#i have an actual number of problems with this movie

[iwritethingssometimes]

I'm seeing some posting about a feeling of fishiness about the recently completed US Election.

In the attempt to do something more productive than my last post, I'm gonna do an adhoc examination of how feasible I think a "rigged election" actually is, looking at a few methods that could have been used. So, to start with, what is the actual evidence here?

Most of it is... honestly vibes based, which I get, but don't put a lot of stock in, There was a lot of energy around the Harris campaign, and she had some good polls, but Donald Trump has proved nothing else in the past fucking decade, its that the polls literally do not matter for him, and he can outperform them by a hundred miles.

But. There's also some numbers.

None of this has been verified yet, and I want to make that clear, but this year has largely reported record turnout in a ton of states, especially the swing states, and yet, so far.

The number of votes seems much lower this year.

Not republican votes, not democrat votes, all votes. Hell, third party voting collapsed this year--whatever else you take from this election, this was not a case of the left splitting the vote.

Now, it's true that the vote count hasn't been completed, and it's possible that the numbers will make more sense once that's done. It's also true that the states didn't have quite the same turn-out as last year... but it was only a percentage point or two lower.

Add that to the frequent postings about people having their ballots rejected for... questionable reasons, and.

Well. It starts going from a "the moon is fake!" conspiracy to "Epstein had sex slaves" conspiracy.

But, okay, is it even possible for Trump to have faked the vote like this? People talked about it, but it was mostly in terms of legal challenges trying to overturn a Harris victory, or pulling in the supreme court to decide narrow districts. This, by all accounts, seems to be a straight forward Trump sweep.

So if there is shenanigans afoot, how could he have done it?

There's three feasible(ish) pathways, in my opinion:

Voter suppression and manipulation pre-ballot: Yeah this happened. It's also irrelevant to any possibility that the vote counts were tampered with. Look, this election was flooded with misinformation, legal suits, court cases, and election officials doing everything in their power to fuck with people's right to vote. It was filled with ballot boxes being lit on fire. Elon Musk did a fucking paid vote scheme! Of course there was voter suppression! But there always is, and although it was worse this year than many others, it wouldn't cause any numerical mismatch between turn out and votes, and there's not much that can be done now for this election. Even if someone voted because Musk slipped them $100, no court will ever be able to prove they didn't just happen upon $100 bucks and then voted for Trump.

Voting machines were manipulated: A few hours ago I would have said this was practically impossible, but apparently a bunch of election officials and cyber-security experts were sounding the alarm about this a few months ago, so, uh. That being said, I've seen people claiming that Starlink or whatever hacked voting machines, and no. No, Starlink did not hack voting machines. No one "hacked" voting machines. They weren't connected to the internet, or any wireless communication systems, because anyone with any degree of cybersecurity knowledge will tell you that's how you create an insecure system. Now, it's not impossible, technically speaking, than Elon Musk or fucking Russia managed to hire engineers and somehow bribe enough officals to get access to the machines and install hardware that would allow external access, but in that case we live in a Bond movie and somehow have bigger problems. So, if the voting machines themselves were compromised in any technological way, it would have required direct, physical access, which should be basically impossible, unless...

Ballot officials fucked with the vote This is the one I think is plausible. Basically, in this case, what could have happened is that various election officials at different levels of the process more or less lied about the vote count. This could have happened in a lot of different ways--they could have found reasons to reject mail-in ballots, which several states attempted to make legal, they could have found reasons to reject in-person ballots, which several states attempted to make legal. They could have, if the corruption ran deep enough to make this feasible, just... not counted or reported votes that swung for Harris. They could have, if the election machines work similar to the ones up here in BC, seen the results from the machines, then called the central election office over the phone--because remember, the ballot boxes should not be connected to anything. I don't know. There's a lot of options, and it varies from state to state, because remember, each state runs their own elections, and has their own rules and procedures.

So yeah, three explanations, only one of which is really plausible.

Now, I want to be clear, I don't think this election was fraudulent. Not yet, at least, I need to see actual evidence, or this is nothing more than a theory, but I also want to be clear.

...3 makes sense.

3 would explain why urban areas seemed to be underrepresented in this election, while rural areas surged. 3 would explain a discrepancy between voter turn out and votes counted. 3 would fit the strategy Trump and MAGA loyalists have been describing for the last four years, of infiltrating the election machinery and manipulating it to their own ends.

So I'm not saying it's likely that Trump fucked with the vote, not without evidence. Not yet.

But I will say this looks a hell of a lot more plausible than any claims made in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

[inor-8]

Regarding Lily's top 20 Pokemon video:

Ok so I've already made a few posts about Lily's God awful video but man do i have a lot to say. So I'm gonna make a bigger post about it.

That being said all her favourites are valid. I have no hate for her favourite Pokemon as everyone is allowed their own opinions. And as I've said every Pokemon is someone's favourite.

I, however, have problem with her jabs at other Pokemon or people who like them.

So....

