#reworded from an anti

[pidovespost0519]

🫵

It is always morally correct to imagine ur F/O as fatter and hairier than they appear in canon.

[olderthannetfic]

Sending this to you specifically because I feel like you're the only normal brained person about this series.

I read Captive Prince a couple of years ago and liked it fine, as someone who doesn't have a strong preference for or against m/m and therefore isn't well-versed enough in its clichés to notice whether it reads like something full of cliché fanfic tropes. I really liked the use of language, some of the historical/political stuff, some of the ways that the characters are made complicated or unreliable.

The problem is, I've since coincidentally read most of the books that were Pacat's inspiration and. Well. Like 80-90% of the stuff in there has direct parallels in one of those. I'm not sure if there are more than three original thoughts in there.

I am not joking, if you read 1. The Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolò by Dorothy Dunnett; 2. The Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling and 3. The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, you will find that some of the scenes were ripped off beat for beat, many jokes were taken and just lazily reworded, a lot of the character beats and arcs are at best a mashup of 2 or maximum 3 things from those books with the serial numbers filed off really poorly. There's a scene where some characters discover a suicide victim whose structure and descriptions are completely ripped off from another series, except Pacat fails to see what made the original scene so impactful. A lot of the pretty use of language is also directly copied from those, including some really really specific descriptors. It's so blatant!

And I don't see how people are okay with this! I know people who are fans of several of these works and they're totally cool with it! And honestly if it were some rando's unpublished original project I'd be cool with it too, but as a published beloved worldwide phenomenon with rabid fans? C'mon.

And another thing is, all of the other series mentioned above are balls to the wall insane. She just... she just made it bland. She took off most of the edge and reshuffled the elements into a fairly straightforward MLM love story with some light kink thrown in. It's not a BAD series, but I feel like I'm disappointed that someone read all my favourite books and THAT was their takeaway?

--

I started reading, got to the name of the series and burst out laughing.

And, wow, you brought up something totally new that I hadn't thought about! I'm impressed. Genuinely. Usually, I rant about all the reasons I hate the series while debunking the standard anti talking points.

--

I've read the Vampire Chronicles, but that was in the 90s and I read Captive Prince in like 2016 or after. I had zero recollection of common points. I haven't read The Lymond Chronicles despite years of hurt/comfort fans bugging me to do so, and I think I got like a chapter into the Nightrunner series before getting distracted...

The reason I found Captive Prince annoying and derivative is that it also reads exactly like the original m/m that was available when it was first being written, most notably the work of P.L. Nunn who was extremely famous for horny fan art but who also wrote some original m/m fantasy novels. The scene where they finally bone reminds me heavily of the one from... uh... what's the P.L. Nunn one where the prince creeps on that archer dude and he gets raped because of course and then the prince has to be ~patient~ and it's peak boring 2000s rape recovery tropes?

The rape backstory is not only lifted from Fushigi Yuugi (the author's fandom at the time) but is shared with basically 100% of original m/m from that era. It's sometimes the uncle, sometimes the stepfather. One single time that I can think of, it was the foster brother, but mostly it's that "funny uncle" type. Unless it's gang rape from a bad Gundam Wing fic. That was also everywhere.

Once somebody told me the author had previously shipped Tamahome/Nakago, I realized that they'd taken what would be a kind of unusual anime ship and made it a thousand times more boring by dumbing down the scary, tall general with the tragic backstory into an uke-appropriate waif.

So I guess what I'm saying is that there may be some inspiration you aren't familiar with, but it's the same story as what you said above: this is the blander remix.

--

As for why people are okay with this... honestly, most of the people who really adore the series whom I've talked to point to how it encapsulates the exact tropes and tone they loved in anime fic circa 2000.

As a fellow weeb, I loathed the tone of said anime fic circa 2000 and could not wait for tastes to change, so Captive Prince is a hideous blast from an unlamented past for me.

I think most people who love the series aren't familiar with its inspirations. Those that are may have consumed them quite a while ago and don't realize quite how direct the parallels are. Or, for the inspirations that aren't overtly canon m/m, the lure of it being Exactly Right may overshadow other things.

(They also mostly haven't read 90s fantasy doorstops that actually contain political intrigue, tactics and strategy. Captive Prince is a piss poor entry into this genre and should be recced for m/m, not this other stuff people constantly think is in there. None of these characters can reason their way out of a paper bag.)

More than any of that, there's a lot of love left over from when the series was a serialized original story on Livejournal in an era when we had vanishingly few original m/m works, especially long ones in a fantasy alternate world.

I think that is what gets it a pass when a new m/m novel presented as "m/m romance" or posted on one of the webnovel sites would be mocked for unoriginality. Many Captive Prince fans aren't (or weren't when they read it) all that familiar with the smorgasbord of original m/m available today. Many are unfamiliar with anime fanfic circa 2000, so this feels adjacent to the fic they've read but a little fresher... instead of like the week-old sardine tin I found it to be.

