#less ‘how do i make the most money off this demographic’

[devotion-disorder]

What if Noel’s darling didn’t want their identity to be on the internet? Like, they’re fine to let him talk about them, or are even happy to hear he likes telling his viewers how in love he is. But they don’t want their face shown, or for their real name to be mentioned (maybe they even request a nickname instead)?

For most cases, Noel can accept not fully showing their partner’s identity (ie their face/ name) in his content. However, his partner will still be the focal point of his content if that’s what he set out doing. Let’s say he decides to do a cutesy “Couples QnA” video. He will find a way for his partner to be in frame with him for the entire duration of the video, even if it means handcuffing them or strapping them to a chair. Blurring their face/ using a fake name is honestly the least he could do and he’ll happily oblige, as long as you agree to let him shoot a video of you both.

It’s not like Noel cares about the clout or money. To him, making these videos is just another way of “proving” his complete ownership over his partner. It may also be some sick form of showing-off, but mostly it’s to fuel his obsession with marking them, to intermingle their identity with his in this collective online presence. Now his wonderful relationship with his loving partner is out there for all the world to see, in the irrefutable form of video content, marked on the internet forever. He may be unable to convince both you and himself that your love is true, but he sure as hell can convince his millions of impressionable fans of it. so i guess the point is less so on their partner’s identity, but the fact that they are in a relationship.

I say most cases, because if his partner happened to be very defiant and difficult, leaking your real name/face would be the least of your worries when he’s uploading videos and photos of you in…compromising situations; or hosting livestreams on shady websites for a completely different demographic than his usual viewers.

[yooniesim]

I'm sitting here thinking about a pretty age-old debate on simblr... the race of sims that have black hairstyles, particularly in cc preview pics.

I know it's been talked about repeatedly, but when it comes to cc previews for paid cc I think it's especially worth talking about. Some people say, well, the creator only uses a few different sim models each time, it's not like they're intending to be racist or something. It's just for convenience, because they're busy, they're hustling, they gotta pay their bills. They always use the same sim, so it's fine. But like... isn't that gross to y'all? Someone making money off of black hairstyles, but they can't even be assed to go in cas for 15 mins to make a black sim? Isn't that a prime example of appropriation of black culture for profit? Like the human aspect of us as a person is gone, it's just another part of us being advertised and sold. Black hair makes money, black hair cc is limited, it will sell and nothing else matters. It feels like black hairstyles are some kind of trend with them too, because none of these creators made them before it was possible to profit off of them... back then it was "too hard" just like now it's apparently "too hard" to make a different preview sim.

Also, it's not lost of me that when a creator does make a black sim for their previews, they're as light skinned and white looking as possible. Whether just by skintone, very eurocentric features (like they just gave a white sim slightly darker skin), vitiligo to make most of the skin light, or claiming the sim has albinism. And while some of this I'm sure is just finding that aesthetic more "pretty", I also think this has to do with potential sales. I'm going to be honest... besides engagement by black simblr itself, I've noticed a lot of posts I have get less engagement/reblogs if the sim in question has darker skin and darker hair. It's much more likely to pick up in the mainstream cc finds blogs/YouTube videos etc, if the content is for white sims or the sim has lighter skin and light hair. I don't care about engagement and simply make whatever sim I want to make, and since I do have that variety, it's how I noticed this strange trend. And with the volume of content paywall creators make, I think they noticed this too. Posts with lighter skinned sims get better engagement, and thus, make more money.

Have you ever noticed, even in paywalled cc packs, there will usually be a sort of token effect? One white sim, one ethnically ambiguous sim, one black sim. This is great if you're showing off something that will vary for different skintones- makeup and skin details, for example- but why is it always like this? And why is the variety usually only in previews for cc packs instead of solo items (like hairs)? It feels like it's all to sell better, to appeal to different demographics and say, hey, I didn't forget poc exist! Please pay for my content! It feels disgenuine, and since creators like this rarely engage with the community anymore besides paid content, it's hard to figure out whether they feel this way or not.

Personally, I don't care much what people do in their own games- I might look at them weird for a sec, but I move on, cos it's their issue not mine. But like many other aspects to this community, when it crosses over into paid content, it sparks my interest. It feels like everything, everything, is about maximizing profit now. And for the people that focus on that, that's their prerogative and all, I can't exactly stop them, but. It's just something I observed and wouldn't mind discussing with y'all.

(Note: I don't apply the "profiting off black culture" part to black creators, obviously. Also no hate to any creators that do this stuff. Be reasonable adults, please. I'm just discussing in a constructive criticism type of way.)

[wilwheaton]

Twitter Blue has mainly been advertised as a way for the app’s power users to upgrade their experience. But that’s not who’s buying it. According to the most recent figures I’ve seen, around .02% of the site pays for Twitter Blue. And, this week, Mashable reported that half of those users have under 1,000 followers and 17% have less than 100 users. Which means Twitter Blue is actually a service primarily used by people who do not have any real audience or community that they’re active participants in. And this effectively makes Twitter Blue more of an attempt at monetizing access and influence for people who don’t have any and are desperate enough to pay to get it. And now we’re seeing Musk really struggle to manage the subsequent cringe of giving people that access and influence. It reminds me a lot of how the crypto industry works and also how pickup artists operate tbh (I think there’s a lot of overlap between those demographics actually). Once you have all these people paying, they start expecting to be treated like the elites you’ve told them they can magically be for a small fee, and it turns out this gets real embarrassing real fast. For instance, I’ve noticed that at a lot of crypto conventions there is a sort of ever-increasing hierarchy of different exclusive spaces that are only available for bigger and bigger whales. It’s casino logic. And I’d bet a lot of money on there being some pitch deck inside of Twitter HQ outlining how Twitter blue is only the beginning of the monetization strategy with even more ways to pay planned once they get it off the ground.

Managing the cringe - by Ryan Broderick - Garbage Day

[lightningarmour]

Absolute comics first thoughts

For the first time since the end of DOOMSDAY CLOCK I've been persuaded into paying money for a DC comic, and two, no less.

I've been 100% checked out of the DC sphere for about 5 years, only occasionally seeing some news here or there about the latest crossover event or fave character or what have you, and I regard those with the passing interest one might have in seeing a hot air balloon. Nothing has drawn me back partly because I'm old now and don't have the time or inclination to try catching up on years of crossover event, status quo altering storylines and yadda yadda.

I had heard about the new ABSOLUTE line of titles, but from the initial teasers and previews, not the least of which was the character design for Absolute Batman with his giant stupid fat bat symbol, I just wrote it off as them doing yet more edgy elseworlds stories, and thought no more on it until maybe three weeks ago. I saw a little roundup of details about Absolute Superman from an interview with Jason Aaron and it caught my attention.

I've gone on at length in the past about how I think that any earnest attempt at writing Superman for modern audiences that keeps true to the "idea" of Superman without making a cynical edgelord version of the character would need to depict Superman as a politically engaged, class conscious individual at least, and a full on Leninist at best. Now obviously I do not expect DC comics to publish a comic about communist superman without it being a laughable piece of propaganda like RED SON, but nonetheless, hearing that Absolute Superman is about a superman who is fighting a mining corporation to protect a community of abused labourers, and re-imagining Krypton as a caste-based society that was destroyed by reckless exploitation of the environment, I was certainly interested.

I resolved to check it out at least. I'd seen some of the details about Absolute Batman, that he's not a billionaire and whatever and still wasn't too interested, but realized I'd heard basically nothing about Absolute Wonder Woman. "She didn't grow up on Themyscira" okay what does that mean?

At this point both Batman and Wonder Woman were out so I looked it up and found some pages from Absolute Wonder Woman #1 and was pretty much instantly hooked because the art was tremendous, and Wonder Woman is flying on a skeleton pegasus with a huge Guts sword and like, that just fucking rocks ass, come on. So I was now sold on two Absolute series, I decided eh, what the hell I'll check out Absolute Batman #1, maybe I could be convinced.

