#role of twitter in marketing

[saerotonins]

actor!toji headcanons

ft. fushiguro toji x reader

content warnings: fluff, parent!reader, megumi is yalls son, just overall cuteness

wc: 918

note: this is my apology for that nanami angst i posted days ago heh

jjk actor au masterlist

as an actor:

very intimidating man, from his aura to his build, oh boy, who wouldn't be scared

but to everyone's surprise, he's actually just a really goofy and adorable man with a really good resting bitch face lmfao

is actually a household name in the acting industry! definitely those types of actors that once casted into a show, it's guaranteed to get hella VIEWS AND RATINGS

has been in the acting industry for YEARS and has a ton of experience but is still very humble

is actually very shy when his co stars tease him whenever his fans thirst for him whenever he's on screen and he's just a blushing mess LOL

i mean he's a literal dilf so 

believe it or not, this man has been in more romance shows and movies than action, especially as a VILLAIN

his fans couldn't believe it either

so when he was first casted in jjk as a villain who kills CHILDREN they were so ecstatic!

and boy were they so happy when toji SURPASSED their expectations because he was so good!

also so happy that he was casted together with his son, megumi, in the same show!

they usually go to the shoot together and even when he doesn't have a scene to shoot and only megumi does, he drives him off to the shooting site whenever his time permits

it's actually so adorable 

in contrast to jjk!toji, he's really a hands on father to him and is actually very supportive of megumi going to the same career path as him

megumi is also the definition of nepo babies who deserved what they got but that's another discussion 

at first though, he is kind of hesitant especially knowing how toxic can it get with the industry but when he saw his son's determination, he eventually gave him a green light and supported him along the way

this man is so fucking strong OML the producers are so grateful the most of the time he helps cleaning up with the equipment once filming is done

literally lifts them up like it's nothing BYE

listen, this old man is RIPPED and really likes to work out 

he's like pedro pascal who is like really chill but really cheeky when it comes to fanservice LOL he is so adorable 

megumi is kinda cringing though 😭 it's understandable though because that's literally your father trying to act cute and he's a teenager so i don't really blame him

also a big gentleman, again, contrary to his role, he is actually very good with the ladies and often checks with his co stars especially when a fight scene is being filmed

profusely apologized to satoru when their fight was filmed because he literally has to do the stunts himself and make everything believable as much as possible 

has ig and twitter but barely posts unless it's a promotion or a thank you post for the team

he's very active in stories though 😭

and i mean VERY VERY active

you know that point where a person posts too much stories and the lines above almost look like dots??? 

yeah that's him 😭

mostly posts the behind the scenes and his family there!

has a pet chicken that he posts there too

no he's not vegan... he just doesn't eat chicken 😭

as a husband:

oh yeah another married man on set sorry ladies he’s off the market

a very romantic and private lover

especially when you're the only one in the family who is not involved in show business

looks forward to coming home to you all the time

the type of husband who says, "i miss my spouse," on set out of nowhere and his co stars just sigh in faux annoyance 

this man is WHIPPED 

his lines is always and SHOULD always be practiced with you, because aside from his fans (not really though since he's already an established actor), the only approval he looks for is from his lover

is really happy and giddy (almost like a teenage boy like SIR you guys are already married for YEARS) when you praise him and has this really boyish smile which happens very often btw

he's such a fucking sap please

as mentioned, he is kinda shy about the thirst but is not uncomfortable and actually goes along with it

you on the other hand GO HAM with it LOL

you're one of the fans lmfaoooo

a very BIG ONE

unlike him who is not active on twitter, you actually reply to fans and agree what they were saying and fangirl/boy with them which is actually so adorable LOL

his fandom is having a field day of you gushing about your husband like you're not married to him and have a literal CHILD with him bye

both megumi and toji, especially toji, are very protective of you so any slanderous rumors from the tabloids and any defamation will immediately face a lawsuit 

and fans love it when y'all fight back!!

if they stan either toji or megumi, it's immediately a given that they also stan you LOL

your boys both find it cute that even you have a very supportive fanbase like theirs

[purseowner4thequalityanimation]

SMT Boardgame Kickstarter Smells Like Suspicious Fish

There's an SMT boardgame. Curb your enthusiasm, you shouldn't back it. And if you did, lower your pledge to like a buck until they clear things up, because as it stands it seems like an incredibly suspect product.

Checking through the Kickstarter comments and Japanese Tweets about the boardgame makes the entire thing seem poorly planned at best. I'll summarize as best I can;

The designer is incredibly infamous in the boardgame community

Naoki Matsunaga, a self-described "board game sommelier", is the designer. You'll find tweets lamenting that "the board game sommelier is involved". Why is he so hated? This thread goes into detail: co_boze on twitter. Part of it is they bashed Werewolf over one game they saw of it, another is they took on a kind of public-face role for boardgames appearing on late night TV shows to talk about them in ways that annoyed boardgamers. They seem to have designed a boardgame based on "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" which ripped off Sid Sackson's 'I'm the Boss". But it's what co_boze talks about next that's really bizarre. The game was apparently banned from most board game cafes and playing spaces. Seminars where people could play the game were hosted, but the venues that hosted these seminars all closed down.

If you keep looking through comments, you start finding claims that his company does multi-level marketing (ie pyramid schemes). To be honest, I don't know if this is true. But even if it isn't, it is really not hard to find people who know of this guy and would really really really REALLY prefer he was not involved.

"Oh fuck, it's THIS guy" is not a reaction that inspires confidence

2. Questionable development and presentation issues.

A regular collaborator with Atlus recently tweeted "The use of AI in Atlus works or derivative works is stictly prohibited." He responded to a reply asking if this was about a board game.

The staff running the SMT BG Kickstarter later clarified the actual -game- wouldn't use AI graphics... but from the looks of it, the promotional materials do.

Dig that... generic metal pipe aesthetic. Nothing screams MegaTen like black plumbing to nowhere.

In totally unrelated news, a board game manufacturer recently tweeted that a Kickstarter used their name without permission, and they're not sure why.

Quote tweets on the post would suggest it was the SMT board game. The comment they are loosely referring to is this:

In a follow-up post, they do specify "The product figures will be made of PVC." and "We will be manufacturing the games in partnership with a factory in China that has a proven track record... " "Figure director Kimura Yuzuru has over 10 years of experience..." and other boring development stuff that I have no issue with. What I do have issue with is how they can say things like they're "considering" which manufacturer to use and namedropping other companies that they're unrelated with. (While I was typing this post, they posted an update that clarified the CMON issue and literally nothing else: here.)

The boardgame is being presented with machine translated English printed on the same cards as the Japanese. But the actual game will have a translator check everything.

they hire translators to localize all game content

Additionally, there was a week long radio silence on the Kickstarter. For reference, Kickstarters are normally very active with the project planners dropping updates, responding to feedback and clearing up any concerns.

Some of the concerns were "How does the game actually play?", a question that would be best answered by dropping a rulebook for people to look at, or better yet showing them an entire run of the game. The SMT BG Kickstarter has boldly chosen neither. Devs have commented the game is on Version 11 and plays well, which makes it strange that they can't share any of it with anyone else.

Actually, when you compare this to how most Kickstarters are run, it becomes very clear the SMT BG Kickstarter is, uh, kinda failing in all possible regards. The first Backer Goal is "Jack Frost Dice" at 2000 backers (not funds raised, BACKERS). Despite getting 300%(!!!) of the initial pledge needed, there are no bonuses or unlocks.

Mind, this lack of information comes after they already delayed the start to supposedly improve Backer Goals and other aspects.

There aren't a shortage of issues - it's ICREA's first boardgame (but not their first tango with SMT; they made the SMT30th Logo, for instance.) The timeline seems totally wack. The staff have been incredibly slow to respond. Cards with tiny font and two languages printed on them. Etc, etc. Maybe individually these issues wouldn't be too concerning. But all of them combined make the product seem incompetently run at best, and at worst an actual scam.