[transmutationisms]

hiii caden, any chance you could simplify/reword this post? as written it is rather difficult for me to parse. <3

hiya, sorry, stuck this in drafts and forgot it was in there 🙈 let me try to rephrase

there's a common issue i see (not just on here) where people try to make blanket statements about how motherhood / parenthood / children are valued socially, but they're thinking only in terms of individual attitudes and misunderstanding why the relevant politics result in statements that might seem contradictory at first. so for example, someone observes that there is, broadly, pressure to have and raise one's biological children. however, someone else points out that this logic doesn't apply to all people equally: in particular, racialised people and poor people are actively discouraged from having children, including by overtly eugenic means like forcible sterilisation (this still happens today!) and welfare policies.

what i was saying in the post was that there is not actually a contradiction between these two positions, despite one appearing 'pro' natalist and one appearing 'anti'. the trick is that the politics that drives both positions (the state's efforts to manage and exploit its population; a politics of human beings as biological resources; hence, what foucault termed 'biopolitics') demands not just the reproduction of a labour force and military reserve, but also the designation of subaltern populations who are considered as a biological threat to the nation / race / national future, and who must therefore be discouraged from reproducing and ultimately eradicated. the politics that highly values one population (eg, the white / 'native born' / able bodied / straight / cis couple and their biological children) is the same politics that inherently also devalues all others (indeed, the attributes that are valued are defined in part through the process of comparison/contrast; these are political designations in the first place).

it's just a common frustration of mine that people try to discuss this as a matter of personal attitudes and are therefore unable to connect natalist and eugenic policies to the biopolitical logics that drive them. it leads to really pointless conversations where people just kind of throw up their hands and act like these attitudes are contradictory or internally inconsistent; they're not. the consistency is not in a uniformly 'pro' or 'anti' position wrt childbearing; it's in the logic that demands and prizes certain bodies and populations, and scapegoats and attempts to eradicate others.

[dc-polls]

Starting Saturday!

Biggest DC Misconception

- Tournament Bracket -

Round One Misconception Matches:

"Damien" Wayne vs Damian talks super polite

Bernard is a great partner for Tim vs Tim was a stalker and unaccompanied minor

Jason was revived by the Lazarus pit vs Jason Todd has an autopsy scar

Jason tried to force Bruce to kill the Joker vs Batman is a dick to poor people

Tim Drake grew up next door to the Waynes vs Stephanie Brown is from Crime Alley

Dick and Jason wore pants as Robin vs Any Robin uses a Bo staff

Round Two Misconception Matches:

Round 1 winner 1 vs Damian has tried to kill Tim Drake multiple times

Cass only uses ASL vs Cass Cain is butch/masc

Round 1 winner 2 vs Dick wanted to send Tim to Arkham

Harley is a good guy now vs No Metas in Gotham

Round 1 winner 3 vs Roy Harper and Jason Todd are best friends

WFA is a good way to get into the world vs Nightwing is a slut/Himbo

Round 1 winner 4 vs Jason has Lazarus Pit Madness

Guy's personality in BTBATB is lacking vs Guy Gardner is an asshole

Round 1 winner 5 vs Tim is addicted to coffee or energy drinks

Wally is funny vs The joker is insane

Round 1 winner 6 vs Batfam calls each other by many nicknames

Pain-Free Life Superman vs Clark Kent is Kon El's Dad

John Constantine fucked a shark / everything vs John Constantine adopts *insert character here*

Orion (New Gods) is a huge douchebag vs The Anti-Life equation is a death equation

Dinah Lance is a psychologist for the other heroes vs Green Arrow cheated on Black Canary with Shado

John Stewart is boring vs The Question is a crazy conspiracy theorist in the comics

A couple quick notes:

I had to reword some titles to fit the grammar we're using

There were an overwhelming number of Batfam related entries, so they take up the first round to thin them out

I tried to match up similar entries throughout, as that seems to have worked well in past tournaments

[lovebvni]

i believed in shifting faithfully for about 3yrs until i sat and realized that its hard to find tips or an explanation of the validity of shifting that actually hold weight. How do u determine whether something is misinformation when there isn't any concrete info to compare and differ it from? I'm not an anti-shifter or anything and i believe in the possibility of multiverse etc but it's hard to navigate whether i am being fed someones shifting perception as fact or genuine information. i want to continue my journey with shifting but the shifting community is constantly rewording or denouncing what they once spread as fact & its hard to find anything reliable and that makes rediscovering my spark with shifting difficult. Any tips? Loll

i feel like the main reason things change in the shifting community is because we are all breaking out the toxic mindset of shifttok.

we are more evolving than changing, growing rather than becoming something different.

to regain my spark, i usually watch my material in shifting to, or read it, or idk man 😭😭 LMAO

besides that i talk to friends, make a new dr, or manifest a bit. just anything to be a pick me up. maybe drawing, listening to music while visualizing, or get a reading from me when they r open!! :D the basic thing you need to know about reality shifting is that the mutliverse is real and we are active in all places at the same time. like a tree, we have roots under ground and leaves above, but the roots aren’t any less than the branches. if anything conflicts with that (such as “you can’t do this because of this”) then you will know it’s misinformation. anything is possibly in any way you want to do it.

i hope this helped and i answered it correctly! sorry for getting to this late too 😭😭

[imptwins]

Why making any concessions to puritan rhetoric is a bad idea

(note for the uninitiated: 'anti' is short for 'anti-shipper', 'anti-ship', or 'anti-fan'; in this context it refers to people who get very vocally militant about opposing dark kinks/problematic ships in media, especially creative fandom spaces. Proship is simply the opposite, people who vocally believe people should be free to make/indulge in whatever as long as a line is drawn between fiction and reality.)

(note 2: this was written for cohost, i cbf rewording it lol)

I very often see people - both websites and individuals - making a concession to the people who come up to them yelling about problematic kinks and guilt by association and 'why didn't you block this person' blah blah blah. It's happened with a few BNFs (big-name fans) in the UTDR scene lately, I've seen it from artists I respect, from friends, hell I used to be in this camp myself. And, of course, it happened to this website about a year back, and the conversation has come up again recently due yet another tumblr exodus.