So now that I've read all three first issues of the new ABSOLUTE Universe, I have some thoughts.

ABSOLUTE BATMAN #1 is a confused mess. I think that Batman, being easily the most popular DC character, with the broadest demographic appeal, has too much baggage. You'd kind of think that with a character like this where everyone knows his whole basic backstory, you could gloss over the details a bit more, but this issue is so concerned with establishing and referencing as many iconic Batman characters as possible, it's so bloated.

in this one(1) issue they set up or directly show you: Alfred Pennyworth, Jim Gordon, Barbara Gordon, Harvey Bullock, Killer Croc, Penguin, Riddler, Cat Woman, Two-Face, Black Mask, Ras Al Ghul, and of course we cannot go even one single issue without giving you The Joinker. It's too much. Ease off. We're not going to encounter probably two thirds of these people for ages. And, frankly establishing that half of Batman's presumptive rogue's gallery just so happened to be Bruce Wayne's childhood friends is dumb as shit. The dynamic between all of them is going to follow the exact same "gasp, could it be that my old friend is now a criminal?!" dynamic like 5 times in a row.

This is easily the most edgy of the current Absolute series and is basically exactly what I assumed the whole imprint was going to be, but it really feels in places like Scott Snyder wanted this to be a Batman that was darker and more violent but then DC editorial was like "no, Batman can't kill people" so he adjusted the script as little as possible to reassure the audience that he's rolling non-lethal damage as he stabs the shit out of people with his ear-knives and chops their hands off.

Despite all the parts I don't like about how they portray Batman, the thing that pisses me off is I really like the way they are doing Bruce Wayne.

Typically Bruce Wayne, the billionaire is kind of a hard character for me to like because of how much he serves this kind of great man power fantasy(yes, I know, superhero comics are inherently fascist) He has a vendetta against the concept of crime because his parents were killed by a criminal, so he takes it upon himself to "protect" Gotham, but in many depictions of Batman it's kind of like, what exactly is his connection to the city other than he lives there and presumably is the HQ of Wayne Enterprises. he views it the way a rich person would, dirty and too full of undesirable people who must be punished so that he, a wealthy socialite can enjoy the place without having to see the underclasses.

Making Bruce a working class urbanist is such a more interesting way of exploring the character. He loves the city because he grew up in it's streets, played in it's parks, attended it's schools, rode it's busses. Adding the layer on that that he became a civil engineer and worked with the municipal government does for the first time I've ever seen something interesting with Gotham by kind of interrogating the notion of what makes a city what it is. Is it the infrastructure, the people, the civil servants? It's the most interesting Bruce Wayne has ever been.

But then as Batman he's just fucking mutilating people and blowing them up with bombs and whatever. Yawn. I think that the Batman aspect also annoys me because it so blatantly disregards the central premise of the Absolute line. What if Batman wasn't a billionaire? Well then he wouldn't have access to tons of money and resources to do his Batman shit! So they like, half-ass that by giving him the kind of stripped-down arsenal. No gadgets and gizmos, just knives and a hunk of bat shaped metal used as a battle axe. But then oh yeah he also has some kind of miracle fabric that he can use as like tendrils or whatever and it's completely bullet-proof and so on and so forth. Like, Batman really really does not feel in any meaningful way like he is working at a disadvantage in this version of the story, and that just makes the whole thing so damn boring.

ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #1 fucking kicks ass. This was by kind of a wide margin the best issue of the three series debut issues. I think that unlike Batman and Superman who both have quite a lot of baggage tied into their backstories and supporting cast and so forth, Wonder Woman has never quite achieved the level of iconography as they have so there's almost more freedom to do something new without hitting a bunch of prescribed plot points. In fact she might be the one of the trinity who has had the most attempts to re-imagine her and spruce her up to get people interested. I recall back in 2010 they did a big shake up that was not too dissimilar to this new take on the character. What if she never grew up on Themyscira? What if she didn't have the favour of the gods, etc. And I really liked that one, so I guess it's no surprise I'd be fond of this new version as well.

I think the number one thing that hooked me on this issue is the artwork, tbh. It's my favourite style so far of the Absolute comics, and everything just looks so cool and big and epic and awesome. That's it. It's just cool as hell.

The next most important thing is it has much better pacing than the other issues. You get a very simple, very effective set-up. The Amazons have been punished by the gods so this baby is being raised in hell by a witch. That's it. Good, effective time lapse of her growing up interspersed within the action scenes of her fighting monsters. It's simple and to the point but still leaves me invested int he mystery and wanting to know more. And again, it did not feel the need to shoe-horn a bunch of characters in so you can do the soyjack point at the issue. They could have easily shoved Steve Trevor in there as one of the soldiers responding to the freaky monster pyramid but that would have just been lame. It's confident enough in itself to not have to try and get you with low hanging fruit.

I don't really have much else to say, it's just cool and good and I'm unequivocally excited for more.

ABSOLUTE SUPERMAN #1 is a solid start. Now I'll admit I'm way more of a Superman-head than I am for Batman or Wonder Woman. This was the series that made me interested in the Absolute experiment in the first place, so I'm probably way more willing to be lenient towards a Superman title than say Batman.

That being said, this one also has like Batman, aspects I really like, and others I'm a bit iffy on, though not in as wide a gulf as Absolute Batman. As I said before, I've spent probably too much time trying to think of how to reinvent Superman in a modern context and, specifically, from a politically left-wing perspective, and I'll say that so far I think they're doing a decent job.

It's obviously nothing new to look at Superman as an immigrant story. Going all the way back to Siegel & Shuster, who were children of Jewish immigrants, the whole idea was what if this guy came from somewhere else. I think that the way that Jason Aaron has interpreted that concept for a modern context is actually quite brilliant. It's almost less of what if Superman was an immigrant than what if Superman was a refugee? Rather than unable to return to his homeland, but finding a new home with loving foster parents we are given the suggestion that he's never had a stable home since arriving on Earth. Moving from one place to another, nowhere to go home to, hiding among the economically exploited peoples of the global south.

It's such a riveting set up, I'm really excited to see how this version of the Character is informed by his history.

I also like the use of Krypton as kind of a heavy-handed double metaphor for stratified class society and the dangers of climate change. Like, it is presumably already dead and gone and unable to like, textually affect the story so who cares if it's allegorical nature is too on the nose. I also really like the notion of Kal El having like, living memory of Krypton, rather than only knowing about it from recordings on an alien flash drive or whatever.

I think the use of this "Lazarus" corporation as a kind of stand-in blanket evil corporation that does every kind of exploitative, extractive, broadly seen as morally wrong kinds of industries a bit hokey but hey it's a comic. I love the use of the Peacemakers as the like, corporate PMC security force though, that's fun. I am pretty curious if Lazarus is going to be a kind of fake-out Lexcorp. Like Luthor is the head of it but they called it by a different name so as not to ruin the surprise of his introduction. That or maybe it's related to Ras Al Ghul? Who knows, but I'm interested in what their whole deal is. They not only operate diamond mines and factory farms but also like, hunt down alien technology to reverse engineer?? And employ a Brainiac. curious as to what the deal is with the screaming jars. Does being shrunk down just like, really hurt? Seems like almost going overboard with the concept. Like not only does he shrink down cities and put them in jars but he also tortures the shrunken people? Like why, what's he getting out of it?

