#do we all just cave to corporations because they produce stuff we can’t help liking? idk. something like that?

[electric-friend]

the whole positive attitude towards the barbie movie is kinda confusing to me because i understand that stylistically a lot of those things are “in” right now as reactionary pushback against the kind of so-called feminism that condemns the enjoyment of “girly” things but…. i mean why are we all suddenly stanning a big obvious money-grabbing advert disguised as a piece of feminist cinematography? a few years ago people HATED fashion dolls because of their perpetuation of societal beauty standards. and they didn’t like mattel.

please, i feel like i’m missing something, can someone explain what’s going on? why is barbie different to all the other big-budget money-maker movies?

[thedmvsacc]

Watching Developing Hell by NoClip once again and it makes me think so much about game development. I remember that meme a couple years ago about shorter games, with shittier graphics and their developers paid more and i know it’s mostly a meme, but it’s not really.

What people really want are games with good art direction, gameplay and story. And as “AAA” games decline because of corporate greed squeezing the life out of their developers, indies continue to rise due to their passion, strong vision and love of the craft. Naughty dog’s insane hours and shitty story with good combat show this. It is touted as a fantastic genre breaking game when it’s the furthest thing from it. It doesn’t tell the story it wants to tell and in fact, treats the player so badly it’s pathetic. On top of having gameplay that goes against it’s main message.

In contrast, Supergiant and Hades show what is possible. Healthy work life balance with people who love the craft but also want to prioritize that they are people first. And they do that while producing one of the best roguelikes and indie games of this generation. It shows art doesn’t have to be commodified or built on human suffering to be worthwhile. It’s amazing to see an outlier but when it seems to be so few and far between that hope gets hard to hold onto.

This also makes me think how AI art is the same thing being done to the visual arts. These tech bros and finance bros just want the most money not caring about human cost, when that is the part that matters most. Art is ultimately communication, and the fact that a significant population of people that hold a lot of wealth or more than the working class don’t understand that because they haven’t been taught to care about wholistic and multifaceted, instead of specialist, learning really disappoints me and is frankly a failing of college and schooling.

Art is, so very important. We all know about cave paintings and viking graffiti. Humans have not changed all that much, we are still silly to the core and in a fight with time to leave a mark. So to have people reduce it down to just pretty pictures or generated words for some essay hurts.

Having AO3 scrapped, and knowing my work(albeit not that much of it and it being fairly old) was scraped to create some random writing generation is awful. I can only imagine artists who’s whole livelihood is their art having AI trained with it without permission feel.

We used to make fun of the AI generating scripts stuff back in the late 2010s but it’s getting genuinely scary. I can’t help think of the Luddites, and the actual ones, not the caricatures of them. Have I wasted a significant portion of my life dedicating myself to a skill that will soon be replaced by machines who will do it better than me but without all of the mistakes that make it handmade? Is it equal to the work i make? Is it worse? Better? I don’t really know the answers to these questions, but if we continue on the same path, i think fighting it will be futile but fighting to keep what i do alive, will be the more important fight. Tailors, master craftsman, cobblers still exist(though in dwindling numbers) despite great changes and much to the chagrin of people who make money making cheaper versions of their products. So id there is anything to take from this, it’s that we need to find support now and stick to each other so the tide is less likely to wash us all away.

[cecilspeaks]

174 - Radio Jupiter

This is Radio Jupiter calling out to all who hear. Please respond. Awaiting your reply.

[different theme song]

This is Radio Jupiter. I’m not sure who is listening. I’m not sure if there’s anyone to listen. I can only verify my own existence. I can only verify the void around me, the apparent fact of stars, the swirling atmosphere of the planet below me. I cannot verify much. I don’t know who I am or where I came from. I woke up here, and all I have to go on is my call sign. So this is Radio Jupiter, reaching out to whoever there is to be reached out to.

It is so beautiful here on my perch, here in my place, in the cosmos and the universe about which I know nothing but feel everything. I don’t know if everywhere is as beautiful, or even most places. Did I happen onto the one beautiful place in the all of it? Without perspective, there is only what is nearby. Without the burden of comparison, everything is beautiful.