It makes sense. The most common stuff that antis go after is stuff very few people are into: lolisho/cub, ferals, heavy gore, heavy noncon. It's niche, the real-world applications are unquestionably vile, it's very easy to just say 'I also find this icky regardless of whether I really believe that all people into it are secret criminals, so, I'll just block the people who they say are bad and move on.' I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen someone respond to proship/antiship discourse with "I'm an adult with a job." Going to bat for this content is high risk, low reward. You're not going to make friends, you're going to lose them. YOU WILL LOSE SUBSCRIBER, etc. As a result of all this it's very easy to assume that anyone defending it must be into it.

But I'm not. I'm a writer who often deals with darker subjects, but most of the first-on-the-list anti stuff, I'm not into at all. I'm not into ferals or gore period, noncon I like purely as character exploration, lolisho I can enjoy from the perspective of what I call 'trauma repair.' There's probably a proper term for it. But the tl;dr is I've never been actively aroused by any of these things, not in fantasy and especially not otherwise. Whenever I write them, it's just fascination or character analysis. Whenever I have a 'this character can be any age you want' fic, in my head, they're 18+. Writing noncon is a weird challenge for me because I'm constantly battling with the alternate ending in my head where the victim breaks free, beats the shit out of their captor, etc. This isn't me trying to claim virtue through this, just stating my position.

So… Why do I go to bat for these things? Why do I get annoyed when websites block lolisho, when artists have 'proship DNI' in their bio, etc? It's lost me a couple friends, it's certainly cost me followers and general reach, it's gotten me blocked by countless people I respected the work of. It's earned me a few callout posts, multiple with 1k+ followers, and one particular obsessed stalker who tells anyone who will listen that I actually groomed a child (despite all evidence otherwise). It's caused me a really significant amount of trouble. Why die on this hill?

The answer's kind of simple, when you boil it down: fictional fantasies either affect reality, or they don't. This is why I go to bat for things I'm not into, but it's also why whenever you see someone making concessions to antis, it's never enough. Cohost banned lolisho last year (I believe it's still banned?? Unclear), but the antis still make constant callout posts about this site and its owners. Some of the team have even gone out of their way to state very firmly that they're against these things, they've gone above and beyond just 'ban the bad thing' and broadcast their views about the morality of it. You'll frequently see artists write some huge apology or clarification when a callout post hits, usually involving some variation of 'I do not condone x y z and think it's disgusting.'

It's never enough.

But it makes sense, when you think about it. By drawing a line, you have essentially agreed with the core angle of the people screaming at you: that a fictional fantasy affects reality. That it's dangerous. You will, by necessity, now have people start to work down the list. Incest, ferals, gore, noncon, sure. Any relationship with any kind of skewed power dynamic. Sibling-coded, minor-coded, postminor nonsense. All of these things are less easily agreed to than lolisho, I've seen countless porn artists concede with the core idea that lolisho is immoral, then they act like it's unreasonable that people just keep going until they're being told that a knot on a furry is bestiality, or a 23 year old dating an autistic 21 year old is pedophilia. These are genuine examples of things I've seen people dogpiled for. Seriously look up "postminor" if you want to see how bad this can get, on top of being absurd it's one-for-one the kind of gross ableist shit that Autism Speaks gets into.

But YOU AGREED TO THEM. You agreed with the core concept, that the fantasy must reflect reality. Of course they're going to keep demanding more; by the logic you used to agree with them, you are doing immoral things. If fictional lolisho is immoral, so are the rest of them. It's way easier to look at your average pic on baraag or inkbunny and go 'oh, eugh, vile,' but at the end of the day the cutesy played-for-laughs sleeping kiss, the dubcon bondage that you don't call dubcon, or the meet-cute where they're a bit too drunk, they're all immoral fantasies.

That's not even to get into non-sexual stuff. If the lolisho fantasy is wrong, so is running down civilians in GTA. Suddenly your notifs are full of 16 year-old Jack Thompsons with rainbow flags in their bios.

This really is an all-or-nothing debate. If fictional fantasies affect reality, then even the immoral fantasies that you're personally comfortable with, the cutesy coy playful ones, must be immoral. If fictional fantasies don't affect reality, then even the ones that make you uncomfortable, the ones that have you scrambling to close your browser in case the feds are looking, must be fine.

It should have become very obvious over the last decade that you cannot fence-sit on this. There's a huge internal disagreement going on among progressive/queer/compassion-minded people, on whether these kind of things affect reality, or whether they don't. You can learn to apathetically dismiss stuff that squicks you, or you can learn to sanitize everything you ever make so there's not a trace of contentious theming left. Immoral fantasies are immoral, or only immoral actions are immoral.

You're going to have to pick one.