Some of the iffy parts for me include the suit AI thing he's got because I'm frankly sick of that trope by now. Ever since Iron man it's like every fucking character in comics has to have some kind of tech suit with a quirky robot voice. I'm willing to give it a chance on the grounds that it's like alien technology so sure whatever. I kind of like that he has to fucking charge the suit with a solar panel. I am curious about what exactly the breakdown is with the suit. He uses his x-ray and laser eyes so presumably it's still Kal himself who has super powers and they're not like, imbued by the suit. The suit seems like it is regulating his powers in some way. Like without it he couldn't control them and would cause havoc, but the fact that he has to like charge the suit's battery is kind of funny. Like, is the suit solar powered and his powers are just inherent no matter what, or does he still derive his power from sunlight as well? Fuzzy on the rules.

I also don't like the Lois reveal. It's just dull. Who care. The little teaser of Kent Farm is interesting to me. Feels like several different ways they could pivot:

Kal El's rocket lands and blows a hole in their barn, they find him and are frightened of him so they call the authorities/Lazarus and Kal flees.

Similar to above but they care for him like usual before Lazarus shows up looking for the alien craft and kill the Kents to remove any witnesses

Altogether it does enough things I'm interested in to keep me going with it despite the few quibbles I have. So far it's 2/3 on the Absolute universe and with the "phase 2" or whatever announced I'm 100% guaranteed also picking up Absolute Flash because it's my boy Wally and Jeff Lemire writing, like come the fuck on, how could I resist that.

[notyouraryang0dd3ss]

Omg that ask you received about marginalised swifties ‘Turning their brains off’ to fawn over their fave fascist is SO REAL.

Ur ask box says come here to rant so I’m NOT holding back lmao sorry if this is a long one.

One of my friends is like this but he doesn’t even have Taylor Swift as an exception to his political opinions/ the standards he sets for other celebrities. Instead he will try to the best of his ability to justify EVERYTHING she does. Even if he literally said the opposite five minutes ago.

He loves Greta Thunberg and thinks carbon credits are just rich people shite?? Actually no Taylor is trying her best!! 😭😭 did you know she bought carbon credits so really she’s mitigating climate change.

He is against racism (AS A WHITE ENGLISH BOY) And thinks all celebrities should speak up against it?? Well, if she speaks up she and her fans could be hurt! (In THIS crowd?? 💁🏼‍♀️ 👩🏼👩🏼👩🏼👩🏼‍🦱👩🏼👩🏻‍🦰👩🏼👩🏻👩🏼 Bitch WHO?).

He is against homophobia (dude is literally gay) and any cishet celebrity who doesn’t immediately condemn homophobia is trash and morally bankrupt (his own words- which I agree with)?? Well yk she did make that one song! Wdym it portrays the poor rural working class as the homophobes and the rich educated people as great allies who have never been homophobic nor the ones passing homophobic and transphobic legislation?? No it’s actually a metaphor (for what? Her being classist? Not much of a metaphor when it’s fucking obvious).

That’s the context, so here’s The Story 😸😸

I remember late last year (a few weeks before Taylor Swift donated the wild wild sum of £250 dollars to see a comedy show raising money for Palestine) me and my friend were talking about how it’s morally bankrupt for celebrities to not talk about Palestine and this delulu little swiftie was like “yeah!! You guys are so right!” Until our friend was like “esp billionaires cz they could make so much of an impact just by speaking up once but don’t because they care more their money and have probably never spoken to a brown person darker than a paper bag”

And lemme tell you this about this mf. his face dropped immediately like 😊😟 and he starts waffling on like “uhmm well she’s on tour it would endanger her fans! Like the Manchester terror attack!! And she’s not a politician or anything so it wouldn’t do nowt.”

(The way he was insinuating her fans might get bombed in a ‘terror attack’ is a little 🤨 considering Isreal wouldn’t bomb a white US American woman and her majority wealthy white western fanbase in a western zionist county because that demographic makes up the majority of their supporters, and esp not in a terror attack... unless he’s aware of the fact that she’s probably a Zionist but just doesn’t want to say it LMAOO)

So me and my friend share A Look like what is this english boy (derogatory: inbred racist) on? And he immediately goes on the offence and I will say again; he is a staunch leftist. He is a gay guy in the Uk, esp considering the northern (aka fucked by the government, quite bigoted and really deprived) working class (he is the richest of our friend group but tbh that isn’t saying much lmao) area we live in. He is ALWAYS talking about social justice and how he, who is on average the most privileged person in our friend group, wants to use his privilege to help the less fortunate.

So! He turns to our friend: queer brown girl who’s family are catholic and from Maharashtra (India), and me: queer white girl who’s family are (mostly) Jewish and from Eastern Europe. And he says (I SHIT YOU NOT) extremely loudly so that many people nearby can hear cause we’re in our school’s canteen:

“Well, at least MY ANCESTORS didn’t murder hundreds of Hindus during partition! And at least MY BROTHER isn’t in the IDF!!”

(Wish this was in an English literature exam cause I could analyse the fuck out of it)

All it took was people insinuating his favourite celebrity wasn’t a good person. We didn’t even fucking name her. And he weaponises his privileges against those with less than him. Even if what he said was true it is fucking disgusting to use that against minorities, esp his friends, esp because we live in an area where so many people fall prey to politics scapegoating minorities for all the UK’s problems, and esp because he pretends to be against this stuff??

But no it gets worse, because let me explain the actual truth of that he said.

Our friend’s family were originally Hindu and converted relatively recently and AFTER partition so they wouldn’t have been killing Hindus. And saying murder is just pretty ugh. Also HUNDREDS?? The only people with that much blood on their hands after partition are the English and that’s a fucking fact. And from what I know most of the conflicts within Maharashtra were not religious but ethnic-based?? I might be wrong but of course this guy wouldn’t know regardless. Also it should be noted that the majority of Indian kids at our school are from a different state with a different language + culture and our friend already feels alienated from them along with being treated like shit by a select few. So literally announcing her family fucking MURDERED theirs isn’t helping at all!

Then there’s my bit lol.

First of all it’s not my brother, it’s my half brother. And he’s not in the IDF he is just a Zionist. Which is still really awful and uplifting a system of apartheid. But not the same.

Now the thing is. The only reason this guy knows this is because THREE YEARS AGO i entrusted him as a friend and vented about issues in my family: that my half brother is a Zionist and wants to join the IDF when he’s older and I’m really ashamed that he has interpreted our religion in a way that perpetrates genocide. Also like my entire family are arguing about it and it’s really stressful. A month later (still 3 years ago) someone spread rumours around school that I was a Zionist and hated Muslims (what really happened was that someone was making Holocaust jokes saying ‘I gave them permission to do it’ and I called them out, so that was their revenge.). This guy was my friend all through that and KNOWS how much it upset me and esp because there were at the time no other Jewish people in our school.

To this day I’m still hesitant to tell people at school that I’m Jewish because I’m paranoid something like this will happen again.

But this guy didn’t care. He made up a lie about my friend not only demonising her to her own community but also to outsiders. Blaming mass bloodshed that his own people perpetrated onto her and her family. Then he lied about me and my family- bastardising something I told him years ago as a close friend with the trust he wouldn’t use it against me years later. But he did.

Of our little trio (we do have a bigger friend group but we were the only ones in that convo), he is the one who has done the least for Palestine. We have been fighting for fucking years and he’s only opening his eyes know which is still good and better than never of course. But to speak with such authority when literally all he has done is tell us he’s against Israel (better than Taylor but still spineless). Bro isn’t even an activist because there’s nothing active about what he does. He just passively hangs around and through association with us, other people and being already a minority (queer) isn’t assumed to be a Zionist.

AND!! Ironically he is actually quite disliked at my school- not for being a scumbag, but for the fact that he’s gay. We are some of his only friends but he’s willing to jeopardise our relationship just to uplift an insanely wealthy bigot half a world away.

Anyway yeah that’s it lol.

What he did was racist and antisemitic and fucking AWFUL. He has done stuff like this before and since- never always go the same extent though- and I think this story takes the cake.

