#well not false advertising they're all there

[lionbearfox]

kittycat impact 2 (more of them)

[astrobiscuits]

Astro observations part 8

[LONG EDITION] - taken from my phone's notes (also, i was too lazy to edit it so here's a nice chunk of info)

🍂 Sun conjunct Saturn individuals inherit mindsets from the father, grandparents or great-grandparents. They might never fully act like their Sun sign (aka "shine"), since they've been conditioned from a young age to listen to parents, teachers, and later on bosses. They are the type to never divorce, no matter how toxic their marriage is. If these peeps deal well with their Saturn Return, they might become "THE BOSS" (aka the person everyone looks up to due to how accomplished, disciplined and rich they are, they've literally got their shit together and deserve a round of applause, "it wasn't easy to get to the top, but it was worth it" - you might hear them say this). They are also more prone to ingrain stoic principles in their lifestyle

🍂 Mars square Neptune gives off major cult leader vibes. They're the type to fool you with false promises until you sign up for their "camp" but then you realize it's actually an evil cult where all they wanna do is put you to work (and maybe later even kill you lol). These individuals become very scary when angry (you don't wanna see them angry, trust me). If they ever commit suicide, it'll be by drowning, alcohol or drugs

🍂 Mars trine Neptune is one of the best aspects for those who make a living off their talents. The talent depends on the element the trine is in:

If it's in Earth signs - ideal for those who work in the "money handling sector" in advertising, becoming an entrepeneur, holistic care (if Virgo is involved), cooks, those who work in interior design, seamstresses, embroidery/lace makers, models, event planners If it's in Air signs - ideal for those who work in sales (their negotiation skills are ✨chef's kiss👌🏻✨), becoming a spiritual/religious teacher or an art/music/any other creative pursuit teacher (lmao, i can't even speak💀💀), writers, musicians, magicians and astrologers (for the last two - if Aquarius is involved) If it's in Fire signs - ideal for dancers, theater/movie actors, hairstylists, circus performers, photographers (only if Leo is involved) If it's in Water signs - ideal for make-up artists, painters, tarot readers

🍂 Moon sextile Uranus individuals have got the ability to create a positive parasocial relationship with their followers. Since these people often use their devices to validate their emotions, i wouldn't be surprised if most of y'all also have atleast one active profile where you post quite frequently

PRO TIP: Whenever Transit Jupiter is trining/conjuncting your Natal Uranus (to a less extent also the sextile), you'll get a sudden boost in your followers count

🍂 This is a theory of mine that i've come up with and i'd love to hear your thoughts on it. When it comes to intergenerational astrology, i do believe that we inherit all of our personal planets placements from our parents and ancestors. But then you might say "But i don't act like my mother at all! This is bullshit!". I'm not saying we're all carbon copies of our family members. What makes us unique and distinguishes us from our parents and grandparents (or even great-grandparents) are the way the planets aspect each other in our birth charts and the planetary configurations between them. Basically we start from the same ground, but we all use our traits differently, whether for the better or the worst expression of them. Let's not forget that we also tend to go through different life experiences than our parents and grandparents; we might be blessed with different opportunities that might enhance our best traits and help us achieve what our ancestors always wanted to but weren't able to

Hope you enjoyed today's post, loves!💗💗💗 I've been wanting to post for a while now but my inspiration has been wandering alone in the Sahara Desert I can't promise that i'll start posting again more frequently (the new uni year is starting soon for me + i enrolled in a local astrology school 2 weeks ago🥳🥳 ya girl can't wait to officially become an astrologer) but my inbox will be open again for further questions! I must also thank you for helping me hit 500 followers!!! I'm probably gonna do another ask game once i hit 600 followers, as i'm too busy right now. As always, don't forget to drink water and take care of yourselves! Hope to see you soon! ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Paying for it doesn't make it a market

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Anyone who says "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product" has been suckered in by Big Tech, whose cargo-cult version of markets and the discipline they impose on companies.

Here's the way that story goes: companies that fear losing your business will treat you better, because treating you worse will cost them money. Since ad-supported media gets paid by advertisers, they are fine with abusing you to make advertisers happy, because the advertiser is the customer, and you are the product.

This represents a profound misunderstanding of how even capitalism's champions describe its workings. The purported virtue of capitalism is that it transforms the capitalist's greed into something of broad public value, by appealing to the capitalist's fear. A successful capitalist isn't merely someone figures out how to please their customers �� they're also someone who figures out how to please their suppliers.

That's why tech platforms were – until recently – very good to (some of) their workforce. Technical labor was scarce and so platforms built whimsical "campuses" for tech workers, with amenities ranging from stock options to gourmet cafeterias to egg-freezing services for those workers planning to stay at their desks through their fertile years. Those workers weren't the "customer" – but they were treated better than any advertiser or user.

But when it came to easily replaced labor – testers, cleaning crew, the staff in those fancy cafeterias – the situation was much worse. Those workers were hired through cut-out shell companies, denied benefits, even made to enter via separate entrances on shifts that were scheduled to minimize the chance that they would ever interact with one of the highly paid tech workers at the firm.

Likewise, advertisers may be the tech companies' "customers" but that doesn't mean the platforms treat them well. Advertisers get ripped off just like the rest of us. The platforms gouge them on price, lie to them about advertising reach, and collude with one another to fix prices and defraud advertisers:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

Now, it's true that the advertisers used to get a good deal from the platforms, and that it came at the expense of the users. Facebook lured in users by falsely promising never to spy on them. Then, once the users were locked in, Facebook flipped a switch, started spying on users from asshole to appetite, and then offered rock-bottom-priced, fine-grained, highly reliable ad-targeting to advertisers:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

But once those advertisers were locked in, Facebook turned on them, too. Of course they did. The point of monopoly power isn't just getting too big to fail and too big to jail – it's getting too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

This is the thing that "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product" fails to comprehend. "If you're not paying for the product" is grounded in a cartoonish vision of markets in which "the customer is king" and successful businesses are those who cater to their customers – even at the expense of their workers and suppliers – will succeed.

In this frame, the advertiser is the platforms' customer, the customer is king, the platform inflicts unlimited harm upon all other stakeholders in service to those advertisers, the advertisers are so pleased with this white-glove service that they willingly pay a handsome premium to use the platform, and so the platform grows unimaginably wealthy.

But of course, if the platforms inflict unlimited harms upon their users, those users will depart, and then no amount of obsequious catering to advertisers will convince them to spend money on ads that no one sees. In the cargo-cult conception of platform capitalism, the platforms are able to solve this problem by "hacking our dopamine loops" – depriving us of our free will with "addictive" technologies that keep us locked to their platforms even when they grow so terrible that we all hate using them.

This means that we can divide the platform economy into "capitalists" who sell you things, and "surveillance capitalists" who use surveillance data to control your mind, then sell your compulsive use of their products to their cherished customers, the advertisers.

Surveillance capitalists like Google are thus said to have only been shamming when they offered us a high-quality product. That was just a means to an end: the good service Google offered in its golden age was just bait to trick us into handing over enough surveillance data that they could tune their mind-control technology, strip us of our free will, and then sell us to their beloved advertisers, for whom nothing is too good.

Meanwhile, the traditional capitalists – the companies that sell you things – are the good capitalists. Apple and Microsoft are disciplined by market dynamics. They won't spy on you because you're their customer, and so they have to keep you happy.

All this leads to an inexorable conclusion: unless we pay for things with money, we are doomed. Any attempt to pay with attention will end in a free-for-all where the platforms use their Big Data mind-control rays to drain us of all our attention. It is only when we pay with money that we can dicker over price and arrive at a fair and freely chosen offer.

This theory is great for tech companies: it elevates giving them money to a democracy-preserving virtue. It reframes handing your cash over to a multi-trillion dollar tech monopolist as good civics. It's easy to see why those tech giants would like that story, but boy, are you a sap if you buy it.

Because all capitalists are surveillance capitalists…when they can get away with it. Sure, Apple blocked Facebook from spying on Ios users…and then started illegally, secretly spying on those users and lying about it, in order to target ads to those users:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

And Microsoft spies on every Office 365 user and rats them out to their bosses ("Marge, this analytics dashboard says you're the division's eleventh-worst speller and twelfth-worst typist. Shape up or ship out!"). But the joke's on your boss: Microsoft also spies on your whole company and sells the data about it to your competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revengel

The platforms screw anyone they can. Sure, they lured in advertisers with good treatment, but once those advertisers were locked in, they fucked them over just as surely as they fucked over their users.

