good news! unity has walked back a lot of the runtime fee!
they made a blog post outlining their new terms, the link is here. but if you want a sparknotes version, here's the highlights:
1. the runtime fee is not retroactive. previously released games are safe.
2. the fee only applies to the next major version of unity. developers can choose not to upgrade if they don't want do deal with it.
3. the fee is opt-in and number of installs is self-reported. if they'd prefer, developers can instead pay a 2.5% revenue share. (for reference, unreal is 4%.)
4. interestingly, the splash screen is being completely removed. this is probably a way to improve their reputation.
overall, this is a HUGE improvement! but, if I remember right, there was not any revenue share before, so, we are not at the same point we started. unity will still be taking a larger cut of developers' revenue if they choose to use newer features. but, it is nowhere near as drastic as we thought it would be.
overall, I think we're in a stable spot now, but I also think unity has lost most if not all of the trust it had. especially with indies. there has already been a mass exodus, and I kinda hope that will keep going.
something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.
it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.
and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.
on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.
edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.
Perseus, Daniel Ogden
Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet
I think it's so tired and played out, the growing genre of tumblr posts that are like "yeah I don't have tiktok (hair twirling) (brag) (proud of myself)" like I need yall to understand it's just an app. and I know that we're all getting old. I'm turning 51 this month. but you SAID you wouldn't do this whole "disregard whatever the Young People are doing once you become an adult" thing and now you're totally 100% doing it. "it's toxic" so is tumblr and twitter! "there's censorship" just like tumblr and twitter! "I don't like this-and-this trend" you literally follow people you wanna follow and shape your own algorithm. and your tumblr reblogs are FULL OF TIKTOK REPOSTS. you love tiktok. they are just videos. having or not having an app is not a personality trait!!
An IRL friend of mine recently suggested I cut back on posting content because "maybe a dozen or two dozen people" like my posts and they weren't sure why I bothered when there was no money or engagement in it.
I definitely felt a bit like that a few years back, particularly when I'd see people repost my scans on other platforms and get tens of thousands of likes. If I'd shifted platforms and focused on engagement that could well have been me.
However, that's not really what I've ever been about. I share what I share because I like it and want other people who like these works to enjoy what I have in my collection too (or to discover new works they might not have encountered). Nobody has to engage with what I post though, I could get 0 likes/reblogs and I'd still keep plugging away because ultimately this is just a hobby and I'm just a fan.
I don't want to harp on with the cheesy "you should do things for yourself first and foremost" with hobbies, but at the end of the day my affection for certain series and artists won't evaporate just because my posts about them aren't popular on Tumblr.
I've been here for 14 years and have only just hit 10,000 followers. I'm not an important internet person by any stretch of the imagination and I think that's OK. If I'd been angling for something beyond simply being a fan of certain things, I can see how this might be considered failure. For me (personally) though, I don't feel like my hobby needs to have any form of hustle attached to it. This is what I do to express my affection for things.
Not everyone will feel the same way as I do about sharing content online and that's fine, we're all individuals and we engage with things differently. I just wanted to express this while the thoughts were still fresh in my mind.
Enjoy your hobbies in the ways that work for you. You'll find people who appreciate your contributions (big or small) wherever you go online and if you move onto different fandoms or hobbies, you'll find new folks who like what you do there too. Just don't feel locked into numbers as the ultimate way of judging your own love for media.