#mid market

[theeboyracer]

Eat Carnation Mush

[demujeresblog]

Visa publica el primer Índice de Capital de Trabajo de empresas en crecimiento

Las empresas del mid-market en América Latina y el Caribe (ALC) tienen un gran potencial para convertirse en los nuevos gigantes empresariales del mañana a medida que continúan escalando, muestran una resiliencia extraordinaria y llegan a nuevas audiencias globales.   A medida que estas empresas en crecimiento continúan enfrentando los desafíos del panorama económico actual, Visa (NYSE: V)…

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Honda TN-Acty Big Cab, 1982. A face-lifted version of the first generation Acty truck with a cab extended by 100mm (note the small window in the C-pillar).

[modormouth]

and for her neutral special homura wields  ✨g u n ✨

also free homura meme image for you to use

[dailyadventureprompts]

Villain: Duke Sabrian, the Trueborn Bastard

The barred windows of the carriage let in only cold mountain air and the endless procession of crucifixes marking the road up to the Duke's castle. You idly wonder if he's picked out which ones he'll nail you and your friends to once you've told him that you've failed.

Though he styles himself the gallant exemplar of everything the noble warrior class could be, Duke Sabrian is in truth the embodiment of all the failings of his social order: brutish, bloody-minded, and blind to any plights beyond his own. More than a decade past Sabrian fought a war against his own sibling to seize control of their duchy and since then has ruled from an isolated mountain fortress fearing reprisals from the people he subjugates.

As long as the Duke rules things will continue to get worse, and it's only a matter of time before the party and those they care about get caught up in it.

Adventure Hooks:

Exhausted after delving their first dungeon the party are shaken down by a group of the duke's men, who are better armed and carry the threat of reprisal should the party draw steel on them. Perhaps it's better to give the toughs what they want and live to fight another day... say after finding out where the guards get drunk so they can trick/charm/beat the location of the stolen treasure out of them.

Countess Ledrick has a problem. Despite being one of the mercenaries who helped win Sabrian his throne she was never formally sworn in as one of the duke's vassals when she took over her lands and is widely regarded as little better than an upjumped brigand. Now a large shipment of tribute heading for the Duke's council has gone missing on the borders of her land, and it's only a matter of time before the blame comes to rest on her. She'll need all the help she can in recovering the lost treasure which just might be the party's ticket to a position in her court.

While out in the market a couple of the party members are approached by a woman in a hood doing her very best to try to seem inconspicuous. Through smiles and whispered pleas she begs them to help her hide from the guards, palming them a small handful of jewels in the attempt. If the party gives her aid she'll eventually introduce herself as Mina, keeping most of her story to herself but letting slip that she stole something precious from Sabrian and that she needs their help getting out of the duchy and into some neighbouring lands. It'd be an arduous journey, made even more arduous when in the next town the party discover posters and criers proclaiming that the duke's wife Minerva has been kidnapped, promising a great reward for her return and a terrible punishment for those who made off with her.

Background: While many born into the nobility feel confined by their station, Sabrian always knew he was made to rule. He was one of those people who excelled at the standards he was expected to meet, for whom the path of life is not only a straight line but part of a larger destiny that gave order to the world.

The problem was that Sabrian was the younger son, and his older sister chafed against noble life as much as he suited it. Sabrina was high minded, well read, and was possessed of several strange notions. The first being that those who own and govern the land owed something to those that lived upon it, the second being that her name was Solace, not Sabrina. The third was that she was not a woman, simply a person. The fourth and perhaps most outrageous was that she they would not be taking a husband, nor even a lover for the purposes of producing heirs and rather than just handing over their claim on the duchy to their well deserved brother like so often happened when the noble family tree refused to branch they would instead be creating some kind of made up of council made up of their vassals the elected mayors from the duchy's largest towns.

Sabrian wasn't having any of it, his sibling had clearly gone mad and was denying both of them (but mostly him) their birthright. After years of arguing, petitioning their mother on her death bed, and an outright threat of banishment from the now ascendant Duke Solace, Sabrian went out, raised himself an army, and went to war with his softhearted kin. The fighting was worse than anyone could have imagined, the people rose in Solace's defence and Sabrian had to resort to brutal tactics to put them down burning villages and farmland in the drought of summer and marching his followers over the ashes towards their next target.

Solace's head was delivered to him in a basket the same day he took the throne, and for the decade since Sabrian can't hold court without remembering the reproachful look in his sibling's dead eyes.

Further Adventures:

Knowing the common people hold no love for him, the duke governs from an ancestral bastion high in the mountains, a cold and lofty perch quite suitable for an unassailable tyrant who thinks himself above all. His remoteness and unwillingness to bother has paradoxically allowed his vassals the ability to govern their lands the way they see fit, which leads to a patchwork of graft, neglect, and personal ambition. In recent years Sabrian has sought to curve this independent streak by putting more and more resources behind his personal guard, who are now commanded by a former bountyhunter famed for her ruthlessness.

