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

[messrsrarchives]

i think another thing worth adding to all the conversations is that my existence as a trans person in this fandom is not a form of protest. (under the cut because it's long)

i think it's easy to fall into the mindset that being in this space as someone from a community jkr has harmed is protest in and of itself. or that merely engaging with queer stories is an act of protest - "jkr would hateee what we write!", "jkr already hates me so-" etc etc but that doesn't alleviate the harm caused. that doesn't change the fact that all of this is relevance and promotion of her universe (esp over on tt) so,,, what actually is your act of protest?

i think it's important to recognise that jkr doesn't know us. she doesn't know me, she doesn't know you, she doesn't look at this space and consider the demographic of it (outside of potential promotions), she simply sees a group of people engaging with her works that could potentially be drawn back into profitting her (again, promotions - thinking here about the official HP tiktok queerbaiting). in her own words, when asked how she felt about losing a community from engaging, she replied: "i read my most recent royalty check and find that the pain goes away pretty quickly".

me existing as a trans person - both inside and outside of this space - is not a form of protest, it's just existing. my heart beating and continuing to beat throughoit everything is not an act of protest, it's me living.

me being trans is not a protest.

everything else? everything i do rather than everything i am? that's the protest.

it's just,,, coming off the back of all the tiktoks being made (which btw, endlessly thankful. sucks that now is the time but it's never Too Late to start talking about it and i'm thankful to everyone who has shouldered some of the weight over the last few days) i'm seeing a lot of comments like "but so many of the creators in this space are trans!!! how do we STILL have an issue with transphobi-"

because outside of being a cool sticker to show your inclusion and diversity, the vast majority of people don't care. because outside of going "hey look, we uplift trans people by making them popular", no one really considers us.

when you argue about headcanons, when you argue about "proper cosplays", when you post your videos of the studios whilst following us, when you do so many thingssss, you don't consider how it affects us. or, when we use our voices, if it's not about a headcanon or a fic? we're ignored.

for example, you'll argue about fem sirius but when we say "hey, maybe debating what makes a man a Proper Man is harmful", you roll your eyes and go "yeah but,,,,, he's meant to be MACHO MANLY 😡☝🏻" and i'm left watching people debate whether wearing makeup makes me - a real life trans man - less of a man. you'll argue that it makes wolfstar straight and i turn to my real life cis male boyfriend and ask if he's ever wanted me to Look Normal, or if anyone has ever questioned his "boyfriend", and he'll shake his head and ask why i'm worried, and i have to bring up a Fictional Wizard.

we're used as almost an act of protest by the fandom on tiktok??? used a lot as a "look at how trans inclusive this fandom is!" but when trans people say how they're treated and made to feel? the biggest concern is if this will affect their content.

existing as or engaging in something that jkr would hate is not an act of protest if that protest starts and ends with fictional characters. if that same inclusion and strive for representation and inclusion is not reflected with the issues that affect these creators you use as signposts for inclusion, then it's not an act of protest.

jkr doesn't care that you read trans regulus or that a trans person in this space has 300k followers, she cares if you're going to giving her money or not - so what are You doing to prove to Us that you won't?

engaging with queer media isn't an act of protest if you turn a blind eye to the creator of the franchise whilst she harms queer people. and it's not an act of protest if you ignore those that Do speak about it, because it's affecting the content you want.

my existence here isn't the protest. me being in this space as a trans person? that changes nothing. everything else i do is the protest. not my identity, but the fight to protect it.

[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.)

[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.

[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.)

[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.

[superstardestroyer]

I know every time we start talking about how fandom is now/used to be it's quickly pointed out that this group has always existed but "It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to "manage" because no one owns fan spaces." This is what's changed.

When moderators existed, there was an expectation that once someone had proven themselves to be this type, they would be removed. It didn't always work great - this type seeks out becoming mods more than most! I recall a hilarious event with a Gundam LJ community in particular. But because they are such a small percent of the whole, they can be bullied back (which was what made the event such an impeccable and memorable time).

The algorithm has changed things though. Fanart and fic don't drive comments and retweets and discourse vids as much as contentious senseless beefing does. Discord communities are naturally hidden away so instead of being open and allowing the larger groups to come in and air things out politely they fall prey to the one or two who come in.

Fandoms end up virtually controlled by this demographic now in public perception as a result. That article about how studios are going to run things past gam*rgate types to avoid their ire speaks to a phenomenal shift in the perception of the power of the 1% of horrific fans.

I think it's also exacerbated because of the prevalence of phones and the power of social media. Doing numbers can make you real world money and get you real world attention, and back pre-2010 you had to log off to go to work and school. You didn't really impress anybody by being on fandomwank for being a fandoms nightmare.

Growth and normalization of fandom are huge factors, but the design and influence of social media are a kerosene on the fire of the 1%.

Dismantling their power and preventing their behavior relies on the rest of us realizing the role we play in it: QRTing them shouldn't happen. Linking to their content is the last thing we should do. Certain things that used to work for naming and shaming are now exploitable hacks for them.

Sharing bad call-out posts that are clearly just personal beef needs to stop: the 1% can and does use our communities and senses of justice against us. We need to stop trying to prove constantly to each other that we're good and pure because let's be real: 99% of us aren't hurting anyone no matter what we do in our corner of fandom.

Weird kinks and problematic fic content do much less damage than a person who constantly sets fires in our spaces. Moderating - as a former moderator of multiple fandom and art spaces, some very large - has never been about policing ourselves for little, weird, gross behaviors. It's about spotting behavior that either is these guys or feeds into the shenanigans of the small number of real troublemakers online and cutting them off from attention and audience and mobs to lead.

And to deny them means I think that all of us need to care a lot less about clout and audience online too, which is what's so hard about it. QRTing or otherwise linking the menace and their content makes them come beef with you. It drives views. Not doing it stops YOU from getting followers as surely as it does the problem-maker. Wanting the approval and notice of popular fans makes you end up part of their hurtful mob.

Politely minding our own business is harder. But in the end it's what we need to start doing more of to starve out this shit. The Tumblr porn ban and folks coming back really did improve this site tremendously: by cutting the chain of communication between them and everybody else. With fewer followers here, many of them focused their attention elsewhere. It may involve posting to smaller communities and tending to your mutuals more and bothering with everyone else less, but I think it is worth doing.

Doing your part to not be part of their behavior is not just passively ignoring them. It is an incredible difficult and active task where you have to dismiss the hold they want to have on your attention all the time and instead focus all your energy on accepting the harmless and annoying parts you don't like about everybody else in your fandom to build a community that isn't going to evaporate in 6 months when it is no longer the cool new show or whatever. Now more than ever, we have to be resilient and care about each other as people and fandom spaces rather than an audience to validate us and confirm that we are important and pure so that we can starve out those of us who will burn our community to the ground so that they can get what they want from the ashes.

I feel like with the new ~fandom drama~ or whatever going around, I should re-introduce my favorite theory of fandom, which I call the 1% Theory.

Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.

The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.

Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.

Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.

Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.

By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.

There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.

1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.

2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.

3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.

So remember, if you’re ever feeling disheartened by your fandom’s activity- it’s just 1%, people. Do your part not to be a part of it.

[imweirdblog]

End of another year

I don't feel good today. It is similar to what I have described before. I cannot pinpoint what is causing my mood to be off. I don't like this feeling. I don't wanna do anything I enjoy, the joy has been sucked out of video games, movies and even lettuce. I know to some extent I do enjoy all of that but it is just that right now I don't feel like doing anything, not even hanging around people. I wrote that as if I was super interested in doing that before, I wasn't.

Last time i wrote was almost a month ago, I remember being worried about placements. I am placed already which is kind of insane considering not all of us will be by the time the course ends. The pros and cons are both present, no placement stress is the primary one. And cons? well the pay isn't great.

I did consider starting the gym and have been going there fairly regularly. Sometimes I skip a day here and there but what really irks me is the guilt which I have whenever I miss a day. Why is this an issue? Do i feel like i'm being help upto a standard by people around me? Do i think the haters will win if i don't continue? This begs the question what is winning? Is it just money at the end of the day? A chiseled body? A beautiful girl? Or was it always about game development? I don't think any of those will give me any fulfillment. But the money thing I don't know how to work it out. Body I am working on. Girls? I don't know how to communicate with especially considering there is a vast demographic gap between the number of guys and girls around me. I'd say like 70:30. And everyone one of these girls are being approached by guys which makes everyone else my competition. And you can't be friends with your competition can you? Lets move on from this topic. Maybe I will start with development again if not game then of some other kind while I have time left.

Moving on to other things, firstly lets talk about the counseling session I had and how it ended on "trust issues". Also I think there is a conflict of interest between visiting a school counselor considering anyone wants as less work as possible, if you're making a fixed income. Generally how it works is that it is a pay per session so what ends up happening is, is the counselor wants you to keep visiting which would make any work impossible. Here there is theoretical possibility for work due to ABC taking me on without it aligning with her interest. Now here's where it gets interesting, it falls on me to chase and fix up the appointments and her 'job' is to avoid them to avoid the work. I'm not particularly interested in chasing around this bs, I think the best course of action is to report her to the college and try to get her fired but that would only satisfy my power hunger and not actually get me to benefit from therapy if it is possible anyway. Such a conflicting relationship could never result in any positive work.

Moving on to my scores for the semester. I am on a misunderstanding sprial with a professor and even with 80%+ attendance and saying something in most of the class for participation i managed to get one of the lowest scores i have seen around me and it is a great shame to me. It makes me uneasy and think about what the future looks like due to this. This can be one of the contributing factors to my mood.

Next we have the annoying always drunk and babbling roommate. I know he wants to start a fight and I know he will go crying to his parents and authorities if it happened. Don't think he will have a strong case considering the amount of evidence he leaves and kind of reputation he has. There is nothing for me to gain out of this so I don't think this will come to fruition.