I'm hardly a big influencer in the SMT scene (my biggest contribution is when that fucking succubus gif gets 36k likes on Twitter every 5 months) but I haven't seen any English speaking sources discuss this in detail, when there really should be at least some noise about all of this. Still. if just one of you end up saving 600 bucks on what ends up being a trashfire carcrash project because of this post, then that'll have made the past 30 minutes of typing this shit worth it.

[kcinpa]

TL;DR Project 2025

Project 2025 has crossed my dash several times, so maybe tumblr is already informed about the hellish 900-page takeover plan if Trump wins office again. But even the articles covering Project 2025 can be a LOT of reading. So I'm trying to get it down to simple bulleted lists…

Navigator Research (a progressive polling outfit) found that 7 in 10 Americans are unfamiliar with Project 2025. But the more they learn about it, the more they don't like or want it. When asked about a series of policy plans taken directly from Project 2025, the bipartisan survey group responded most negatively to the following:

Allowing employers to stop paying hourly workers overtime

Allowing the government to monitor people’s pregnancies to potentially prosecute them if they miscarry

Removing health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions

Eliminating the National Weather Service, which is currently responsible for preparing for extreme weather events like heat waves, floods, and wildfires

Eliminating the Head Start program, ending preschool education for the children of low-income families

Putting a new tax on health insurance for millions of people who get insurance through their employer

Banning Medicare from negotiating for lower prescription drug costs and eliminating the $35 monthly cap on the price of insulin for seniors

Cutting Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age

Allowing employers to deny workers access to birth control

Laurie Garrett looked at the roughly 50 pages within Project 2025 that deal with Health and Human Services (HHS) and other health agencies, and summarized them on Twitter/X in a series of replies. I've shortened even more here:

HHS must "respect for the sacred rights of conscience" for Federal workers & healthcare providers and workers broadly who object to abortions, contraception, gender reassignment & other issues - ie. allow them to deny services based on religious beliefs

HHS should promote "stable and flourishing married families."

Require all welfare programs to "promote father involvement" – or terminate their funding for mothers and children.

Prioritize adoptions via faith-based organizations.

Redefine sex, eliminating all forms of gender "confusion" regarding identity and orientation.

Eliminate the Head Start program for children, entirely

Ban all funding of Planned Parenthood

Ban birth control services that are "egregious attacks on many Americans' religious & moral beliefs"

Deny pregnancy termination pills, "mail-order abortions."

Eliminate Office of Refugee Resettlement; move all refugee matters to the Department of Homeland Security

Healthcare should be "market-based"

Ban all mask and vaccine requirements.

Closely regulate the NIH w/citizen ethics panels, ensuring that no research involves fetal tissue, leads to development of new forms of Abortions or brings profits to the researchers.

Redirect the Office of Global Affairs to promoting "moral conscience" & full compliance w/the Mexico City policy

The CDC should have no role in medical policies.

"Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism," HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence & by what method.

I'm still looking for a good short summary of the environmental horrors that Project 2025 would bring if it comes to fruition…

[tinystepsforward]

automattic vs wp engine mastterpost

adrienne's GitHub recap is probably the best place to see a comprehensive timeline of what's going down. it's been kept up to date. my (very out of date) previous writeup is here.

what's happened/other links

Matt has not logged off, just switched platforms, so there's lots on X/Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News. it's really not worth wading through.

WP Engine actually filed suit.

the complaint includes some truly remarkable screenshots of Matt trying to blackmail the CEO of WP Engine.

which... personally i would not happily work for someone who just blackmailed me while not even my boss, but that's just me. he hasn't denied this at all, in fact confirming on Hacker News:

I haven't doxxed any private texts from other parties like they have. [source]

and, notably,

I even invited her to my 40th birthday on Jan 11, another text message she decided not to share. [source]

this gives me the creeps. in the context of the rest of the way he's talking to her, and the ways in which he's interacted with women in general, it's. not great.

also he slid into an ex-employee (also a woman)'s DMs asking why she was being mean to him bc he'd never been nothing but nice to her, while also making legal threats. so y'know, pattern of behaviour.

a good writeup of the social side of things

if you don't care so much about the open-source stuff, Steph Lundberg's writeup is, like her previous one on Matt's Tumblr meltdown, pretty solid and people-focused.

Mullenweg has already demonstrated egregious lapses in judgment and abuses of power, it’s just that up until now he’s wielded his power against vulnerable populations without access to high-powered lawyers and their own massive platforms.

a more technical writeup

this one is melodramatic in the same ways Matt was (uses war terminology), which i don't agree with, and which led to some... internal arguments at Automattic. that part's not my story to tell, but a little more on that later. it's a solid writeup of the actual WordPress side of things. there's some seriously dodgy trademark behaviour going on here.

of note: this blogger locked comments on his post:

and then Matt, uh, found a way around that:

wild!

10% of Automattic leaves

that's a link to Matt's blog post. here's an Internet Archive link.

in short, staff were offered a severance deal of the higher of $30k or six months' salary. while that's very generous, it's still very risky in today's tech market, especially (for the same reasons i mentioned when Matt was melting down on here) for people outside the US, people who need the health insurance, or people with young kids. despite that, 10% decided with very little notice (they had two days to decide) to leave.

However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!

i'm thrilled to see some of my ex-colleagues make it out. i'm keeping the rest who have stayed on in my thoughts. i don't know anyone who's wholesale shilling for Matt.

Matt's been pressuring staff to post in support of him, @-ing the entire company to vote on Twitter polls in his favor, and so on. many of the people who stayed have written blog posts about it, all starting with "I stayed". people on social media have pointed out the very clear pattern of Automatticians jumping into discourse to defend Matt, and it doesn't look good.

i don't have a lot to say about those posts, except to highlight Jeffrey Zeldman, whose "I stayed" post is perhaps one of the more honest ones. (his Rodney King reference was in poor taste, and he... i don't like his role at automattic, tbc) but like. he's nearly 70. he helped shape the modern internet and develop its accessibility standards. he has often put his neck on the line for disabled staff who don't have as much clout as he does. given the financial troubles he talks about and the state of this market and how old he is, i personally have read between the lines of what he's saying in a particular way.

fuck, man. i'm sad. i'm sad for all my friends who are creaking under the strain and watching others leave but who can't do that. i'm sad that many of them are left in teams which are half-empty or divisions where significant senior leadership are just gone, with no time to document what they had in progress.

i'm sad for Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the former executive director of the WordPress Foundation, who was dealing with a personal emergency and ended up having to miss WordCamp US (where Matt started publicly starting shit with WPE). she came back from that to a gigantic fire in the community she's invested a decade of careful, Matt-negotiating, stewardship to, and decided to take the severance offer. she deserved better.

other things Matt's been up to

mostly linking to comments or posts which compile things here, bc it's too scattered otherwise.

blocking people from the official WordPress X account if they disapprove of his actions.

publicly talking about a vulnerability in ACF, a plugin WPE maintains, which could put thousands of sites at risk. this is not normal, and he met with so much horror even from current staff that he deleted his post.

saying he comes across badly because he's "a little ASD", which is driving me personally up the fucking wall. he's never once said it before and he really is turning into Temu Elon.

generally bragging that he still has more planned. jesus fucking christ

continually saying that WPE's suit is against WordPress.org and the community, which is not true. on which note, his pinned tweet is certainly something:

his choice of lawyer is uh. the kind of guy to defend nestle against literal child slaves.

as always, while i think WordPress crumbling will disproportionately affect websites in poorer parts of the world, there are certainly tyrants who are causing much more immediate and potent suffering. if you've read this far, please do send anything you have spare to gazafunds.com.