Increasing isolation gives the party a chance to rally together a resistance against the duke, but such a coalition might be built on shoddy foundations. A sizeable minority of his underlings feel hard done by him and might turn if given the right encouragement, though they may prove untrustworthy. Solace's old supporters have been ruthlessly hunted and will be mistrustful of newcomers, especially those that fought under the usurper. Minerva's clan are powerful nobles in their own right in a neighboring territory, and once they have their daughter back would be happy to throw their support behind the party's plan to oust the useless tyrant, provided the party are willing to play ball with them.

Sabrian has been unravelling, retreating from public life, executing his servants an courtiers for suspected treason, even keeping his formerly loving wife locked in a tower for the better part of a year. In the ten years since he married Minerva to secure her parent's support for his usurpation he has been unable to father a child, no matter what healers he turns to or what concubines he lays with. The inability to produce an heir was one of his primary reasons for going to war with Solace, and now he is failing in that exact same noble duty. This rather ironic fate was delivered unto him by Litirenn, god of farmland and cultivation, as punishment for burning one of the god's shrines during his rampage through the countryside ( along with the shrinekeeper who was an outspoken proponent of Solace's reforms. The god is going to be watching the party's actions closely if they set themselves in opposition to the duke, giving them a nudge now and again, ensuring the land rises to support them, that kid of thing.

Art 1

Art 2

[retropopcult]

United Airlines stewardesses, 1948

[aethersea]

devastating to go into the tag for an obscure vampire movie I've been quietly obsessed with for years to find mostly gifsets of minor characters (played by big-name actors) and review blogs saying they didn't like it :(

@ everyone who made a post saying "I liked it :)" I am blowing you a kiss. everyone who made a lovely gifset or photoset of the cinematography I am tipping my hat. that one poster that said "bro did y'all just miss the Entire Message about class and race or???" I am shaking your hand with enthusiasm there was SUCH a message about class and race

anyway everybody should watch Night Teeth and revel in glitzy flashy modern vampires in LA with me

[yume-fanfare]

new hobby: make bad edits engstars-ad style

[ladyluscinia]

Saw Venom 3 today and left feeling entertained but also perplexingly less satisfied than the previous two and kind of like they had carefully set up a tackboard and methodically pinned all the necessary parts for actual stakes I give a shit about but then handed me the thread to actually connect them while giving me an apologetic 🥺

...and then I remembered this one was produced entirely under the MCU formula (including giant CGI fight that can't be bothered to involve the narrative) and it all made sense.

Still the actors were having a blast and the shots were fun and they did go heavy handed on the Symbrock even as they left it hanging so still better than most recent MCU

[foxyldraws]

The most unrealistic part about aftg is that Tilda owned a house in San Jose

[bingqiuhateabortion]

Had a chance to smell these hualian fragrances recently

and. Xie Lian one was generic but it didn't smell bad, kinda like a floral washing powder... But Hua Cheng STANK and also his smell was surprisingly strong even though the samples have already weathered a bit. Imagine taking every toilet freshener smell you know and pouring them in one bottle alright and then spritzing right into your face. So I don't know why would any of you trust me and my tastes but i like smelling different fragrances!!! and both of these weren't good. So don't buy them. Definitely don't buy the HC one because i had a splitting headache before but nearly threw up right there after smelling him i swear to god. (My first thought was that he smells like that to ward off anyone trying to approach Xie Lian kinda like skunk)

[thegreatyin]

what do you mean i need church renown 10 in order to get legenda cosmogone. what do you mean a breath of void is somehow harder to get than the impossible theorem at this point. i'm gonna kill you

[appallinnballin]

YUO WILL NOT BELIEVE YOUR EYES

[kinnbig]

never not thinking about that time that one of the big-name BL blogs on this site tried to insist to me that Tong isn’t gay and it was actually all just ‘marketing’

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

streaming tv is like the fantasy/fiction need for a mid list. big money thrown at projects expecting that big money can make anything too big to fail, when the reality is that there’s only so much profit to make in an oversaturated market and only so many properties that can be the number one most popular thing at a time, but no matter how many projects fail or how variable the quality of the art is, it’s never going to be acceptable again to shore up most of your projects with only SOME money and letting that “mid list” find longlasting audiences that provide your baseline business

i wish both streaming tv and the publishing industry would spend less money on more projects that cultivate good writing. i want good writing and long projects to get invested in so bad that i'm caring less and less for production

my thesis statement is that tv shows are being canceled because they cost too much money. a mid list would have saved most canceled shows. higher production costs don't mean better writing, and lower production costs don't mean worse writing

the publishing industry is asking for shorter fantasy books and is canceling series and leaving authors behind because it is throwing all its money at shiny new things that are not actually new and don't stick

all of this without investment in a "mid list" to keep baseline profits coming or to keep a foundation of writers paid and busy

if companies spent less money on shows, would they last longer? would they hone writers' skills more? does this extend to animation where the budgets are so much smaller? or is there no world where i could get multiple 25-episode seasons of arcane and i'm just deluding myself