When you said leftist swifties will just ignore their values for her. You were right to an extend but also kind of wrong. Turns out they will also weaponise everything they claim to be against just to protect their precious little blonde billionaire. Hooray 🤩🤩

Anyway thank you so so much for not only calling out Taylor swift and swifties’s BS but also issues within the anti community (sigh. Jewishbarbies) and standing up for what’s right. Free Palestine and fuck the colonisers 🇵🇸🇵🇸❤️❤️

As a side note you said you wanted to listen to more Indian songs n you probably already know it cause it’s Bollywood and really popular but CHAMMAK CHALLO by Akon is a lifestyle <3 I might not be here much but I’d love to be 😻 anon if it’s available (or the REAL Jewish barbie if you feel like it lmao)

please drop this guy. this is not your friend this is someone who hangs out with you because (as you said) no one else likes him.

nobody with his alleged politics would ever think let alone ACCUSE you and your desi best friend of racist lies (STRAIGHT UP ACCUSING YOUR FRIENDS FAMILY OF MASS MURDER?) and zionist ties (blaming you for your brother wanting to join the idf?). this is not a good person.

i’m sorry this behavior is so abhorrent. nobody who genuinely respects, likes, cares and KNOWS the both of you would ever think of saying this in your face. and all in the defense of a WEALTHY WHITE CELEB WHO PRIDES HERSELF IN BEING A FEMINIST CONTINUING TO STAY SILENT 9 MONTHS INTO A GENOCIDE. he is showing you that he would rather side with/defend a (privileged) white person rather his own marginalized friends if he likes them more than you. this is not someone not committed to their own politics.

this is what i was saying about further left identifying swifties is that their leftist politics are just aesthetics for them. if you can disregard your politics for your favorite celeb you are not committed to the ideology you claim as your political framework. also i noticed how you used homophobia and greta thunberg as examples, which explains his behavior as self serving meaning he’s a leftist only because he’s directly impacted by his issues. (if he calls himself anti racist tell him to stfu especially after what he said to your desi bff bc wtf) this is not a good person who’s own personal politics regarding palestine are passive at best. he isn’t even committed to palestine’s liberation.

ugh. what a disgusting human being. i am so sorry your “friend” said this disgusting shit to you just because HE felt threatened you guys were holding his fave accountable. he went fully mask off and spouted bigotry because HE felt threatened. if this is not the first or last time he’s done this, he’s told you multiple times who he is and you have no obligation to continue being his friend because he does not deserve to be.

fuck all the zionists in the tag and SHOW UP FOR PALESTINE. go and get involved in your actions, reshare and donate to gfm’s, actively educate yourself (haymarket books has free book pdfs to download about palestine), post online and above all REMAIN STEADFAST IN YOUR COMMITMENT TO PALESTINE.

death to all colonial powers, land back to all indigenous peoples, and reparations and return of all stolen resources and artifacts to the decolonized peoples. fuck israel and death to the white settler colonial state!

[therealbeachfox]

"So Outlaws should’ve been doomed from the start, and almost was. The thing that saved it though, strangely enough, was that fucking décor.

For those of you who never set foot inside one while they still existed (and good on you, you are truly wise) and don’t want to sit down with any of those old YouTube “Live Commentary of my Outlaws Trip Experience” videos (also good on you. No one has enough life-span to be wasting any of it on crap like that), it can be hard to describe. You had your cow skulls painted with American flags and wearing giant rhinestoned purple cowboy hats. You had guitars with red and black lightning bolts and flashing LEDs hidden inside. You had railroad crossing signs covered with barbed wire, shotguns with screaming eagles painted across the barrels in gold paint, and on and on and on.

Just… Truly godawful shit.

But this was Gotham, and that décor did not last long. I mean, around here most restaurants know better than to cover their walls with easily snaggable crap like that. It’s just free shit as far as most of the late-night customers are going to be concerned, especially when your business model is so heavily focused on the 20-somethings and teenagers with good fake IDs demographics like Outlaws was.

But this was Gotham, so we didn’t just steal all that shit, oh no. See, here’s what the rest of you don’t get about Gotham. It’s not that we’re all a bunch of amoral murderous criminals. Sure, our per-capita rate of those is truly unsettling compared to the rest of the country, but they’re still very much the minority. No, what makes a Gothamite truly a Gothamite is the utter gleeful perversity we take whenever we’re gonna be a shit. It can manifest in all sorts of ways (Just look at our own Bruce Wayne, who manifests his as pure ‘fuck the rich’ energy, setting his money on fire, pratfalling into fountains, and then grinning at all the other rich-people who have to put up with his bullshit because despite it all he’s still way richer than they’ll ever be.), but very often it manifests in not doing crime in a straight-forward manner, but insisting on being a little fucking bitch about it.

So people didn’t just steal that gaudy bullshit wall art; they replaced it.

The cow-skulls got switched out for manikin heads, still wearing the same gaudy cowboy hats. Then the hats were exchanged for headwear that was even weirder. Railroad signs were taken away, even with the barbed wire, and for awhile the walls were plastered with “Warning! Live Mines!” signage left over from No-Man’s. That terrible LED-illuminated lightning guitar was replaced with a full-ass gargoyle someone managed to pry off one of the smaller spires of St. Marie’s, and I really fucking wish I could claim credit for that one, but I have no idea who did it much less -how-. "

(494 words from chapter one of TCAKMJT) I would love to know about how you came up with the idea of Outlaws, because I (non-american) had to actually search up if it existed or not!

Hoo boy! Going from 0 to 60 right out the gate on this one!

*deep breath*

Outlaws (the restaurant) is what happens when I'm allowed to let an idea peculate for the better part of a year in the back of my head.

While I was in the process of pulling together Conrad the Crime Alley Kid from the various in-character comments I'd made on TaxiCabToSlowtown's "Am I the Bathole" series, TaxiCab was busy making their own version of the (at the time) nameless not-hench, which turned into How to Get (a) Partner(s) Through Reddit. In it, the big mask-off reveal that Red Hood was Jason Todd was made in the back alley behind a nameless East End bar with Starfire and Arsenal in attendance, and just as with Jason's screen name being TheFredHood, I knew I had to borrow/steal/homage that for my own version as well.

When I got to that point.

*Spongebob voice* 11 months later.

So during all the time I was working on the earlier stories, I had this scene churning away in the back of my head. The first thing I -knew- I had to do was name the bar they met at Outlaws. Because I strongly feel like Jason and pals would be unable to resist grabbing 1 AM burgers and beer while plotting out their next technically-not-a-crime-spree from a place called -Outlaws-.

However, Outlaws lead my mind to Outlaw Country music and all of its assorted motifs and flair, and I floundered around on how to reconcile my version of Red Hood voluntarily eating at a place like that. But that was fine, I had a bunch of other shit to write ahead of figuring out how to handle that.

A bit into all this, I came across the Skrunkfest post series, and my brain promptly shoved it into the Outlaws box and went "Eh? Eh??" at me while waggling its eyebrows, but it still wasn't jelling.

A bit after -that-... I can't remember a specific post or image or thing I read triggering it, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one, but I had the sudden mental image of a western-cyberpunk bar with the fog-machine ambiance and weird lighting, and walls covered with Batman villain gear with green and purple fairy lights strung through them, and just a total Skrunkfest style vibe as you got served at a grungy funky bar with a cracked Red Hood helmet mounted between one of Harley's hammers and a razor-wire wrapped "No Man's Land - Landmine Warning" signpost. And went "Okay. Something like -that-."

So by the time I sat down to start writing that story for reals, I had the mental image of "Outlaws: A kitchzy Western/Outlaw Country restaurant/bar turned Gotham Skrunk/Villain den." and began writing it based around that concept sketch.