[tanadrin]

I feel like a conspiracy theorist, but I'm convinced the GOP cheated by disenfranchising enough voters to win. Not just in swing states. The margins in every state are weird. A few thousand votes here and there across every county. The huge number of split ticket votes. The sudden loss of 12 million democratic voters despite record early voting turnout and voter registration?

It doesn't add up. It doesn't make sense.

So many people who had confirmation of their ballot being received and accepted are now finding out that they were unregistered or there was a "problem" with it.

They were saying for months that they didn't need anyone's vote. The betting market manipulation. The billionaire backers. Elon Musk's grubby hands all over the election.

They did steal the election. And we'll probably never find out how.

in the broad sense, yes, american elections should be fairer, and the franchise should be more universal. in the narrow sense--this is cope. purges of voter rolls happen in public. there's litigation on them all the time. a purge of 12 million voters from voter roles would not have gone unnoticed. to account for all these factors you would need an improbably large conspiracy. (stealing elections in the united states would be hard. each state administers its own elections! you'd have to steal 50 elections. and once again, this would be a case of someone rigging the presidential election and forgetting to rig any of the downballot races, which would be stupid.) including a conspiracy to rig most polling, given the outcome was within the margin of error of most polling averages for this election.

i get why it's the preferable scenario--people aren't dumb! my opponents are just evil! there's some optimism in that--but "i personally do not understand how this outcome could have occurred" does not mean it was a conspiracy.

So many people who had confirmation of their ballot being received and accepted are now finding out that they were unregistered or there was a "problem" with it.

this is normal and you typically have several days after the election to amend your ballot if there was a problem with it. if you do, it still counts. fun word problem time: if ~150 million people vote in an election, and 0.001% post on twitter about how they needed to amend their ballot (especially in non-swing states), how many twitter posts in a row do you have to see to convince yourself there is a ~conspiracy~ afoot?

fun second word problem: out of seven swing states, how many were governed by the opposing party or someone who had publicly opposed donald trump's election subversion attempts in 2020?

fun third word problem: do you know how elections in your state work? do you know which state official is in charge of administering them, and their party affiliation? do you know what the margins of downballot races like house and senate in your state were this election, and their relative swing from 2020? in short, do you know in detail how elections in the US work and what "typical" voting patterns look like, or are you just going off of vibes from a vaguely paranoid local bubble in social media?

[felassan]

Thoughts on DA: Vows & Vengeance -

[info compilation post link] [more info on the podcast]

---

this post is rather unstructured : )

---

I know what BW said about how there won't be official transcripts, but I hope that they decide to post official transcripts of each episode if it's possible, as it's rly important for accessibility & inclusivity.

I like the title - the alliteration is fun, and the concepts of vengeance and revenge are a DA thematic staple atp. it's neat that it's free and the spacing of one episode per week until mid/late October will help pass the time until launch (the last podcast episode releases 2 weeks before DA:TV Release Day). it's also cool to see DA expand into new forms of media, and I'm excited that we will hear lots more lines from each of the 7 Veilguard companions. 👁️

here is one of the podcast writers, Jeremy Novick, on Twitter.

I’m really looking forwards to Taash and Davrin’s episodes of the podcast in particular ◕‿◕ it feels like we don't know much about them or their backstories relative to the other DA:TV companions at this point in time.

Nadia Carcosa, Drayden and Elio are described as being "podcast-exclusive" characters, I guess this means they will not appear in the game itself (which helps the podcast storyline stay self-contained and the podcast to remain as optional listening). but it would be cool if in the game there is some references to them here and there, like in dialogue and/or codex entries/notes etc. 😊

in the background image of the teaser trailer and what looks like the thumbnail for the podcast[?] on podcasting sites, the two faction symbols shown are the Mourn Watch and the Shadow Dragons. is this a coincidence/just since their symbols look cool, or are these two factions the factions with the biggest roles in the podcast storyline relative to the others? the penultimate episodes are the ones that focus on Emmrich and Neve 🤔

"revenge, redemption, and love": these themes mixed together often produce regret. and there was a quote somewhere in DA:TV marketing materials that said “For DA:TV [the game itself], from the start one of the biggest themes has been regret; how regret shaped peoples’ lives, how people deal with their regrets, how people maybe move past their regrets.”

Mae Whitman previous credits include: Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Brigette Lundy-Paine previous credits include: Bill & Ted Face the Music, Atypical, I Saw the TV Glow Armen Taylor previous credits include: Diablo IV, Octopath Traveler II, Vinland Saga

I wonder when the podcast is set? maybe in the weeks to months before Varric, Harding, Neve and Rook go to Solas' ritual site in the game's prologue? I also wonder what lineages Nadia, Drayden and Elio are? If Drayden has a mysterious connection to the Fade, they're most likely to be human or elven, right?

cat burglar, thief, scoring jobs like the one described in the podcast's plotblurbs - these kind of plot beats remind me of what we learned about an earlier concept of DA:TV when the game was more about stuff like heists and spies.

Nadia being a thief unknowingly employed by the Dread Wolf to track down a powerful ancient artifact before finding herself tangled up in everything: this reminds me sm of one of the 'here's what the DA4 PC's backstory could be and how they could end up caught up in the narrative of the game'-speculation ideas I used to wonder about hhh.

a retired cat burglar.. maybe Nadia has ties to the Lords of Fortune? some of them seem to be more thiefy. although, being wanted by Tevinter authorities for crimes of theft, high treason and murder maybe points towards Shadow Dragons instead.

two lovers going on a job to get an artifact reminds me of Irian Cestes and Vadis from TN. "burglar" also gives me Hobbit/LOTR vibes :D I imagine that over the many years since DA:I, the Dread Wolf has employed many such people [unknowingly to them] on jobs like this.

Elio being "seemingly" banished to the Fade is interesting wording.. so is "banished" actually. (Elio's Fade banishment also makes me think of foreshadowing Solas' subsequent entry to Fade Jail in DA:TV.) ((shoutout to left-in-the-Fade-Hawkes' LIs who I can also imagine desperately searching for answers on a rescue mission across all of Thedas after learning that Hawke was left in the Fade in DA:I...))

Carcosa

I'm reaaally curious about what Drayden's mysterious connection to the Fade is all about and entails.

"a few [answers] they wish they hadn’t" 👁️...

the question is, what the powerful ancient artifact is, and why does Solas want it? if he wants it it's probably ancient elven, right?

On the trailer itself

"This chamber, it feels different from the cave. I can sense something. The Veil is thin here." - I'd guess this speaker is Drayden. it isn't Nadia, as we hear her later on. the speaker can sense the thin/thickness of the Veil and Drayden is said to have a mysterious connection to the Fade. at this point they're in some kind of, well, chamber, as the speaker's voice echoes and you can hear water dripping down the damp walls.

The announcer's voice is so deep hh!

To be wanted by Tevinter authorities for crimes including high treason, maybe Nadia is from Tevinter? treason is "the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill or overthrow the sovereign or government." so to commit treason in Tevinter context, you're probably from Tevinter.

"Who the hell is Nadia Carcosa?" - this sounds like Varric. :>

"So, what's the mark?" - I'd guess this speaker is Nadia. they sound scrappy/seasoned (Nadia is nearly retired), and the speaker is probably asking for more details on the job they've just acquired to do. does she sound like she could be a dwarf to anyone else or is this just me? :D maybe that's just my daydreams hhh

"The Eye of Kethisca" quote: presumably the middle man who Solas hired to hire someone, thereby keeping his own identity secret

The Eye of Kethisca itself: this must be the "powerful ancient artifact" from the text blurbs. there are no hits for "Kethisca" on the DA Wiki, so this is a new name/thing. it must be creepy-deepy, because when it's mentioned in the trailer you can hear creepy voices whispering ominously. :D "Kethisca" doesn't sound elven, but you could easily have an artifact that's e.g. ancient elven but acquired another name or been called something else by others in the centuries since.