The surveillance capitalism hypothesis depends on the existence of a hypothetical – and wildly improbably – Big Data mind-control technology that keeps users locked to platforms even when the platform decays. Mind-control rays are an extraordinary claim supported by the thinnest of evidence (marketing materials from the companies as they seek to justify charging a premium to advertisers, combined with the self-serving humblebrags of millionaire Prodigal Tech Bros who claim to have awakened to the evil of using their dopamine-hacking sorcerous powers on behalf of their billionaire employers).

There is a much simpler explanation for why users stay on platforms even as they decline in quality: they are enmeshed in a social service that encompasses their friends, loved ones, customers, and communities. Even if everyone in this sprawling set of interlocking communities agrees that the platform is terrible, they will struggle to agree on what to do about it: where to go next and when to leave. This is the economists' "collective action problem" – a phenomenon with a much better evidentiary basis than the hypothetical, far-fetched "dopamine loop" theory.

To understand whom a platform treats well and whom it abuses, look not to who pays it and who doesn't. Instead, ask yourself: who has the platform managed to lock in? The more any stakeholder to a platform stands to lose by leaving, the worse the platform can treat them without risking their departure. Thus the beneficent face that tech companies turn to their most cherished tech workers, and the hierarchy of progressively more-abusive conditions for other workers – worse treatment for those whose work-visas are tied to their employment, and the very worst treatment for contractors testing the code, writing the documentation, labelling the data or cleaning the toilets.

If you care about how people are treated by platforms, you can't just tell them to pay for services instead of using ad-supported media. The most important factor in getting decent treatment out of a tech company isn't whether you pay with cash instead of attention – it's whether you're locked in, and thus a flight risk whom the platform must cater to.

It's perfectly possible for market dynamics to play out in a system in which we pay with our attention by watching ads. More than 50% of all web users have installed an ad-blocker, the largest boycott in the history of civilization:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Ad-supported companies make an offer: How about in exchange for looking at this content, you let us spy on you in ways that would make Orwell blush and then cram a torrent of targeted ads into your eyeballs?" Ad-blockers let you make a counter-offer: "How about 'nah'?"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

But ad-blocking is only possible on an open platform. A closed, locked-down platform that is illegal to modify isn't a walled garden, a fortress that keeps out the bad guys – it's a walled prison that locks you in, a prisoner of the worst impulses of the tech giant that built it. Apple can defend you from other companies' spying ways, but when Apple decides to spy on you, it's a felony to jailbreak your Iphone and block Apple's surveillance:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

I am no true believer in markets – but the people who say that paying for products will "align incentives" and make tech better claim to believe in the power of markets to make everyone better off. But real markets aren't just places where companies sell things – they're also places where companies buy things. Monopolies short-circuit the power of customer choice to force companies to do better. But monopsonies – markets dominated by powerful buyers – are just as poisonous to the claimed benefits of markets.

Even if you are "the product" – that is, even if you're selling your attention to a platform to package up and sell to an advertiser – that in no way precludes your getting decent treatment from the platform. A world where we can avail ourselves of blockers, where interoperablity eases our exodus from abusive platforms, where privacy law sets a floor below which we cannot bargain is a world where it doesn't matter if you're "the product" or "the customer" – you can still get a square deal.

The platforms used to treat us well and now treat us badly. That's not because they were setting a patient trap, luring us in with good treatment in the expectation of locking us in and turning on us. Tech bosses do not have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years.

Rather, as tech platforms eliminated competition, captured their regulators and expanded their IP rights so that interoperability was no longer a threat, they became too big to care whether any of their stakeholders were happy. First they came for the users, sure, but then they turned on the publishers, the advertisers, and finally, even their once-pampered tech workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

MLK said that "the law can't make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me." It's impossible to get tech bosses to believe you deserve care and decency, but you can stop them from abusing you. The way to do that is by making them fear you – by abolishing the laws that create lock-in, by legally enshrining a right to privacy, by protecting competition.

It's not by giving them money. Paying for a service does not make a company fear you, and anyone who thinks they can buy a platform's loyalty by paying for a service is a simp. A corporation is an immortal, transhuman colony organism that uses us as inconvenient gut-flora: no matter how much you love it, it will never love you back. It can't experience love – only fear.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

[project-sekai-facts]

is it me or does prsk not really cater towards hardcore yuribait or yaoibait as much even when given the opportunity especially compared to other gacha games, like even the wedding events neither of them was focused on a popular pairing or even just in general with the stories (except for minoharu and vbs i guess?)

Yuribait and yaoibait are strong words that aren't exactly right to describe project sekai. They're just alternative ways of saying queerbait, which implies a marketing strategy of attracting a queer audience by falsely promising representation. While they didn't advertise queer representation, spn and sherlock were accused of this due to the way they wrote their leads (i guess spn did become genuine rep. Ish). Proseka isn't that, neither are similar franchises, like bandori or love live for example. Even if they rarely say things outright, which admittedly is in part because of corporate greed and appeasing fans, I wouldn't say it's queerbaiting, especially for this game and the two I've outlined (well LL has a complicated history but this isn't the time or place). The whole idea of falsely promising queer rep or marketing off it doesn't really happen here, especially in project sekai it feels very genuine and clear even if not labelled. I put this down to the writers saying on record that they want the characters, and their relationships and issues, to feel realistic and relatable.

To actually answer the question now my little media ramble is over, yeah it does feel less compared to other games, especially bandori which gives content to multiple pairings for the same characters. Like don't get me wrong prsk has quite a lot of ship tease when you really get down to it and track through all the stories, but it definitely feels limited to only a handful of pairings. While prsk does give moments for multiple pairings for the same character sometimes it's just... less ig. Again i think it's just to do with the intentionally realistic way of portraying the relationships, so imo it makes sense that they only pick a hanful to give much more obvious or outright romantic subtext to (aka mmj/vbs), even if they still give little moments here and there for other pairings for those characters, as well as giving less-fleshed out or explicitly romantic shiptease for other pairings that don't include those characters (does this make sense? it's hard to talk about shiptease in the game without explicitly talking about shipping. oh well...).

(Also as an aside: mmj is also a bit of a genre thing, and a lot of a Love Live thing. I'm not reaching by saying that either, it showed up on the results to a survey about media the staff at colopale like. mmj does take a few cues from LL here and there, (rooftop practice, genki orange leader, the white feather, airis character design and voice actress) so this is probably one of them)

Even though the wedding events don't usually focus on a ship (aside from the Honami/Kanade one (for context it's honami's most popular ship at least on pixiv, although it's still on the rarer side of things, and it's not that popular in terms of Kanade pairings)), they have always featured popular ships on the card lineups, aside from the most recent one. the first one had cards for the two most popular Akito pairings, and the second one had An/Kohane and Shizuku/Airi. The second one is particularly notable since the event didn't go lightly on the ship tease at all in some parts, though it makes sense since both pairings have romantic text and/or subtext in the story. Even the first wedding event had a tiny bit in one of the card stories, and this year's one managed to squeeze in a scene where Minori imagines Haruka getting married (presumably to her).

We also had the buddy funny spend time event back in 2021, which was explicitly a double date event featuring an/kohane and minori/haruka (again two pairs with romantic text), and we've had other events that follow a sort of similar concept of two popular pairings doing something together, without the double date thing attached, but you can tell what they were thinking lol. I don't really wanna elaborate on that bc I don't wanna start a whole thing but if you look through the event list you can probably work it out.

But then again, this is the Hatsune Miku friendship game. Friendship and community are two of the core themes of the game, which again explains why it might feel like there's less romantic teasing and such compared to other games. Because there is. The events and other stories prioritise writing the platonic relationships over giving ship tease. There's definitely events that you can come out of with little to no moments for the ships you like. This isn't saying that other idol games don't focus on the friendship by the way, I'm just saying prsk has much stronger and consistent themes. From an objective perspective it has the best writing of the major idol games on the market (maybe, idk what's going on in bandori nowadays I've heard MyGO and Avemuji are really good).

Yeah it's the hatsune miku friendship game which prioritises realistic characters and relationships that's about the best way I can put it.

(aside #2: back to the idea of queer content, while they don't write the game, sega is pro-lgbt and is a sponsor of tokyo pride, and offer protections for queer staff. Other sega franchises like Yakuza and Sonic have queer characters! And mizuki is about 5 events away from coming out as trans unless they fumble super badly. So it's a nonzero chance that prsk can and will include textual queer rep in future (i mean they already have lol). It genuinely is down to the realism other fan appeal. Again this isn't to hate on other franchises I'm a huge fan of LL and a casual bandori enjoyer, prsk is just Like This)

[bunnie-online]

just ask. {A.S.}

juuuuust thinking about (modern!)anakin being your boy bsf (and roommate) catching you coming home from a verrrry disappointing dick appointment

part two

warnings: MINORS DNI 18+, suggestive, possibly ooc ani, fem reader

it was 1 am, you fully expected Anakin to be asleep, doing this 'walk of shame' in front of him would be exactly that... shameful. you has just had one of the WORST hookups of your life with some dude you met off tinder a couple of days ago, he was alllll talk. the definition of 'sounds to good to be true'

he didn't know ANYTHING about the female anatomy, like seriously, he basically dry humped you and rolled over. lame.

you unlocked the door of your shared apartment, opening and closing the door as quietly as possible, as not to wake Anakin. to your surprise he came walking into the living room with a mug in his hand. he was in his usual pajamas, blue and black plaid sweatpants and topless. you tried not to stare but your gazes always seem to linger when it comes to Anakin. "Hey! Thought you'd be home tomorrow?" he tilted his head in that adorably innocent way he always does. his mannerisms never matched his face, or body for that matter.

"Ah noo" you chuckle and cast your gaze downward. "Oh? Your date didn't go well?" he asked again this time raising his eyebrows with the word 'date'. he might look and sometimes act innocent but Anakin was far from it, he knew what your intentions were for the night. "Ugh, not at all." you roll your eyes and set your bag down by the door. "This dude was soooo lame." you whine.

"Aw, poor thing" Anakin says in a joking tone. "C'mere, I made some tea" he offers. "Since when do you drink tea?" you laugh "I like to pamper myself from time to time!" he said feigning offense, clasping his hand over his heart in a classically Anakin fashion.

"Tell me what happened." he sits in the bar stool at the kitchen island after handing you a cup of tea. "Ani, I don't know, it's embarrassing." your face turns pink. "Please I know about the thing you did in middle school. I think I can handle this" he laugh at you cringing from that horrid memory from your pre-teen years. "Oh you know you can't bring that up all willy-nilly Anakin!" you swat at him. his beautiful laughter filled the air

"Okay so I was going to hook up with this guy-" you start. "Shocker." Anakin smirks, interrupting you "one, rude. two, shut up. three, anyyywayys, I was going to go hook up with him and it sounded sooo promising because, damn can he talk himself up. He was so good with his words! And we get down to it and dude lasts like, two minuets! Anakin, I wish I was joking.." you bury your head in your hands out of frustration (mostly sexual). "That's the third guy this month! Like can men just be honest if they're mediocre at sex?!"

Anakin chuckles. "Blows my mind that there are guys out there who're putting up false advertisements for dick." you toss your head back and laugh "false advertisements is CRAZY" you laugh harder and Anakin joins you. "Did I lie?!" he jokes again, earning another laugh from you. "You got a point" you agree with him.

"Seriously though, that's a shame. I'd never lie like that." he takes another sip of his tea. Your mind starts swirling with questions. 'what does he mean by that?' 'I wonder what he's like in bed?' 'he has to be huge, right?' "Like honestly that's so fucked up." his voice breaks you out of your thoughts. "This sounds personal for you, what're you doing? Handing out trash dick or what?" you laugh. he chuckles again. "Hah, no. But if I was, I'd at least be honest about it."

your eyes widen but you regain composure quickly. "Oh? And what makes you so confident?" you smirk at him, wanting a rise out of him. "Well, I'm sure some of the girls weren't crying because I was dishing out bad dick." he smirks. "Wow you sure are cocky." you say with fake confidence hoping he wouldn't double down. your hopes were crushed when he stood up. he made his way behind you, placing both of his arms around you, resting his hands on the counter trapping you. he leaned close to your ear. "You know, you don't have to act out for me to prove it to you. You can just ask." his voice completely changed. you have never heard Anakin speak in such a low, sultry tone. you noticeably shivered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i highhhh key wanna finish this tomorrow bc it's midnight and i'm SLEEPY

~bunnie

[genericpuff]

oh boy rachel's telling on herself a little-

so we noticed that her Twitter name recently changed again, now featuring her bluesky social in her username to obviously advertise to people that she has a Blue Sky.

She's had BlueSky for a while, but it obviously doesn't have as massive of a following because 1.) Blue Sky is still a much smaller platform than Twitter (undoubtedly because it still requires invite codes to join), and 2.) it's really, REALLY hard to move the entirety of your fanbase from one platform to another as many followers are bound to be "dead" (i.e. not active on the platform anymore) and others will naturally fall off because they may have followed ages ago but never bothered to keep up or unfollow from a page that was just on their backburner.