Number 20: Ampharos

Ok so her reasons for liking Ampharos aren't anything out of the ordinary. It's cute, it's powerful. I honestly love Ampharos too, I used it in Soulsilver and it's pretty strong and available early on.

However, she says she wishes it was as popular as Pikachu. To which I say, keep dreaming Lily. I'm sure it's just a joke though along with that one joke about choosing Chikorita. We all know Totodile is the best.

Number 19: Flygon

And she starts it off by saying that it's the only one that's a valid dragon type. No! No! No! Every other dragon is valid (Yes, Even Alolan Exeggutor)! I support and love Flygon but that doesn't mean it's the only one that's valid!

Then she goes a bit into it's design lores which I appreciate. (Flygon is based on an Antlion but also draws inspiration from dragonflies btw)

Now, my problem with this segment is that she shits on Salamance??? Like, sorry Flygon isn't as popular but how is it Salamance's fault?! Bro just want to fly that's all!

I don't understand this woman's problem. I think she wants her favourite to be everybody else's favourite too. And it isn't as if Flygon is some obscure or forgotten mon, it's actually a pretty beloved Pokemon in the community. People love the whole Trapinch line actually. But I guess she's salty about Flygon not getting a mega. Well a lot of us are but we don't go shitting on other mons and calling them edgy.

Well, I think that would be my thoughts for this segment. Praying for you to get a Mega in Z-A Flygon, you deserve it for being such a good boy.

Number 18: Salazzle

You're never beating the gooner allegations, Lily.

That being said there's nothing worth mentioning in this section. She just says everything she likes about it and mentions she doesn't like how the internet got wierd with it. But who are you kidding, look at her design. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Number 17: Heracross

Nothing to mention here. Valid as hell take, to be honest. I also love female Heracross' heart horn.

Number 16: Cacturne

Ok so the Cacturne section was pretty chill too. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except for her complains about Tim Burton which I have no comments on. I've never watched a Tim Burton movie.

Still I'm surprised how she missed the scarecrow motifs in it's design.

Number 15: Haunter

Ohhh looks like someone is salty about not getting a Gengar!

In this she pretty much complains about how gengar isn't valid and it's design is bad and stuff. We get it Lily nobody wanted to trade with you as a child. We wouldn't want to either. Next!

Number 14: Crawdaunt

Ok so this is where one of my major problems with her start. In this segment she starts shitting on gen 1 designs and saying how GameFreak took gen 1 designs and made them more elegant in gen 3 because they looked edgy.

Like noo? What the hell is your problem with gen 1 designs Lily? Why do you hate them? I think she likes shitting on them because she thinks it makes her sooo different and sooo cool.

A point which she proves by saying how unconventional she is for using Crawdaunt as her physical attacker instead of garchomp or gallade or the fire fighting starters. Ohhh you like using Crawdaunt? Never heard of that one before! You're so cool and different, Lily. Soooo not like other girls!

Number 13: Omastar

What happened, Lily? I thought you hated the edgy gen 1 designs? Yeah, it's okay when you do it but not others? Rules for thee, but not for me, huh?

Number 12: Nidoking

Nothing to note here honestly.

Number 11: Aegislash

And now she's getting salty that it got banned in gen 7 ou blaming it on some pety smogon admin. Like No Lillian not everyone is like you. There are people who take their job of maintaining balance and keeping the game fun seriously. I'm sure you would have done that if you were a smogon admin though.

And then she complains about shinies. Saying how black shinies like Charizard and Mega Gardevoir suck. Well fuck Lily what's your deal with people enjoying shinies.

Also hot take (not really), black shinies are cool as fuck. There's a reason they're so popular and no matter how overrated you think Charizard is, it still has the best shiny among gen 1 starters

Now I think I'll only be covering half in this post because you're only allowed to include ten images apparently.

[foreststarflaime]

(Rather Unhinged) Character Ask Game

Figured I’d try my hand at making one of these—made them the most random I possibly could bc the blorbos need to be put in Situations. Send me a number (or numbers) and a character and I’ll answer the question for them!

1. How do you think this character would fare in a zombie apocalypse?

2. Favorite hc for this character?

3. Make me a hc about [insert topic]

4. What snacks is this character getting at the movie theater? Where are they sitting? Do they turn off their phone or are they a criminal?

5. How would this character act on social media?

6. How would this character answer the trolley problem? Then how would they actually act if faced with it?

7. What’s your favorite thing about this character?

8. What would this character’s favorite kind of weather be?

9. How far would this character get attempting to climb Mount Everest?

10. How would this character feel about [insert topic]?

11. Forget the sex or die trope. This character must attempt to rob a bank or they will die. Do they succeed/how much do they get? (If you have extra time, what’s their plan? Who is their crew?)

12. This character suddenly finds themself on the titanic. Do they survive?

13. Shopping timeeee what outfit/style of outfit does this character put together?

14. This character comes suddenly face to face with a dragon. Befriend or slay?

15. This character is sent a scam email by the fae requesting they type in their name for a free prize. Do they fall for it?

