#maker's market

[tadashitea]

I've been holding back on covering the Pacific Wharf section of Disneyland as it's being renovated and such but I will comment on this new news.

All in all, I've been underwhelmed with how it looks because they never really make much from the franchise just in the "theming" of the franchise which I suppose is still a win that it's even getting attention at all but I digress. Perfect example right here, The Aunt Cass Cafe'

Looks cool but nothing like the Lucky Cat like we all know and love but I also understand this is concept art, it's not actually built yet. (Though August seems pretty close)

What I truly wanted to talk about was this-

The Hamada Bot Shop. It's a meet and greet but I really like this idea for the characters, where Hiro opens up a bot shop, keeping the garage like feel where he tinkers with scrap.

(let's just hope he isn't still making them for bot fighting)

But what I see cited in all the articles I've read is "This is where the Big Hero 6 team builds and innovates their hi-tech gear, so you may also see a few of their upcoming inventions." which probably means that they'll have shenanigans where they test a new experiment.

But THIS is Maker's Market right next to it and hey, look it's Good Luck Alley! But it's probably how you'd imagine, something similar to the Savi's Workshop where you build your own lightsabers (they've been doing a lot of that lately).

But those banners are most interesting. In order of left to right-

Smash Bot, Cerberus Bot (which explains the Cerberus Lair sticker below), Worm Bot (Trina made the cut, hooray!), Little Yama, Snips

And of course, the most well known Megabot. (Also Saw Bot but he's beneath Worm where he belongs.)

[ancient-art-of-craft]

Christmas Bazaar SEASON

This is the time of year that makes me want to learn how to crochet because I want to MAKE A GIANT WHALE SHARK and TINY OCTOPUS. This is a need. Also that chicken. It is time to buy earrings and honey and jam and sodas from the sports team and anything but those 3D printed creatures.

Like I get the idea but idk man it feels sterile in comparison to Grandma Becky and her granddaughters trying to sell their clay earrings and bulky-weight knit hats.

It is time to browse for Christmas presents for your friends that might end up squirreled away in your own home. Cookies and specialty popcorn and caramel. Ornaments and dog treats. My neck of the woods hosts them in high schools and churches, where the orchestra/band/choir gets up and plays Christmas carols while browsing.

Depending on the parking and how popular it is, you're going to want to get there very early in the morning, but you're in luck, the Holy Grounds coffee shop is open. Or middle schoolers are desperately trying to make an Italian soda.

It's a fun Saturday, and you get to support local businesses over buying everything last minute off of Amazon and praying that it comes in time. I bought my friend mini whisks to hang in her ears. Phenomenal. There used to be a clockmaker. Once you get to know the people, they come back every year. The same company makes headbands and I buy one every Christmas, and now I have a small collection in my closet.

You say you want a cozy fantasy life, cozy fantasy is found at a Christmas Bazaar. Admission is free. Well, at least it is in my neck of the woods.

[frogcreates]

i had a great time a couple days ago at my local LGBTQ+ maker's market!!!! i'll be putting some new leftover stuff up in my shop soon, so keep an eye out for a post about that!

(also i went to my first pride fest oh my gosh i loved it!!!!) 🌈🌈🌈🩷🩷🩷

[nostalgicfun]

[luuxxart]

i just think the fool has a very big mutual crush on the moon, that’s all

[star-reyes]

Queer baiting in comics is BACK, BABY

[motof1bfs]

forget to tell the world i bought a custom flag with this design, made by me ofc

[randomnameless]

Why do the FEH devs insist on ignoring Nabatean lore so much?

I recently had a surprisingly cordial discussion on redshit with someone about the "nabateans = colonisers" take, and one of the main points raised was that the game was purposedly foggy around Nabateans/Sothis/their story because it would obviously favor a certain narrative (and thus make another narrative look, uh, not that marketable anymore).

To be honest, we still ended up with a product that had a lead go "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and yet that lead is still marketable enough to have raunchy cipher cards and 5 FEH alts, so I actually wonder if, while pissing on that lore had that purpose, it was ultimately pointless since Supreme Leader can still sell goodies despite her incarnation in FE16.

And not only Supreme Leader - but the entirety of WC where we basically have 70% of the cast crying/complaining about their "mixed blood" or lack of and basically adding their 10 cents to the "this race and its blood is the reason why the world sucks".

I mean, can you imagine Sylvain selling any goodies and alts if Flayn replied to his "wah wah people only are kind to me and want to fuck me because I have Nabatean blood :(" by some uncharacteristic "good for you, I have to hide my ears, had to dye my hair, have to lie about my family because if the truth is found out about my identity, I will be hunted and vivisected like an animal and harvested for parts by people who call my kin abominations - just like what happens in the game where the same people who call my kin "abominations" ally with a classmate who calls me a creature and pretends I am incapable of human feelings based on my race".

FE Fodlan's main selling point is its cast of students, for various reasons, but even if I tried to kid myself, Nopes and FEH made it clears : students are the main selling point.

If you spare more time and attention to the Nabatean plot/lore, the students either grow from "likeable" to "despicable" or worse, you won't gaf about them because yeah sure, Hilda might be upset because people expect things from her due to her crust, but it would feel like a "peanut" compared to Seteth's irrational (granted, it's not so irrational since GW exists) fear that Flayn's newest friends would dissect her if they learnt she was a Nabatean, and being conflicted by finally letting her have human friends and form bonds she crave, or protect her due to the trauma from the genocide of their species.

Don't get me wrong, I love peanuts, I mean, not everyone can have a tragik of loaded backstory!

And yet, given how this verse's DNA is "can you fight against the red emperor who uwus about you", they had to add copious amounts of Earl Grey to their games so there's no clear-cut factions :

The "Your alien blood and its influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command" vs "I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

is turned to :

"Your alien blood Crests and its your church's influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command"

"I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

Sprinkle with the cast's hammering here and there that the "reforms" might be needed - but never develop on what they are - and add a few baseless and groundless takes as a toping (basically everything Claude says about tolerance and the general "isolationism/foreign policy" stuff) and you get FE Fodlan where the Red Emperor's war isn't seen as the catastrophe it is in the other entries from the series!

Now, for FEH...

FWIW, the F!F!Billy's trailer had them try to explain that Sothis was a bit pissed about her slaughtered/massacred children when Nopes never gave any reason about why she was pissed - maybe on Billy's behalf bcs Jerry's dead, but come on, she would indeed deserve the medal of the worst parent in the franchise if that was the case, since Billy can murder her daughter without Sothis taking over ! - but given that they cannot write/go against the source game those characters are from.

They tried a bit, with B!Supreme Leader and Hegemongard's FB, but then it stopped (because she had no "new unit" released since then lol) and I can understand why : Hegemongard came out before the Supreme Emblem, and Hegemongard hates dragons who are seen/perceived as gods by some of their human followers. Come FE17, and now Supreme Emblem accepts Alear because they are "one of the good ones". We can come up with HCs and details and talk about what are emblems or if Hegemongard's views were only hers at the end of AM all day long... But imo, Doylist wise, it still feels it's a retcon because the devs from the main games tried to scrap and remove the most "controversial" traits she had.

For the other characters... Well, you see what Marianne is in FEH (but even in her base games), she's one of the few characters who reacts - in a way - to the partial history about relics and demonic beasts and all... only to give sad uwus to Maurice.

FE16 (and Nopes) refused to have any "student" character react to the Nabatean lore/reveal, about what are relics and all. There are no lines, Claude shared some knowledge in the explore section of VW's last chapter, but we don't have anyone muse or think or even talk about what are relics, what are crests, and what kind of fuckery their ancestors or the ancient humans of Fodlan did.

With that in mind, FEH can't do much : either they write Marianne in a retcon-y way like what happened for Hegemongard (and they're not afraid to piss on characterisation, look at Lyon!), or they flanderise her "character" and develop her around 3 lines she had in the game in her paralogue, and continue to give sad uwus about Momo when he was at best a guy who slaughtered and murdered so much that he abused the Nabatean turned into a relic to the point where he turned in a demonic beast even if he had a matching crest, or at worst, had been part of Nemesis's piñata party in Zanado and was something of a genocider.