If a person is the sum total of every experience they’ve ever had, is a person without memories still a person? Or are they a different creature altogether, made either limited or limitless by the possibilities of a clean slate? I am either trapped or I am more free than anyone who can hear this. If anyone can hear this.

There is a framed photo in this room. It is an elderly woman. Maybe my mother or my grandmother or an aunt. Perhaps merely a photo I saw in a magazine once and liked for whatever reason. I have no way of knowing what kind of person I am, what kind of photo I would keep. Perhaps it is a photo of you. Do you present as an elderly woman? Would you like to? I think perhaps I would like to, even for just a little while. But I only am what I only am, I ever am, whatever I am.

[distortion] This is Radio Jupiter calling all cars, all (species), all… [fades out]

Cecil: Is that any better? Is that better? Can you hear me? [clears throat] OK, my producer is giving me the signal that we are now back on the air. Sorry about that, not sure what that other signal was, but it completely took over ours, which is rude. We’re currently looking for the source of the signal. We’ve narrowed it down to up. Just right up there somewhere, beaming on down to us. But we’re back in control and we do not expect any more interruptions. Of course, we didn’t expect that interruption either. I don’t expect almost anything that happens to me, my life is full of mystery and surprise, as is yours I’m sure, but still, we seem to have this one technical issue addressed. With that settled, I think we can get to the news.  

Our top story concerns… [reluctantly] Susan Willman. OK. Sure. There has been a lot of talk in town since the whole incident with the Obelisk, in which Susan Willman learned the name of an immortal all knowing being. This name now exist in her head, an object of great power reverberating through her thoughts. She has withdrawn from her duties as director of the Night Vale Community Theater and the Night Vale PTA. Oh darn, we’ll miss her and her prosaic, muddled staging and grandstanding about home-work life balance.

Susan has instead taken residence in a booth at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. There at all hours, toying with a half drunk coffee and playing with the reflection of the sun in the back of a spoon. At night, the mint light of the sign outside sends strange shadows across her face, and her friends say they sometimes don’t recognize her at all. Steve Carlsberg, who is taking over her role at the Night Vale Community Theater, went to talk to her about some finer details of the casting process, and said that she was less than helpful. She was weeping, and the only thing she said the entire time he was there was that she was afraid to speak, lest the awful name slip past her lips. “No one was meant to carry such death inside of them,” she whispered, and then said no more. “Oh sure, yeah yeah, makes total sense,” said Steve, as he (-) [06:51] down some invisible pie. Well, I think we’ve given Susan enough attention for now, moving on.

In other news, the new beer cave at the Ralphs has been closed for repairs due to occasional time loop issues reported by certain customers. Manager at the Ralphs, Dave Ball, issued a statement by spelling out words with cantaloupes in the parking lot, saying “everything is fine with the beer cave, it’s a great and refreshing addition to Night Vale. Please don’t go inside or even look at it, as we don’t know why it’s doing what it’s doing. Everything is fine, please stay safe and stay away.” Dave then rearranged the cantaloupes to create complex fractal designs that made me dizzy to gaze upon, but were beautiful nonetheless. When reached out for a comment, Ralphs corporate said they had no records of any branch in a town called Night Vale, and were tired of receiving prank calls with bizarre tales about a made up store. When provided with pictoral evidence of Night Vale, a representative at Ralphs corporate began to bleed form the eyes while shouting: “This can’t be real! My god, this can’t be real!” More on the story of the beer cave if anything happens [distortion, fades out]…