16. What hurts this character the most emotionally?

17. What gives this character the most comfort?

18. If this character is from a more modern setting, how do they fare when dropped unceremoniously with no warning into the middle ages? Or if they’re from a more fantasy/old timey setting, the other way around? You get the idea

19. This character received a mysterious package in the mail containing a genie lamp. 3 wishes, the usual rules, go!

20. This character is being marooned by pirates on a deserted island and the pirates say they’re allowed to bring three things to the island. What do they bring?

99. Wildcard situation! Asker gets to make one up!

[rabnerd28]

Venom 3: 0/10, Eddie Brock did not get pregnant

[nostalgia-tblr]

one problem with getting into Fiction Franchises like, oh let's say the MCU, long after they started is that 1) there are things that refer back to things I don't know about and 2) i don't know what i don't know about, and in a way that latter is more of a problem at least for me.

i managed an episode of wandavision and was left thinking "this seems like it's good, but i have no clue what's going on here so it's not going to work for me is it?" and i am reliably told it's supposed to be Mysterious Mindfuckery but i, a noob, was unable to work out without external clarification what i wasn't supposed to know. if you see what i mean.

i notice the mcu movies (at least as it progresses?) don't have numbers on them, and we know when they're direct sequels because there's a subtitle. and if you come at these later you need to get a chart to work out whether you should watch thor: ragnarok before or after thor: the dark world. which is easily done if i am determined to get things in the right order, but any effort is too much for someone.

so while i am willing to consider the idea that the later mcu films/shows are just Less Good than the early ones (personally Doubt so far but I'm not opposed to the idea) it's very easy inside a fandom to lose sight of what your thing looks like to the casuals who make up most of an audience, and frankly the mcu is currently Very Large and confusing.

who are all these Mrs/Captain/Miss/etc Marvel ladies and which of them have already been in films I might or might not have seen? how many ant men are there prior to this one? am i supposed to know who the baddy in this or that film is? which of these side-characters are from something else?

doesn't-seem-related-but-it-is: i was surprised to discover that the general mcu fandom view of the loki series was not that it was some sort of AU situation that could be thought of an entirely separate from the main series of films. because that was pretty much why it was the one to hook me, i think - it explained the relevant backstory with clips and yet also this is a different loki so if i don't want to go and watch however many films he was in i don't have to. i would expect him to be to some extent "out of character" because it carefully explained to me that this is not really the same character as that identical guy with the same name who was in some number of films. there's a woman one and an alligator one but don't worry they're all from AUs anyway.

[starlene]

Having a chat about the Barbie movie with @neroushalvaus helped me to put something that bothers me about the movie to words.

At the end of the movie, when Barbie becomes a human, we see her dressed in beige, sensible clothing. Symbolically, she has grown up into a woman – and as a woman, she no longer wears the bright, pink, girly clothing she used to wear earlier.

Meanwhile, in our reality, women come to watch this movie all dolled up in their best pinks and glitters – a movie that ends with Barbie, a world-famous emblem of femininity, leaving neon pink behind her and choosing to wear muted colours instead.

Somehow, in this regard, I feel like the real-life response to the movie is more uplifting than the movie itself. In real life, adult women are celebrating the movie by wearing girly clothing, and they’re feeling happy and confident while doing so. If bright, girlish aesthetic makes you feel good, growing up doesn’t mean you have to leave it behind.

The costume design makes sense for Barbie’s character arc, sure, but on a symbolic level... I don’t really like what it says about the relationship between girlish/hyper-feminine aesthetic and adulthood, and I guess it just makes me a little bit sad how that part of the story and the real-life response to the movie clash.

[fingertipsmp3]

I’m gonna be honest I have no idea what Lana is singing most of the time. Whenever I don’t understand a word she sings, my brain just replaces it with a random noise. And in fact I assume she just made a noise in place of a word

[suguann]

He has a feeling that the new girl running the front desk at the gym is going to be a problem—a distraction disguised in a gym uniform polo and khaki pants.

It starts with you smiling too brightly as he walks in one morning, all teeth and that little twinkle in your eye that feels like trouble when you scan his membership card.

“Good morning, Mr. Riley.” 

“It’s just Simon,” he tells you as he takes his card off the counter. 

The following day, it’s the same, except Johnny is there to make it worse.

He nudges Simon with his elbow. “She’s kinda pretty, huh?”

“Say it any louder, and she’ll hear you, mate,” he grumbles.

Simon’s not blind; of course, he knows you’re pretty, but he doesn’t have time to commit to anything outside of work—even if you smile at him like you’re happy to see him and how he’ll think about it later: on missions, at his desk, during morning runs. His head is nothing short of woven webs with thoughts of you stuck in the middle.

Honestly, it’s that you—

(You try to make small talk with him every morning, and Simon is starting to think it’s just for him because on the days he doesn’t come alone, you merely scan his card and go back to reading the open paperback book on the desk.)