Tldr :

Why FE Fodlan never gaf about Nabateans : earl grey + the marketable cast has to stay marketable and you can't sell peanuts at the same price you'd sell swordfish

Why FEH dgaf about Nabatean lore : they can't afford to retcon characters + they have to sell peanut alts with the same seasoning they had in their base game.

For what it's worth though, I think FEH is more daring than the base game(s) given how they gave more lines and screentime to Rhea - through her different alts - than GW. And they even designed her Halloween!alt's lines to piss on some of Claude's assertions, while the various FB involving members of the church also - indirectly - reply to some accusations thrown their way in FE16 when, FE16, never gave them an opportunity or lines to explain that those takes were full of dung.

*"but random, maybe she doesn't know that the crests she often decries is "dragon blood"!"

It's highly debatable, especially given what she and Hubert throw to Billy in CF - but even if she doesn't, Doylist wise we still have a character who, knowingly or not, says "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and who is never called out on her prejudice. That's more of an issue regarding the general writing though, she has to be a red emperor and took pages from Ashnard's book, and yet, the player must still feel bad and want to romance her, so her mindest/goal cannot be looked at too closely, because, I guess, even the devs thought it would be difficult to romance her (thus sell goodies!) if more light was shed on the "blood from this race corrupts our people" schtick -> which in turn would also make characters whose backstory and gimmick rely on "crying about crests" be way less likeable, thus marketable and able to sell goodies.

[tinygalaxykid]

My zine on vending for the first time! I wish I hadn't waited so long to start and now hopefully others can start too!

[elaho]

Paisley's Bridal Boutique is now compatible with Stardew 1.6!!

**Please scroll to the bottom of the page for an important announcement**

Paisley's Bridal Boutique has been given a major revamp for Stardew 1.6! Over 10 new hats, 5 new shirts, and 4 new pants have been added, along with vanilla wedding hats, shirts, and pants are available, including Mermaids Pendant and Bouquet.

All pants, skirts, and dresses now have full animation compatibility. You can now wear your favourite outfits wherever you'd like - farming, mining, fishing, dancing, getting married, and more!

Four official Flower Dance outfits have been included, so you can wear a fancy dress or suit to match your mate at the festival.

Much more content has been added to the Boutique! Check out the Changelogs on Nexus Mods for a complete list of changes and additions for version 1.3.0.

Paisley's Bridal Boutique is available to play for free on Nexus, CurseForge, and ModDrop.

**Important Announcement**

I've been thinking about the future of the Maker's Market for a long time and needed to decide whether continuing to make mods is something I can continue affording financially and with my spare time. But the thought of quitting made me really sad.

Making mods is something I enjoy doing and being able to share them with the community makes me really happy. I know many people would also be sad if things ended here.

Because of things, I've launched a Patreon page for the Grampleton Maker's Market [and other Stardew mods]. This way, I can continue to work on creating the mods and content I'm passionate about while also being able to give players the immersive and well-rounded content they deserve.

My mods will always be free to play, so my Patreon will be focused on relieving a bit of my financial stress while also sharing exclusive behind-the-scenes content, character developments, updates, sneak-peaks, Q+A's, and voting polls regarding the Market and other Stardew mods with my patrons.

I will add more Patreon tiers in the future, but I've decided to keep things simple by starting with two tiers so I don't end up overworking or pressuring myself to pump out content. Thank you all for your generous support and encouragement over the years. I truly appreciate each and every one of you <3

Much love, -Elaho

[nelkcats]

Double Trouble

During a convention in Gotham, the Fentons brought the rebuilt Fenton Ghost Catcher, they were extremely proud of their invention and were going to catch as many ghosts as possible at their paranormal convention.

But as is normal in Gotham, a rogue attacked. Croc personally wasn't too interested in what was going on there but he was paid by some others to cause a distraction while some villains robbed the place and extra money was always great.

From the looks of it, the news that the Fentons were coming to Gotham were public. The Fentons were known as very reclusive weapon makers with peculiar interests. Their inventions sold very well, and were extremely dangerous so Peguin assumed that even if they were destined for "ghosts" they would work perfectly fine with bats.