Agent N-223: [--] out there, out there? Not sure if any of this is getting thru, but continuing to narrate on the off chance anyone will hear this and come, you know, to collect me. I’ve been doing some digging through the spaceship, and I’m disturbed by what I’ve found. Weapons. Many, many weapons. Racks of guns, cases of grenades and explosives, radar that I instinctively know is for tracking combatant space crafts, even though I have no memory of receiving that training. I am armed to the teeth and ready to wage war. But on what? There are no living beings in sight, and for all I know, there are no other living beings anywhere. Perhaps I’m here to wage war upon the planet below me, that swirling gaseous titan. Maybe someone had enough of it and sent me up here to put Jupiter back in its place. If so, I think the weapons they gave me were insufficient. I experimented by shooting off a round or two out the airlock, but the bullets soared into the upper atmosphere of the planet without slowing at all. My attack had no appreciable effect on my victim. So maybe the planet is not my target. Could it be the stars themselves? I am sent here, a pinprick in the side of God to cast myself as the stars, shouting threats and tossing grenades until the entire (-) [09:42] of the universe cowers and surrenders. Perhaps that.

Or perhaps I am at war with you, whoever is hearing this. Maybe I was given this radio in order to threaten and terrorize before I attack. So be afraid, I am coming. O-once I figure out where you are. I have no idea which direction to start moving and I don’t even know if this space ship has any way of controlling movement or if I’m just stuck in this orbit. Either way, this is Radio Jupiter apparently declaring war. [distortion] Consider it declared and [fades out].

Cecil: Can you hear, they can hear me? OK, I apologize, we’ve been doing all kinds of troubleshooting, including shifting the angle of our broadcasting tower, updating all of our software, and yes before you ask, we did try unplugging it, doing a ritual spilling of blood and plugging it back in. The issue we’re having is that these broadcasts are being sent out on military frequencies, which unfortunately automatically override ours. I’m unclear why the military would be getting into broadcasting, that’s more of a community radio thing, so let’s all stick to what we’re good at. I’ll keep doing radio shows that inform and delight, and the military can spend three trillion dollars on a plane that instantly explodes if anyone tries to fly it.

We have reached out to Rudy DeJardin, the local representative of the military industrial complex. He has a little table set up outside of the hardware shop, and anyone who has any questions for the military can just ask him, and he’ll do his best to answer. Most of the stuff can’t answer because it’s classified or embarrassing, but sometimes he’ll say a few cryptic words. In this case, his only answer was to make “mm-hm” sounds and shake his head frantically, while rolling his eyes toward the heavens. Not clear what to make of that, but I sure love whatever this broadcast is off my frequency, Rudy. Any time you want to get on that.

And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s show is brought to you by Nature’s Caress Fountain of Youth gentle flushable wipes. Did you know in most of the world, they just wash after using the toilet? They have a whole thing specifically for doing that. It takes a couple of seconds, cleans thoroughly, and doesn’t create mountains of paper waste. If you dirty your hands, do you wipe at them frantically with an even less robust version of tissues, or do you use water and soap? Why would it be different for anything else? Because it just is, that’s why. It’s the American way, love it or leave it. Nature’s Caress Fountain of Youth gentle flushable wipes: clog the world with your debris. This has been a word from our sponsors.

And now, as a special treat, Mr. Lee Marvin himself will perform act 3 scene 5 of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. This is the scene that contains the immortal line “I never knew the meaning of fear until I kissed Becky.” [distortion] OK, Mr. Marvin, take it away!

Agent N-223: This is Radio Jupiter speaking to you from a time of peace. Yes, there was that brief episode of war, and it was regrettable. I fired upon an innocent planet, although that planet seems none the worse for my crimes. In any case, that war is now over, as far as I’m concerned. I have no interest in battles and conflict, especially when I have no memory of what that conflict could involve. I have no interest in killing anyone, and I have no interest in dying quite yet.

So, peace in our time. I’m jettisoning all the guns and other weapons. Let them scatter out harmlessly into the universe, most of them swirling down the gravity well of Jupiter, where the immense pressure of the inner atmosphere will compress them into diamonds. I don’t know if that idea is scientifically sound, but I like the thought of it. All these worthless guns made glittering jewels, swirling in the endless storm of a planet that doesn’t even know they’re there.