It’s weird because it’s almost like you—

(He bumps into you at the supermarket and makes a dumb joke about carrots that makes you laugh. It makes him a little tongue-tied and awkward afterward because he realizes he hasn’t talked to a woman outside of only wanting a quick fuck in a really long time, but more importantly, he wants to hear it again. 

Instead, he tosses potatoes in his cart and walks away.)

He tells himself it means nothing, or not how Simon wants it to.

You’re just…he’s not even sure; acquaintances? Maybe more than that, but less than friends. Somewhere in that odd in-between phase where he only knows bits and pieces but not the whole picture.

Sometimes, he wishes—

(Simon doesn’t know what he’s doing the first time he invites you to meet the guys from work on a night out. He’s dated around a few times and had his fair share of hook-ups, but this isn’t like that. His palms are sweaty, more than usual, and no amount of wiping them on the thighs of his jeans keeps them dry.

Then you walk into the bar in a dress that’s probably too light for early spring in London—even though he stares appreciatively at the long expanse of your legs as you walk up to the table—and he wishes he wasn’t introducing you as his friend.)

But you—

(A new development happens after you slip him your phone number on one of the gym’s business cards—it’s weird that we don’t have each other’s numbers, so message me sometime or whatever—and he messages you ‘hey’ right before he leaves for a mission a few days later. 

It slowly shifts and changes over time.

You start sending him texts in the morning. Never an actual good morning text, but of the dogs you take on walks, the sunrise, the new flower box in your window. Somehow, it’s better.)

You really are—

(His house feels too hot, and he’s distracted from the movie by how close you are, how your leg drapes over his under the blanket, fingers fisting into his sweater at his stomach that clenches. An ache that grows, throbbing, spreading from his abdomen to his groin.

It feels monumental—something more than the gentle touch to the elbow to squeeze by each other in his entryway earlier or giving you his jacket that night at the bar—a tilt of the axis that makes the messy pieces fall neatly into place. 

He must be staring because you glance up at him, smiling, and the sound from the TV turns into white noise in the background.

“Can I…would you—fucking hell,” Simon runs a hand through his hair. “Can I kiss you?”

When your lips press against his, and his hands are pulling you onto his lap, where you settle hotly against his dick tenting in his jeans, he wonders why neither of you has done this before. Just kissing—him licking the seam of your mouth, and you panting his name.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” you mumble, lips brushing his.

“Me too,” and he fists his hand into the hair at your nape and pulls you back to his mouth.)

“I knew you’d be trouble,” he tells you one day, glaring at the bloke further down the bar who tried making a swipe at your ass before Simon showed up, towering over his shoulder with your fruity cocktail in hand.

“Oh, yeah?” you giggle, leaning into his side.

“Yeah,” the corners of his mouth quirk, though he hides it when he presses a kiss against your temple. “A real pain in my ass, love.”

“But yours.”

This time, he does smile. “Yes, but mine.”

Masterlist

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I was not tagged by @mademoiseli, but I shall still do this fun tag game;)

favourite colour: orange

currently reading: The Angel the Series books "Bruja" and "Stranger to the Sun."

last movie in theatres: "The Batman."

last series: I assume this means last new TV series that I watched? And that was "The Chosen." Oh! For newest video game series--which I think is the newest series of anything I've gotten into lately--that's "Five Nights at Freddy's."

craving: Chinese food.

tea or coffee: Coffee.

currently working on: A SoKai manip, SoKai amvs for SoKai week (or trying to, if Sony Vegas will cooperate with me)... I also need to start a RokuShi amv for RokuShi Day--since that's closer than SoKai Week is--but I need to think of a song to use for them first.

Tagging anyone who would like to do this!

[fluffykitteninabox]

That's not just a musical trope my friend. That's the start of theatre.

In ancient Greek theatre the chorus (χορός) which means dance, were a group of actors who worked as a collective.

The chorus originally came from the ritual circle dances. According to the story, the first dancer exited the circle and started to converse with the other dancers. And the back and forth dialogue is the start of storytelling and theatre.

They wear matching costumes and masks. They are rarely individual characters, and if they are that's in comedy only, not in tragedies.

They're supposed to represent the common opinion of the people/the audience. In comedy their role is more active, while in tragedy they're more like an audience surrogate that mostly passively observes the struggle between two main characters.

At first the chorus started at 12 members, but Sophocles brought that up to 15. The comedy chorus in Aristophanes' plays has 24 members.

They also kind of break the fourth wall in a way, because they often address the audience when they sing.

It's really not a coincidence that the first photo there is the muses from Disney's adaptation of the Heracles myth. As much as I hate it as an adaptation, it really represents exactly what the chorus is supposed to be in a play.

I'm not giving too much credit to Disney though. Judging by the rest of their choices for the movie, they probably only chose the muses for this purely because they're more easily recognisable as figures.

And they're not even nine! I understand that they probably couldn't put a 24 member chorus in a Disney movie (I mean we greeks don't even stick to the numbers in modern adaptations either) but I don't think having all nine muses there instead of just five would have been that much more difficult.