Jason already knew that the two weapon inventors were in the city, the Bat was too paranoid not to know, but the Fentons never showed that they wanted to cause harm so when Croc attacked Red Hood was guarding the place.

The problem was that during the battle he was pushed into the Ghost Catcher and separated into two halves. One looked like the normal him but more ghostly? while the other was more lively and energetic. The second one looked like a bigger version of what Robin would have been without his death. Of course, the invention blew up right after that, and the Fentons looked sad.

Danny scrambled to hide both Jason before his parents noticed, motioning for him to be quiet as he watched the villains make off with the anti-ghost weapons. He knew the convention would turned into a mess since the beginning.

[tadashitea]

The Bot Shop is finally open in Pacific Wharf and it's pretty accurate to the concept art but there's one thing in particular that bugs me-

You can see Callaghan's mask in the top one, sure, but what's the one next to it? I can't for the life of me remember seeing this and can't seem to find it online either (so if you know, I'll delete this rn) but until then-

It's awfully similar to Boba Fett's mask:

Green, red around the eyes, yellow lines on the top portion. It even resembles a little bit of the shape of a Mythosaur skull. I've had other theories but I'll wait and see if anybody can identify it first.

[vigilskeep]

sister magdalene squinting at the depiction of the herald of andraste: are you fucking with me Maker

magdalene: the maker has rewarded my faith by allowing me to raise the herald of his bride 🙏😔 i thank him each day for granting me the strength to persevere through the indignity of my trials to reach this highest of honours

toram: do NOT try that line on the seeker

magdalene: fuck you i thought it was pretty good

toram: exactly i’ll never hear the end of it

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Capitalists hate capitalism

As the Marxist agitator Adam Smith once said, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Smith understood that capitalists hate capitalism. They don’t want to compete with one another, because that would interfere with their ability to raise the prices their customers pay and reduce the wages they pay their workers. Thus Peter Thiel’s anticapitalist rallying cry, “competition is for losers,” or Warren Buffett’s extreme horniness for businesses with “wide, sustainable moats.”

These anti-capitalist capitalists love big government. They love no-bid military contracts, they love ACA subsidies for health insurance companies, they love Farm Bill cash for Cargill and Monsanto. What they don’t love is markets.

Case in point: pharma giant Merck. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) includes a provision that allows Medicare to (finally) start (weakly) negotiating the prices it pays for (a tiny handful of) drugs. If you’re scratching your head and wondering if you understood that correctly, let me assure you, you did: the US government is currently prohibited from negotiating drug prices when it bargains with pharma companies.

In other words: Medicare simply pays a pharma companies — whose products build on billions in publicly funded basic research, whose taxes are reduced by billions in research credits, whose patents are backstopped by billions in enforcement — whatever it demands.

To do otherwise, you see, would be socialism. Markets are “efficient” because they “discover prices” through bidding and selling. In the case of publicly purchased drugs, the price that Uncle Sucker “discovers” is inevitably “a titanic sum” or possibly “add a couple more zeroes, wouldya?”

Enter the IRA. Starting in 2026, Medicare will be permitted to negotiate the price of ten (10) drugs. The negotiations will use the prices of other drugs from the dysfunctional, monopolized market as a starting point and go up from there. The negotiations go on for three years, and there are multiple stages where pharma companies can hit pause with court challenges:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-05-11-regulators-bungling-drug-price-reform/

The system will not consider the prices that Medicaid or the VA (which are allowed to bargain on prices) pay. Nor will it consider the prices that other governments pay — the US is alone in the wealthy world in offering the anticapitalist price-taking posture when dickering with the pharma companies.

But this isn’t enough for Merck. They are suing the Biden administration over the IRA’s drug pricing plan, arguing that it is an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/06/merck-sues-biden-administration-over-medicare-drug-price-negotiations.html

Merck is represented by Big Law firm Jones Day, who made their bones by representing the RJ Reynolds from smokers with lung-cancer, arguing that the smoking/cancer link wasn’t scientifically sound. That’s not the only fanciful argument they put before a judge: Jones Day also represented Trump in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election (they also hired Trump’s counsel Don McGahn as he exited the White House’s revolving door).