Small digression: I usually write my stuff multiple times. I write the chapter, get out everything I feel needs to be in there. Then I put that to the side of the screen, and start writing it again from scratch. Now that I'm not coming up with the ideas fresh, I can write them... smoother? More detailed and more comfortable. Taking a sander and sculpting knife to it all. I honestly usually repeat this process two or three times before moving onto reworking stuff within the document instead of making a new one.

All that to say, the first... three? versions of the chapter still weren't working for me. Then I remembered: Oh wait, I don't need to have Conrad give a mental description of the place as he walks through the door, I have social media posts!

And it was while rewriting that whole section as Conrad's online review-slash-teardown that the full Outlaws experience jelled into being.

Outlaws, pre-Gothamization, is everything about American chain restaurants I hate. And everything I hate about the 2000's faux patriotismgasim that overtook and consumed Country music then swaggered around in it's skinned hide.

On the restaurant front, I started with the "Stick everything on the walls" philosophy you get out of Cracker Barrel or *deep sigh* Red Robin. I don't know how common this... concept is outside of the USA, but it's basically taking the contents of some barn's storage shed and just nailing it all to the walls. "Crazy Crap on the Wall decor", pastiche americana, faux Americana, "like a telekinetic went crazy at a flea market", there's no common name for it.

Basically, taking that concept, and blending it with all the insane-ass "We're calling ourselves Outlaw Country, but we've got million dollar budgets for this show tour" stuff I've seen over the years, shoving in the weird over-abundance of sauces that all taste different variations of sickly sweet you get out of places like Buffalo Wild Wings, and just everything that comes from the "A bunch of venture capitalists with too much money decide to just brute force a new dining institution by opening 80 branches all at once and money-bombing an advertising spree across every form of media at once" phenomenon.

So that left me with the original Outlaws, and I knew what I wanted the final results to look like. Then once I was writing Conrad writing about it all, the exact progression of how the former became the latter finally came together.

Ta-Dah!

Honestly, the Outlaws restaurant has one of the highest number of contributing concepts out of anything I've come up with so far. Which, again, is what happens when you get an entire year to just let something brew in the back of your head.

And I'm glad that it felt real enough to have to google because there are honestly so many places like this. I just sort of smooshed them all together and bumped the dials to max because comics!

[tentakilly]

Alright gang. We’re gonna talk about the project of mine that’s least likely to come to fruition because of how complicated it would be to make it. And that my friends is ‘(V)Flower the Punk Magical girl’.

First comes the Licensing. First I have to have permission from Crypton, Yamaha, twindrill, the guys who made CeVIO, the guys who made Synthesizer V, and various Utau creators. It’s not the actual getting permission part I’m worried about it’s the way I believe some characters I’m afraid could strait up not be used in the way I need them to be used. Example: Hatsune Miku. I don’t think Crypton would let me depict her as a villain if I’m going to use her. Even though she would be a miss guided character.

Second issue: music. Very simple. Some artists are less likely to work on a project like this than others and won’t be likely to let me use their music.

Third issue: language and making the characters talk. Most of the characters I plan on using for this project don’t have talk voicebanks(Oliver, Yohio, The Kagamines, Solaria, Kevin, Sweet Ann, Kasane Teto, Gumi, Utane Uta(Defoko), Momone Momo, Etc). Not only that I have to either make this in Japanese or English and because a lot of the voicebanks don’t normally have the capacity to do both languages in an understandable way it would be incredibly expensive and time consuming to do the tuning and actually talking.

Forth issue: Animation. It would be animated with 2D for the characters and 3D for the Setting. I hope why everyone knows why that’s really hard right.

Fifth: The audience. Out of all the vocaloid characters to get a potential movie VFlower is among the least likely because she’s not Miku. Anything but The Crypton Loids and Otomachi Una. It’s simply wouldn’t sell enough in either of its demographics to make up for the cost of making it. And considering that the western vocaloid market is smaller than the eastern market I’m not hopeful that a vocaloid movie would sell well here.

Sixth issue: Budget. Let’s be real a project like this wouldn’t be given a working budget and lots of people would have to work overtime to make this a functional product. I really don’t want that to happen to my projects even if the animation is being done by a different studio.

Seventh issue: The AI debate. Vocaloid and other vocal synthesizer softwares are often confused for Ai products instead of instruments. Many people would boycott the project because there’s a lot of people who don’t know this is voiced by Vocal synths(an instrument that’s made pretty ethically) and not AI generated voices(unethical and lifeless). Which would add to the possibility of it not making any money at all.

I’ll reblog this again tomorrow with the plot of the plot so yall can make fanfic based off the premise.

[lol-jackles]

I enjoyed the first episode of Season 4 of Walker, it's no peak SPN but it's grown into itself. I'm not an avid watcher but it's easy TV and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

So my question is, what number of viewers need to be on live and +7 for it to stay on air and with what demographic?

The live figures and demographic seemed to be falling, but that is the same for all CW shows.

Are you still expecting an announcement of an extended series announcement?

FYI, there is a picture of Jensen in Vancouver having dinner with some of the cast of Watcher, so the rumour is yet another guest star gig is on the cards...

With over 50% of total (legal) TV viewers in U.S are now online and catch-up services, Live TV viewers are only a small chunk of what advertisers use. Live TV viewings do matter, but the networks also look at how a show does in DVR (up to 35 days post-airing usually) and on streaming. Part of the reason why CW created the CW app was so they could get better user data, and optimize their content based on that (similar to the OG Netflix model), so it would make sense if they put less weight on Live TV viewership, as the OG CW had already done.  If one person watches twice on CW app then they would be counted as two content starts.   And if one person watched the full 40 min duration twice then they would have contributed 80 minutes of viewing to the show.  But if you want to a reach of unique non-duplicated viewers for a certain show, they’d be counted once.   There are a lot of different metrics but multiple viewings factor into plenty of them.  Same for actual true for linear tv - if you watch something on a dvr more than once they are all counted. It’d be cool if these streaming numbers were released, but unfortunately that’s a much less transparent process than Live TV, so non-industry people still base their ratings knowledge off of that.

The Nielsen ratings are still used and still matters and it helps that there’s industry transparency. Linear tv still sells mostly on C3 (commercial viewing live + 3 days). But networks will track digital viewing within the US.  There's a lot of metrics to measure “success” on digital platforms beyond viewership - how many new subscribers it brought in, if they stayed to watch other things, how long they spend on the platform, etc

Of course CW app doesn't have subscribers but downloads. On Valentines Day CW app officially crossed 100 million downloads across all platforms and was #1 in the Apple App Store for 3 consecutive years during fall premieres.

The rule of thumb is if an app has 10 million downloads, on average 30% of downloads are active.  So CW app has 100 million downloads, 30% are active, and a total of 30 million active users.  With ads, it's easy money for the network.

For context.  

Peacock = 31 million subscribers 

Paramount = 37 million subscribers

Max = 98 million subscribers

Disney = 111 million subscribers

Netflix = 260 million subscribers 

Of the Big 5's subscribers, we don't know the percentage of active watchers.  But streaming services actually prefer that you don't watch because that costs bandwidth.  Just like gyms make their money from memberships where most members don't go to the gym regularly.

At this point no, I don't expect series extension announcement. The whole industry is going, as they say in business downsizing, restructuring.

I said in another post, never say never to the idea of Jensen scoring a guest star gig on Tracker.

[fadeintocase]

Was reading a thing about how Homestuck was a coming of age story for people growing up entirely on the internet and that it was one of the earliest stories to do so.

One detail I think that people miss about it is how in that era, early Homestuck seemingly unwittingly was dripping with its roots in the sheltered suburbanite domination of online culture pre-2010. Not just with the memes, but with the demographic assumptions. That the initial characters are all spoiled brats from beginning to end.

It begins in a way that is meant to be relatable and comfortable to upper middle class kids in the mid 00s, back when that was most of the only demographic that had the privilege of having their own computer in their own room.

It creates a setting in which these kids in well-off families are not just isolating themselves, where there is supposedly this otherworldly emptiness to the world around them that keeps them isolated, and where the privilege of their situations are like underplayed, seen as an annoyance or an obstacle. Dave and Jade have especially fantastical living situations, but John lives in a big generic suburb and Rose lives in a contemporary architecture mansion. It doesn't allow for uncomfy questions like "do they have friends at school?" because a deeper pain point for kids who lived on the internet back then is that no, they didn't, and never tried to. "is there anything material this character is lacking" in the beginning, no, they are surrounded by basically everything they enjoy. And "how did their family afford all that?" tends to be answered with "in a way that annoys me, ugh", which in my recollection was also the default attitude of spoiled brat suburbanite kids i knew in school.

And it creates that world as a default appropriate for that spoiled suburbanite demographic in that era, where like, obviously if you're on the internet all the time, your family is probably rich. Obviously if you're on the internet all the time, it's because the outside world is bleak and hostile to you in comparison. You don't mind the crazy wealth or the means to isolate away with everything around you that you want or need. Don't mind that. Think about how sad you are that you're on your computer all the time. Make that the bleak atmosphere you're trying to escape.

And make it so that when you're in a world that is supposed to be challenging you, you still have the means to make enough in-world money and surround yourself with everything you want. And every character gets this ability right away, and that sense of suburbanite material spoiled comfort is never challenged. Watching people die and facing heroic decisions are more fathomable in this story of coming of age challenges than having less than your privileged childhood provided you.

In a world a decade later where everyone and their grandmother in all walks of life from all continents has roughly equal ease of access to the internet, that fandom grew desperate to reinterpret the characters because they felt too bland and generic.

And that's because they were. They were based on a very nilla wafer type of existence that was all there visibly WAS on the internet at the time they were created. That's why the game is called Sburb. They were created to be relatable to the most suburbanitis-laden kids of its time. Alternia explores more kinds of status and living situations and how those ppl interact with online communities. However, the story doesn't seem to be sending up tropes about suburbanite existence, it seems to avoid pointing out it's obvious hallmarks to be more comfortable to a sheltered, suburbanite audience. As self aware as it got, I don't think it displays much of a will to question one's own ideas of default.

[matrixonvhsanddvd]

Here's my set up!

In England most ppl do use roll ups. U tend to find that ppl who only smoke straights (pre rolled) are older ppl, ppl who have more money and ppl who don't smoke often enuff to bother. A packet of straights can last a really long time and will keep better than a packet of baccy (loose tobacco) as there's less to dry out.

I use a rolling tin because i cant roll freehand for shit no matter what (and im a handy person, its just too fiddly for me), it's easier to do while walking and i have physical difficulties. It's rare that i see anyone else use a tin, i only started because my bff did! It's not uncommon for ppl to use a rolling machine tho, which is like a tin that's been reduced to just the liner and..rolling pins?

Tins are no more expensive than a good rolling machine and tend to last longer. I prefer to change the liner when it dies rather than but a new one tho. They can be annoying to clean if u care about that but they're useful in that they can hold ur supplies! And put stickers on :3

A packet of tobacco is usually about 30g for £12-17 (tho average is about £14) now from a regular supermarket. It did used to be less before the recent inflation :( a 20 pack of pre rolls is about the same price. To give u an idea of how much more cost effective roll ups are than straights; a 20 pack currently would last me 2-4 days (IV had to cut down coz i have no money lol but this is numbers only, not counting factors like poverty) and 30gs of baccy would last me 2-3 weeks.

It's still common to see empty cigarette packets littering places and u will occasionally see a tobacco packet. They're all decorated now with warnings and warning images due to the law, all packets. They have different warnings and related pictures they get used but I'm not sure how often new ones are added? This one is my favourite atm for sure:

It's also useful to at least have the ability and resources to make a roll up if ur ever desperate/smoke drugs. Old fags on the floor can be picked up and u can squeeze any unsmoked baccy out into a bag to use for a Frankenstein roll up. I tend to find certain brands of straight cigarettes only get half smoked ?? Very good pickings if ur bottom of the food chain.

Its also easier to roll a spliff if u can...roll lol (spliff as i know it to be is a regular fag sized roll up with a blend of baccy and weed) and any other combo of smoking materials (other drugs, herbs etc).

On community culture (i promise this is the last bit), rolling sumone a fag is way more intimate and thotful than just handing em a straight (tho depending on ur Poverty Status™ it may be difficult to accept a straight due to their higher value). There's also the act of passing on the rest of ur fag to another person, usually towards the end of its life. Here that's called, 'twos'. So itd be, 'can i have 2s?' or, 'u can have 2s if u want?' which is a fun word for it i think!

Sorry to ramble but i figured ud be interested and i enjoy teaching ppl about menial things like this lol

----------------------------------------

Holy fuck thank you so much for detailing all this to me, I was honestly really happy reading all of this because it interested me so much. It's funny to me still how the demographic for rolling cigs here is usually the polar opposite lol, it seems its always people who are a lot older who enjoy rolling them up more than just buying a pack of straight cigs.

Also I absolutely love the pack you showed off of course, I'm always a sucker for the ones with "gore" on them, but also I've just never seen a tobacco pack before so that's really sick, thank you!

I guess if someday I'm ever down in England for some reason, I will be very caught up on smoking culture at least. Thank you again for sharing lol

[racefortheironthrone]

Hey Steven, maybe you can help me with something I'm trying to articulate, but I'm not even sure is accurate, just seems like something I've observed, but I could be wrong.

So I've often heard about how the STEM fields are becoming more and more prioritized over the humanities in colleges, and that seems broadly true to me (though there's also other stuff that gets promoted over the humanities like business and law, it feels, though they might qualify as humanities, I don't know), and yet, in my opinion, it seems too broad, cause it seems less STEM and more TE, with the S and M put next to the humanities as fields you shouldn't bother with if you want a profitable career.

Technology and Engineering, it seems to me, are boosted over all else. I don't exactly see people saying get a job as an astronomer or a physicist or a biologist or a mathematician unless it's specifically to "contribute towards society in a profitable way (like, I hear geologists can get employed to help find new sources of fossil fuels, for example)," but meanwhile I hear people say, "just learn to code!" or get a degree in some engineering field or something like that. Basically, a focus on fields that contribute directly to someone making a profit instead of enriching society through the arts or through new discoveries. I don't know if what I said made any sense but I wonder your thoughts on all of it.

(Business I grant you, although a lot of that is due to employers subsidizing MBAs for their white collar workers. However, while Law used to be quite profitable for both parties, it's been in a bit of a demographic crisis for a few years now due to the fact that the number of legal jobs that pay well enough to afford law school tuition have declined massively and the number of people applying to law schools started to nosedive as well. Paul Campos, my colleague at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, has been on that beat for years.)

With regards to STEM, I think it is true that these things are pushed only in so far as they can be harnessed to the generation of profit. Technology and Engineering we agree on; these workers are highly prized by existing industries, they lend themselves well to both start-ups and spin-offs, and their work can be patented in ways that generate profit for both corporations and the university.

However, when it comes to Science, you need to remember that the "S" includes both applied and theoretical sides - and applied sciences look a lot like Technology and Engineering when it comes to industry demand for skilled workers, the potential for start-ups and spin-offs, and the profitability of patents. Think bio-medical, think bio-chemical, think Pharma, think materials and nano-tech and on and on. However, you are quite right when it comes to the theoretical sciences; you do that for the love of the game.