[thestobingirlie]

i've seen ppl talk about steve leaving nancy at the party as proof that he behaved just as badly as nancy during their relationship and it confuses me sm. like from what we know, steve stepped out for a minute bc he was v upset after their argument then asked jonathan to take her home. esp given the context of the scene where nancy and jonathan (ie nancy seeking out jonathan to find out what really happened bc she doesn't remember) it would be so weird if jonathan was just lying about steve asking him to do that, which i've seen a lot of ppl say. like what reason would jonathan have to do that when nancy is already upset and confused (so it likely wouldn't be to spare her a painful truth which would be kind of ooc for jonathan imo) and specifically wants to know what actually happened? it doesn't even make sense from a colder point of view bc we know jonathan wants to be w nancy so why would he lie about something that would make steve look bad if he just told the truth. also i just cannot see steve, no matter how upset he is, leaving nancy there completely w/o knowing she had a way to get home when she's drunk; considering steve is consistently protective i think it would be extremely ooc for him to do that. like he was bitchy the next day w not picking her up but those are two v different situations.

people love to make things up to hate on the pretty girl.

jonathan, who has no reason to make steve look good, and actually doesn’t like him, says that steve asked him to take nancy home. he also tells nancy that steve was upset, and seems to know the barebones of the argument. which implies that he and steve had a little chat.

we see steve leave the house, while crying, but we don’t see him leave the party. i absolutely believe he went outside to cry (because why would he sob right in front of nancy, or everyone in his year?), and then either came in and got jonathan, jonathan followed him and spoke with steve, or he and jonathan had a conversation as jonathan was carrying nancy out the house.

he knew jonathan took her home!! he has to have at least seen them, and that means he didn’t actually leave the party.

and i think it’s so dumb, all those anti steve posts that try and reword all of steve’s actions as terribly as they can, and try to minimise nancy’s. it’s embarrassing. they both fucked up, but their fuck ups weren’t equal. why can these people not seem to admit that??

[dr-giggle-touche]

MY CARMEN SANDIEGO ESSAYYY/BIOGRAPHY note that this is just the base, I'MMA turn this to my teacher then she'll let us actually make it to an essay

Introduction Statement: The life of Carmen Sandiego, a glamorous life, the greatest chase.

Thesis Statement: Carmen herself had countless obstacles in her life, only benefitting the person she grew to be.

First Supporting Idea: The beginning of Carmen, a true mystery.

Born & found in Buenos Aires, Argentina, possibly in the 90’s.

She lived on an island, being carousel-cared for by 5 crime masters.

She started at the island’s crime school, VILE, while nearly graduating at the age of 16.

Second Supporting Idea: The life of a worldwide thief, “La Femme Rouge”.

In her early days, she gained her current crew of Zach, Ivy & Player.

She spent her life running from a worldwide anti-crime organization called ACME, soon even joining them for a short while.

Eventually, being kidnapped by her ex-caretakers to be made back into the criminal she studied to be

Third Supporting Idea: A world of red, hearts and minds changed by a coat and fedora.

Carmen’s known talent was to be a sneaky thief, yet using such quirk to benefit the world for good

She touched hearts to “fight the good fight” and changed, come of her ex-classmates/criminals, to leave that life of crime behind and be better

Her legacy remains as being a mystery, yet doing so much for her world by keeping valuable history safe

Closing Statement: My own opinion stands that, she is a true legend, a person to aspire to be, an inspiration

Reworded Thesis: Despite various hardships in her life, she’s stood her ground, her obstacles only assisting in her soaring life

[akisayas]

stolen from an anti and heavily reworded

btw proshippers in the selfship community this one goes out to you!

💗 ily, and so do all your f/os! <3

💫 you dont enable pedophilia and abuse, you shouldnt be disgusted in beliving fiction doesnt affect reality

💗 we wants you in this community and you dont bring anything bad the table, its not pathetic that we steal posts from antis

💗you deserve to be welcome in your community(s) and you dont deserve any harassment <3

[gameshowtrainwreck]

How to Rig a Game Show (Covering the 'How' and 'Why,' and a little 'How Come'), With Relevant Social Commentary

I'm trying to type up this big effort-assed essay on the American quiz show scandals and the part they played in why we are now where we are.

Nutshell is that, apart from Charles Revson, there was never really one single, abjectly malevolent actor in the whole thing, it was a series of people making small rationalizations and little moral compromises that ended up snowballing into something big enough, heavy enough, fast enough, and out of control enough that the whole thing plowed right tf into the court of public opinion and clobbered a hell of a lot of people.

And in a weird way, it serves as part of an explanation on why some of the shit that happened recently has happened. Let's examine the mechanisms in place that let it happen, how it took place, and who benefitted from it.

The punchline from all of that is that as a consequence of the whole fracas is those who produce game shows are legally mandated to hold a higher ethical standard than any producer for any segment of any news outlet operating within these borders. Neither a complaint nor a complement, just a description of the state of play as on the field.

But here is the complaint: 'Yellow Journalism' never really stopped being a thing with the American press, they just managed to shunt that image off to the tabloids and celebrity gossips, while rewording some of their more-blatant examples to appear more respectable. Even though 'if it bleeds, it leads' was the operative slogan of my day (at any rate), such sentiments were begrudgingly pooh-poohed by those trying to maintain a veneer of integrity. The information age has gone to demonstrate to everybody that engagement has always ranked higher than any proclaimed allegiance to objective fact.

Hell, look at how the US press was quick to call the recent clashes in Amsterdam as anti-Semitic attacks before everybody else found out it was a case of a bunch of out-of-towners literally trying to start shit with locals and the locals reminding the out-of-towners they were both unarmed and without air support. I don't think anybody who originally reported it as motivated by anti-semitism have bothered updating everybody on the newer developments, and if they did, they probably included it as a side note on an unrelated story, below the fold.

Yet some poor, dumb sumbitch of a college undergrad intern is looking at a nickel, minimum, in a federal penn if they bullshit the MSRP on a can of soup.

But despite the exaggeration of the stakes and the consequences involved, there are about three ways I can think of for cheating a game to happen (as in a deliberate and willful effort towards influencing what is presented as a genuine competition towards a pre-determined outcome), depending on who is involved with the deception, and the direction in which it is applied:

"Top-Down Bias:" This was the type of rigging that happened with The $64,000 Question and it's spinoff, The $64,000 Challenge. The shows' producers would meet with Revlon CEO Charles Revson, who would make thinly-veiled comments about the state of the contestants on the show, with producers adjusting material to be friendlier or more antagonistic in their questions for them based on those meetings.