"The Eye was made from a rare gem mined here in the caves beneath us. It was crafted centuries ago by a powerful Dreamer." - Solas speaking. I wonder how oblique/lies of omission/technically true (you know what I mean? that thing he does) Solas is being here.. like maybe the Dreamer was an ancient elvhen Dreamer not a human Tevinter one, like maybe the centuries ago were centuries and centuries and centuries ago dating back to Elvhenan rather than later on temporally at say, a more recent time in history like the height of the Imperium. "Eye" makes me think of spherical things, "gem" makes me think of how lyrium (Titans' blood) is a mineral. caves makes me think of dwarfy things and the Deep Roads. as for "mined":

"The runes say the Evanuris fought the Titans. They mined their bodies for lyrium and... something else. It's not clear."

what if the Eye is the heart of a Titan, a foci? Solas' Orb was spherical and the hearts of Titans look spherical here in the Death of a Titan mural. the way he frames it makes it sound like the mark is a rare jewel mined from caves by a Tevinter human dreamer long ago before being crafted into something, but I wonder if it was, more technically, the heart of a Titan mined from the body of a Titan even longer ago by, say, a member of the Evanuris, before being crafted into a foci. Solas needed his own foci in DA:I to carry out his plans, and then it was broken. there was more than one foci in ancient Elvhenan; after DA:I and Trespasser, I could see a world/storyline in which, during the long years between then and DA:TV, Solas at some point learns that another one of the foci artifacts survived into the modern day, and decided to try and get his hands on it so that he can carry out his plan using another foci instead. and since the foci can do Fadey/Veily stuff, that could be how Elio got yeeted in there. reminds me a bit of the scene when the Inquisitor yeets Cory at the end of DA:I. (here I'm just speculating wildly for fun hhh. Solas' Orb doesn't really look like a gem etc. and the Lyrium Knife tears the Veil, so maybe this storyline was set before he got that or sth)

also I wonder where these caves are? beneath Minrathous? Solas has a hideout beneath Minrathous, as we know, and the deeper you go the more elfy things get.

Magister Andante: I think this is our first time hearing about this character. their name reminds me of Andraste.

"Magister Andante? It's about Nadia. She's about to do something quite reckless." - this sounds to me like Neve speaking. it kind of sounds like she's meeting the magister clandestinely, at night. she seems to know Nadia.

"Listen to me, you've been tricked. This isn't a simple grab-and-go for the money. There are bigger forces at play. We have to put this back and leave." - I'd guess this speaker is Elio. it sounds like at this point he and Nadia have found the Eye and taken it, but he's trying to get her to see reason/warn her. it's a tense moment with the sound of battle all around them.

"I'm sorry, but I won't let you pay for my mistakes." - Nadia refusing to listen to Elio. the sounds of battle get louder and it sounds like there's an explosion or something? plus the dragon roar. maybe Mr dragon is breathing fire everywhere. :D I wonder as well if it's Elio grunting in pain at this point. I'd guess this is the moment where Elio is seemingly yeeted into the Fade perhaps?

"Nadia, I presume. I am Solas, and I am, I believe, the one that you seek." - Solas again obviously, only this time sounding way more godly and Fen'Harelly in persona (booming) than he did when he was talking more demurely/plainly about what the Eye is.

"The name I seek is the Dread Wolf" - Nadia again obviously :) so something in the job went wrong, she figures out who hired them, and goes to find the Dread Wolf presumably because she either blames him for Elio being stuck in the Fade and/or she thinks he might be able to get him out or tell her how.

"The Eye will destroy you" - and this sounds like Neve again maybe?

[abstractnaturaldisaster]

is it over now? (was it over then?)

part five

part six: with the wilt of the rose

With the success of Eddie's Steve single as his bandmates had started to call it, the label had basically told Corroded Coffin in no uncertain terms to channel that energy into the rest of their album. It wasn't that Eddie didn't like the attention his song was getting and Steve absolutely deserved it, the lying piece of shit, but it was like getting permission to write angsty music about Steve took all the fun out of it. He was fully out of inspiration of the angst variety and had taken a hard left turn into moping, feeling sorry for himself, and being one thousand percent convinced that he was going to be single for the rest of his life and die alone.

Eddie was reclining in his giant beanbag chair (his nest as Steve used to joke with him), occasionally humming lines, strumming on his guitar, and writing more and more pathetically dramatic lyrics for most of the day until he reached his limit and pulled out his phone. It wasn't like Eddie was purposefully keeping track of people in Steve's life but over the time they were together his little gaggle of gremlins wormed his way into Eddie's life too. Unfortunately when he opened his phone it was to tweets of Dustin going low key feral over Steve's new role in some indie biopic but at the same time being crazy upset that Steve would be incommunicado as Dustin so helpfully added in his tweet. The kid was such a dweeb. Eddie flicked out of twitter and opened instagram hoping that his feed would be mostly possum memes. He scrolled idly for a while seeing new tattoo ideas and of course many cute furry animals doing many silly things until suddenly he was reminded of a particular face Steve made and Eddie (although he would never admit this) searched for Steve's public profile only a little disappointed that he hadn't posted anything more recent than when the two were together.

Because Eddie may or may not be a massive masochist and can't leave well enough alone, he decides to tab over to Steve's tagged pictures to see if there is anything recent. In between several tags of Steve being unfairly good looking in whatever movie he was currently filming, Eddie was taken aback by a post that was just of Robin and Nancy. They looked a little closer than just gal pals or whatever it was the tabloids called them while speculating how they could be friends while "fighting" over Steve. So much for modern feminism.

Before Eddie got distracted enough to go through a full rant that might include a fairly long section about how Ronnie was treated differently than the rest of his bandmates, Eddie focused back on the issue at hand. Why was Nancy who he highly suspected of stealing his fucking boyfriend posing like she was getting engaged to Steve's best friend. And why did they fucking tag him it it? Robin was snarky sure but she didn't seem like that level of bitch. Eddie took a deep breath and opened the fairly lengthy caption to see:

nancywheeler Hello World! It's been a long time coming but I am so excited to publicly announce that me and Robin (@buckster) are going steady. I know I don't post a whole lot about my person life on here (seriously, the rest of the world is so much more exciting) but you've always been so supportive of my coming out and sexuality related posts as well as understanding when I needed to set a boundary between my personal life and my online persona. I've been unable to share my most recent relationship for a really long time because of the public pressure of coming out and being a "marketable asset." Steve (@sharrington) could not have been a better support during this time and took a lot of public flak to keep Robin and I safe and comfortable until we were ready to be out publicly. He always offered up his home while I was visiting and kept me company while Robin was working. I guess us bi guys have to stick together, huh? Anyways, that's all for now. And no, we aren't engaged (yet 😈)

Eddie was floored. He had spent all his time since leaving Steve's apartment feeling very holier than thou and smug about everything that happened with Steve and the success his band was experience because of it. Although if one Miss Nancy Wheeler was telling the truth (which like as a journalist Eddie thinks she has to), Steve was actually helping his platonic soulmate find love with his exgirlfriend. If Eddie hadn't already felt kind of shitty for assuming the worst about Steve, this had to take the fucking cake. Eddie was truly done for. Put a fork in him. He's the worst person ever. Fuck. He needed reinforcements.

devilededs: uhm hi friends, i think maybe i am the asshole in the whole steve situation can u come to mine?

ronnie: you saw it? i can finally give you shit about being a total drama queen?

devilededs: what do you mean? why would you not tell me if you knew it existed.

ronnie: precisely because of this vibe right now.

devilededs: okay, everyone but ronnie pls come over i need snacks and maybe some really b grade horror but you have to indulge me in my sadness.

garbear: already on the way with your emotional support jeff and frank. we'll pick up snacks.

ronnie: if you let me problem solve for you can i come for snacks? i don't think i can handle moping eddie without trying to show you its very fixable.

devilededs: YES! FIX! ME! HOW! GET OVER HERE!