As for me, now that I’ve declared peace upon the galaxy, I would like to know what is out there. I have found the controls for the ship and it seems I must have been trained in their use, because whatever I do appears to work as I want it to. I am turning away from the only star I’ve ever known. Because my memory is short and it’s the only star that has been there for the last two hours. I’m turning out to the dark unknown, and I’m casting myself into it. I hope there is a grander universe out there, I’d love to see it. This is Radio Jupiter, letting the cosmos know that I am on my way. I’ll see you soon. Or, given the size of space, most likely I won’t see you. But we’ll both exist, and [distortion] won’t that be nice?

Cecil: [clapping] Wow, wow wow wow. Thank you, Mr. Marvin, truly a performance for the ages, and what a treat… What? What happened? When? Oh not again!

This is Cecil Palmer of the Night Vale community radio station. I don’t know if you can hear these words, but if you can, we have identified the source of these intrusive broadcasts. She is agent N-223, sent during the early years of the space program on a secret mission. She was put into hibernation so that she could wake up and serve as reinforcement in the Blood Space War at some point in the future. But it appears that the hibernation damaged her memory, and anyway the Blood Space War doesn’t happen for another thousands years, so eh, she won’t be much use in that battle yet. Ah, thanks to the anonymous tipster who snuck us this top secret info. We owe you, Rudy.

Oh, uh it looks like we might be having more interference due to some Rough weather.

[“The Faded Red and Blue” by David Berkeley http://davidberkeley.com/]

Agent N-223: This is Radio Jupiter on the tail end of the tail end. If there was anyone listening back near that star, I think I’m getting out of range. I feel you getting out of range. Whatever presence I felt that I was speaking to, that feeling is getting hushed and fuzzy. The way I’m sure my voice is for you now.

You’re gonna have to go on without me, I suppose. Be brave about it. Or be scared. Your feelings are not my problem anymore, if they ever were. I have new problems now, problems of void and cosmos, problems of dark matter and lost memories. I am adrift in a universe that does not know I exist, but then you are too. I don’t know what is out there, but I hope I live to see it. Won’t that be something, if I get to see whatever happens next? I hope I do.

Well, this is Radio Jupiter signing off for the last time. [echoing] Stay safe out there, I’ll try to stay safe out here. Goodbye.

Cecil: The signal has faded out. It seems she has finally left our world and also left my radio frequency. I’m not trying to speak badly of a strange remnant of a war that has not yet happened, floating out into the nothing beyond the nothing, but come on, please, use a different frequency. It’s just rude. The military, through Rudy DeJardin has disavowed any knowledge of Agent N-223 or her mission. “Nope,” Rudy said through clenched teeth, “Never heard of her. Iiii certainly wouldn’t just say her name on the radio, after being asked not to. That’s not something I would do Cecil,” he said. So I dunno. Maybe we got the story wrong.

It is something, isn’t it? We are bits of life floating in a whole lot of non-life. The fact is true for us in both space and time, we are brief on any measure. And yet we can reach out our voice and be heard, even if only for a moment. And that has to mean something, doesn’t it? Doesn’t… it?

Stay tuned next for an angry buzzing from inside your cutlery drawer, but you’ll be too afraid to open it and find out its source.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Agate is a girl’s worst enemy. Emerald is a work acquaintance who a girl hung out with once and then it just – never turned into anything more.

[mindthump]

The untold story of how the XPS 13 defied odds to become the world’s best laptop https://ift.tt/2vCoc4N

Dell.

What does that name make you think of? You’re answer is likely beige boxes, affordable laptops or – if you’re a child of the ‘90s – the infamous ‘Dude, you’re getting a Dell!’ guy. Despite his best efforts, Dell spent most of its life as the very definition of dull. The company’s computers were affordable, practical, reliable, but never exciting.

Not anymore. Dell’s XPS 13, our favorite laptop three years running, has redefined what people expect from a premium Windows-powered notebook – and its 2015 release was just the beginning. The company has since unleashed salvo after salvo of cutting-edge products across both its Dell and Alienware brands.

Change like that doesn’t happen overnight – but, as we found out, it can be spurred by just a few talented people with ambitious ideas.