The fault in this approach is that while any plan can be foolproof, there is no plan out there that is capable of being goddamned foolproof. As much as Charles Revson fuckin hated Dr Joyce Brothers' guts as a contestant, there really wasn't a way for the writers to get around her memorizing the literal encyclopedia of boxing they gave her, even to the point of asking her about people who were referees of notable fights.

"Bottom-Up Bias:" Contestants try to exert influence on the outcome of a game by means of outside assistance. Possibly the rarest instance of rigging a game that I've seen or studied-- it's only happened twice in all of history (that I know of). Charles Ingram's incredibly unsubtle coughing code on the UK's Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was the most-recent incident of this I can think of happening in real life.🎤

(please note: I do not consider Michael Larsen's exploitation of the big board on Press Your Luck to be an example of this; he wasn't the only one to notice the board had a set pattern, Bill Carruthers made mention of other people after Larsen thinking they had figured out the same system he had done. Larsen was just the quickest to spot and exploit it. Exploiting a bug in a game as it is designed is not cheating, that's on the production for not smoothing out that particular wrinkle at the start. Old Man Goodson liked to shit hisself over an episode of the pre-scandal chat-quizzer Two for the Money when a question came up that read something like "name a word that ends in the letters -TH;" The team figured out a lot of ordinal numbers could end that way, and ended up taking about five grand in early-1950s dollars in a game whose average payout was usually ≤ $750)

"Broadband Bias:" This was the most-common type of rigging that took place during the scandals. Frank Cooper's Dotto was the first show to be canceled on account of rigging but also involved just about every program in Jack Barry & Dan Enright's primetime catalog (Twenty One, Tic Tac Dough, High-Low, The Big Surprise, hell, let's throw Juvenile Jury in on that even though it wasn't a game show) and ultimately came to a head with Charles Van Doren's Senate testimony. Broadband Bias refers to the idea that you don't have to worry about an outcome that would lie beyond your control if you plan it all in advance and give contestants their instructions for each game.

To hear word from Barry and Enright themselves, they acted independently of Geritol's influence, What happened was that Twenty One had it's very first game end the show on a zero-zero tie. Reps with Geritol told B&E point-blank that they never wanted to see another episode like that ever again. The message Enright took from that was to prep the contestants.💰 Jack stated he had no idea what Dan was doing behind the scenes, but I think that was Jack and Dan's strategy to help soften the impact for each other's roles in it all. Not hatin', just statin'.

The plan was that losers would get a little extra in consolation prize money and/or spots on other quiz/panel shows B&E operated for their taking the dive, winners kick back some money to the production to help cover the losers' extra pay. Nobody the wiser would think anything truly wrong was taking place, they were entertainers, they were there to entertain, this was the check drawn from their performances.

The problem with this lies in the sheer number of participants you have to involve in order to keep the deception going: promises made to participants were not promises kept. Enright painted himself into a corner he couldn't get himself out of, and was exiled to Canadian TV for a decade as a result of it.

Does that mean that game shows are inherently more moral content than anything else out there?🍀 Absolutely not-- considering how much quid-pro-quo that Enright was running just for Twenty One (and this was a scheme Dan had apparently done across multiple shows), a cynical person could argue that the bulk of the reforms in the wake of the 1960 amendment to the Communications Act of '34 to address This Sort of Thing was not just to ensure honest competitions kept and maintained a paper trail (to show how they kept everything honest), but it also lead to one of the first instances of security theater in this country.

It's one thing to have a bank manager on stage talking about leaving questions sealed in a safe deposit box for a week (like on $64k), it's another to guide contestants through a bureaucratic process that could be presented in such a manner that contestants get the feeling that they would have no standing to launch proceedings if they had a grievance anyway.

Not that any of that excuses the predatory gaming that producers participated in during that rash of call-in-and-lose 'live game show' scams that were a thing for a handful of years during the first decade of the 22nd century. The three examples of game rigging I spoke of here were with the consideration of 'the contestant' vs 'the house' as parties ultimately neutral to one another; the house actually taking money from contestants📺 is something altogether different. I do hold the Call-In-and-Lose games as responsible for what would be every negative trope associated with mobile game ads (purposely terrible game demo, simplistic ruleset presented, little to no thought at all put into them, ad astra, ad infinitum).

And despite all of that, the public really wouldn't have cared if those accused had told everybody it was rigged to begin with. Case in point: Chuck Barris' The $1.98 Beauty Show had Johnny Jacobs announce it was fake at the beginning of every episode. Every episode straight up carried a disclaimer roughly saying "this is a satire. please do not think in any way that the participants are actually involved in any kind of competition because this is a satire. Please do not inquire about being a contestant on The $1.98 Beauty Show, even if you live in or plan to visit the Los Angeles area, because this is a satire. There are much better uses of your dignity that are worth considerably more than $1.98 because this is a satire." And that was on the screen for longer than the rest of the show's credits.

I mean, they didn't really say that in roughly that way, but I think you get the point.