Eddie flopped back into the beanbag chair and let his notebook flop out of his lap. Thankfully his friends all had keys so he could continue to rot in place until Ronnie forcibly withdrew him from his hovel.

part seven

@lololol-1234 @swimmingbirdrunningrock @zombiethingy @grtwdsmwhr @dreamercec @anne-bennett-cosplayer @strawberryyyenthusiast @mensch-anthropos-human @kal-ology @ttyrussss @kristmkris @starman-jpg @wonderland-girl143-blog @child-of-cthulhu @legalmenace87 @adealwithher @practicallybegging @lunaraquaenby @stripey82 @lexyvey @goodolefashionedloverboi @mothmamhasyourlocation @mugloversonly (if you wanna be tagged in future parts feel free to comment! happy to add people)

[rose-and-lemongrass]

It's genuinely really funny that conservatives for like no reason decided to latch onto Sydney Sweeney and make her their new darling and then within a few weeks her new movie dropped and it's the most pro choice anti Christianity thing you could imagine.

So we got some reactions like this:

Which are VERY funny because it assumes that movies only take like two weeks to make?? It also assumes that Sweeney has no say in what roles she takes and the 'Libs' forced her into this role against her will.

However doing any amount of research on this movie whatsoever you find out that Immaculate is Sweeney's movie. She's the entire reason it got made in the first place.

And now the offical Twitters for Immaculate and the production company who made Immaculate are using the above Tweet as marketing:

[mariacallous]

Earlier this week, journalists at WIRED and The Washington Post reported that a “Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos” appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote false sexual misconduct allegations against vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

At WIRED, David Gilbert wrote that researchers have linked a group they’re calling “Storm-1516” to the campaign against Walz. “Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West,” Gilbert explained. A few days earlier, NBC News also reported on Storm-1516, citing its work as demonstrative of Russian propaganda’s growing utilization of artificial intelligence and more sophisticated bot networks.

Two days after the WIRED report, Washington Post journalist and Russia expert Catherine Belton reported on another bad actor implicated in spreading the allegations against Walz: John Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop with a long and winding record that includes internal affairs investigations, early discharge from the Marines, and a penchant for posting confidential data about thousands of police officers, federal agents, and judges on his blog, which led to 21 state charges of extortion and wiretapping. To escape that indictment, Dougan fled to Moscow, where he soon put his conspiratorial blogging skills to work, effectively enlisting in the Russian intelligence community’s “Internet war” against America.

Records show and disinformation researchers argue that Dougan is responsible for content on dozens of fake news sites with deliberately misleading names like DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle, and Atlanta Observer. Lately, he’s reportedly started using a GRU-facilitated server and AI generator to create phony videos like the deepfake video showing one of Walz’s former students accusing him of sexual abuse.

With a little more than a week until the U.S. presidential election, Meduza spoke to Renée DiResta — the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality and an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy — about Russian propaganda, how it’s evolved over the years, and how American social networks are responding (and not responding) ahead of the November 2024 vote.

Timestamps for this episode:

(5:00) The Role of Social Networks in Identifying Fake Accounts

(9:35) Government and Platform Collaboration on Inauthentic Behavior

(16:46) A Case Study: Maxim Shugaley and Russian Influence in Libya

(21:45) Twitter’s Public Data Dilemma

(24:25) Bespoke Realities and Content Moderation

(25:57) The Tenet Media Case

(27:28) The Role of Influencers in Propaganda

(35:26) Marketing and Propaganda: A Historical Perspective

(38:27) The Democratization of Propaganda

(39:36) Name Your Poison: Tyranny or Chaos

[egophiliac]

Hello!! I followed you for your absolutely amazing Twisted Wonderland comics (thank you for making them, by the way-) but I saw you posting about something called Ride Kamens? I haven’t heard of it before, what’s it about? Or if that’s a bit much to ask, where could I find more info about it? It seems right up my alley 👀

Thank you!

thank you! :> :> :> (this is also for the other anon who asked about where to find it, I am honored to be infecting the world spreading interest in this silly game)

Ride Kamens is still doing prerelease marketing and isn't out yet; it's set for "early summer 2024", so a bit yet to go! similar to Twst, it's a mobile game about anime boys loosely based on an existing franchise (Kamen Rider), although it seems like it's going to be more standalone/won't require familiarity with Rider going in.

the (very) basic premise is that your player character has just taken over their late father's role as a secret agent, supporting the city's superheroes by running a secret base disguised as a cafe (plus you have a personal butler for some reason) (the reason is because it's amazing). you also have to help the heroes regain their lost memories, and it looks like it'll have a bit of a route/choice aspect there (not romance, just different endings to the character episodes depending on what you do). the details are kinda hard to tell at this point but the characters seem like a really fun bunch; there's definitely big "idiots with emotional problems" energy which I am extremely into.

all the official info is in Japanese only at the moment, but here's the website and the ride_kamens twitter! (though the twitter is sort of overtaken by posts about the AnimeJapan exhibit right now, whoops.) and I believe some people are already planning on doing translations for it too? lots to look forward to! :D

[bri-the-nautilus]

Come To the Dark Side, We Have Hot Guys: A Star Wars Story

Spoilers below for S1 of Ahsoka and the first six episodes of The Acolyte.

I'm writing this with The Acolyte most of the way through airing its first season, with episode 6 having released earlier today. Say what you will about the show, but it's really brought out a lot of the uglier sides of the Star Wars fandom. Everyone and their mother has seen videos or Reddit threads dunking on the Critical Drinker or SWT and their mouth-breathing misogynist audiences at this point, so I don't feel particularly compelled to retread that ground. Instead, I want to talk about the... other side of the fandom, the hypocrisy therein, and how we're all being played for absolute fools by the creative team at Disney Lucasfilm.

Yes, this post is about Qimir.

Now I want to say that I have no problem with villain simping/shipping. Far from it. Most of my posts on this account are me simping for Shin Hati (we'll talk more about her later) or various Soulsborne bosses. Hell, my mutuals and I have a running joke about me having a weakness for evil blonde women. While I personally am too gay for my own good and couldn't care less about men as a concept, I absolutely see the appeal of characters like Qimir and Kylo Ren. I absolutely get why people thirst over them and love making fandom content for them. I think Qimir/Osha has the potential to be a really fun ship, actually. The point I'm making here is not "simping for these characters is wrong and bad," and I want to make that crystal clear before we continue.

That said, let's talk about Qimir, and how the landscape of the show and its surrounding discourse has changed since his reveal. Again, I'm ignoring the chud sphere here, partly because their little corner of the Internet has remained remarkably stagnant since then. The podcast bros still think it's woke, fucking Shadiversity is still whining about fight choreography (which as someone who actually has done HEMA/stage combat, Shad annoys me to no end, but that's an entirely separate can of worms), and it all seems to be business as usual over there. No, the most marked changes have been on the Acolyte-positive end of the fandom space. Here's what the top posts in "hashtag TheAcolyte" on Twitter look like tonight:

You get the idea.

Again, no hate to any of these people. This is tumblr ffs, we've all engaged in a little simping for a morally dubious hot person. I love seeing fans having fun engaging with something, and again I kinda dig the Osha/Qimir ship.

Anyways, if you were around for the Acolyte-positive discourse before the Qimir reveal, and especially the show's marketing and the reponse to that, you'll have noticed a marked difference.

Fans quickly began to see The Acolyte as " the gayest Star Wars ever." Showrunner Leslye Headland is an out lesbian, and her wife was cast as Master Vernestra Rwoh. Archetypical girlboss Carrie-Anne Moss was cast as Master Indara, immediately drawing comparisons to her role in the Matrix movies. Leads Osha and Mae Aniseya are played by the nonbinary Amandla Stenberg. The lesbian witches of Brendok were talked about in press releases before the show aired. Dafne Keen (Jecki Lon) stated in an interview that she portrayed the short-haired, serious Theelin as having a crush on Osha, something that fans were picking up on in their first interactions in the premiere before Keen even gave that interview. While Headland said in a post-premiere interview that she didn't set out specifically to make "a capital Q Queer show," it's an objective fact that no Star Wars movie/show has had as much potential in that area, and fans (especially the queer community) took notice. (For what it's worth, in the same interview Headland commented that she was proud of creating something that so many queer fans identified with.)

The show came out, and Master Indara was killed off in the first sequence, which I'm honestly fine with. It was a good scene and works on a lot of levels. Headland's aforementioned interview came and went. Episode three aired. The lesbian witches turned out to be even gayer than was previously thought possible, and people ate that shit up while the Critical Drinker's brain suffered a major cascade failure. Jecki became a runaway favorite in the premiere and episode four, as did lovable himbo Yord Fandar and the wise, paternalistic Master Sol. In Acolyte-positive circles, this was basically how it went. People thought Brendok was cool, the Yord Horde became the show's biggest social media sensation, Jecki and Sol cultivated devoted followings alongside Osha and Mae, there were a wealth of different ships involving various combinations of Jecki, Yord, and the twins... you get the idea.

Then episode 5 happened.

The writing was really on the wall when the Brendok coven was abruptly wiped out. Introducting such an interesting (and queer) Force-wielding culture only to exterminate them in the same episode was certainly a choice that somebody made. But episode 5 was a shock to the system for many fans, as the show's resident Sith revealed himself and killed Jecki and Yord in some of the most brutal recent onscreen deaths in Star Wars. To be clear, I think this was a great sequence. Two beloved main characters being suddenly and gruesomely killed off was a masterfully executed shock to the system, especially after viewers were lulled into a false sense of security by all the redshirt deaths in the previous scene.

This, understandably, completely changed the landscape of the Acolyte fandom. Virtually overnight, much of the simping and shipping involving Jecki and Yord dried up, and once the dust had settled as far as the "rip blorbo, gone too soon" posts went, what remained were the usual Sol/twins offerings and a wave of Qimir hype. Which is understandable. He's a badass emo Sith boy with a cool helmet who brutally murdered fan favorite characters in front of us and has palpable tension with the female lead. Who wouldn't love... wait a minute.

This feels familiar somehow.

But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all?

And just like that, "the gayest Star Wars" is all about the (straight) sexual tension between an edgy, murderous Sith boy and a light-side girl plagued by dark thoughts whose friends said boy just killed. This is all eerily similar to how the Sequel Trilogy focused on Rey and Kylo while abruptly dropping Finn and Poe's character arcs. Even the fandom discourse is the same. I mean Reylo was so ubiquitous back in the day that it became a derogatory catch-all for good girl/evil boy shipping. Multiple authors now have either gotten their initial start/fame writing Reylo fics, or straight up published legally distinct Reylo fiction after the fashion of Netflix's After. You had the occasional person piping up to say "hey they kind of just left Finn and Poe hanging after TFA, it would've been cool if they got together but at the very least don't relegate them to being side characters/comic relief in separate story threads," and that was it. The same thing is going on with The Acolyte now, only the sequel trilogy wasn't marketed on the strength of being a queer story by a queer creative team. The Acolyte is, which makes it all the more baffling that by the midway point of the first season, all the gays have been buried and the show seems to be heading straight for Reylo 2: High Republic Boogaloo. And the fans are eating it up.

As an interesting aside, I think it's an interesting exercise to contrast the Kylo/Qimir pattern with the broader fandom's treatment of Shin Hati (told you we'd circle back to that), and the ship between her and Sabine Wren. On paper, Shin is very similar to Kylo and Qimir. Villain? Check. Edgy-looking armor? Totes. Emotionally damaged/stunted in some way? Sure looks like it. Tension with the heroine? You betcha. If anything, the only major difference is that Shin isn't as evil as the others. Compare her actions in Ahsoka (clearing out part of a light cruiser with Baylan and making repeated attempts on Sabine's life) to Kylo (oversees multiple war crimes, kills his fan-favorite dad) or Qimir (orchestrates the murders of several Jedi before brutally executing two fan-favorite characters). She's definitely bad, but I struggle to see her as on par with Qimir, let alone fucking Kylo, in terms of evilness.

Which makes it all the more interesting to me that the Shin/Sabine ship has received so much more mainstream skepticism/criticism than the Osha/Qimir or Rey/Kylo ships. "They have no chemistry!" "She's an evil murderer!" "She's a blank slate!" "Sabine is taken!" I may be a touch biased, but from where I sit a large part of the fandom, even the ostensibly progressive side, seems to look down upon Shin/Sabine shippers while swooning for heterosexual variants with far more evil villains.

This isn't a monolith, and I can't stress that enough. I'm not trying to start shit here. Villain shipping is awesome. We support women's wrongs in this house. You do see the occasional person decrying Reylo or Osha/Qimir as toxic, which I think is fairly unnecessary. Like yeah, maybe it's a toxic dynamic, but these are fictional characters. For these specific characters, part of the crowd appeal is the toxic badboy side of things. I don't think we should really spend much energy attacking any fictional ship (between adults, mind you) as toxic, which is why it puzzles me that an as-yet-unconfirmed lesbian ship in a niche show receives such a large proportion of this sort of criticism compared to the canon relationship between two main characters of a blockbuster trilogy.

At the end of the day, this whole affair has been rather sobering for me on both Disney Lucasfilm and the Star Wars fandom. For all the support the Shin/Sabine ship has received from Ahsoka cast members Ivanna Sakhno (Shin), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Sabine), Eman Esfandi (Ezra Bridger, the other character people like to ship with Sabine), and Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka), I'm rather sour on the prospects of it becoming canon. The sequel trilogy dropped the ball on what many saw as a promising chance for an MLM romance between Finn and Poe in favor of trotting out the "why do good girls like bad boys" dynamic, and The Acolyte, "the gay show" overseen by a lesbian, has seemingly shifted to center a similar dynamic after killing off most of its prospects for a queer relationship among the main cast. Simply put, I think that Disney as an international company based in the frighteningly divided United States is reluctant to commit to anything beyond lipservice in terms of LGBT representation in their movies/shows, which again doesn't leave me feeling optimistic about WolfWren's canon potential. And the fandom takes the bait. People love the damaged evil badboy/good girl dynamic, and when the queer fandom suggests the possibility of a queer ship taking center stage in a show with no other extant relationships, even the more progressive side of the fandom tends to either ignore it or actively push back on its basis in reality until Disney Lucasfilm inevitably puts the kibosh on it. The amount of times I've heard people dismiss WolfWren for the same reasons they now like Osha/Qimir and liked Reylo (before that ship was fleshed out/canonicalized, anyway) is ridiculous, but at the end of the day you kinda feel stupid for expecting anything else. Again, I think Qimir is a cool character and I'm as much of a sucker for villain romances as the next girlie, but seeing how easily the fandom lets dangling heterosexual carrots lead it away from Disney Lucasfilm's broken promises of queer rep is a sobering ordeal.

[askagamedev]

Shouldn't Overwatch also have the same problem then in regards to visual clarity? I'm sure if you were to give people Juno and Brigitte people would struggle telling what their role is probably confusing Brigitte as a Tank given she has a shield just like Reinhardt. Only Baptiste has said cross on his outfit which if he didn't people might confuse him from DPS since he carries a healing grenade launcher. Yet the only character design problem ive seen people talk about is Venture.