The Birth of the Adamo

XPS (Xtreme Performance System) is not a new brand for Dell. It’s been around for over fifteen years, a carry-over from a simpler time in computers and technology. We all remember those days, right? Gateway controlled the market on high-end consumer PCs, Windows 95 reigned supreme, and Apple was known only as a desktop computer company.

In many ways, Dell’s feet are still firmly planted in that world. It’s a massive corporation that still makes a large chunk of its revenue selling computers to corporations in bulk. Yet something was in the water in the late 2000s. While the MacBook Air was developed in Cupertino, Dell was attempting to pioneer its own radical new direction for the future of computing.

Dell Adamo 13

It was called Adamo — a quiet, short-lived experiment within the walls of Dell that would pave the way to a very different future for the conservative computer manufacturer. It was built by a small team, created as if out of thin air, and disbanded within two years – but the groundwork it laid within the walls of Dell would change it forever.

“It was what we called a dark program,” says XPS Lead Marketer Donnie Oliphant. “It was a ‘need-to-know’ basis. It was literally like three guys in a room upstairs that had a lock on it. If we’d had more exposure to the rest of the business, it never would have made it out the door. We let the rest of the company in on it about six months before we shipped it.”

While the MacBook Air was in development in Cupertino, Dell was attempting to pioneer its own radical new direction for the future of computing.

Oliphant was moved over from the Latitude business at Dell, and he’s the longest-standing Dell employee in key roles on the current XPS team. He was joined by another key figure: Nicolas Denhez. You may not have heard the name before, but the French designer is responsible for some of the most celebrated modern technology concepts such as the Xbox One S and X, HoloLens, and the Microsoft Courier project. Before he moved over to Microsoft, he worked on multiple laptops in the Adamo line laptops, all of them futuristic, risk-taking, and doomed.

“The mechanical carcass cost on that was $570,” says Oliphant, pointing to the solid chunk of aluminum in an Adamo laptop’s chassis. “They were ridiculously expensive, and that wasn’t because of the material choices. It was because of our ineptitude with regards to design.”

The Adamo line produced two products its short life, the Adamo 13, and the Adamo XPS. They’re among the strangest PCs ever released commercially. Launching within six months of each other, they featured an all-aluminum body, and hefty pricetags to match. The Adamo 13 was $2,000 for the lower-priced model, and $2,700 for the higher-end model. But from a design aesthetic perspective, the Adamo 13 was far ahead of its time, even compared to something like the MacBook Air.

Dell Adamo XPS

“It was basically myself and [Denhez] that sat upstairs and built ID models on what we wanted it to look like. And then we took it to engineering and said, ‘put a computer in this.’ Typically, it’s the other way around. Typically, we do a design — architecture, features — and then we wrap a skin around it. This was done the opposite. If you think about it from today’s design philosophies, they were done ass-backwards.”

The Adamo XPS had a very different design story, though it was even more experimental in its conception. Dell completely out-sourced the design and development of the product, hoping to save a few bucks along the way.

“We used an outside design house — so, non-Dell employees. The idea was that we could offshore the development,” he says. “The thought process was that was going to be cheaper, but it just turned into a major headache — and we still had to finish it for them. There was a little bit of animosity toward that second system. But it was cool, because it was sub-10mm.”

Dell’s Adamo XPS is tiny even by today’s standards at just 0.4 inches thick.

In fact, the Adamo XPS was declared the thinnest laptop in the world when it was launched at CES of 2009. At just 0.4 inches thick, it’s tiny even by today’s standards. Oliphant would be the first to admit that ultra-thin designs come with its own flaws and compromises, but the desire to create bold, sleek products would live on in future XPS products.

“When I inherited XPS in 2010, and we took the products that were going to be the next-generation Adamo and we put those on the XPS roadmap,” said Oliphant. “The first XPS 13, codenamed Spider, launched in early 2012. That really should have been an Adamo product if we had kept [Adamo] alive.”

Going from Adamo to Dino

In 2006, Dell purchased Alienware, a popular gaming PC manufacturer based in Miami, Florida. The acquisition made great business sense, giving Dell access to a new market for high-end gaming rigs. Yet Alienware was a very different company than Dell. It was scrappy, down-to-earth, and completely consumer-focused. That ethos was about to get injected into the company in a big way.