A lot happened this year. But I am no closer to finding any long term answers to the way I am and my condition. I don't even think I ever will be. Love is such an alien concept to me now. Every interaction still seems transactional in nature.

I don't know why I feel. Perhaps this is still fine, i remember i used to have friends and girlfriend prospects. It was much more of a high low kinda thing compared to what i want. I want a slight high constantly but the problem with that is that when anything becomes the standard or norm, over a period of time it will seem less meaningful. It is fine. I will be the loner type for now. I don't think I am going to be shedding this image anytime soon because of the 20 other people who will be joining the new job with me. But hey that's months from now. Perhaps I will be a completely different person then.

[peakwealth]

Move slowly and do not break things

FROM JAPAN 1

Kyoto neighbourhood temple, April 2024

Good news. Japan's long running experiment with fiscal irresponsibility, decades in the making, is going well. The international bailiffs haven't shown up in the middle of the night and even Tokyo's stock market has perked up, something long deemed utterly improbable. Life goes on, everything is spic 'n span, the dazzling food halls of the department stores are busy, as are the more modest shopping malls that have come to disfigure suburban Japan. And, of course, the trains run on time. How all of this is possible remains hard to explain, just as hard as when I last visited, in 2016. (1)

Look around, though, and you can see how prosperity is quietly seeping away. Industrial output is falling, household savings have evaporated and tax revenue has been going down since 2017 - the latter obviously... concerning if not calamitous for the world's most indebted country.

As the economy loses speed, incomes decline and the per capita GDP is by some metrics now less than Italy's. The government just keeps issuing new bonds to cover the annual shortfall, adding to the pile. Perhaps inertia has something to do with it, the assumption that if the budgetary trickery has worked so well for so long, why change it now? Or there simply is no alternative: as the country needs to keep going, the tap of fictional money cannot be turned off.

Geriatric Japan continues to be the gentlest of anachronisms. It is leading the way, showing other countries how to age with a measure of dignity. Until recently, the big cities had remained immune from demographic erosion, but that is no longer the case. The population is in decline in all of the prefectures. But it is in the countryside that the phenomenon is most visible. The elderly go about their remaining business in silence and many village houses show few signs of life. Look closer and it is obvious no one lives there any more.

Abandoned houses in the village of Sekigahara, near Ogaki, Gifu Prefecture (April 2024)

The government has faced at least this part or reality: immigrants, mostly Asian, are finally becoming a more common sight in the cities. It doesn't make Japan a multi-ethnic society like the UK or Canada, but it signals, as I wrote earlier, an unprecedented change to the fabric of Japanese society, accustomed as it is to cultural homogeneity and ethnic exclusivity.

Still Japan carries on in all its Japaneseness. Some of it is frozen in time, some of it is up to date, but it is clear that much of what constitutes Japan's face to the world goes back a long time: Sony, Hitachi, Toyota, Yamaha, Mitsubishi, Canon are names that belong, in essence, to the 20th century. The commercial brands that established Japan's global identity, even the smaller ones like Kikkoman (sauce) or Shimano (bicycle gears) have little novelty value. Uniqlo is one of the few Japanese brands to have spread worldwide in recent years.(2)

Not enough of those. (National Arts Center, Roppongi, Tokyo)

Like Europe, Japan has missed the boat of global connectedness. It hasn't come up with anything that compares to Facebook, Apple, Google or Amazon. Not invented there. Instead Japan continues to manufacture earth moving equipment, 35 mm cameras and mass market wrist watches. This is not to belittle Japan's efficient manufacturing sector, its rigid work ethic or its still thriving creativity. But it is not what creates the trillion dollar corporations of the 21st century. Japanese smart phones? Swept aside by the Samsungs and Xiaomis of Korea and China.

I noticed a corporate slogan of Hitachi that said "Inspire the Next" but in reality Japan hasn't inspired much in a long time. It is not a frivolous country, much of it is dull, static and regimented. Japanese society is unfailingly civil and conservative, too obliging to foster disrupters and visionaries. Not too many Elon Musks have popped up in Japan. It is not part of the Japanese genius.

In many ways one should be grateful for this because it can be argued that the Instagrams and TikToks of this century have not made the world a better place. Au contraire, they have made the global rat race a lot rattier. They have brought anxiety to billions and the scourge of disinformation and post-truthism. So instead of obsessing about Japan's demographic and industrial sunset, we might as well let them potter on and be grateful for our reliable Toyotas and our Panasonic appliances.

____________________________________________________

(1) The total of Japan's publicly issued bonds (national and local) now stands at around 1,300 trillion yen or around 225 % of annual GDP. The government gross debt-to-GDP ratio is even higher at 258,2 % (2023).

By comparison: Germany 68,6 % China 71,8 % USA 126,4 % Italy 149,8 %

Source: Japanese Public Finance Fact Sheet. (www.mof.go.jp)

(2) If you think Nintendo, think again. The company was founded in the 19th century.

___________________________________________________

ALSO SEE EARLIER POSTS LIKE: "Better not make fun of geriatric Japan" - https://peakwealth.tumblr.com/post/116037791897