving company. I really do hope we can all figure this out. We've weaved a web so complicated, built this society structure so intricately that it's hard to remember that we're mammals. We're animals. And all we really need is just food, water, shelter, temperature regulation and love. At the end of the day. That's really it. That was me trying to talk myself out of a panic attack. And it worked pretty well. Because it's true. It hit me insanely hard.

I want to be an "artist". I want to be outraged. I want to tell people "you have to fucking stop". I want to run down the streets shaking people. But I'm scared of what people will do to me. I'm scared of the cost. People will do really fucked up things for money. And me? I don't even want it. For real. All I want is the tools I need to make new interesting, inspiring art and get it to people who want it, who my art and writing and music will serve. To those who will use and appreciate it. In addition, I want housing, food, clothing. That's pretty much it. Anything more than that is a bonus, honestly. But I need money for that. I can't just trade art for a house. Or music for food.

It's kinda fucked up that like... this is kinda like the catalyst that led to Jesus dying, right? And... we're not like... pissed off like Jesus was? We're like... the Roman populace. Like... isn't the Bible rooting on Team Jesus? Or did I miss something there, I literally read the wiki on that for the first time tonight... Why are we okay with this commerce infestation? Why are we okay living in the Den of Thieves? Is it because we know what happens to those who try to put a stop to it? Are we just repeating history? Has it always been like this? Is there anything we can do about it? I really do hope we can. I just don't feel like I'm brave enough to be the one who screams it from the mountaintops and shakes people on the streets. The outraged revolutionary. I'd rather just write about it in my journal. Or think it and discard the thought from view. It's safer. -_-

I see the dawn light coming in the window again. I'm very scattered and stressed tonight. Mostly good stress, but this one just set off a lot of shit. The people I know who suffer the most are very talented creatives who have been forced to live the wrong life. By a system that is not designed with everyone's best interest in mind. And I see a gleaming jewel like YouTube or Twitch or Patreon. Venues they can use to finally be the people they want to be. And then they get demonetized. And striked. For stupid shit. And they have to be insanely paranoid at all times about "is it safe? is it safe? can I play that? am I allowed? will I get in trouble? will the bad man come after me? will he threaten me and take my money?". All because they chose to take a giant leap to pursue their passions. The weight is enough for most to quit.

I'm still gonna show up. I'm still gonna try. And I'm gonna cheer those I see potential in on as well, encourage them to take the leap.

Yeah, I'm just trailing off at this point, bed has been calling me for a while. Thanks for listening to this rant. It's a very frustrating and scary topic that really doesn't have a lot of good answers, but I hope we can all look back on this in like 5 years and go "man, we really had no idea what were doing back then, did we... geez... Things are so much better now." Here's to you, creatives. Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning.