#like I need money to live but morally I'm not opposed to other people making art and selling it so idk where to land on that

[deoidesign]

just wanted to say that I absolutely LOVE your comic I am so inspired by it and it’s so lovely and I wanna buy the physical books (I’ve never done that before) I just AUGGHHH EVERYTHING ABOUT IT IS SO 💙💙💙

do you allow fanart? And is there anything not allowed? I wanna draw adam and steve so bad 😭

Of course it's allowed! Fanart fanfic fan music fan dubs whatever!

I like to think I'm sort of "building a playground" when I make a story, have fun on it! I made it for you!

In my general opinion, it's not my business what my "fandom" does... It's on you and also me to curate our own spaces! If you're inspired by my work in any way, that's the greatest honor I could imagine and I want you to feel fully free to explore that. If someone is being weird, I know where the block button is and they can keep being weird where I don't have to see it haha

Just don't like... sell it... it's messy legally with webtoon and I'm one person making the story and it's my whole income so the few sales I get are kind of huge for me ;_;

[allwormdiet]

Worm Cast Impressions (Arcs 1 to 7)

Easy money says some of these characters are about to fucking die so I'm pausing now to jot down my impressions of everybody who's managed to make an impact (and one or two characters whose lack of impact is kind of impressive)

Undersiders

Taylor Hebert: Character of all time. Simultaneously sanest and least sane person in the entire universe. Deeply concerned about keeping hold of her moral core, constantly innovating in ways to inflict violence on her enemies real and imagined. Has never fully finished thinking her actions through once in her entire life, people keep thinking she's the most cautious girl they know. Her first kiss was partly because she liked the boy and partly because she wanted to piss off her bully. I am cheering for her more often than not and I am so scared of what this story is going to do to her.

Brian Laborn: I want to study him in a lab. Team leader entirely by default, as near as I can tell. Hates using violence as a means of control, really good at using violence as a means of control, seems to default to using violence as a means of control when he's upset. I don't think he's normal about women. Desperately trying to be so so so boring, thinks he's perfectly rational even though he is just as unhinged as his teammates, I suspect that he has built a mental prison with twenty layers of protection around all thoughts that would suggest he is anything other than Normal and Strong and Reliable. Maybe turned on by efficient displays of violence?

Lisa Wilbourn: She is so charming and I am so scared of what's actually going on in her head. I think Taylor's best friend but definitely her biggest enabler. Stop lying and let me know what is going on in your head, I know more about Alec and Rachel than I know about you. Concerned that she's only nominally concerned about Coil being a heinous fucker. Desperately hoping the air can be cleared so I stop worrying about whether she's going to destroy Taylor or something. She has to know Taylor is a wannabe hero.

Alec: The fact that he's really only done one thing that I consider morally in the wrong is kind of incredible when looking at the fact that he's a recovering sex cult enforcer who started living something approaching a normal human life as a homeless preteen. He's had three years to jury rig a sense of humanity and morality mostly on his own and the end result is a selfish lazy jerk, and yet the fact that this is what he's managed to come up with on his own is, without sarcasm, worthy of a fucking prize. He's actually really good at this all things considered. Actually a little bummed that he didn't oppose Coil for the whole Dinah creepfest.

Rachel Lindt: Rachel Lindt is maybe the best character so far. Autistic dog girl who only tolerates human society so she can better feed and care for her animals. I'd say something like "I'd kill for her" but there's no way I could do that any better than her dogs and she'd call me stupid. Only thing against her at this point is the slur usage, which is rough to deal with, but I suspect part of that is just being written in 2011.

Loved Ones

Danny Hebert: You sad bastard. Please survive long enough to reconcile with your daughter. I know he can't provide any material support for the problems his daughter has been dealing with, that the bullies are too well-protected and there's basically nothing that he can do about parahuman shit, but I wish she would allow him to be there for her. Maybe he'd be uncool about it, sure, but maybe not. Makes me sad to think about.

Aisha Laborn: This girl is in dire need of someone to have her back and also, like, pay attention to her; Brian is the closest one to actually doing it but I don't think his best efforts are enough. I know she's gonna be an Undersider in the future so hopefully I get to have a more thorough impression of her, and one that's not marred by the fucking Mercedes metaphor, Jesus Christ that was a rough passage to get through.

Protectorate

Armsmaster: I'd probably like him more if he wasn't so up his own ass about being in charge and earning glory. My suspicion is that he's basically a good guy with some bad habits that nobody can check him on, which has spiraled out of control. Might unironically consider a teenage criminal his nemesis, which is funny but not a great sign of his priorities.

Miss Militia: My prior complaints about her possibly inappropriate response to holding Regent hostage are entirely subsumed by the fact that the last twenty-six years of her life have been lived on terms set by the Protectorate. She was nearly devoured by the machinery of empire and now she's become a component of empire that feeds upon others, and she hasn't even realized it. She never had a goddamn chance.

Velocity: Nothing to really say about him, except there has to have been a way to design his costume so that a teenager with unaugmented strength couldn't take him out with a single blow to the testicles.

Assault and Battery: The name theming feels a bit weird (what, if they got a third would their name be Coercion?) but whatever. I like the idea of a duo with complementary powers, I guess, but there's not really much else here.

Dragon: On the one hand she's in charge of the Birdcage and is friends with Armsmaster, but on the other hand she clearly hates the Birdcage for what it's made her complicit in, and maybe Armsmaster is good to have as a friend. Jury's out, unlike on Canary.

Wards

Gallant: The best way I can think to describe this guy is "blandly nice." It's like if "inoffensive" could be a personality trait. Glory Girl could do better than him, probably, but to be fair she could also do a lot worse.

Clockblocker: I think he's the funny one? Or at least the deliberately unserious one, which is the same thing. The first character confirmed to have developed entomophobia as a result of Skitter, probably not the last. Stopped a bomb from destroying the East Coast which feels like it should get more attention.

Vista: World's most powerful thirteen-year-old. Who deployed her to stop that bomb and fight those Nazis. I want names.

Kid Win: No sense of proportion on this kid, my god. Shooting a laser cannon meant to deal with threats that are theoretically rated higher than Lung into a bank filled with hostages? He's lucky nobody died.

Shadow Stalker: What the actual fuck is going on with her. Who hunts other human beings with broadhead arrows? That's for making someone bleed to death. If she was doing it to the fucking Nazis then that'd be fine, but no, it's Grue and Taylor we've either seen or heard about her getting rough with. Either the Protectorate knows she's a maniac and is letting it rock until she gets herself caught, or else they don't realize what she's doing in which case someone is not doing their job.

Browbeat: Absolute nonentity, to the point it's almost distracting. The description of the bank fight suggests he lost to Regent, which I think means that Regent got close enough to a guy with super strength to knock him out with a taser and didn't get his block knocked off. No wonder the Protectorate wants to trade him out, dude's got nothing going on.

PRT

Director Piggot: I don't like the organization she works for, because the vibes beyond the city level feel rancid, but for Piggot I mostly just sympathize with her. She's trying to corral a bunch of teenagers and adults, who all have some kind of horrific trauma shaping them and also giving them powers that are baseline as dangerous as a fucking gun, into something resembling a fully effective government agency, with no signs of support from the other cities or the higher-ups despite the fact that the literal fucking Nazis have her heroes outnumbered and have apparently had it that way for decades. Let this woman take a vacation or something.

New Wave

Glory Girl: Absolute nerd who seems to love being a superhero, and also making Nazis ragdoll in her spare time. I'd love to end it there, but unfortunately she's got some bad habits; girl desperately needs to kill the cop in her brain and get her impulsiveness under control, the fact that she ragdolled the Nazi on accident and threatened to pull favors in the judicial system to send a first-time offender (and Tattletale) into the Birdcage don't reflect great on her ability to keep a lock on things in high-stress situations.

Panacea: Pathetic girl who is clearly sitting on a pressure cooker of issues. I know what those all are but I'm not going to comment on any of it until we're actually there. For now it's mostly just a pity thing.

Azn Bad Boys

Lung: I was harsh on his characterization at first but I'll admit with time and context I'm not nearly as quick about that. He definitely still sucks, the guy literally murders his lieutenant as a matter of bruised pride and making his life more convenient. Also still cannot shake the feeling that he was basically idling in Brockton Bay for most of his career with the kind of power he has on tap.

Bakuda: She's a monster, but that also kind of oversimplifies things. She's clever, arrogant, grandstanding, and gleefully violent, even as she has the capacity to admire the architecture that another Tinker has crafted and to treat Lung as something resembling a friend. I don't think there's a world where she triggers and is, like, a good person, but I think this was one of the worse lives she could have wound up living. Also, y'know, she's dead.

Empire Eighty-Eight

Kaiser: Rancid smug piece of Nazi shit. Stupid too btw, why are you bothering with street-level robberies and extortion when you own a fucking pharmaceutical corporation? Why are you fighting out in the streets and meeting with other Nazi capes when you could be acting through proxies and bankrolling far-right parahuman cells across the country? Like I'm glad he isn't smart enough to think like that but fuck me.

Purity: Like, actually for real dumb as a bag of hammers. Kaiser barely has to try to wrap her back around his finger and she divorced him; Tattletale barely has to try to get her to back down and she thinks Tattletale exposed her identity to the public. Truly nothing in that skull of hers.

Hookwolf: Nazi capes fuck off

Stormtiger: Nazi capes fuck off

Cricket: Nazi capes fuck off

Rune: Nazi capes fuck off

Night: Nazi capes fuck off

Fog: Nazi capes fuck off

Wait does Coil's gang genuinely not have a name

Coil: Everything about this guy just pisses me the fuck off honestly. He presents himself as some kind of lesser evil, a firm but gentle hand that can guide all facets of the city to a brighter future, but he doesn't have the intelligence or vision to back any of it up; he displays nothing but brute force manipulation tactics involving bribery and blackmail, he's tunnel-visioned and cruel to the point that it ruins his own long-term plans, and before I forget everything about his thing with Dinah gives me fucking hives and I want to beat his skull in with my bare hands. I hope Taylor gets to kill him. Oh, or maybe Dinah.

Nameless sniper: Actively cooler and more competent than Coil.

Travelers

Trickster: genuinely cannot trust a man wearing a top hat in the year 2011, not even as a bit

Sundancer: what the fuck went so wrong with your life that your power is The Fucking Sun

Faultline and Co.

Faultline: Ironically not a super strong read off of her in terms of personality. Seems generally pretty cool going off of how she interacts with and leads her team. Very funny that she has a rivalry with Tattletale.

Newter: Little worried that he's selling his body secretions as a drug to other teenagers but if a parahuman only has one red flag that's pretty good actually

Gregor the Snail: This dude rocks, actually, love the vibes he gives off. Shame that people hate him for being fat and a mutant.

Labyrinth: Would like to see more of her when she's back in reality, otherwise not much to go off of. Cool power.

Other Parahumans

Scion: Fucking creepy

Marquis: probably Panacea's dad, calling that shot.

Paige McAbee: Justice For Paige McAbee.

Dinah Alcott: not really a character yet so much as a particularly horrifying MacGuffin but Jesus Christ what an awful fate

Uber and Leet: Gamers should be more oppressed. Also they beat the shit out of sex workers on a livestream and aren't considered serious enough threats to be consigned to the Birdcage, which feels pretty bad.

Heartbreaker: Haven't even met this guy and he sounds fucking awful. Please god somebody take him down.

Normal Humans

Emma Barnes: I need to understand what's wrong with her. Something happened that gave her the temperament and skillset of a CIA torture technician before freshman year of high school and she turned that onto her best friend for reasons totally unbeknownst to us.

Sophia Hess: I don't know I feel that the one bully who does the most physical harm and acts the most aggressive is the black one. Pretty bad I think. She's also clearly got something going on in her head but tbh that feels like it's going to be more straightforward than whatever is wrong with Emma.

Madison Clements: I feel like she's just here so that Taylor could be bullied without overusing the other two. What's your stake in this? Why do you give a shit? Does it matter? Probably not.

Mr. Gladly: I hated every teacher I ever knew who acted like this and I hate him even more for being utterly useless in protecting a student from blatant harassment. Fuck off.

[fangswbenefits]

Your post about twitter being morons hit my analysis nerd button. So I gonna ramble here a bit if that's okay;; it's probably going to get long >.>

The thing that people seem to be flagrantly ignoring is the difference between a Villain and an Antagonist. Because while they tend to overlap in a lot of media, they're quite different things. An Antagonist is at its base someone who is in contention with or opposes another (and in literary situations is in specific opposed to our protagonist). A Villain has multiple definitions, those being a character who opposes the hero of the story, a deliberate scoundrel or criminal, or the one blamed for a particular sort of evil. There is overlap, but not every antagonist is a villain (kind of like every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square)

Now, the big thing is, both villains and antagonists can be traditionally good, evil or anywhere in between which pulls even bigger sets of nuance to it.

So let's look at Spiderverse. We've got a lot of antagonists in this movie, but really only two villains. Because only two characters are acting out of pure malace. And that is The Spot, and The Vulture. Both are out there deliberately harming others, causing destruction. Now looking at antagonists, technically, most characters in this movie could be considered antagonists at some point or another toward one of our main protagonists, Miles. (Gwen is also a protagonist, but since my focus is gonna be on Miguel, we're looking at Miles)

Miguel O'Hara is 100% an antagonist. No ifs ands or buts about it. But he is not a villain or evil or whatever else people want to say. He's a morally gray character, with generally good intentions though somewhat questionable methods (and a rather ends justify the means and pragmatic approach which is an interesting choice for a spiderman). His actions are, as he believes them to be, what is required to save billions of lives. That is not the sort of thing a villain or someone who is evil would do.

His methods have a level of brutality to them for sure (and I think it actually makes for an interesting juxtaposition between his antagonism vs the antagonism of Mile's parents. On one hand, you have smothering in an attempt to save the world from the individual, on the other, to protect the individual from the world), but these methods are to his mind what is necessary to save lives. That certainly doesn't excuse them, but it makes for a logical line of motivation. Something else that makes for a generally logical line of thinking in how illogical it is (to me at least) is that I would bet money on this man having never gotten the sort of counseling you need after a massive trauma. (Namely from anecdotal evidence, though don't worry I'm much better now :D). Because is just. Does things to you. Especially if there's guilt involved.

(Uh. I had more but it's getting close to time for me to sleep so now the words are vanishing on the wind TnT rkfjdsjk, sorry)

💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯

[trlvsn]

i’m thinking about mvk right now wtf happened to him? why is he like that? who did this to him? what do you think his tragic backstory is i know he has one and i need to know right now

oh anon you're gonna wish you didn't send this ask.

what i think people often forget when trying to understand certain characters is that characters are a part of a story first and a person second. to understand manfred and some other related things, let's look at this from the beginning, specifically, from the first "evil" major character we get introduced to (and by evil i mean someone the protagonist opposes) - miles edgeworth.

miles edgeworth is introduced to us as the demon prosecutor, the guy who uses dirty tricks in court, is famous for being ruthless and thinks everyone should be punished, a guy who strives for perfection is his job as a prosecutor. that brings us to a point where we think miles edgeworth represents something the justice system overall should not be - biased, devoid of empathy, driven by a perfect record and a desire for a good career instead of the genuine desire to find the truth. the story could as well have made us defeat edgeworth because of that - that approach is not needed in the court, so we expose him for some kind of crime and get him fired, goodbye, who's the next character going to be? however, the writers make the decision to humanize him, make him not just a character that represents a wrong idea but a person who has a backstory and some good in his heart, a person with a pretty good moral code, actually, a nerd, a friend, a man. this is where we start to question what exactly made him like this - this is why miles gets a tragic backstory. he is meant to be explained, he is meant to be human, he is meant to be more.

so manfred von karma becomes the answer. he is the reason, he is the influence, the part of miles's life that made him like this and the part that he starts to oppose. manfred von karma is an asset, a tool we are given to understand edgeworth better and draw some conclusions: "hey, maybe the guy wasn't, like, evil and demonic, he was manipulated as a kid, you know". manfred is like a mirror of edgeworth, which is a tool one can see frequently in ace attorney writing. there are characters that represent one character trait of another character, hyperbolized and extended. damon gant is edgeworth's authority mirror, representing what could happen if miles went from cutting salaries to grabbing more and more power to himself. manfred is miles's perfection mirror (self-explanatory).

what do we get from this, then? manfred von karma is undeniably linked to a more important character, appears for one single case (if we don't count aai) and serves one purpose - get the idea across. "don't get too focused on perfection, kids! this is a job that determines other people's lives, and to manipulate the verdict in order to serve your own selfish purposes is yucky!". manfred is a symbol first, person second, that's why he doesn't get a backstory.

manfred von karma is not just a man - it's what every prosecutor could become. a prosecutor gets a high salary, which the game establishes, and that salary depends on the amount of cases won, or, if i'm wrong, one's reputation depends on that, and the reputation causes bias. in such an objectively terrible system any prosecutor would slowly go from "i'm going to find the truth!" to "i'm going to win", and manfred went there a little too much. manfred's backstory is his habitat, he is the product of the system. with every case won and every close call, every paycheck earned, with all the competition in the field empathy and common sense leaves him - it gets to a point where a penalty causes him to commit murder. he is not a sane person at the moment of the crime - he is quite literally delusional thinking it was some kind of fate that the gun was there. he is what happens when a man loses himself in his career, what happens when the law is about money and success and not fairness, what can happen to anyone and should not happen.

so, to me, manfred does not need a backstory, apart from the one i mentioned above - he on his own is one.

but let's imagine this is the real world for a second and ignore the fictional, ideal aspect of it all. it's quite definitely possible manfred was somehow abused, but do i think it HAS to be so? no. a person does not need to be traumatized or a victim to grow up shitty. he could simply be spoiled, actually, with all of the wealth he clearly has. to prove my point, imagine a scenario where you raise a child with nothing but praise. you give it all the love and care, feed it, cherish it, but a child is curious by nature. eventually, it will do something bad, like pinch you or hit another child. you, the universally loving parent, still give it love and feed it candy after it does the bad thing, and you continue to do so. with nothing but love and care, the child will grow up with a defected sense of right and wrong, selfish, entitled, unempathetic.

point is - i don't find a tragic backstory to be a necessary thing for manfred's character. i don't think he needs a backstory at all.

however, that is not to say i'm somehow trying to prove anon wrong. theorizing and coming up with explanations IS fun and good. i'm just giving my personal view of his character here.

[teekays]

Davo for the character ask thing please!

this one took me so long because i have THINGS to SAY. i have cried in an airport over connor mcdavid. lets begin

First impression

i will be so real when i first got into hockey i totally fell for the like... this guy is the BEST agenda. mostly because i think i noticed that the praise he got was SO strong and i wanted to know what made him so good as opposed to other guys but i also noticed he got a lot of hate for being boring and i was like... they're all boring. why do we hate him for being boring specifically? and that led me on a quest to tease out The Connor Mcdavid Story

Impression now

i'm a mcdefender sorry. i know!! he's the most interesting guy in the world actually. like he IS boring but that is so clearly a purposeful obfuscation of whatever else he's got going on there that he developed because of course you're not going to just have your heart out there in the open as a first overall who's been hyped up for years as the Next One placed on a flop team in a flop city... it's also interesting to have seen that kind of relax a little bit in recent years and i think that relaxing is directly parallel to him becoming a little less like. black and white in his thinking which he very much was for a long time. like he's someone with a very strong sense of right and wrong and very strong ideas about How Things Should Be Done and as that has loosened up (because that's not conducive to like, being alive yknow) and as he's gotten more secure in his position he's gotten a little more willing to put himself out there which is fun. the morals thing does come out sometimes tho in that he will speak up if he feels like he needs to in the name of fairness. also i find his like, earnestness and the ways he's different than the nepo babies of the hockey world to be deeply charming even when they suck. like he's a shill grinding for his money but he's honest about it and i have to respect it. make your terrible millions and have a zero tolerance policy for being irreverent and Too Cool for the media while doing it. go white boy go

Favorite moment

sitting on mitch's lap in the everglades was a foundational babygirlism but also. right after the draft i don't remember who it was but little baby connor freshly in that oilers jersey was like "why are you ripping him to shreds rn he literally just got drafted" it makes my heart break into a million pieces i feel like when spongebob lost gary. because that's sooo... it's not him anymore really. but it will always be him and who he was.

Idea for a story

my sick and twisted mind has been percolating Mccareer ending injury for so long because i would like to see him freed from the shackles of hockey and having to build a life outside of what that means to him. who is connor mcdavid? find out next week when he escapes to a beach for a week and hates it

Unpopular opinion

say it with me now. estrogen could fix him! but also once again i think he is much less miserable than people want to think and if he is then it's justified. he lives in edmonton. you'd be sad too. also i covered this but he's actually a little freak and not boring at all if you know how to look at him!!!

Favorite relationship

i'm a mcstrome warrior til i die hashtag Your dead best friend is walking up the stairs hashtag I ain't a kid no more we'll never be those kids again. that being said i think also him and leon should get married. and another thing this may be also an unpopular opinion BUT i am actually so obsessed w ambitious girlboss lauren kyle and the way she so clearly runs their whole lives and he's so deeply okay with that... i think a common hockey boy trait is kind of always wanting to be told what to do because that's what you've done your whole life but to see someone quietly own it that way is so fun to me. i think she should lean into it and be like the tweet that's like "if two guys were in love with me i would manipulate them into doing gay shit together"/"if i had two boyfriends i'd dress them up like twins" with connor and leon and like leon is there for connor's benefit but she makes him think it's her idea so as not to upset the delicate balance. yknow?

Favorite headcanon

this is also from what we've seen mostly based in fact but he's absolutely dogshit at other sports. like. some guys are athletes and other guys are hockey players and he is absolutely a hockey player to his core. hilarious

[morgana-ren]

How hard is it to get Reaver to negotiate with you? If you're doing the nasty stuff he wants and bratting appropriately, will he give you more of a leash (heh)? Would he be willing to let you influence business matters if you showed an interest and a knack for it? (I've not played Fable yet so I'm totally in the dark)

Thankfully, playing Fable isn't pertinent to our Reaver outside of establishing a baseline personality (him being a complete jackass.) We really took the characters and ran with them.

Truthfully, Reaver in Fable is more of a minor character. He's one of the four heroes (and you get him at the very, very end and he has maybe a singular page of dialogue.) Most of his mythos and lore is built around the commentary that others have to say about his character. In Fable 3, he's a minor villain that has two or three cutscenes, one mission based around his house that you don't even really see him outside of the few cutscenes, and as a vehicle for the more reprehensible moral decisions in the game. He's hedonistic, licentious, cruel, amoral, greedy, and ruthless. That's it.

Now, don't get me wrong. That was more than enough to give the fandom some pretty heavy opinions on him that would sway either which way, but speaking realistically, he's a minor part of the game franchise. He's a beloved minor character that we established further out of pure love.

Our Reaver is very heavily based on that Reaver, but we developed him way beyond that. We gave him other traits and characteristics. So everything I say is more or less just our ideas of his character as opposed to his established lore from Lionhead and the Fable franchise.

Reaver, above all, is a businessman. Before he was a businessman, he was a pirate. It all very much influences each other. What I'm saying is he's going to be more than willing to negotiate, but at the end of the day, he will be getting what he wants out of the bargain, even if that means he has to take it.

If you took an interest in his business, he'd be absolutely delighted. He loves showing off his factories and his control over the workers-- but the girls he takes are more concerned with unions and working conditions, usually, which he couldn't give a shit less about.

For Reaver to consider you having a knack for it, you'd have to think exactly like he does. Money first, humanity later-- if at all.

Now, he's willing to barter with you for these things, but you will be giving him things that he considers of equal value. Meaning if you want him to pay his workers even minimum wage, you are going to make it worth his while, and even then, he will usually undercut you somehow. The issue in getting involved with his businesses is that you are putting other lives at risk. If you slip up and say:

"I was talking to some of the workers, and--"

He is going to want to know who, and when you won't tell him, he will start shooting until either everyone is dead, or until someone else talks. He needs complete control over his work force. He does not abide brewing mutiny, whether it's on his ship or in his factories.

You can totally go to bat for people. You can try to have a hand in his business. Keep in mind, though, Reaver already has things working at what he considers to be at 100 percent efficiency. If you want him to crank those numbers, you will be making it worth his while-- and you're not going to like it.

As for obeying him, he will give you leash insofar that he believes you are safe. You will never get to a point in the relationship with him where you will have the control and the upper hand openly, but you can make him so moon-eyed that he'll do stupid shit to make you happy. You will never have full autonomy, but you can manipulate him in ways that other people cannot. You can get him to occasionally act against his own interests.

Ultimately, he does want someone with their own mind, and weirdly, the people he gets attached to most are strong-willed women who do not obey him (has to do with his background and also the fact he is just a sheer bully and he likes a challenge.) He is an underhanded fuck and he is always going to expect the same from you.

You can get to the point where he won't shove you in 'the cage' every time you irritate him, or maybe he won't threaten every person that passes, and even be seen as a sort of 'free and independent' person, but you won't ever escape him. You can think whatever you want, but you don't make the rules. He does.

I guess what I'm saying is, he, as a business man, will negotiate. But he enters things of this nature the same way he approaches business arrangements. He will be coming out on top.

[self-loving-vampire]

In my own argument against AI art I acknowledged that it making art more accessible was a good thing. I just don't think it's worth the cost of rendering artists worthless at their expense. Because it is at their expense. AI art needs a learnset that is neither consensual nor compensated. Even if it's considered fair use and totally not for profit, it can't exist without the work of artists it's based on. It is inherently harmful in this regard.

I don't need to make backwards thinking arguments or excuses for disliking AI art. I don't like it because it threatens the last shred of monetary value artists can cling to, and none of the arguments for it seem to have an answer to this problem; they just (rightly) point out how any proposed 'solution' does more harm than good. But so does AI art, if artists themselves have any value.

Any pro-AI art argument that doesn't take the impact on the artists that made it possible into account basically sounds like 'art isn't worth compensating, and therefore it's okay to devalue artists'.

Regardless of what might be gained from devaluing artists (more accessibility to art, protection from IP law, both of which are good things), it cannot be gained without devaluing artists. I take it most artists aren't okay with this. I'm certainly not, and I'm not making any money from my art in the first place.

The part that's odd in terms of people flipping moral stances over this can probably be chalked up to rationalization. People who are pro-artist enough to be anti-AI art seem to be determined to justify that AI art is inherently wrong in a way that is easier to swallow than the choice between artists and fan works/disabled people/etc.

I made the argument that it's a false dichotomy, but because it's a lose-lose situation, rather than the zero-sum game it's made out to be. People seem determined to believe that their side of the argument must be the correct one, and therefore it must also be the 'morally correct' side. Because of course they would only support the obviously morally correct argument, rather than admit the concept of having a personal stake exists. I'll admit it's odd it's happening with this discourse in particular, but people rationalize things rather than examining their thought process all the time etc.

I don't consider my stance against it 'morally correct' (at least not in the same moral absolutist sense I just referred to; I'm still following my personal values here); I'm personally against AI art because it can't do good without inherently causing harm, simple as that. I'd rather stop the train before it hits than be forced into the trolley problem when the real issues are more systemic than most people involved in this discourse are willing to address. Universal basic income would make it so artists could be artists without worrying about AI art threatening their livelihood. But that would mean admitting that people deserve to live whether or not they're considered productive, and the powers that be don't like that idea. 'People shouldn't have to be productive to survive' is a good argument; 'Artists should just get a day job' isn't. (You've acknowledged the potential economic impact at least and even if we ultimately disagree I appreciate that.)

I'm opposed to IP law too, btw. I think preservation of content is as important as it is overlooked, and the proponents of IP law are the same reason AI-art poses a threat to artists in the first place. But since I do have a personal stake in the argument, the pro-AI art stance doesn't feel like the lesser of two evils, it feels like no matter what happens I lose, and I'm powerless to stop it.

The economic argument is definitely one of the better ones, though I also have a few issues with that one as well. I 100% agree that the ultimate solution that we should be working towards is UBI, though.

Even if the situation for artists did not change in the least, there are already a lot of other poor people working multiple minimum wage jobs who don't really have the opportunity to create as they wish or learn new skills because they are already in the situation that artists could potentially find themselves in.

Those people also need help, and I think the focus on trying to do something about AI while treating UBI as an impossibility is both mistaken and kind of overly narrow. There's already a large underclass of poor people doing exactly what artists are afraid they'll have to do if AI takes their job. It's already a problem worth solving.

(Personal tangent but I know that master, for example, has tons of creative ideas and has even taught himself various skills to pursue them but is still kind of held back from fully devoting himself to them because of work. UBI would help even people who are not currently artists to create things.)

Anyway, on to some issues I have noticed.

For one, I feel like Luddism as a whole is kind of a doomed proposition. It is not really realistically possible to undo useful technological advances without offering an even better alternative. Even the original Luddites completely failed in stopping the advancement of textile technology that would harm their own economic interests as skilled craftspeople.

It seems like a "you can't un-ring a bell" type of situation where I can't really see a way for it to be undone as long as it remains profitable, and efforts to get copyright giants like Disney involved are likely to just result in either everyone getting screwed over or those companies gaining a monopoly on the technology.

But aside from that, I feel like a lot of people are treating this instance of automation and industrialization potentially threatening a group's income differently from all the previous automation efforts that they already pretty much accepted without complaint.

Think, for example, of skilled toymakers, clothiers, furniture makers, and so on. If you have read about the history of pre-industrial clothesmaking as I have, you might be aware of just how a ridiculous amount of time was spent on this before modern technology changed the game.

The industrialization of textiles changed the economic angle of this, obviously. If clothing becomes cheap and accessible because a factory can make it much more efficiently then you can't make nearly as much of a profit by selling whatever surplus certain circumstances may afford your household.

People did lose work (and by extension money) over this, and reacted by destroying industrial machinery.

And yet this same accessibility and plenty had largely positive effects on the net. It's a good thing that half the household doesn't have to spend every waking moment making clothing, and the free time gained from this enabled the pursuit of other things.

Enabling greater access to artistic creations will not have a remotely comparable effect on free time, but it does have its own economic benefits that are easy to overlook if one looks only at artists in isolation and not other kinds of creators.

Consider, for example, an independent game developer with no budget working for their bedroom (not purely a hypothetical even in this day and age, Jeff Vogel is still going). They are basically treading water because their projects are kind of niche and don't look nearly as appealing as other games visually, since their budget won't let them spend that much on that side of things.

AI art enabling such developers to create high-quality art for their projects at an affordable price means that developers like that can keep going more easily and so create things that would otherwise not exist.

The technology would be putting some people out of work while at the same time allowing other people to create beyond the possibilities that previously existed.

This means that the calculation of the costs and benefits is already upon us, and when you factor in the fact that a lot of the more serious propositions for actually doing anything about AI art in practice involve IP expansions then I am not convinced that the anti-AI position is the one that leads to the best world-state.

I sympathize with the difficulty this creates for the people put in that position, though. I think unless an asteroid hits the earth or something then practically everyone will end up in the same situation in the long run as more and more jobs become automated.

The really tragic part is that this would just be an unambiguously good thing if not for the perverse way in which people are expected to "earn" their continued existence through paid labor.

A world with less scarcity and in which no one needs to work would be downright utopian if the increased productivity was shared equally, but it would also be kind of dangerous if all the gains were monopolized by a small elite and everyone outside of it was just rendered irrelevant and left to die.

It really does not have to be like that, and I am optimistic that with the right focus it may be possible to gather support for stronger social assistance as automation advances and more jobs disappear. After all, an actual majority of the world may find itself in that situation within the next century.

I guess the better good news I think I can give you in the short term is that it's probably going to be a while longer before AI really reaches the point where a lot of people prefer it over human artists for at least some purposes, and there's other situations where the people benefitting from AI art would not have hired an artist to begin with so there's no actual income loss there (for example, the median D&D player probably won't be paying someone big bucks to draw their OCs, especially when they can use stuff like picrew and video game character creators instead).

[perpetuallyfive]

I'm not going to reblog someone else's post just to disagree on this, but I genuinely don't understand why people are so upset by the way the One Piece (Live Action) ads are functioning on tumblr.

Like first of all there are just straight up actual ads on the dash showing up — though I seem to be seeing them way more on mobile than I am on desktop, so maybe that's part of the confusion — so it seems pretty obvious they're running an ad campaign, and on desktop there appears to be just a tab rotating through fanart and little hyped up posts created in anticipation of the show, somewhat focused on one Straw Hat at a time in lead up to Thursday's release.

None of this is being re-appropriated into a new context or transformed into a regular ad. They're putting posts on a tab in a timeline, the same way they do a "hey this is trending" tab already. Any art appearing this way is in its original post, with its original tags, with the artist's username, with a capacity to reblog and add to the notes, making their work much easier to find than in the current search format honestly.

Tumblr needs money to continue surviving, so obviously they're going to accept payment for ads, and if one of the ways they choose to do this is just making things that people are choosing to tag slightly more visible rather than inserting a million ads onto your timeline all the time, I'm not sure how this is some morally reprehensible thing that should be opposed. What even is the anger about, other than people just immediately being mad when something you like on the internet needs money to survive?

[meanwhileinstasiville]

And so I liked "the color kittens" book when I was little,

had good rhythm. As now employed as an ongoing proselytizing strategy BECAUSE "cats" and "gate" (golden gate to the golden state) and "color" equals *as a xerox of my evil grandfather* (raised with radical acceptance and tolerance with moral and/or ethical bankruptcy overlooked) some kind of a synagogue thing; grandpa pissed them off too, *though he never raised a hand against them*.

So then, writing can kill; "pens mightier than swords"

(no I'm not content boxed into a chapter where I neither belong nor fit, synagogues)

Writing can confine; "stone walls...do not a prison make"

Writing can even establish worth and/or merit; "love of money" (meaning *money is love*) is the root of all evil"

(money being how synagogues get around and, as opposed to say, mosques and firearms since that tends to be "Turkish cannoneers and..." where a discussion starts)

(as far as Greta Garbo being related to the Ogren's and insinuations of "one side or the other"; it's actually *Turks* ancestrally and so really it's neither for that part of that branch)

Writing *is people* is what the latest long standing goal seems to have been; acids made of *four specific letters* seems like a pretty serious oversimplification for all life sciences.

(now tumblr is alternatively *telling me it is/isn't connected* in red or green, you know paragraph to paragraph)

Mom before her breakdown had taught me,

That you should never shop hungry.

The best stuff is the cheapest.

That you can't save money by spending it.

Also that the more people living on an excess (like opulence among muslims and old empires) the more excessive the opulence needs to be. America is accomodating *absolutely huge numbers of synagogues* consuming enough resources for *five whole planets*.

As a dutch aristocrat raised daughter (meaning semitic ideas), she had said that it was all relevance "as a woman" for women in that culture. You marry the saudi king for the money, and then have affairs with the head of the army, the leader of the opposition; the first love AND the last romance (because womanly ideas have been thoroughly documented) and then you're onto "why don't these old jewish ladies take bombs on airplanes" (actual quote) to really cover everything.

So I see these amassed "giant scrabble boards of doom" running around ashland and it's age old problems. Writing is like fire that way; a good servant but...it can be *really good at describing things* but it doesn't dictate how they work. And assuming it does usually causes really bad things to happen.

Ashland had long been a place where *the primary form of recreating* was spending money "getting to shopping" mom called marrying well and before her breakdown. So ashland became a place susceptible to being yanked around *by BOTH mosques AND synagogues* after the 1970s or something. And it shows.

And nothing people need, needs advertising. And that one is from my dad, a highschool dropout who used a *seven dollar pencil* and like a *thirty dollar pen* for most of his life, taking down like 80k per year; pretty good, huh?

Italy had "put sex on money"; Germany had "money is millions of years old", America had...I don't know what America had; *according to mom who was a government accountant* credit cards *did not mean American dollars "went farther"* it meant that "nobody had any money after 75 or so". Something was "using up all the cash" so rich people had to subsidize Americans who *weren't even born yet* with "something they couldn't spend at yard sales" (she didn't know anything about drugs before she had a breakdown). Equity on things unspeakably wealthy people have, is why whole swaths of America have been "living on credit cards" for so many years. And that was *back in the 80s* she had explained that. Assuming of course, as when she was living on a fixed income and actually laughing about the stuff, than *almost no one* makes minimum payments most or all of the time. And they have. And black people notably *come out of the womb* to this problem, which I had likened to a giant elephant in the room being polite and wearing wallpaper to blend in. As old as America's constitution.

(maybe this thing posts...who knows *censorship is getting interesting*)

[cringe-sunday]

Oooh I see. Yeah no, I don't rlly feel like Tim would become red hood js bc it doesn't fit his personality. He's too technical for it (imo) and Jason is more emotional,, hence part of the reason he turned out how he did and became the red hood. He's known as the 'angry Robin' (which technically isn't true but for the sake of this post we're going to be using how people view them in fanon) because he's emotional and people know it. Tim is known as the smart Robin. The one that uses his head first and who stays up all night drinking coffee because he can't shut his brain off. Logically, I feel like he would overthink it. Before doing anything,, before becoming red hood and before he decides to reveal himself, he'd think about it wayyy too much and try to get intro Bruce's head with it. He'd think about /why/ Bruce didn't kill the joker after he died, he'd think about why he wasn't avenged, he'd think about why he didn't get justice even though that's what The Batman fights for. Being The Batman's sidekick and not getting justice when he needed it most at that moment is why Jason became Red Hood. Because he was angry that he wasn't worthy of the justice that Batman tries to get for the rest of the city. Tim would use logic, though. If he did hypothetically become the Red Hood, he'd be much more dangerous too, because it would be (as I see it) harder to appeal to his empathy due to the fact that he puts his morality aside for the sake of his train if thought and way of thinking. But before he would do any of that, he wouldn't become the Red Hood. Honestly, I think he would just kill the joker himself and get it over with. What's more logical? Making a grand entrance and announcing to the world that you lived even if there are only a handful of people who would truly understand the sentiment? Or get revenge justice for yourself? Personally I feel like it would be more empowering to watch the life drain from the man who killed me knowing that I'm returning the favor as opposed to having my mentor/father (figure) do it for me, though I do understand the reasoning.

Plus I feel like with reverse robin aus there's so much more potential than just making Tim red hood. Imagine Jason as a stalker,, or Tim stealing tires (I'd say for attention in this universe considering his family is rich, so he wouldn't need it for the money) them getting caught and promptly raised by his nextdoor neighbor (in a rich people who own like two thousand acres of land way). Imagine Damian being Nightwing and wearing the discowing costume unironically. Imagine Bruce raising his own blood before adopting seven kids. Imagine that by the time Tim gets to the house, it's already packed full with animals and other creatures, because, like his father, Damian has an issue with adopting creatures. Imagine dick not feeling as lonely when he arrives at Wayne manor because, like at the circus, he's surrounded by family and the manor isn't as empty as it would have been otherwise. Imagine Damian's reluctance when Bruce first brings home Tim and then the others,, imagine his unwillingness to admit the fact that he actually likes the new siblings.

But idk,, I js feel like there's more potential. Sorry for kinda hijacking ur post lmao

Someone ask me about my opinions on Reverse Robins Aus

[pacifymebby]

A headcanon of what the boys would be like if they were in Peaky Blinders 🥃🔪🚬

Van

🔪 bloody dangerous, unpredictable, wants to be the leader but isn't there yet...

🔪 Michael Gray as opposed to Tommy

🔪 Stubborn, hot headed, dramatic, don't insult him you won't live to apologise

🔪 a flirt, definitely uses his status to pull, definitely a ladies man, probably gets himself into trouble flirting with other peoples women

🔪 Needs to calm down

🔪 will throw the first thing he sees to start a fight.

🔪 known for smashing bottles to use as weapons

Bondy

🔪 Alfie Solomans kind of laidback but scary as fuck

🔪 daft, sarcastic but lowkey calculated and incredibly smart, quietly has control

🔪 protective of his family but also of anyone he deems to deserve protection. Parent energy

🔪 surprisingly loyal to his partner, but insanely possessive, does not like when other men eye her up or talk to her.

🔪 a perfect shot.

🔪 knives everywhere

🔪 just, too attractive for his own good, girls can't resist him because he's dangerous but also attentive and has that daddy energy

Benji

🔪 quiet and calm as fuck but will go feral if he needs to

🔪 seriously do not give him a reason to fight you

🔪 isn't the leader and doesn't want to be the leader, will not go near that job.

🔪 Is doting on his girl despite the teasing and ribbing he gets off the others. Literally doesn't care if people see him as less of a man for loving his girl, if they call that into question he can make them understand his strength pretty quickly

🔪 in it for the money for sure, likes to buy fancy things

Bob

🔪 I'm picturing a Bonnie Gold kind of character

🔪 BABY but also tough as fuck

🔪 unbeatable in a fist fight

🔪 too quick and clever for his enemies

🔪 also he's so small and pretty that no one is expecting him to be able to take them out with a single punch

🔪 Can sense when shits about to kick off, he's got a sixth sense for that danger

Sam

🔪 He's like a younger Bondy, he has that seriousness about him despite his ability to laugh and play the joker when it suits.

🔪 Worries about the people he loves too much

🔪 Protective, weird fucked up but wholesome and pure moral code, hates seeing bad things happen to good people.

🔪 Will use his power/ command/ money to help people who need it. Generous. Looks after the community.

🔪 Genuinely terrifying when he's angry or threatened, if you touch someone he loves he will tear you to shreds in a heartbeat

🔪 Probably brooding over a lass he's head over heels for but won't go near because he has a complex about how dark his world is and how she's too good and too pure to be dragged into his shit.

🔪 Doesn't stop him being overly protective of her, making sure she gets home safe at night, fucking up any man who wrongs her....

also I made this fucking ugly chart over the top of someone else's chart

[free--therapy]

Overcoming Guilt & Shame

It's important to note that by overcoming shame and guilt, it doesn't mean that we are letting ourselves get away with something that we truly know and believe to be wrong. The point of overcoming it is making sure that we take accountability, responsibility, and coming to terms with what made us feel this way in the first place. There are 5 steps we can take to help us overcome our shame and guilt: assessing the severity of our actions, weighing our personal accountability, atoning for any harm we caused, breaking the silence of our incurred shame, and finally self-forgiveness.

It's suggested that only 1 or 2 of these steps are necessary in helping us overcome guilt, however when it comes to dealing with shame, it's best to try all 5 steps:

1. Assessing the Severity of Our Actions

It doesn't matter how big or small the action is that we feel bad about, we can still feel guilty regardless. It could be as simple as ignoring your mother's phone call to answer your best friend's call, or calling in sick to work when you don't feel like going in, and so on. Our evaluation of how serious our actions or thoughts are depends on our values and rules that we create for ourselves. It'll always be subjective and what we may feel guilty about, another person won't feel guilty in the same situation. If we often feeling guilty or ashamed, it means that we are either living our lives in a way that ends up defying and violating our own values and principles, or we may be judging ourselves too seriously on things that aren't as serious as we may believe. How can we assess how serious our actions are? Consider the following:

Do other people think this is as serious as I do? How come?

Would there be anyone else consider it less serious? How come?

How serious would I consider this to be if my friend did it instead of myself?

How important will this situation seem in a month from now? 1 year? 5 years?

Would I consider it to be serious if someone did the same thing to me?

Was I aware of the consequences or meaning of my actions/thoughts? Based on that, are my current judgments applicable?

Did I cause any damage? If I did, can I still make things right? If yes, how long would it take to do so?

Is there a more worse action I could have taken and didn't?

2. Weighing Personal Accountability

Weighing how much of what we have done and our perception of the wrongdoing is up to us now to take care of. To do this, we must evaluate the situation we're feeling guilt or shame about by starting to consider everyone and every aspect involved in the situation, including ourselves. "Aspects" or factors can be something like alcohol being involved, owing someone money/debt, the time of day (late at night where people are tired), or knowing that the certain people involved in our situation may have experienced abuse in their life as well. Anything that may have relative responsibility to the situation. Create a list, whether on paper or in the mind, and assign values to how big of a responsibility they may have in the particular situation.

Example: Having an angry outburst at a spouse for complaining about not paying bills on time. People responsible for my angry outburst: - myself: 60% - looming debts: 20% - spouse: 12% - 11pm at night: 8%

Compiling a list like this won't entirely help to eliminate guilt however, because there are situations where we should still feel guilty for doing something wrong. That guilt will help us to make amendments and atone for what we have done, but we can manage it in a way where it becomes something productive as opposed to it being another thing we turn on ourselves as a way to self-sabotage (shame). Making these sorts of lists will help us to realize that not everything is entirely our fault in situations where we feel guilty, which can help us feel a lot less guilty at the end of the day.

3. Atoning for Harm We Caused

When we're feeling guilt as a result for causing harm to others, it's important that we make sure we make amends for what we have done. Doing so can have a very important impact in healing ourselves and the relationship(s) we may have ruined. Atoning for our actions involves recognizing what we did and having the courage to face the person we hurt, asking for their forgiveness, and figuring out what we can do to make things right.

Here are some questions we can consider when trying to figure out how we can atone for what we have done:

Who did I hurt?

What did I do that was hurtful?

This is why it was wrong (the values I violated):

This is what I can do to make amends:

This is what I can tell the person I hurt: I recognize that when I (behavior/action) ____________, this hurt you. It was wrong because ___________. I'm sorry that I did that to you. What I want to do is _______ to show you how truly sorry I am. I hope that you can forgive me with time.

We have to remember that even though we may ask for forgiveness, the other person is under no obligation to grant us it and we have to be okay with that. The whole point of asking for forgiveness and trying to make amends is to help us feel better about the guilt that we have, especially when we're truly sorry.

4. Breaking the Silence of Incurred Shame/Guilt

Because shame has to do with having to keep things secretive, it helps for us to talk to someone we trust about what happened. We usually keep these things secret because we believe that if anyone ever finds out, we'll be criticized, condemned, or rejected for it. By telling someone, we may be surprised to find acceptance and this response ends up forcing ourselves to reassess the meaning of the secret that we hold onto. But how do we find someone we can trust when we have trust issues? We have to find someone that we believe we can share our secret in confidence, whether it be a friend, a coworker, or a mental health professional. Holding onto the shame will only increase the impact it has on us. More likely than not, a lot of people are more understanding that we have been led to believe. A lot of people have likely had similar experiences as us and know how to handle it, or they know people who may have been through things and have their an understanding of what we're going through. We all assume we're alone in our suffering and shame, but more likely than not, we are more alike in experiences, and even if we don't have the same experiences as other, we are eager to listen and learn, and offer advice. Not everyone is going to react the way we think.

5. Self-Forgiveness

Part of being a human is making mistakes. Perfection is merely just a concept that will never be attainable, but so many stress over to achieve. All of us at some point in our lives have done things that we told ourselves that we would never do, or violate the morals and values we hold. This is something that we all do and sometimes we may consider ourselves as "bad" people because of them, but violations don't necessarily mean that. Sometimes our actions may have been linked to a certain situation or time in our lives and can change as we progress in life.

When we come to realize this and how we are all susceptible to being imperfect, it's a lot easier to forgive others, including ourselves. Self-forgiveness will help us to alleviate a lot of our shame and guilt. It can lead us to a change in our perspective and interpretation of the mistake we made. We learn to become a lot more compassionate kind towards ourselves as we begin to understand that we may have made said mistakes during a time where we didn't care how we behaved, as opposed to believing we are "bad" people.

Self-forgiveness, just like forgiving someone else, doesn't mean that we are approving, forgetting, or even denying the pain that we have caused to other people. It involves recognizing that we are imperfect, we make mistakes, and that we can accept our shortcomings and the consequences of our actions. We have to be okay with acknowledging and recognizing that we have both good and negative qualities, and that we also have strengths and weaknesses.

Here's how we can begin to work towards self-forgiveness:

What do I need to forgive myself for?

What impact did my actions have on myself on others?

How will it continue to affect me and others?

How do I imagine my life will be better if I can forgive myself?

Forgiveness begins with understanding. What life experiences have I had that might have contributed to what I did?

What would I think about someone else who did the same thing?

What are some positive aspects about myself that I usually ignore when I'm feeling guilty or ashamed?

In a compassionate and kind voice, how can I forgive myself for what I've done?

What are some qualities that I have that can help me to move forward?

Adapted from Mind Over Mood by Dennis Greenberger, Ph.d & Christine Padesky, Ph.d.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

In the past you’ve talked about how Niall cancelling his tour was a decision made at the label level, so I would assume that Louis’ tour (going ahead or cancelling) would involve Sony even though Syco is no more. Walls was released under Syco/Sony & probably the agreement included some tour revenue which would need to be fulfilled. It could be that after 2 reschedules, they just want to get it over with regardless of Covid situation. They can alway just add cancelled dates on the end of tour. #1

#2 That sounds uncaring but it does seem like the industry is to the point that they go ahead with touring and just deal with outbreaks as they go. Bon Jovi just announced they’re touring starting in March. The impression given is, we’ll ask for neg. tests and vaccination, so we’re (live nation) are doing their part and what ever happens happens. They want the money.

**********

Hi anon

You've got a major misconception here, so I'll deal with that first

Record labels are not the decision makers in tours. I would never suggested that Niall's record label made a decision about his tour. The people putting out the biggest money for a tour, and therefore the biggest decision maker is the promoter - usually Live Nation.

Touring economics is very complicated, and just when I think I've got a handle on it I learn there's another piece to it, but I do think it's incredibly important to understanding the music industry that fans understand some basic principles.

Fans starting point should be that record labels main business is what it says on the tin - recorded music. Other streams of revenue that an artist might have (merch and touring) used to be separate and usually seperate from the record label. Things are more complicated now, and everything is negotiable. When people talk about 360 deals - what that means is the record label gets a piece of the touring income. But if so they're still just another layer between the artist and the promoter.

Whatever is happening with Louis' tour, Syco has nothing to do with it, because it no longer exists. I don't think any record label has a piece of Louis' tour, but if they do it's a cut that is listed in the Sony accounts and it absolutely isn't a priority for them. It'll come in when and if it comes in.

************

I don't think we need to insert a record label in this to understand what's going on. Rebooking a tour is difficult and will have a lot of costs attached to it. It'll throw off a whole bunch of other plans.

I also want to push back a little bit on the idea it's all money - we live under capitalism obviously money is important and particularly important to the corporations who shape this whole thing (and in a very different way, the workers who hadn't been paid). But people enjoying music together is a good and important thing. Maybe Bon Jovi are doing it all for the money, but they probably also really want to perform.

I suspect the reason people want to insert a record label is because they see something morally or ethically wrong with going on tour at this point and so want to absolve Louis of responsibility.

Mostly this is framed in one of two ways I don't agree with. The first is that it's somehow unfair to fans to tour now. As I've been clear most of the time I'm here, I don't prioritise consumers in my analysis. I do think offering refunds is important, but I don't think there's any obligation for people not to tour.