Frank Azor Bryan Steffy/Stringer/Getty Images

The face of Alienware today is Frank Azor, who might be the most casual and earnest tech executive you’ll ever meet. He’s the kind of guy that’ll tease his employees for wearing a suit to a meeting and can just as easily talk about the internal components of a laptop or the latest gaming trends. While Azor and his team brought a casual attitude to Dell, for him, a corporate culture of risk-taking is what made the XPS 13 possible.

“You have to have a culture that is willing to innovate,” says Azor. “You can’t have ID with these crazy fucking ideas that are far out there, and then have a product planning team that say ‘I like some of them, but those are too expensive, or ‘my engineering team will never let us do that.’”

Azor started working at Alienware when he was just sixteen years ago, as one of just four other employees. Now, he’s the manager of both Alienware and XPS lines at Dell — and he’s determined to transform Dell’s stuffy culture from within.

“We’re an aircraft carrier,” he says. “To make a turn, it takes a long time. You need to start gaining momentum, and then you’ll start making the turn. I would say we’re in the momentum phase right now. This stuff is leading the company’s image — it’s leading the kind of culture we want to be. It’s all stemmed from the type of stuff we’ve done on XPS.”

Within just a few years of its launch, the influence of the XPS 13’s design has reached just about every screen we look at today.

Compared to the Adamo products, the XPS 13 might not look that strange, but it took significant risks. Starting the trend of thinning out bezels, the XPS 13 dared to move the webcam below the screen. The result when using the webcam was (and still is) odd, shooting right up your nose, and giving you a double chin. The team received its fair share of criticism for it, but the XPS team has stuck to its guns rather than caving in on the decision.

“When everybody’s like ‘we’re bought in, we’re going to be a culture of innovation, we’re gonna take risks, we’re gonna augment the engineering process to help solve for those defects and risks,’” he says. “But we’re going to go into this together with risk — a higher risk than we would if we built a “me-too” product — then you can make amazing things happen. If that hadn’t happened, we probably wouldn’t be where we are right now.”

During our tour of the Dell headquarters, we received an in-depth look at all the advanced engineering that powers the next generation of XPS laptops. (Photos: Luke Larsen/Digital Trends)

The legacy of XPS

Design trends come and go, but they always start with a trendsetter. The 2015 version of the XPS 13 was such a device. Manufacturers of televisions, monitors, smartphones, and laptops have all been on a mission to remove bezels — and that was set in motion by the XPS 13. On the smartphone front, you need only to look to the iPhone X or Galaxy S8 in your pocket. In laptops, look at the MateBook X Pro, which takes the bezel-less approach to the next level.

Dell’s XPS devices even make the MacBook Pro look a little outdated. According to Oliphant, that was always the goal, and the XPS 13 proved it was possible for PC manufacturers.

“Apple was very successful during that decade,” he said, speaking of the late 2000s. “Before 2015, most ultra-notebooks were just deemed MacBook Air-knockoffs or wannabes. What we saw shift with the introduction of Dino, our XPS 13 in 2015, was we started winning some of those head-to-head comparisons. We were actually delivering products with things that Apple didn’t have.”

Like any success, the XPS laptops didn’t spring out of nowhere. It was forged in a fire of bad experiments, lost profits, and finger-crossing moments. Yet Dell stuck with it, because the people behind the XPS 13 believed in the quality of what they’d built. Instead of retreating, they improved, tweaked, and revised. The result was a laptop that impressed critics and changed the company that built it.

“We’ve had to create a subculture for XPS. And from a consumer perspective, we’re trying to change the perception of customers or potential customers of Dell,” Azor said. “That’s what XPS is here for.”

[cartoonfan7]

Has anyone thought of these yet?

Camp Camp by Rooster Teeth has become a haven for AU crafting, but as far as I know, no one’s thought of certain ones that I honestly thought would happen be now. Or maybe someone has thought of them already and I just never came across them for some reason. Regardless, I will list my fleeting AU ideas and leave up to the rest of you to figure out the full basics. Anyone can use the following….. 