Good musical trope: omniscient narrators with matching outfits and great harmonies

[hussyknee]

Wonder how far I can prod libs into finishing their full thought bubble behind all this "harm reduction" "genocide is a single issue" "you don't care about marginalized people in the US" "dyou want fascism WITH genocide???" screeching.

Okay, class, say it with me: "I don't want to live in a third world country like the ones we keep destroying."

Because you know. The countries your war criminal leaders keep bombing and starving and destabilising and leeching dry? We don't have trans or gay rights or women's rights or disability benefits or environmental or labour protections. No one would want to live in our countries obviously. You'd kill yourselves before you had to live like we do. Sure, we're only like this because you keep us trapped in poverty and violence and we still have full, happy lives worth living despite it but that's because we're used to it! We don't know any better! Not like you! You know what you deserve and you shouldn't have to lose anything as a consequence of your own political choices! Your government is supposed to happen to other people! Not you! So like, yeah, it's bad that the poors are being massacred wholesale or whatever, but like. That doesn't mean you gotta die with them, y'know? And by "death" you don't mean actual genocide like what's happening over here but "death" as in "having to live like we do".

The trolley problem metaphor is so goddamn attractive to you because you see yourself outside the tracks, objectively assessing the situation and making the "tough" "moral" choice for the collective good. It's imperialist horseshit. You don't have a democracy and it's not a trolley. What you have is an imperial death machine running on an apartheid system that decides who gets fed to it and who gets fed by it. That's your "two tracks"— the colonized and the colonizer, the core and the periphery, the white and the coloured. "Harm reduction"? Have you counted how many fucking millions in and around the world your death machine eats to keep how many of you "safe"? But our losses are a foregone conclusion, a matter of course, a regrettable necessity. The only variable is yours.

Every political choice in 200 years of your settler colony has been "genocide AND". "Genocide AND women's rights". "Genocide AND workers rights". "Genocide AND fascism". "Genocide AND democracy". The difference is that for the first time in your history you're now watching it livestreamed to the entire world in real time 24/7, exactly as your colony is about to capsize under the weight of its own bloodlust. A sea change from when your parents threw parties watching bombs dropping on Baghdad and then spent twenty years watching movies about sad it made the soldiers.

How do you count the victims when we are numbers and you are people? You scream about trans rights in the US while Palestinian trans children don't have the right to reach puberty. OSHA for you but Congolese children have to die in mines. Reproductive rights for the US while Sudanese women are raped in millions. Yes, but it's always been "genocide AND" no matter what, right? Do we want to sabotage the party that has never fucking cared about us and don't now even with half their own country screaming at them on the off-chance they might possibly maybe one day do?? Why are we acting so mad like it's YOUR fault that you're fighting for your quality of life over our corpses?? Do we want YOU to lose your rights over it??

Yes, actually. We do. We want you to have a taste of the reality that generations on generations of your illegal illegitimate white supremacist occupation has inflicted on us just so your worthless hide can sit there and call our genocides a single fucking issue. And let's be real: that's what you're so fucking afraid of.

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

Nobody asked me for my opinion on the controversy that dropped today when the Sonic Movie cast pay rate was revealed, which is fair ig since I try to stay positive on this blog. But in case you're wondering, yeah as a certified AFAB™ I'm pissed, but not really specifically at the Sonic crew. Actor pay rates are usually negotiated between agents and the production companies so just like all the other problems with the Sonic movies, this is most likely an issue with Paramount and their patented dumbfuckery. Disclaimer that obviously it could very well be a Sonic crew issue as well, obviously I don't know the inner workings of the entire film production.

Also, if you're mad about this: please be mad about the pay gap that has been going on as long as Hollywood has been alive. This isn't a problem unique to the SCU. I know the phrase "pay gap" is thrown around a whole lot but do you guys actually know how big an issue it is?

Recent percentages are that male and female actors have "a wage difference of about 25 percent," with an estimated difference of $1-2million between star-power men and star-power women.[x][x] Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone said she made $500k to Michael Douglas's $14mil– and when she was asked to be lead in a film being made in ~2022, the lead male, who was "new", was going to be paid $8-9mil, with her salary still at $500k. Last December, Biggest Monopoly In The World Disney was sued by 9,000 women over their pay gap.

This article is from 2019 but brings up some big fucking pay gaps between leads– for instance, Gillian Anderson was offered half of what David Duchovny was for the X-Files reboot as one of the two main fucking characters, Amanda Seyfried has disclosed she made 10% of what her male co-star made on an undisclosed film, Natalie Portman made 1/3 of the salary of Ashton Kutcher in No Strings Attached, and Ellen Pompeo, the titular character of Grey's Anatomy, was paid less than the actor playing her love interest, Patrick Dempsey. In fact, Dempsey was being paid almost double what she was.

However, BIG issue with the 2019 article: it only focuses on what White actors are being paid. Research shows that Black actresses make 57 cents to every dollar white actors make on a good day. Viola Davis, one of the most popular and talented actresses of our generation, has said that black women "get probably a tenth of what a Caucasian woman gets. And I'm number one on the call sheet." Octavia Spencer had to collaborate with Jessica Chastain to make sure they both got paid the same amount of money on a film they both worked on, and revealed that her new salary increased 500% afterwards.