As Ryan Cooper writes for The American Prospect, Merck’s argument is that the “fair market” value of its drugs can only be discovered if its single largest customer — Medicare — simply pays whatever Merck demands of it:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-06-08-merck-negotiating-drug-prices-unconstitutional/

They explicitly denounce the idea that a powerful buyer should use its market power to extract price concessions from sellers like Merck: “leveraging all federal insurance benefits (amounting to over half of the prescription drug market) to coerce companies to abandon their First and Fifth Amendment rights is a quintessential unconstitutional condition.”

Rebutting this argument, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said, “negotiating for the best price is as American as apple pie. Since when is competition in this American system a bad thing? Why should we be the patsies around the world and pay the highest prices for medicines?”

The irony here is that Merck itself is a very powerful buyer. Whether negotiating commercial leases, raw materials or wages, Merck is ruthless in extracting the lowest prices it can from its suppliers. The company attained its massive scale the old fashioned way: buying it. By drawing on its nearly limitless access to the capital markets, Merck bought out dozens of its competitors:

https://mergr.com/merck-acquisitions

Anticapitalist investors funded these acquisitions in the expectation that Merck would be able to use its market dominance to pay suppliers less, charge customers more, and use some of the resulting windfall to corrupt and bully its regulators so that it could buy still more companies, charge still higher prices, and impose crushingly low prices on still more suppliers.

The IRA’s drug-bargaining provisions are extraordinarily weak. When they were first mooted in 2021, I talked about how Democrats were caving on muscular drug price controls that would benefit every American (except a handful of pharma shareholders):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/18/bipartisan-consensus/#corruption

They did so despite wild, bipartisan support for imposing price discipline on Big Pharma, and ending the 300% premium Americans pay for their drugs relative to their cousins abroad. 95% of Democrats support strong price controls; so do 82% of independents — and 71% of Republicans:

https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2021/11/healthcare-affordability--majority-of-adults-support-significant-changes-to-the-health-system.html

No one believes Big Pharma’s scare stories about how this would kill R&D: 93% of Americans reject this idea, including 90% of Republicans. They’re right — nearly all US basic pharma R&D is directly funded by the federal government, with pharma companies privatizing the gains:

https://khn.org/news/article/public-opinion-prescription-drug-prices-democratic-plan/

Despite the fact that really whipping the shit out of Big Pharma would be both popular and good for America, the Dems’ final version of pharma bargaining is a barely-there nothingburger where ten drugs will become slightly cheaper, after the next federal election. This is called “political realism” and it’s a fantasy.

The idea that limiting drug controls to the faintest, most modest measures would make them easier to attain was obvious nonsense from the start, and Merck’s anticapitalist lawsuit proves it. Merck will settle for nothing less than total central planning — by Merck. For Merck, the role of the federal government is to wave through a stream of mergers culminating in Merck’s ownership of every major drug; patent extensions for these drugs to carry them into the 25th century and beyond, and unlimited sums paid for these drugs on Medicare.

Given all that, there would have been no downside to the Dems passing an IRA that subjected the drug companies the same modest, commensense, market-based discipline we see in Canada, or the UK, or France, or Germany, or Switzerland.

But that’s not the IRA we got. Instead of defending a big, visionary program in court, the Biden admin is facing down Jones Day and Merck to defend the most yawn-inducing, incrementalist half-measure. What a wasted opportunity.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/09/commissar-merck#price-giver

[Image ID: A caricature of a businessman with a money-bag for a head and a stickpin bearing the Merck logo, standing atop a pile of bundled $100 bills. At the bottom of the pile, a frowning, disheveled Uncle Sam offers up a $100 bill.]

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Shabbos bag: done (besides weaving the ends)

The first image is how my tanakh looks in it, the second is after I've put the pins and keychain I got for this bag on the band (still haven't found jewish pins I like, but I'll look more). I don't know if I like the straps still, but the homely appearance of this bag kind of lends itself to The Vibe. Learning how to accept things that are less than perfect, B'H.

[modormouth]

cursed idea that i had to model: the toriningen girls from yume nikki reimagined as low poly momo-like creatures.