I do believe that the that extra scrutiny that was incorporated into American game shows as a result of the scandals was a factor in why Mike Richards was cut loose from Jeopardy! as quickly as he was after Alex Trebek's passing. Going by accounts from those who had complaint against him while he was the executive producer at The Price is Right, one could not help but come away with the idea that Richards was trying to be the same type of business-as-usual Hollywood producer that empowered Harvey Weinstein to go hogg wild for as long as he did. Not a big deal in any other sector of the entertainment industry, apparently, but in a subsector of entertainment where you literally cannot do Business-as-Usual (including the regular charge of acting like a Goodson/Todman Producer towards Goodson/Todman Models that Bob Barker liked to pull), that is an absolute non-starter. If Sony Pictures Entertainment had their Standards & Practice rep go over the allegations, they likely saw an established pattern that did not carry good omens for Sony's fiscal futures if they allowed him to carry on. And remember, this was the company that released Mobius to theaters twice.

Unless you've sworn a life debt to them (and why the fuck would you ever go and do a fool thing like that in fuckin Hollywood of all places?), there are no bosses or coworkers that are really worth going to prison over, particularly when it comes to anything that would be highlighted by hand within the pages of "Legally Established and Enforceable Precedents About Which On Game Shows You Do Not Fuck Around (Even as a Joke Between Good Good Good Friends), Rev 5th Ed, Now With New Ingram's Rule"🏛️

It is possible to rig a game show, but if you wanna stay out of prison you gotta tell everybody it's rigged. There are three ways I have found to put a thumb on the scale if you wanted to but there really isn't a need to, because the money straight up ain't in it like it used to be. Pat Weaver at NBC (Sigourney's pa) had pushed for the 'magazine' style of sponsorship for programs for years before this happened in order to reduce sponsors' control of programming, and that was before the march of technology increased the number of competitors through the internet.

You can control the outcome of a closed system; nobody gives a shit that pro-wrestling is scripted because no promoter will suddenly decide to allow random members of the audience to participate in a royal rumble; but if your pitch is that anybody can play, then anybody should be able to win, and you should be able to show the receipts backing that up.

If you want to make a game show, make one that requires leaving the things that need to be left up to chance left up to chance. Trust your audience and your contestants, give them a game that builds tension organically.

Footnotes and bonus content:

🏛️ [it's an actual book, ask your Standards and Practices representative to show it to you the next time you're a contestant on a game show; some of them will even take the time to read it to you, and slowly because you're supposed to read that in your contestant agreement when you signed at the bottom saying that you understood it and their paychecks really depend on your having understood it.]

🎤[about the only other time I can think of something like that happening in the English-speaking world was, funnily enough, a plotline on The Phil Silvers Show— Fred Gwynne was a guest star as somebody previously attached to an Antarctic weather expedition and only had a guide to North American birds to read, and so he remembered all eight thousand-plus birds and went crazy because of it. Sgt. Bilko gets him on as a contestant on The $64,000 Question despite his protests and the bulk of the episode involves their trying to sneak Bilko and a walkie-talkie into the isolation booth to get Gwynne over that last hurdle (given a "now what?!" amnesia plot on Gwynne's part).

Beyond the anglosphere, there was an incident in the 1990s on Italy's 'Telemike' (named for the host, Mike Bongiorno. He hosted the Italian version of Jeopardy! back in the seventies for RAI; when a competing network managed to get him signed, they brought it back under a different name). A contestant tried to sneak in notes to help her out during the double-or-nothing final round and Mike caught her trying to look down her own blouse.

The point is that it hardly ever happens in fiction, and happens with the same apparent frequency as it does in real life.]

💰[Martin Scorsese's character in Quiz Show even mentioned as much to Rob Morrow's character, and more or less explained everything that would happen as a result of the scandals. When Jack Barry talked a little about it on the Dick Cavett Show, he still spoke about the stakeholders involved in the manner someone would assume somebody still intending to draw a paycheck in 'this town' would speak of them would say, which I don't fault one bit. And to his credit, Jack could have just as easily left Dan twisting in the wind when The Joker's Wild took off, but he didn't. I have to give the man props for that.

And while I'm on it, Goodwin's role in the scandals is given a little more impact in the portrayal because he's good friends with Robert Redford. Not hatin', just statin'; I'm sure you'd do the same if you directed a movie about a day in the life at your friend's job]

📺 [Not that I think setting up a game to be impossible to win is "rigging" like how I have attempted to discuss it; there have been several game shows that made a giant performance about the top prize being offered, and then you watch the show and realize there's no likely possibility that anybody would be lucky enough to collect on the amount as advertised. Just because you could win $50k at Plinko does not mean anyone has actually won it.

As a personal bit of advice to any quiz producers out there: don't do that shit. The game is the thing, make a good game and the prizes will take care of themselves]

🍀[lmao a Turkish crossword quizzer some time back got cancelled immediately after they had a whole round of questions making fun of President Erdoan on a live broadcast. News channels here wouldn't dare try to jeopardize their access like that]

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

Welcome to LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown

What’s currently going on:

Semifinals will drop January 10.

When will the showdown get started:

This showdown will be started on April 10 around UTC 14:00

Round 2 will start on June 8.

Round 3 will start on July 18.

Revival Rounds ran from October 16 to November 8.

Round 4 will start November 9.

Round 5 will start November 23.

Quarterfinals will start December 31.

Semifinals will start January 10.

General Showdown Information:

For this showdown the characters don’t have to be canon LGBTQ+ or disabled. As such if you see a character and are like why do they qualify, there is reasoning for it, and we can tell you why we included them. As a quick note, some qualifications/propaganda has been reworded to avoid using outdated language. Any changes like that will be denoted as so: [change]. Anything that is in italics is probably mod input, but without brackets nothing has been changed. If we miss any awkward/offensive terminology please let us know. The block button exists for a reason, please be civil.