While this is true, it's a very different situation. Overwatch is an old game, it's been running for eight years now. When Overwatch launched, there wasn't anywhere near the kind of well-established competition that there is today. When Overwatch launched, there was no Apex Legends, Paladins, Deadlock, Quake Champions, or Valorant. Further, Overwatch's launch cast was designed with incredible visual clarity - nearly every character had a silhouette and visual design that both made them distinct and conveyed their style of gameplay. There's a pair of business terms for this kind of thing - Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean.

A Blue Ocean is mostly unexplored and pristine - you're entering a market that's mostly untouched and there isn't much competition. This favors the first-mover advantage - the first ones there have more time to experiment, set things up, and learn from their mistakes. The customers/players in that market don't have anywhere else to go if they want their gameplay, so you can afford to make mistakes, iterate, and improve. Since there aren't many other games to switch to, the players will likely stick with what they are already familiar with.

A Red Ocean is a saturated market, where the waters have been dyed red with the blood of all of the dead or dying competition. There's already a lot of competition, meaning that any new product must stand out significantly from its peers or it will soon die from lack of audience. In a Red Ocean, the initial launch is much more important because you never get a second chance at that first impression. Further, audience retention is also super important because of how much competition there is - a new product might be able to draw some attention just from the novelty, but novelty wears off quick and most of the players already know the genre and the other games available. If the new game doesn't serve their needs immediately, the players won't give it the time to improve - they'll just go to one of the competitors that already does serve their needs.

We can't really compare the two games in a vacuum, we must compare the full environment that the games launched in. Overwatch had the added benefit of significantly less competition in its Blue Ocean, meaning that the playerbase really didn't have anywhere else to go while they waited for Overwatch to improve things. Concord was unable to grab attention immediately in a Red Ocean, meaning any potential audience quickly dispersed themselves among the large number of competitors already out there.

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Got a burning question you want answered?

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Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[un-pearable]

not getting into fights on twitter is a very easy rule to avoid having a terrible night but i can’t not judge this . cmon. do we not understand the timeline here

1) overlapping productions in the flurry after Sonic The Hedgehog’s unexpected but very welcomed success. could not find a date for when Sonic CD transitioned from a Sonic the Hedgehog remake to a whole new game but safe to assume it was somewhere around the same time in 1992

2) developed in entirely separate countries after multiple iterations by two separate groups hoping to add a female character to the cast for marketing purposes. we are all well aware of madonna.

3) extremely different roles? what role of amy’s did sally steal considering neither of them had a role? both of these characters were created whole cloth for their own narrative contexts and genres: amy in sonic cd is specifically there as a damsel to incite part of the plot; sally’s first appearances in the initial miniseries and the first chronological episode already skew towards the ‘voice of reason’ and leadership position. while an argument can be made that their roles began to converge after the Classic era, it’s not sally who changed dramatically.

i love amy so fuckin much but pitting two fundamentally different characters against each out and just. ignoring the well-documented history of the franchise is baffling to me. if anything, characterizing amy as a ‘voice of reason’ leader-type like sally is the real character assasination. amy’s whole arc is centered around becoming a hero of her own and has never involved leadership until IDW - which takes pains to clarify that that role also didn’t fit her and was an obligation she willingly gave up to pursue her own heroism again. it’s reductive to read both sally AND amy in the way people who pit them against each other do. sally and amy existed simultaneously through two decades of shifting attitudes around female characters in children’s media. characters change. this is how franchises work

[bratpak]

FLORIAN SANICO is the young, hot, and not rich CEO of ACIDIC RECORDS. He only acquired Acidic Records after his stepfather's passing in 2020. Being born in the Philippines in 1988 to a single mom, Florian grew up primarily raised by his grandparents until his mom found her future husband when Florian was just seven years old. Florian's stepfather would embody the term "the father that stepped up," immediately taking on the father role in Florian's life that the little boy so desperately wanted. When he was ten years old, Florian's father, a South Korean man, would relocate the family to South Korea for his work and to provide a better life for them, which he most certainly did. While in South Korea, Florian would attend the most expensive international school and the most prestigious universities there, obtaining degrees in business management, marketing, psychology, and international business.

Money has never been an issue for Florian if you can't tell.

Acidic Records was a mere side quest for his father, only housing underground indie soloists and producers. They never did anything noteworthy until Florian was appointed CEO in 2020, immediately opening auditions for their training program. Florian has always believed KPOP was where the money was, and his father was just too old to handle the times.

He was...almost right!

With the debut of BRATPACK in 2022, Florian found it much more difficult to break into the KPOP market than planned, initially losing a lot of money in the BRATPACK venture. However, with the group's rapidly rising success and album sales, Florian might not be such a failure after all.

ALMANDA SUMMERS is the alias of the creative director of BRATPACK. No one knows who she is or has ever seen her face. No one can find anything about this woman; seriously, she is a mystery.

Besides her Twitter account.

Almanda, believed to be a woman in her late twenties, is very active on Twitter and Instagram, often posting pictures of her visions for the group and commenting on recent events in the KPOP realm. Though she is quite loved by the fandom, some people believe she is an instigator and gets BRATPACK into drama they would've never gotten into if Almanda just turned her phone off.

Either way, her constantly running mouth doesn't derail her from being one of the most known and sought-after creative directors in KPOP at the moment. Bringing forth aesthetics and ideas the genre has never seen before or has left untouched for too long in her opinion, Almanda is an icon and legend in the making.

TONYA FUKUI is a former African-American—Japanese supermodel whose career was cut short due to a cheating scandal that had her dubbed "Japan's Hottest Homewrecker " for well over a decade now. Though her modeling career was done, she went behind the scenes and started working as a stylist for high-end clients, turned Jpop acts, and turned Kpop acts. Truly, she was just chasing where the money went to fund her purse addiction.

Tonya has worked with groups such as AESPA, NCT 127, NCT DREAM, RED VELVET, SHINEE, EXO, GOT7, STRAYKIDS, NMIXX, BLACKPINK, and many, many more. If you liked an outfit your favorite idol wore, Tonya most likely designed it for them.

Now, she primarily spends her time styling BRATPACK as she claims they let her be as creative as she wants. After years of being a punching bag for the general public, Tonya is finally adored again, mainly just people on BRATPACK Twitter, but hey! It's a start.

AUGUSTUS MOON is the main producer of BRATPACK. He began working in the KPOP industry at just seventeen years old when he and his sister, Autumn Moon, fled America and went to South Korea to get away from their abusive parents. Though Augustus has had some solo releases himself and has garnered a small following, he much prefers sticking behind the scenes as he says, "KPOP is not for me. I hate dancing." even though his Tiktok page will contradict that statement.

Augustus was born in 1995 in Chicago. He doesn't speak much about his time in America, deeming it "a test on if he really wanted to live or not" and saying his life only really started when he moved to South Korea and started making music.

Before exclusively working with Acidic Records and BRATPACK, Augustus would work with a wide variety of KPOP acts and make an even wider variety of songs. Some are phenomenal, and some are the worst things you've ever heard. Not every track can be a winner!

AUTUMN MOON is the main producer of BRATPACK and a part-time soloist. At sixteen, she fled America with her brother and moved to South Korea to get away from her abusive parents. Autumn and Augustus are glued at the hip. You'd swear they're twins by how in sync they are with one another.

Unlike her brother, Autumn is a soloist as well as a producer. However, she has seemingly put her own music career on the back burner to focus on BRATPACK and motherhood. That's right! Actual mother! Autumn has a nine-year-old son, Eunji, who she adores and loves dearly. She married her long-time boyfriend and PRIORITY member, Jang Kiha, last summer and is currently pregnant with their first child.