At the end of last year, while promo-ing The Color Purple, Taraji P. Henson broke into tears while talking about how little she's being paid when compared to her white and male contemporaries. And when she talked about the gap, I find it so fucking frustrating that the general audience response was to immediately blame the only Black female producer on the film. I have a million gripes with Oprah Winfrey but TCP cast has said that she herself managed to fix a lot of the problems on set and was nothing but supportive to them. Oh, and there were a lot of problems on set, including a lack of food and dressing space for the main actors. And this is all from celebrity women. Just think about how Hollywood is treating women who don't have the star power to speak up.

Of course this isn't even a problem solo to Hollywood, let alone Paramount, let alone just one movie. And honestly it was probably really sad that when I saw the pay rate for the Sonic 3 cast, I wasn't even surprised, because I've seen worse on bigger projects.

[doberbutts]

The problem with the concept that there are trans men who don’t have male privilege is that it seems to imply that there are trans women who DO have it, which is a concept that is widely agreed to be unequivocally transmisogynistic. Any rebuttal for this?

My rebuttal is; I know trans women who have lived in my house and sat on my couch and watched movies and played videogames with me who have told me to my face that they did receive male privilege on a similar incredibly conditional, individual, and situational basis similar to how I am describing for trans men, how it relied on the closet and total stealth, and very aware they had to be of the line they were toeing, and how much worse they are treated now that they are out and transitioning, and how afraid they are to say it because of rabid people online who are looking for any excuse whatsoever to hurt them when they deal with that enough in their everyday lives.

I am forever reminded of this older interview (mid-90s early 2000s I think) of transgender Japanese citizens and this one person who was probably what we would call a trans woman. And, like my butch friend, was trapped in a situation in which there was absolutely zero room to breathe. They were amab, married to a woman with multiple children, working as a businessman to support the family. They said how they always felt like a woman on the inside, and how they knew that could never be a reality for them, so they didn't see much point in pursuing anything because it would break their family apart. The only thing they could do was make various cute needlework girly things during their daily commute to and from work. They had some cover story for their wife that they were buying them from a shop for their daughters or something.

Do you think that this person, who is perceived by everyone around them to be a cis man for several decades, does not benefit from male privilege in any way despite probably not actually being a man? Do you understand what I'm talking about when I say that this is a topic that needs to be discussed with far more delicacy and nuance than "man privilege woman not privilege"?

Do you think that all of the accounts of trans women out there saying "when I came out and started identifying as and passing for a woman, people suddenly started treating me much worse" and "I frequently have to boymode because otherwise my life is too dangerous" aren't discussions of exactly what I'm talking about?

Privilege is a tricky, complicated thing. It's also something bigoted society bestows upon you, and not a moral critique of your own existence. TERFs and MRAs both have poisoned the well, but that's not a reason to completely disregard the much-needed grace that has to be had during these conversations.

Personally I think any trans person's experience with "male privilege" is shakey at best and entirely contingent on a wide number of factors that you can't just point at their gender and say yes or no. I think it's way more complicated than that. And I don't think anyone is lesser for having or not having it, either. Gender is a morally neutral thing. Gender presentation is a morally neutral thing. It is okay to exist. It's okay to have a complicated existence.

[steddietogo]

Eddie can’t sleep with all the snoring. He should’ve taken Steve’s guest room when he had the chance but Eddie apparently is an affectionate drunk. He didn’t protest when Steve and Robin lead him to Steve’s bedroom and the three had just collapsed onto the bed together.

Now Steve is snoring like a fucking chainsaw. How can he be expected to sleep in these conditions? Hey, at least Eddie’s found one thing he finds undesirable in Steve. It was beginning to be too much— the constant barrage of butterflies in his stomach whenever Steve did completely normal, swoon worthy things. But Steve snoring like a faulty boat motor? No butterflies. Problem solved.

But Eddie’s still mad that he can’t sleep. He flops around angrily to glare at Steve’s slumbering form and— the dude is on his back, wide awake and blinking up at the ceiling. Now Steve’s back to being stupid perfect and that just makes Eddie more mad.

“What the fuck,” he whisper-shouts in the dark. Steve, fucking glowing in the eerie blue-tinted light spilling in through the window, just turns to him and shrugs.

Eddie props himself up on his elbows and peers over him at Robin— who is twisted up in a blanket, dead to the world and making enough noise to scare away a wild demogorgan probably.

“Does this happen often?” He asks Steve.

“Only when she’s drunk, and you don’t need to whisper, no way you can wake her up now,”

“Oh,” Eddie flops back down on his stomach making a mournful noise. “Goodbye sleep, you will be missed,” Steve turns to Eddie, curling up onto his side until his face was so close to Eddie’s that their noses almost touch.

“I can think of other ways to pass time,” Steve practically purrs. Eddie barely hears him past the blood roaring in his ears.