fantasy books especially have had an oversaturation problem for years, but the biggest problem is an over-reliance on debuts without investment in originality or in authors’ futures. what this looks like is big money thrown at marketing shiny debuts or at a subset of the old familiar faces in fantasy that established themselves before the shift in industry mindset. everyone else either gets scraps or can’t find their footing after their debut. you either go viral somehow or you go home. to make money, the only acceptable projects are generic or are recognizable rehashes of previously popular but specific ideas. fantasy is considered a popular genre now, but in my opinion, fantasy has never stopped being niche, but the need to find bigger audiences and bigger investment has resulted in pushing fantasy series that don't do anything new or interesting and actively spurn good prose, but can appeal to as many people as possible (instead of weird fantasy freaks, aka me, i'm freaks, now most of the freaky fantasy i can find is in video games and a single tear is rolling down my face)

now tv. buffy the vampire slayer cost about 1-2 million per episode. star trek tng cost 1 million per episode

look where we’re at with streaming services. tv shows that cost millions and tens of millions of dollars per episode. the sopranos redefined what prestige tv meant and it cost 2-6 million per episode. chasing the new prestige mindset, game of thrones started out at 6 million per episode. today, early game of thrones’ budget from about 2011-2013 is joked about like it’s chump change, especially for game of thrones or hbo. but prestige tv reeled in that subscriber money. the streaming model today is the continuation of the prestige tv model, except that every show needs to be prestige, no matter the audience or genre or story structure. because prestige tv made money

now that the baseline model for helping your subscription/channel make money is to throw 6 million+ per episode, it's no longer a mystery why seasons are getting shorter and shorter. and the demand for higher and higher production will only mean that shows take longer and longer to make

netflix shelled out 6 million per episode - what an oddly familiar number, huh? - for stranger things season 1. season 4 cost 30 million per episode

wheel of time season 1: 10 million per episode. rings of power season 1: 58 million per episode. these are adaptations btw, not original IPs, but this is SEASON ONE money you’re looking at. i liked both rings of power and wheel of time decently, but my hot take is that both of these shows are under-written and over-produced. why so much money thrown at projects with writers at the helm who are inexperienced in the fantasy genre? rings of power in particular is bank-breaking and it was originally planned to run for several seasons

the mandalorian season 1: 15 million per episode. andor season 1: 20 million per episode. the acolyte season 1: 22 million per episode

remember that the subscription model requires subscribers to make money and requires NEW subscribers to satisfy the hunger for growth, and star wars is a single IP with established fans. the mandalorian, andor, and the acolyte all took major risks in different ways. the mandalorian actually fell back on star wars fundamentals (rather than being something net new in my opinion) and its risk was in being a show, not a movie, and the first of its kind on streaming for star wars

andor could be the riskiest fantasy/sci-fi show to hit streaming, ever. 12 episodes for season 1 that cost 250 million overall, not 6-8, explores marxist themes, and did not pull in new subscribers. what popularity it does have is purely due to word-of-mouth and plain old good writing, rather than marketing or by simply being part of star wars. it was originally going to be 5 seasons but is now going to be 2 because... 250 million dollars is a lot to spend on one season of television that didn't make you a lot of money. simple as that, even if andor is the best live-action thing disney has produced in decades in my opinion

the acolyte season 1 was 8 episodes and cost 22 million per episode, which armchair critics on social media are stating is the reason why the show has been canceled. haters will just say it was canceled because of bad writing, and fans are saying it was because of review-bombing and the diversity of the cast and crew

i disagree on some level that the acolyte is the first star wars show to be canceled, because again, andor was going to be 5 seasons and is now going to be 2, losing over 50% of the original story. even fans of the acolyte will agree that its writing wasn't the best. most fans who have seen andor will agree that it is the best-written star wars media ever on par with the best episodes of clone wars. both shows brought me over to disney plus when no other show or movie did

but in effect, both shows have been canceled

my take is that if a mid list existed, both shows should have been on it. they are part of an established IP with established fans who were going to watch the shows no matter what. most people with star wars fatigue would not have heard about the uniqueness of these shows until later and would have probably picked them up by their finales or by their season 2s

if they were not star wars properties and were original stories instead, both of these shows were still fairly unique doing things that appeal to "weird" subsets of sci-fi/fantasy fans. the mid list would have been perfect either way

i firmly believe that a mid list would have saved both of these shows. 6 million per episode MAXIMUM. ideally less. not because i dislike either show, but because i care about writing above all else. pay 1 writers room a fair wage and let them go fucking nuts for a few seasons. as long as everyone else in the production is being paid a fair and living wage, i don't care how little is spent on the show

stranger things should have been a mid-list anthology series that ran forever, wheel of time should have been a mid-list tv fantasy with at least 12 episodes per season to do any justice to those massive books but also to pay homage to the book series' roots as high fantasy that goes on and on without much of a plan and with often mid and sometimes junky writing but with appeal in that it was long-running, made readers familiar with the same characters every book for many hundreds of pages each, and is something of a comfort read now for many fans

i think that reality is catching up to streaming services and things are going to get worse before they get better

but i also think that the next "evolution" of tv should be the return of the mid list

[goshyesvintageads]

American Sugar Refining Co, 1955