Autumn has been very open about her love for music and how happy working with BRATPACK makes her. Between her very fulfilling personal life and flourishing career, Autumn has attracted her own fanbase, calling her "Life Goals" and starting the trend of autumnism, where people try to live their lives like Autumn's.

Though her solo career, which only caught her attention once she decided to hang it up, has been put on halt, Autumn is very happy with where she is in life and adds a layer of hope to the BRATPACK team.

[prying-pandora666]

Remember when the live action was first announced, and some fans were asking that Sokka and Katara be cast to black actors? The fandom came down hard on them that representation is so important and that we can’t take those roles away from indigenous people.

When asked if the actors could be mixed black and indigenous, this was also rejected for some reason, and people who asked for this were widely mocked. Especially on sites like Reddit and Twitter, while Tumblr continued to emphasize that they had to be indigenous!

Then they cast a white man as Sokka, where is everyone? I keep hearing these weak excuses of “maybe he’s distantly mixed”.

Oh really??? So now it’s okay if they’re mixed as long as that mix is with WHITE. Funny how that works.

There’s plenty of evidence he may not even be legitimately Cherokee at all, anyway.

So where is all the outrage now? Where are the people who care so much about indigenous representation that they absolutely couldn’t abide fans even just FANTASIZING about the characters being even partially black?

Don’t get me wrong, casting indigenous actors should’ve always been the priority. It’s just interesting to see nearly everyone sudden get quiet about indigenous representation and say “well who cares as long as he’s best for the role!”

Spoilers: He looks stiff and awkward.

For real a bunch of you fell for marketing.

[chirpsythismorning]

Well, it looks like I've been shadowbanned by the Stranger Things subreddit for talking about the strikes.

This might not seem like that big of a deal, but considering the ST subreddit might very well be moderated by Netflix themselves in some capacity, has me pretty pissed off rn.

For some context, Netflix creating the ST sub has already been speculated since the sub's inception. The first season of the show didn't even start filming until November of 2015, however the subreddit for the show was created a month before that, in mid October of 2015.

It's not uncommon for Netflix to create social media accounts across the board for all of their content in order to promote it online, and so it makes sense that in the process of getting filming ready, marketing was going about creating social media accounts on every platform (their other official accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were also created months in advance of filming as well).

Also worth noting that there is a separate sub called Hawkins AV Club, which fans created themselves to talk about the show and other things related to it that they weren't able to on the main sub, most commonly leaks, which are prohibited on the main one (Netflix don't like leaks...).

Recently though, I noticed all the strike related posts were getting removed, with it being flagged as breaking rule three.

Rule three is pretty simple, in that all it really states is that users cannot post stuff unrelated to the show.

As far as I know, the main ST sub has never made an official post about how the strikes qualify as being unrelated to the show, so it's not like this is some widely understood specific point that has been elaborated on that fans have to follow. To me, it looks like this rule operates as a loophole for a moderator to remove strike posts and list it as 'breaking rule three', without having to acknowledge how fucked up that is.

And so I wanted to test this theory and decided to post the picture of Finn picketing at Paramount Studios in support of SAG-AFTRA the other day.

Right after posting, I added the comment, 'Also ST sub if you delete this, you're confirming you have a Netflix bias'.

For the first hour, the post remained public and so luckily I was able to get some comments on it from other users in the sub. A majority of the comments just acknowledged the picture of Finn and voiced their support, though there was at least one condescending comment speaking negatively against the writers and actors striking. But most importantly, I got a few comments from fans asking why I was insinuating that the post would get deleted aka my time to shine.

I replied by saying that I noticed all the strike related posts were being removed for 'breaking rule three' and how it was bogus because plenty of other unserious posts, that are even less related to the show, stay up all the time. And so, considering the speculation over the years that Netflix played a part in creating the sub and therefore likely still has a stake in moderating it in some capacity, means they are essentially blocking fans from discussing the strike.

I then went into how ST has one of the biggest fandoms for a TV series and how the sub reflects that with over 1 million users. There are plenty of other fandoms out there that are much more niche and small in comparison to ST's base, that have been able to come together and make a big difference by donating and spreading the word as a community, and how it's kind of embarrassing considering our size, that we have not been able to come together to show support for our writers and actors in a tangible way.

And that's when I speculated how I didn't think it was a coincidence that one of the biggest fandoms in the world isn't able to even merely talk about the strikes, in the one place that affords them the ability to come together in the masses, to potentially have the ability to play role in putting pressure on the studios in order to reach a fair deal sooner than later.

These strikes literally depend on the writers and actors not talking about their content in order to put pressure on the studios, and this sub basically operates in the exact opposite way. It allows free for all discussions about the show, but doesn't allow any discussions of the strikes.

Who benefits from that? Netflix. The studios.

The reality is the strikes have EVERYTHING to do with the show. Making posts about an actor protesting so that the writers and actors of said show can continue production in a way that is more just and humane, is about the show. Technically, in a reality where things are never resolved as a result of this strike and the studios being greedy, the show could literally cease to continue. So again, this strike has EVERYTHING to do with the show.

I then ended my comment by saying that despite my suspicions, I hoped that I was wrong and that my post would stay up.

Returning to the sub the following day, I found that my post was not only removed, but also all of my comments were. Everyone else's comments remained including the anti-strike one, and there was also the addition of a pinned moderator comment explaining why the post was removed ie Rule 3.

Now, I have had some of my posts removed on Reddit in the past. Byler posts for example tend to get removed pretty swiftly because the comments get nasty and so that's the moderators usual excuse for removing those, however they don't say it outright with a moderator comment, you usually have to message them directly to get the gist of why it was removed. I've also posted memes before with them being removed and being flagged as breaking rule three, however I have never seen an actual moderator pin the details of the rule. They usually just tag Rule 3 at the top, with it being implied that you have to go look into their FAQ to read up on the rules yourself.

The way they removed my post just came off soooooooooo corporate to me, where the moderator(s) didn't even acknowledge what I said, but basically just proved my point by taking advantage of their rule loophole, by listing off the irrelevant argument against it based on said rule, with no further elaboration on what I actually speculated.

Initially, I wanted to make a post about what happened on here, but I sort of just shined it on because I already assumed they were going to remove it, and so all they did was confirm my suspicions.

But then today I was on the sub and tried to comment on a recent post, only to see that when I tried to reread it after posting, my comment wasn't showing up.

To test if it was a me problem, I went to another subreddit I'm in, Shrek (naturally), and commented on a post. Low and behold it showed up and stayed there...

I then went back to the ST sub to comment on a different recent post and again it did not show up right after I posted it.

So apparently I am a threat to the ST sub to the point where they do not want me commenting on posts anymore, specifically after I posted about the strike and the subs intense measures to prevent it from being discussed at all. Like... ya'll just literally proved my point tenfold.

Now, I do think there very well could be several moderators that are not associated with Netflix at all that are in charge of moderating the main sub. That's actually very likely. However, whether Netflix was involved from the beginning or not, it's also very likely they are now, as the sub is MASSIVE and they probably don't want an account on that scale to be controlled entirely by fans. That would mean 1 million people having access to leaks or anything and everything. Not being able to moderate that would be a pain in the ass (and we're seeing how now in the case of a strike, they also benefit from preventing certain posts from being seen).

So I think that either Netflix created the account themselves from the beginning and have recruited a handful of regular hardcore fans over the years to help moderate it, or they hopped on after a bunch of complications with leaks getting posted to hundreds of thousands of fans during s2-3, taking control at some point from the original moderator, only to join the mix of other moderators that already existed and are basically none the wiser.

In the case of either of those, they can play off that they are an unofficial ST reddit, all because they have a few fan moderators, when it's clear that is not the case.

Anyways, the ST sub has a Netflix (studio) bias and everything that's posted on there is likely moderated by someone that works for Netflix. So, keep that in mind.