Information for Round One:

Links to each wave: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six

Polls will drop 16 in each wave, one wave each day. Polls will start on the 10th and go to the 15th. They will drop around UTC 14:00-15:00

Information for Round Two:

Links to each wave: One, Two, Three

Polls will drop 16 in each wave, one wave each day. Polls will start on June 8th and go to June 10th. They will drop around UTC 14:00-15:00

Information for Round Three:

Links to each wave: One, Two

Polls will drop 12 in the first wave, 13 in the second. Polls will start on July 18th and go to July 19th. They will drop around 15:00-17:00 UTC.

Information for Revival Round:

Revival Round 1

Revival Round 2

Revival Round Finals

The first round of polls will drop on the 16th, in matchups of four. Further matchups will drop the next weeks as matchups of two until we are left with 7 characters coming back.

Information for Round 4:

Links to each wave: One, Two

Polls will drop 8 each wave, starting November 9 going to November 10. They will drop around 16:00-18:00 UTC

Information for Round 5:

Link to matchups: here

8 polls will drop on November 23. They will drop around 16:00-18:00 UTC

Information for Quarterfinals:

Link to matchups: here

4 polls will drop on December 31 at some point.

Semifinals: link to matchups here, polls will drop at some point.

Propaganda:

If you would like to send in propaganda you can do that via ask. We may also reblog propaganda on posts themselves, as long as they are text based (not tags), and aren’t heavy with undescribed images. Please don’t send in anti propaganda.

Random Information:

Here is a link to our FAQ that’s mostly about organizational type stuff.

Here is a link to our FAQ that’s more about us.

We’ll probably make a new one that’s a bit more organized but that won’t be for a while.

Contacting Us:

Feel free to send us asks about literally anything, as long as it’s vaguely related to this showdown.

[pidovespost0519]

Remember!

You can totally make a selfship au that is as highly specific as you want <3 you and your F/O(s) will find each other in every universe! Doesn’t matter how many you make, how niche, odd or highly specific it happens to be, just that you have fun :]

[feastfic]

I had a moment and wrote down a whole lotta nonsense with Popcorn and I accidentally made myself feel really hard with it so. I might as well haha

Tw for drug use and (NONGRAPHIC) mentions of sex.

Okay so, where to begin hah. A lot of this was spawned from indulgent things and so I'm going to try and reword a lot of what I wrote down to make it more general.

• To me she is the pinnacle of "making everything a joke to push away the fact that she is deeply fucked up". To her it's just easier to never address anything and play it off as just a bit or something unimportant if somehow, someway, someone approaches her about it.

• Her avoidance has lead to an unstable relationship with substance use — it's a cycle of getting high and getting a whitey, and then getting hungover and being back at the base of "feeling the things she literally just got high over to not handle". Keeping herself busy with hosting (as precarious as it is, given that her contestants aren't exactly the most empathetic bunch about her case) is one of the only means for her to dodge herself, in a sense. So it sure isn't a good alternative, but it's better than y'know, whiting out...right?

• Literally everything she has is undiagnosed and she isn't about to get her shit checked out. (ADHD, BPD, MDD and Crohn's.) The majority of the folks around her aren't really versed in Why she decides to act like she does; they just think she's egotistical, big-headed and a dick overall.

• If for whatever reason somehow there was someone who was wholeheartedly genuine with themselves and with everyone around them...she'd actually kind of hate them. Literally they could do nothing wrong but she would be skeeved about the fact that they can just essentially gallivant around with their heart on their sleeve. It's like an anti-her, you get me.

• To add onto the last point, she's made herself so distant that if there was anyone that would try to actually talk to her and y'know, be a basic human being (or, well, object being) she wouldn't know how to reciprocate that in the slightest. Because she does want closeness but that kind of thing is deeply unsettling to her, and she would engage in what she guises as just "casual" sex; to her it's the only feasible way to actually figure out how exactly she feels about someone. It's just an empty feeling spawned from an innate guilt at this being the only way she can achieve basic positive social interactions and anger — less at herself and instead projecting it onto the other person for, in a twisted and cruelly roundabout way: leading her into this situation in the first place.

• She doesn't really cry — it's just...hard for her to be able to. "Feeling miserable" isn't how she'd describe it but there's no real way to really say it otherwise. Pretty much everything gets bottled up, both good and bad, and it can sometimes (unfortunately) seep through into her actual hosting job.

• If somehow she came across Airy, he would genuinely be one of the only people she could tolerate. He's so similar and yet could not be more different. Both apathetic but in his case he just... legitimately doesn't really seem to express that he cares. It's like if Popcorn were a firecracker and Airy was a bundle of wet sticks — they can exist next to each other without friction that would spark either of them.

• On MUCH much lighter notes: somehow she managed to get her 3D glasses to be prescription. She cannot see without those things but also you just Cannot take them off; if you lift them up there's just an endless amount of others underneath the pair(s).