It is true that Mathematics is the most abstract, the most academic, and the hardest to monetize in the ways described above. However, as I learned from my union colleague who was in the Math department (who ironically went on to a career as a union organizer rather than attempt a career as a mathematician), there is one avenue for money-making with a Mathematics degree:

Finance.

I don't know whether this is still as true as when I was in grad school, but it used to be that Wall Street would throw very handsome salaries indeed at anyone with quant skills from any branch of STEM. (In fact, I remember complaints from some Engineering professors that industries that actually make stuff couldn't get enough engineers because they could make more money working for a hedge fund than actually engineering things.)

[iamasimplesimp]

*scuttles out from the dark* hey

What if I make a new AU? (again)

Lore under the cut :]

So, like, no virus ever existed. It's been a while, some amount of years, and the Fazbear band is still doing good, but the executives aren't happy with the income growth of this branch, so they rework the daycare attendant (again) to try and earn more money.

Now part-time daycare attendant and part-time performer (So exciting, Moon! We're back to singing songs for everyone! Too bad we aren't actors again though.), Sun and Moon aren't a part of the band as much as they're part of a side group, a literal experiment. They sing pop songs and are practically a massive hit within the week.

The execs take a look at the demographics and are shocked to discover that it's mostly the parents and older teens who love them, not the kids. And, they discover, that it's the single parents that are the most adoring.

So, another experiment is pushed for Sun and Moon. They start creating original songs for Sun and Moon to sing, just starting with 3. And the execs watch. The other two songs don't matter, what matters is the third song is a love song for some unknown person. It’s played off cutely, an inoffensive crush for someone that doesn't actually exist.

The numbers tell no lie, the love song made over twice the money of the other two songs combined.

The execs have discovered a new market. And they figure out how to best cater to it.

Soon enough, they realize that the Pizzaplex is too small and perhaps too kidsy to reach the full potential market, so they rent out a nearby stadium for a week and write up another album's worth of poppy love songs. (I'm so excited, we're going outside of this building, Moon! Do you think we'll actually see the sky?)

Word spread, and the ticket sales exploded. Soon, the music was spread online to encourage more fans, and as the weeks progressed, the execs realize that this dumb robot is making them way more money than the original band ever did.

So, they searched the web for any sort of criticism, and find the most common complaints from the loudest fans was the fact they thought that Sun and Moon were separate animatronics, and wouldn't it be so cool to have them sing duets? And there costume and appearance definitely deserves an upgrade.

So, Sun and Moon are separated, and gifted new bodies. (Moon! I can hug you now!!!)

But, now what do the execs do about their relationship? As in, what are they to each other? Brothers? No, that limits that particular part of the fan base that ships Sun and Moon together. Perhaps they both have different types they're "attracted" to? No, that limits the market. Rivals to this mythical person's love?

And then the puzzle pieces clicked into place.

The only problem was that both Sun and Moon were too chummy with each other. So, their AIs were given an update. They act bratty with each other, so they're less likely to be friends.

But Sun especially (Hey dummy! Bet you can't guess how much I care about you!) found loopholes in the code, and despite Moon's warnings, kept pushing to show love and appreciation towards his counterpart. It was too much love, in the execs eyes. Sun was meant to be the flirty fun love interest, who has hatred and annoyance out for his rival. They can't have this love involved.

So they reworked his AI again.

Sun found more loopholes. (It’s not a hug, I'm choking him!)

And they reworked him again.

And more loopholes were found. (Dummy, why aren't you fighting this?)

Eventually they realized how much they redid his personality never worked, because his memories of Moon were telling him that he loved his counterpart. And you can't just erase the memories of animatronics. They have advanced learning AIs, you'd either have to erase the entire memory-base, or leave it alone.

And then some software engineer found a simple workaround. They changed the memories of Sun, just a little bit. The person in his memories? Their name is not Moon. Their name was Eclipse.

And just like that, the execs had the perfect animatronic who acted as they're supposed to be programmed. (Tch, dumbass, why the hell are you bugging me?) (What the hell are you talking about? You and I are not friends.) (I hope I meet Eclipse again someday...)

Now, Moon isn't dumb. He knows if he pushes with Sun any further, that he himself would be next. So. He holds back, and like a good little animatronic, he pretends to be rivals with the first person who cared and loved him.

The execs are very happy. :]

[lunarsilkscreen]

Black Cat

Has two differently mainline stories, the Manga Variant and the Anime variant. Mostly the order in which the story is told, because the Manga started like most Manga; an episodic about a Hero who is roughly inspired by the Ronin.

I'm talking here about why it's both a memorable series, and not quite a good series or as big as any of the other Manga stories like Naruto or One Piece.

Anime and Manga tend to follow two different paths , opposed to Western media.

Western comics, unless they're Archie Comics or newspaper comics, tend to be gritty and realistic and meant for a teen or adult audience.

Western Cartoons tend to be non-serialized "Family Friendly" k-6 entertainment.

But for the most parts: Manga, Anime, Cartoon, and Comics tend to target the same demographics and suffer from the same corporate control and tropes.

So in both; there's gritty or slapstick.

Because of the desire for these media types to be non-serialized, that is; no continuity between episodes..because they don't want an audience to turn on the channel one day and be unable to immerse themselves in the content, on paper it reduces total viewers and thus; and revenue.

So many MangaKa and Cartoonists *want* a serialized feel, because that's how you develop a dedicated fan base; but they still want the audience who drops in on strip 3,085 to not be completely lost and want to read/watch more.

I've gone to far on this tangent.

Black Cat started as a pseudo slapstick retelling of a secret agent cat that quit his job and went on the run. Literally because he's a child soldier and the agency owns his as.s

And the Anime retells the story from the moment [Train]> the Black Cat decides to quit his job. Instead of retelling it mid way in the comics.

It's because of this, I think, that the comic and animation doesn't really know what it wants to be. Which, ironically; is great considering that's the exact feeling that the protagonists have. He's a skilled assassin, and doesn't want to be that anymore, but finds himself in an adjacent career field as a bounty hunter. But only because he needs the money, and even then; only because his partner sven insists *because* HE needs the money.

And so the series occupies this weird middle ground between ultra serious, and ultra comedic. Not like Deadpool.

To put it another way; the series feels like the Live action remakes of anime on Netflix. Where the realism and the cartoon just aren't mixed very well.

Despite the directors of those series trying their very best to do so.

I wonder if it's part of the Western Lens MangaKa tend to complain about. But I doubt it.

It's likely a difference in perspective between the director/producer who purchased the rights to those series, and then tried to keep them "Traditional" despite... You know; Manga and Comics whole deal being to break tradition.

Black Cat is something that's backwards in comparison. Where the Animators work their hardest to make it less traditional, and less *gimmicky* while trying to maintain the details from the Manga.

I like the idea of what a fully-fleshed out Black Cat Series *could be*. Because Kentaro Yabuki seems to want a series that feels more fully fleshed out. He's very aware of his own series. I think.

I'm not sure if he has a hand in the anime TBH.

The magic in the series... However; is kind of ripped off of other popular series created at the time, like Sasuke's Sharingan, and every Assassin having an extremely dangerous power. But none of that seems completely coherent. Likely speaking more to metaphor or allegory than a magic system.

I would very much recommend Black Cat, but at the same time; I understand if it's not your vibe.

[justsomeoneunordinary]

it's juat my opinion, but people tend to forget that being a shinobi is the same as being a soldier and i think the reason that there is fewer female ninja compared to man it's because military service is less appealing to the larger female demographic than it is to the male demographic and the fact that more often than not, the women don't have the presure to become soldiers the men have.

i'm pretty sure i'm talking out of my ass here, but as far as i could see, most of the kunoichi in the show , at least the ones from the main cast, are kunoichi because they are clan heirs and have the expectation of being a kunoichi on them.