“L-like what?” He tries and fails to keep his own voice steady. If Steve making eyes at him from a distance are dangerous then those eyes in this proximity are deadly. Eddie discreetly pinches himself to keep him from doing something stupid. Like closing the gap between their lips.

“Like—” Steve pulls himself up and, holyfuckingshit, plants a knee on either side of Eddie’s hips. Eddie doesn’t have an exact number for the times his dream had started exactly like this. Steve on his hands and knees, hovering over Eddie.

This is happening. Is this happening? With Robin right there beside them? Actually Eddie doesn’t care about that part but is it happening?

Then Steve moves again, gets off Eddie and slides off the bed like he didn’t nearly just send the man into cardiac arrest. “We could go watch a movie?” The fucker smirks at him like he knows exactly what he just did to Eddie. Get it together, Munson.

Eddie ends up following Steve downstairs like a love sick puppy anyways. Even lets him pick a cheesy musical to watch. When Eddie finally starts to drift off to slumberland, he feels a strong pair of arms pulling him into a warm chest. And the last thing Eddie thinks of before fully succumbing to sleep is that maybe he might have a chance with Steve after all.

[tangibletechnomancy]

The reason I took interest in AI as an art medium is that I've always been interested in experimenting with novel and unconventional art media - I started incorporating power tools into a lot of my physical processes younger than most people were even allowed to breathe near them, and I took to digital art like a duck to water when it was the big, relatively new, controversial thing too, so really this just seems like the logical next step. More than that, it's exciting - it's not every day that we just invent an entirely new never-before-seen art medium! I have always been one to go fucking wild for that shit.

Which is, ironically, a huge part of why I almost reflexively recoil at how it's used in the corporate world: because the world of business, particularly the entertainment industry, has what often seems like less than zero interest in appreciating it as a novel medium.

And I often wonder how much less that would be the case - and, by extension, how much less vitriolic the discussion around it would be, and how many fewer well-meaning people would be falling for reactionary mythologies about where exactly the problems lie - if it hadn't reached the point of...at least an illusion of commercial viability, at exactly the moment it did.

See, the groundwork was laid in 2020, back during covid lockdowns, when we saw a massive spike in people relying on TV, games, books, movies, etc. to compensate for the lack of outdoor, physical, social entertainment. This was, seemingly, wonderful for the whole industry - but under late-stage capitalism, it was as much of a curse as it was a gift. When industries are run by people whose sole brain process is "line-go-up", tiny factors like "we're not going to be in lockdown forever" don't matter. CEOs got dollar signs in their eyes. Shareholders demanded not only perpetual growth, but perpetual growth at this rate or better. Even though everyone with an ounce of common sense was screaming "this is an aberration, this is not sustainable" - it didn't matter. The business bros refused to believe it. This was their new normal, they were determined to prove -

And they, predictably, failed to prove it.

So now the business bros are in a pickle. They're beholden to the shareholders to do everything within their power to maintain the infinite growth they promised, in a world with finite resources. In fact, by precedent, they're beholden to this by law. Fiduciary duty has been interpreted in court to mean that, given the choice between offering a better product and ensuring maximum returns for shareholders, the latter MUST be a higher priority; reinvesting too much in the business instead of trying to make the share value increase as much as possible, as fast as possible, can result in a lawsuit - that a board member or CEO can lose, and have lost before - because it's not acting in the best interest of shareholders. If that unsustainable explosive growth was promised forever, all the more so.

And now, 2-3-4 years on, that impossibility hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of these media company CEOs. The market is fully saturated; the number of new potential customers left to onboard is negligible. Some companies began trying to "solve" this "problem" by violating consumer privacy and charging per household member, which (also predictably) backfired because those of us who live in reality and not statsland were not exactly thrilled about the concept of being told we couldn't watch TV with our own families. Shareholders are getting antsy, because their (however predictably impossible) infinite lockdown-level profits...aren't coming, and someone's gotta make up for that, right? So they had already started enshittifying, making excuses for layoffs, for cutting employee pay, for duty creep, for increasing crunch, for lean-staffing, for tightening turnarounds-

And that was when we got the first iterations of AI image generation that were actually somewhat useful for things like rapid first drafts, moodboards, and conceptualizing.

Lo! A savior! It might as well have been the digital messiah to the business bros, and their eyes turned back into dollar signs. More than that, they were being promised that this...both was, and wasn't art at the same time. It was good enough for their final product, or if not it would be within a year or two, but it required no skill whatsoever to make! Soon, you could fire ALL your creatives and just have Susan from accounting write your scripts and make your concept art with all the effort that it takes to get lunch from a Star Trek replicator!

This is every bit as much bullshit as the promise of infinite lockdown-level growth, of course, but with shareholders clamoring for the money they were recklessly promised, executives are looking for anything, even the slightest glimmer of a new possibility, that just might work as a life raft from this sinking ship.