 Portal AU: This one seems so particularly obvious, to the point I’m not sure I’m *seemingly* the only one who thought it up. I don’t particularly have any ideas for an AU like this outside of CC characters as Portal characters. My current roster is Max as Chell, Daniel as GLaDOS, Mr. Honeynuts as the Companion Cube, Jasper as Wheatley, Cameron Campbell as Cave Johnson, David as Caroline, Space Kid as The Space Core,  Nikki as The Adventure Core, and Neil as The Fact Sphere.  It’s slightly weird that technically David turns into Daniel in this AU, but I wasn’t too sure of just having OOC David for most of the AU. I did figure that David would be perfect singing “Still Alive”, “Want You Gone”, “GLaDOS’s cut song”, and “You Wouldn’t Know”. I could use some help figuring out the rest of the roster I still need to fill Doug Rattmann, The Morality Core, The Curiosity Core,  The Cake Recipe Core, The Anger Core, The Announcer, The Turrets, The Defective Turrets, Atlas & P-Body, and Greg.  Any help figuring these guys out would be tremendous.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory AU:   The same kind of AU as above only expanded and I actually have a few ideas for this one: It’s meant to combine elements from the original book with it’s two cinematic adaptations (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory). Campbell Inc. has become one of, if not, the richest companies on the planet, effectively on the levels of Megacorporations, but strangely enough, it seems primarily known and famous for what would, under other circumstances, be considered kids stuff, like toys and candy. But everyone agrees that, somehow, someway, they are top of the line, the best of the best. The head of the company even gains more publicity when he took in several kids from less than stellar backgrounds and adopted them, including Davey and Jasper. But the Campbell Inc. seems to be falling into hard times as the world rolled into the 21st century. Rumors began abounding about the illicit and downright illegal activities of CEO, Cameron Campbell, including unconfirmed allegations of abuse, exploitation, and even one of his kids dying horrifically in an industrial accident in Campbell’s combined primary factory/mansion/theme park. On top of that, competitors who wished to discover Campbell’s money making secrets in all things sent spies into Campbell’s factories around the globe and managed to make a few sizable discoveries before Campbell was forced to lay off a majority of this workforce and try to rebuild the company from the ground up. Campbell himself became a recluse and gave control of the company to one of his adopted kids after some of the previously rumored illicit and illegal activity was confirmed, many speculating that Campbell did this to have a scapegoat to deal with this mess while he went into hiding. For a good few years, Campbell Inc. began to loose money, both by the diminished workforce and by the fact that Campbell went into so many directions in the past that the successor had no idea how to continue. (The successor was a recluse as well who did everything humanly possible to remain anonymous to the world until the main factory/mansion/theme park tour, but to answer the question of the people reading this, yes, the successor is David.) That all changed one night when the main factory and several others around the world started up and began production again despite no one ever leaving or entering the factory in the years before, the night of “reopening”, and in the few years after until the Golden Sparrow contest. Afterward, the company seemingly starts again from scratch, selling the best goddamn candy and toys the world has ever known, allegedly because the successor wanted to return the company to it’s roots (but it’s also partially because David’s a kid at heart and wanted to go back to that). A few years after the mysterious successor inherits the factory, a contest begins that almost ends the world with it’s hype: multiple Golden Sparrows are sent out, promising that the people who show up with one will get a free tour of the refurbished factory, as well as a small portion of the company’s stock (which in and of itself promises for thousands, if not millions of dollars in annual income) and a lifetime supply of any products produced by the company, including food, candy, toys, makeup, certain brands of clothes the company owns, etc. Some rumors even went out about a secret prize, although until the weekend tour of the factory, no one can confirm or deny the rumor. And here enters Max, a young, jaded boy who lives a very shitty, poverty stricken home life (that I unfortunately can’t fully describe since we don’t know what Max’s parents are like [all we know now is that they’re kind of shitty] and there’s a possibility that we’ll see the campers’ parents in the