[numericalbridge]

Darius meta part 2 (wip)

---

Darius meta masterpost - main Darius meta post

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Headcanons and very small posts:

Post - about Darius’s textbook

Post - headcanon that Darius was secretly terrified of Belos

Post - headcanons + fic idea about Darius and being hurt/feeling pain in abomination form

Post - headcanon that Darius and Raine had learned from each other and and grew to appreciate each other more after working together

Post - mini post, Vitimir as a potential parallel / anti-parallel to Darius

Post - my favourite profession for human!Darius

Post - Darius meeting Luz

Post - how Darius was navigating the Coven Head intrigues + about his acting

Post - Darius annoying Lilith with saying Titan’s name in vain

Post - separate rebel groups 'what if’

Post - Darius likes cute things

Post - Darius and his mentor meeting for the first time

Post - Darius + glasses

Post - Darius & spa

Post - Darius calling King 'little king’, silly

Post - Belos buying abomonatons because he didn’t trust Darius + the Blights role

Post - about Darius and Alador&Odalia friendship break up (speculation/headcanon, needs rewording)

Post - my cringey wishfull thinking for Darius and Raine interactions

Post - Willow and Darius having a similar type of humour

Post - potential for Luz, Hunter + Darius and Raine interactions

Ask game reply - opinion on Darius (+Luz and Scara)

Ask game reply - opinion on dariraine (+Lilith)

Post - where Darius had developed his fighting style specifically for the possibility that he might need to fight Belos one day

Post - Darius’s mindscape headcanon 1

Post - Darius’s mindscape headcanon 2

Fic and AU ideas:

Post - AU where instead of puppets Collector turns the Coven Heads back into children

Post - silly self-indulgent team red filler episode idea

Post - a couple of rejected ‘hurt-comfort’ ideas

Post - team RED goes into Belos’s mind, but there is a trap

Post - Darius gets a cat AU

Post - Human!Willow + Darius as her mentor

Post - Darius and King interactions AU (writing this as a fic)

Post - previous Golden Guard’s ghost

Post - about Darius and magic

Post - team RED story ideas

Post - AU where Eber dies during the ER

Post - AU where Darius isn’t a rebel and Hunter is a beloved nephew of the Emperor

Post - random self indulgent scenes 1: previous GG is petrified AU + Darius vs Alador and Odalia, Darius and Raine

Post - random self indulgent scenes 2: Darius using his teleportation spell to save Eda after KT

Post - random self-indulgent scenes 3: AUs where Collector would semi-reanimate previous golden guards’ corpses (Darius + Eber, Raine, Alador)

Post - random self-indulgent scenario: if Darius was Raine's childhood friend

Post - Perrius Aus

Post - about abomination matter in the dariraine AU +

Post - Darius turning into abomination form in the human realm in the dariraine au and human Gus - witch Luz au

Post - Hollow Mind hodgepodge mindscape AU feat Darius and Luz

Post - minipost about AUs where the kids get to see what the adults where like when they were the same age

Post - AU where after after the HM Hunter would have stayed at the Owl House and Luz would have ended up with the rebels

[beardedmrbean]

The International Olympic Committee awarded the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City on Wednesday but warned they could be stripped of the Games if US authorities maintain their feud with the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The success of Salt Lake City's bid was a foregone conclusion given the Utah city, which hosted the Games in 2002, was the only candidate.

But in a dramatic twist shortly before members approved the bid by 83 votes to six, Olympic chiefs said  the Games could be revoked if US lawmakers and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) were not brought into line, especially over the case of 23 Chinese swimmers.

Outspoken USADA chief Travis Tygart accused the IOC of "stooping to threats".

John Coates, chairman of the IOC's legal commission, said the host city contract confirming Salt Lake's right to stage the Games had been altered to allow the IOC to take them away if US authorities did not respect the "supreme authority" of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Speaking in Paris ahead of the opening of the Games on Friday, Coates said it was "a must, and I stress the word must" for the US authorities to respect WADA.

"The IOC has reinforced the current language of the Olympic host contract in order to protect the integrity of the international anti-doping system and to allow the IOC to terminate -- to terminate -- the Olympic host contract in cases where the supreme authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency.... is not fully respected or if the application of the World Anti-Doping code is hindered or undermined," Coates said.

The warning stunned seasoned observers of the IOC and sports politics.

USADA has been a vocal critic of WADA for much of the past decade.

Those tensions spiked this year after reports in April revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance ahead of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, but were subsequently cleared to compete at the Games.

Tygart has consistently accused WADA of covering up the cases, which China blamed on unintentional food contamination.

Eleven of the 23 Chinese swimmers are in Paris.

WADA has angrily rejected the criticism from USADA, threatening legal action against the body.

- 'Sport lapdog' -

Coates said both the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and the state of Utah had agreed to the reworded host city contract.

"We are committed to fostering WADA's authority as (it) is crucial for the opportunity to provide clean sport for athletes and give them confidence that they can be protected," USOPC chairman Gene Sykes said.

"Our view is that this is of paramount importance and we take their concerns very seriously."

Sarah Hirshland, chief executive of the USOPC, called the Games an "opportunity to bring organisations together to improve the entire anti-doping eco system in collaboration and unity with one another".

She said they had "happily and readily signed" the contract.

But in an angry statement, Tygart again condemned WADA's handling of the case of the Chinese swimmers and lashed out at the conditions of the agreement for Salt Lake to host in 2034.

"It is shocking to see the IOC itself stooping to threats in an apparent effort to silence those seeking answers to what are now known as facts," he said.

"It seems more apparent than ever that WADA violated the rules (over the Chinese swimmers) and needs accountability and reform to truly be the global watchdog that clean athletes need.

"Today's demonstration further showed that as it stands today, WADA is just a sport lapdog, and clean athletes have little chance."

[martyrbat]

how do you think ‘this EXTREMELY empathetic character who tries to save lives/operates solely in the hopes of preventing people from experiencing any avoidable pain/avoid dying is anti-choice/‘prolife’’ without questioning what youre saying or the implications of it?? you're literally rewording ‘an embryo/fetus has more value than the actual living pregnant person and its actually murder to get an abortion’ propaganda in a new way.