The other is an individualised response to the pandemic - and a milleu where it's widely accepted that the reason that there's still a pandemic is because those other people are doing things wrong. I a completely opposed to this worldview - I think it lets the government off the hook. If having 5,000 people meet in a room is a problem at this point in pandemic, then the solution is a legal framework to stop that from happening - rather than just expecting everyone to make individual decisions.

I don't mind blaming companies at all, but I also have pretty minimal expectations. I wouldn't suggest that restaurants or bars should voluntarily close because of the state of the pandemic. I don't think that's a reasonable expectation to put on people. Performers and entertainers (and the people who work on shows, and often the venues they perform in) have had less support than hospitality in many places. I totally understand why, at this point, in jurisdictions where there are no restrictions artists are like 'if not now when?'

So I'm not talking about the possibility of Louis touring from an anxious moral perspective, my main question is: 'On Louis' terms, is this a good idea?'

Will it be possible to tour without members of a touring party catching COVID? Will venues remain open? Will supply chain issues impact on the tour? How much of the audience rely on flights in? Are flights running? Touring is a reasonably dangerous activity - what are the implications of touring in a state that has no hospital capacity? (That I think is the moral issue - can the tour be run in a way that isn't endangering those on it?).

It seems to me very unlikely that Louis' US leg will be able to go ahead uninterrupted. But I'm aware that I felt that way about Harry's US leg and I was wrong. There's lots no-one knows about pretty much anything, and at this point it's important to acknowledge it. That's why what I'm most interested in is what other artists and venues are doing, to get a better sense of what might or might not be possible.

[reading-writing-revolution]

Don't be an asshole; don't be like Trump. Give a fuck.

I'm not and have never been a liberal (I've never voted for a Clinton) - I'm a registered Independent and always have been, and I agree with every word of what's below the dotted line.

I don't consider this to be a liberal standpoint at all. I consider it to be a "I'm not an asshole" standpoint, or a "We could solve these problems if we actually gave a fuck about other people" standpoint, but too many people in power or privilege are too threatened by these ideas. They think liberty and dignity and rights are finite commodities, and if someone gets equal amounts, another person might get less - less liberty, less dignity, fewer rights. This is stupidity in action, but Americans, in general, are not known for critical thinking, and politicians prefer citizens dumb and pliant.

Think again. In a country that put a man on the moon and won two world wars, we can't solve these problems? Sure we can. But we won't because too many people are too happy to let their neighbors suffer. If you're one of them, read this, then go slam your hand in a door, then come read it again and get a fucking clue...maybe the pain will help you think clearer and you can salvage some of your humanity.

You're welcome.

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

"I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. I'm liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does.

Let's break it down, shall we? Spoiler alert: Not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all." This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die because they can't afford healthcare" a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is sensible policies, that just MIGHT save one person’s, perhaps a toddler’s, life by the hand of someone who should not have a gun. (Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine).

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men including decisions about their own bodies, and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I'm liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn't mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don't believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved."

Author unknown

[spiritualdirections]

What are some examples of how to trust in God? I hear about doing it all the time, and it's not that I'm afraid of trusting Him. Quite the opposite, I'm happy to do His will and leave my own behind. I just don't know how to? I need some concrete examples of ways that I can do it because I'm kinda lost trying to figure out how the heck to trust Jesus on my own without knowing any way to trust Him. Does that make sense? Thanks for listening to me XD.

The first sin was to stop trusting God and instead to trust ourselves, by trying to grasp at divinity and autonomy. Trusting in God is opposed to everything that made the world fallen, and the principle goal of the devil is to get us to stop trusting God.

Trusting in God is essential to salvation, which means that it isn’t easy (or perhaps possible, according to some doctors of the Church) without grace. To follow Jesus means to take up your cross every day, which requires that you deny yourself--and trust in God. Avoiding the Cross is the surest sign that there’s still room to grow in trusting God.

Throughout our lives, there will be moments when what seems to be good for us and what the Church wants us to do seem to pull in different directions--those are the moments of greater or lesser spiritual crisis, where all our (fallen) instincts for self-preservation scream at us to do what seems to be good for us, even if it means disobeying God or His Church, or not doing what we’re told is right. 

Examples include (these are not all for everybody, obviously):

Not working on Sunday or Holy Days of Obligation, or asking others to work on those days (CCC #2186-7)

Trusting that God will send you the person that you’re supposed to marry, if you’re supposed to marry, rather than forcing the issue by dressing or acting in ways that manipulate potential spouses. 

Praying every day for a good length of time. The more contemplative the prayer--the greater proportion of listening to God rather than talking at Him--the more trusting it is.

Obeying a legitimate command of a legitimate superior, including secular legal authorities.

Tithing--giving at least 10% of your money to the Church, off the top. Giving more if you are wealthy.

Having children.

Making the time to go to daily Mass. And to say the Rosary. And to read Scripture and other spiritual books.

Trying to join a religious order if you can’t think of any reason why that’s clearly not for you--and then trusting the order to discern whether you have a vocation. (See St. Thomas Aquinas’ surprising advice on this.)

Practicing mortifications of the flesh, the will, and the imagination: for instance, fasting, sleeping on the floor, taking cold showers; not reading your email (or tumblr) except at set times; using your free time for study and self-improvement rather than entertaining yourself; living a schedule by going to bed at a set time, getting up at a set time, working hard when you do your work, and stopping when it’s time to pray or do other things.

Telling the truth to those who have a right to know, whatever it costs.

Spreading the gospel to others, even if you’re not sure it will be received well.

Perform the spiritual works of mercy of charitably correcting those who are in moral or intellectual error even if they don’t want to be corrected.

Agere contra: St. Ignatius of Loyola’s exhortation to struggle to do the opposite of what’s comfortable for us: for introverts to go talk to people, for extroverts to spend time in solitude and silence; for those who hate broccoli to eat more of it; for those who don’t feel like praying to do it.

Forgiving and showing mercy to those who you think are still opposed to you. 

Not fearing poverty, suffering, or death; meditating on Christ’s commandment to give your life for those you love, and asking in prayer for the strength to do so.

Making a good confession, and being radical in doing what it takes to amend your life (e.g., if you are tempted by stuff on the internet, being prepared to get rid of your computer, reduce your data allowance on your phone or get a flip phone, install a filter, get an accountability partner, seek counseling, and/or consider joining a religious order that leaves the world). 

Showing love and respect for people even when their actions aren’t loveable or respectable. 

Make the time for a retreat, and overcome the temptations of the devil to compromise the retreat (fighting FOMO, not checking email, etc.).

Don’t worry about tomorrow. Pray for the virtue of hope.

Make time to visit with boring and unpleasant people.

Persevere when God sends us trials, when we don’t feel his presence, when our prayer is dry, when we suffer involuntarily or those around us do, when this world rejects us, when our life seems monotonous, when another path of life seems better than our vocation does, when the Church disagrees with us, when our superior tells us no, when others seem to have a better or holier life than we seem capable of, when our will is not done. 

The point is not that our self-love and self-interest are evil, but that they are disordered as a result of our sin and the fallenness of the world. Over the course of our lives, our self-love develops a bunch of psycho-spiritual defense mechanisms to avoid being hurt by the fallenness of the world, and the central problem of our spiritual life is usually to unwind our pride and fears and defense mechanisms so that we can trust God more than we trust ourselves. That’s largely doable, but it requires spiritual exercises of the type suggested above--and perseverance when God tests us, as He will.

Jesus I trust in You!