season 2 finale, so if that’s true, I don’t want to potentially date this post with speculation, needless to say that Max’s home life sucks in this AU). Max seems unable to fully grasp the hype about the Golden Sparrow contest at first since “his generation” wasn’t around when Campbell Inc. pretty much ruled the world, although many experts note that they’re getting back up there again and might ACTUALLY rule the world this time now that Campbell’s is being run by a new person who seems to have learned from his predecessors mistakes. Max partially blames Campbell Inc. for why the world he lives in is so shitty, since he understands, in basic economics, what’s liable to happen when a workforce a large as Cameron’s is laid off almost all at once without being replaced by other people. But Max eventually starts giving into the hype as more Golden Sparrows are found and he realizes that the contests prizes could get him out of his shitty life and into a much better one (whether he’ll take the rest of his family with him is anyone’s guess, but I’d say it’s very unlikely). Like Charlie before him, it takes 3 tries to get a Golden Sparrow (should I include the forged one, I don’t know who I’d attribute to in this AU, maybe the Quartermaster, but I feel like he should be somewhere in the factory, should he be the forger or the baseline for the Oompa Loompas, or should I just go the book route about the OLs only being described as little people and seemingly not clones of each other, given how similar individual Oompa Loompas look to each other in the movies?) and, noticing that the Sparrows allow bringing plus two, Max decides to bring a local woman he’s kinda friends with with him (my original plan was for this to be Bonquisha, but I noticed that I haven’t made a place for Gwen in this AU, I don’t know, maybe Gwen is one of Campbell’s adopted kids and she makes friends with David, or maybe Max brings both Gwen and Bonquisha together as his plus ones because Max doesn’t like Bonquisha’s boyfriend. Note: David doesn’t get with Bonquisha in this AU, but they do surprisingly make good friends.) All of the other Campers in the main series, including the Woodscouts and the Flower Scouts, win the contest and bring their parents (except the woodscouts and the flower scouts who go as their respective trios, well, I guess the Woodscouts would try to use the free tour as an excuse to infiltrate the factory to steal secret formulas for their popcorn sales, I could even see them stacking Jermy onto Petrol to do the whole kids in trenchcoat=adult shtick so they can have more hands to steal things with or they could fill the role of a character that was actually cut from the book, Miranda Mary Piker .) The Flower Scouts would, collectively (I guess), fulfill the archetype of  Veruca Salt, all of them being highly successful spoiled brats who feel very entitled, possibly playing into Tabii withtwoIs’s hardcore crush on Neil, who would probably be Mike Teevee, including elements of his 2005 Film character. Ered would fulfill the archetype of  Violet Beauregarde, a cool, somewhat competition freak who likes being cool and winning. I’m not sure about any other Campbell Campers filling the roles of the other “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” kids, but I guess that the factory could have things that could appeal to their vices as well, hell, there are chapters that got cut out of the original book, like Spotty Powder, The Vanilla Fudge Room, The Warming Candy Room, and The Children’s-Delight Room (Info taken from Wikipedia and Lost in Adaptation.) Daniel will be in this AU as Arthur Slugworth, although he’s more like how Slugworth was in the book, actually a corporate rival to Campbell as apposed to secretly being in league with David. Max actually starts internally freaking out at how similar David and Daniel are in appearance (especially after the freaky-ass tunnel scene, which is in this AU, David visually turns into Daniel while reciting the “There’s no earthly way of knowing” poem, Max is kind of traumatized and tries bringing it up again later and gets exasperated with everyone pretending like it didn’t happen, eventually he just gives up trying to rationalize it), but eventually concedes that he actually kind of likes David. Other Camp Camp characters will appear, like the town residents, Jasper (who was the factory’s OG dead kid), the cop (Sal,I think, from the first episode), the federal agents, I guess Jen could appear, but I wouldn’t know how to insert her in, the forest squirrels as the Nut Checking Squirrels, the campers and counselors David went to Camp with could appear too, probably in flashbacks.

Because I’m personally kind of hyped for the new movie, I kind of want there to be a Stephen King’s It AU. I don’t know how exactly It would work, but the internet will find a way.