I know what you mean, anon, I used to believe that too a long while ago before I accepted the real reason there are so few female characters in Naruto is simply because Kishimoto doesn't know how to write them and didn't want to put more effort into them.

Konoha isn't presented as a military state until later on and neither are shinobi presented as soldiers until later. Kishimoto started this story with "cool ninja fights go brrr" and yet there's an obvious lack of female characters right from the start.

There's a difference between how the military works in real life and how in Naruto. Konoha is a military state whose majority population are shinobi, so the kids, even civilians, grow up where being shinobi is the norm, which makes their view on being a "soldier" a different one to ours.

The decision to become a shinobi is one made as a child, not as an adult where one is aware of the dangers. Kids enroll in the Ninja Academy at 5 or 7 (I don't remember anymore), and most of these kids know shinobi as the cool guys who run across rooftops and can disappear in a poof of smoke. What child wouldn't want to be like that? Sure, there would be some kids who'd be too afraid or shy or both to enlist in the Shinobi school but that's not exclusive to girls only.

If the reason there are fewer shinobi gals than guys was truly because of the whole military thing and not because Kishimoto is just bad at writing women, why did he not put the same amount of effort into writing the few female characters he has as compelling as he did with a huge majority of the male characters?

It's a fantasy setting. It's a fantasy setting whose target audience is kids and teens. It doesn't matter that shinobi are soldiers, it's about cool magic ninja fights go brrr, so putting realism into the numbers of female soldiers compared to male soldiers is ridiculous at that point.

Lastly, Kishimoto himself said in an interview many years ago that he struggles to write girls and doesn't know how to. Not to mention that the lack of female characters in shounen manga isn't anything new because they still seem to think their only target audience is boys, still unaware there are plenty of girls enjoying those stories too.

I understand where you're coming from, anon, I do, but no. The lack of female characters (especially the lack of well-written female characters) has nothing to do with Konoha being a military state but everything with them being female characters.

Personally, I think it's nigh time male writers get bullied for their lack of skill in writing girls and women. Be it shounen mangakas or big Hollywood writers, they're professionals who earn their money with their writing, so it's their job to learn to improve, instead of being let off the hook because they admitted that "tehee, yeah I don't know how to write girls" (as if we are some other species).

[taehyungfirst]

Controversial opinion and also lowkey venting but I feel that is awful the way so many people avoid to speak directly about the hate Tae receives, the reasons behind it and why is so normalized and that's because it directly involves the company, some complicit actions of some members (mostly on the past)and the pushing of certain narratives and content with no regards to the harm its causing to him specifically and the mental illness they are promoting, for a company this is just business and a way to push their artists to certain demographics and fill certain markets.

Entertainment companies aren't exactly known for caring about ethnics and people's wellbeing (much less kpop ones)but this is just wrong in so many levels.

I speak Spanish and I'm serious most of this fandom is ot6 and you can guess the reason behind that. I think it's selfish how the company and yes the members too will benefit from having taehyung, the stan attractor in the group while fetishistic awful narratives are pushed knowlingly by the company themselves that are causing this level of delusion and harm to and they can not know how is the ambience and trends in the fandom, they have profesionals how keep an eye on these kind of stuff, its also the way they do not move a fingir to make things better o get a hold of some of the craziest most disgusting narratives (all the opposite) and with the level of brainwashing technics they manage ppl can't tell me they couldn't make this situation better

Hi!

I actually agree to certain degrees, I agree that the company has the power to stop certain narratives and to protect their artists better, but they simply don’t, or better— they don’t care enough to stop them because it’s money. Good press? Bad press? Still press = still money. I bet they got some good amounts of money with that pr stunt. Even though if they used those money to promote Layover better they could’ve gotten even more.

I don’t think the members benefit from Tae being bashed here and there, or they don’t benefit actively because they care and they love Taehyung. You’re right when you say the fandom has become ot6 and it started since the tn rumors (started officially, because they singled him out alr with the jkk ship) I have no idea how this hostility grew so much and how they’re not even ashamed to hide it anymore. Back in 2018 you couldn’t utter a bad word about a member that you would get bullied off every app, but now it’s even encouraged.

[alarrytale]

Sorry if this is weird but i don’t have any fandom friends and want to get something off my chest: i think a lot of larries use the idea of hl (Louis especially) being puppeteered by management as a coping mechanism for anything he does they don’t like. Louis moving away from clean boyband pop music and fashion towards grungier punk-influenced stuff? It’s lthq forcing him to change who he is to appeal to dirty hets. Couldn’t be that he’s genuinely changing as an artist. He doesn’t really prefer the indie scene over stadium pop. Lthq makes him smoke and drink. Lthq makes him not act stereotypically flamboyant and effeminate. It must all be an act for the hets because it’s impossible to be gay and a lad. I’m not an anti but I’ve noticed a pattern of larries building up an idealized image of who the boys ‘really’ are and dismissing everything about them that falls outside those narrow parameters as fake. It’s especially weird as someone who got on board long after the 1D era and seeing older fans lament how they used to be more ‘authentic,’ whereas i look at those old interviews and performances and things seem much more polished and restrictive to fit the young teen demographic. I’ve even seen people argue that the weed incident with zayn was 100% staged to foreshadow babygate, as if two young dudes with money lighting up on their own is unthinkable. My point is i think a lot of larries’ personal identities are tied up in these two strangers, so when those two strangers do things that don’t line up perfectly with larrie perception and opinions, the closet and management are easier scapegoats to process than growing apart from your favs. I’m not telling anyone off, I’m just saying a lot of people are setting themselves up for disappointment when hl’s less popular behaviors don’t immediately stop after they CO.

Hi, anon!

I think there is a lot of cherry picking going on in this fandom too, on both sides actually not only on the larrie side of things. And i think some people believe it has to be one or the other, and not 'both can be true at the same time'. Believe me, if i could blame the base ball cap he wore on stage last night on lthq i would!

About his image change. I think it's both lthq and louis himself who chose this. But i think it's not all him, and at the same time he's more than that. We are talking about the man who's favourite movie is still Grease, who listens to Abba and has a far away tattoo. Even though his sound is still mostly pop (at least to me, hold your horses you genre puritans), his looks and behaviour in public has changed to match a more laddy and chav image. Even though his image has changed he's acting like an adored boy bander superstar with his fans. His image weren't neccessarily more authentic back then, but Louis as a person was. He was speaking more freely about his likes and dislikes, joked more, were bolder before he slowly was hardened by fame and the closet. But he grew up and out of some things too. So it's a combination of both.

You're not an anti, but you talk about us larries like you don’t identify with us as a group, and you also put us all in the same basket like we're one entitiy who share the same thoughs and beliefs. I don't think a lot of larries personalities are tied up with these two strangers. I think there is a lot of projecting going on, but i think most people can seperate fact from fiction. I don't think people will be dissapointed after they come out, even though some people have them on a pedestal.

I obviously think i have them both figured out, but the things i struggle to explain i question. If i can't rule out that their actions or behaviour can be tied to obligations out of their control, i'll be more forgiving. I don't blame weed smoking or cig smoking on management. I blame it on his need for a coping mechanism to dull his thoughts after living a long life in the closet, away from his loved ones and having to cope with the loss of close family members. The clothes he wears on stage, that i don't like, i blame partly on his image, current fashion trend, his stylist but also himself. I acknowledge that he probably could say no if he didn’t like it. I also acknowledge that others may love what i personally hate.

I don't think H and L coming out would fix every issue the fandom has with them. I don't think they are perfect persons. I also know that even if they come out there are still NDAs in effect and they can’t give us all the answers. They may have to talk about Simon cowell like the sun shines out of his ass. Harry is still going to be ignorant of his own privilege and put his foot in his mouth. Louis is still going to be a lad who stuggles to remember his own songs. And i'm still going to be here calling them out on it.