So where are we now? Well, we're exiting the "fucking around" phase and entering "finding out". According to anecdotes I've read, companies are, allegedly, already hiring prompt engineers (or "prompters" - can't give them a job title that implies there's skill or thought involved, now can we, that just might imply they deserve enough money to survive!)...and most of them not only lack the skill to manually post-process their works, but don't even know how (or perhaps aren't given access) to fully use the software they specialize in, being blissfully unaware of (or perhaps not able/allowed to use) features such as inpainting or img2img. It has been observed many times that LLMs are being used to flood once-reputable information outlets with hallucinated garbage. I can verify - as can nearly everyone who was online in the aftermath of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Dashcon Experience - that the results are often outright comically bad.

To anyone who was paying attention to anything other than please-line-go-up-faster-please-line-go-please (or buying so heavily into reactionary mythologies about why AI can be dangerous in industry that they bought the tech companies' false promises too and just thought it was a bad thing), this was entirely predictable. Unfortunately for everyone in the blast radius, common sense has never been an executive's strong suit when so much money is on the line.

Much like CGI before it, what we have here is a whole new medium that is seldom being treated as a new medium with its own unique strengths, but more often being used as a replacement for more expensive labor, no matter how bad the result may be - nor, for that matter, how unjust it may be that the labor is so much cheaper.

And it's all because of timing. It's all because it came about in the perfect moment to look like a life raft in a moment of late-stage capitalist panic. Any port in a storm, after all - even if that port is a non-Euclidean labyrinth of soggy, rotten botshit garbage.

Any port in a storm, right? ...right?

All images generated using Simple Stable, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[d4yl1ghts]

stuck

mark sloan x shy, fem!reader

summary: you and mark get to know each other when you get stuck in an elevator

A/N- i feel like he would love star wars (not as much as bailey tho)? but this gives me such katniss and peeta vibes

-

You read the files that Doctor Shepherd had given you to take a look through because he thought his new patient may have some sort of problem with their heart and cardiology was your specialty. You were currently in the elevator, heading up to find an empty room to study your new case when the elevator suddenly came to a halt. Confusedly you glanced around and noticed Mark Sloan, the world’s number one man-whore was the only other person there.

He glanced up from his papers and made eye contact with you. “What happened?”, he questioned with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. This was the first time you’d heard him so nervous. “I think the elevator just broke.”, you sighed as the realisation just set in once you said it out loud. He huffed to himself. “Hopefully they’ll be able to fix it soon, I have a surgery in an hour.”, he stated, checking the time on his watch.

“Might as well get comfortable.”, he added as he fixed himself on the floor and placed his files beside him. You copied his actions and sat opposite him. “So, what case have you got there?”, he asked you, striking conversation. “Oh, just a new case Derek wanted me to check up on. What about you?”, you awkwardly asked as your cheeks blazed. “Just some boring charts of burn victims, I have to reconstruct their faces, arms and legs.”, he said. “Oh, lovely.”, you replied sarcastically.

You stared at the wall of the lift and zoned out into your own thoughts. It must have been around five minutes of silence before Mark started speaking again: “If we’re gonna be here for a while then we may as well get to know each other.”, he said, looking into your eyes. It wasn’t a bad idea, there was nothing else you could really do.

“Tell me three random facts about yourself. I’ll go first: I used to live in New York (I’m sure you’ve heard about that), my middle name is Everett and I love the Star Wars movies.”

“Uhm… this is actually hard to think about, hold on.”, you said, embarrassed. He chuckled slightly. “Okay, I hate posh restaurants, I also love the Star Wars movies and I have a pet cat named Jack.”

“Cool, why do you hate posh restaurants though?”, he questioned as he turned to you with amusement in his eyes. “They’re just so intimidating and I just generally don’t like the vibe of the, do you know what I mean? Also, they’re so overpriced like you could find some cosy place that sells nicer food for way cheaper.”, you said passionately. You did not like posh restaurants at all. “I get what you’re coming from to be honest. I always preferred a cute and little cafe opposed to a fancy restaurant.”, he reasoned.

“If I ever ask you out on a date, I guess I’ll know where to take you.”, he flirted which left your cheeks on fire, well that’s what it felt like anyway. “I’m not surprised everyone calls you a man-whore.”, you said as you ignored what he previously said. “That’s not my proudest nickname.”, he responded. “I want to change my nickname, I don’t want to be known as that anymore. I don’t want loads of hook-ups and flings, I want a real relationship.”

He gazed at you. “I swear we’re having a whole confession session here. Oh my God, it rhymed.”, he laughed to himself. You laughed along with him, he was pretty funny and cute. If you looked past his reputation, he was a nice guy.

After another fifteen minutes of talking and joking, firefighters had arrived and gotten the two of you out of the elevator. “Hey, Y/N, do you wanna hang out one day? Not in an elevator, of course.”, he asked you, almost anxiously as he awaited a response. “Yeah, I’d love to.”

“I promise I won’t take you to a posh restaurant.”, he added as he walked away and charmingly smirked at you. You laughed to yourself and waved him off. “We can work out a date.”