But interestingly enough, this change is very recent and when you check her BlueSky, which she would only post to every once in a while, it's now seeming to be a lot more active with multiple posts over the past couple days. So I think it's very clear at this point that she's trying to actively commit to the migration from Twitter to BlueSky.

BUT HOOO BOY. SOME OF HER POSTS Y'ALL. SHE'S PRACTICALLY DOUBLING DOWN LMAO

You've all seen me dissect the SHIT out of Rachel's art process and y'all can verify it yourself through those posts that never once has she shown herself drawing this way. Never in the process reels, or the time lapse videos, or the single sketch posts she's made. So her claiming that she "likes doing this as well" is just flatout false because she doesn't do this. So I literally don't know who she's trying to fool with this (aside from her own fanbase) but she ain't fooling me LMAO

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rachel Smythe (@usedbandaid)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rachel Smythe (@usedbandaid)

But that's not even the best thing she's shared, oh no. Because this isn't even the full kit of clown makeup.

Nope, that goes to this repost-

No hate to the person who posted this, I'm sure they're chill and cool, I just think the fact that Rachel of all people reposted this to her BlueSky which she's trying to replace her Twitter with is very telling. We all know this isn't just Rachel sharing something funny for the gag, we know exactly what Rachel likes and portrays in her work that she could see herself in through this post.

And what's even more telling (and hilarious) is that this may as well have been her running away to BlueSky after the "Never apologize for being Sicilian" tweet became the top result when you search "Lore Olympus" on Twitter LMAOOO

I'm not saying that's exactly what's going on here, but the thought of Rachel deciding to fully commit to moving to BlueSky out of sheer embarrassment over this one out-of-context panel from years ago that went viral overnight - and staying at the top of the search result feed because no one's engaging with good faith LO posts anymore - is hilarious, and if it takes this dumbass panel of Hades telling Persephone she should never apologize for being Sicilian to get people talking about how stupid and hilarious LO is, then I say it's about damn time.

[gracefulserpent1207]

I feel like people are forgetting that the SAG AFTRA strikes were not JUST about getting better pay for actors and writers. Another very big benefit of the strikes, that is more overlooked than people care to admit, is protection against AI.

The reason why people overlook the damage that AI does to actors (including voice actors) and writers (as well as many others) is because people just aren't educated enough on it and this is because it is being advertised to be this amazing, technological advancement that will save the economy when it's actually the complete opposite. AI is damaging the economy because it is putting so many people out of jobs. Not to mention the fact that strikes are usually concentrated around getting better pay for people, so when uneducated people hear about the SAG AFTRA strikes, they tend to assume that it's because the actors/writers that are striking are just asking for more money (which they ARE doing and which they have the right to do because the pay they get stinks) and so avoid the other, equally important factors.

There are so many cases where I've seen AI being advertised/used in a "positive" way recently. This included a boy from my college mentioning how he couldn't be bothered to do the homework that had been set, so he just used AI to write his homework for him. Are we really seriously going to allow this to happen? Are we seriously going to allow young people to neglect their education and use AI to fake work for them, getting them target/expected grades that are much higher than what they're actually going to get, giving them false hope?

Another example from what I've seen includes an ad on TV for a new phone that used AI with the camera, and boy did this ad piss me off. Part of the ad sees a group of teens taking a picture, in which they are all frowning, with this phone. They then use the AI included with the camera to edit the picture so that they are all smiling. Why? Was it not easy enough to ACTUALLY smile? If not, was it because they genuinely aren't happy? And if that's the case, should we really be sending a message to TEENAGERS to just hide the fact that they aren't happy and fake a smile instead? Use AI to cover up the fact that you're struggling? No. No we should not.

I know a lot of people reading this probably think I'm reaching or overreacting, but AI does genuinely have a long term effect in these cases.

But I think the most common, most damaging example of people using AI that I've seen is from social media, specifically TikTok but other platforms as well. And this is the use of AI voice filters.

The SAG AFTRA strikes have worked hard to benift actors of all kinds, including voice actors, and the reason I'm drawing so much attention to this fact is because people just aren't getting it into their heads how DAMAGING AI voice filters are for voice actors. Several voice actors have already lost their jobs from being replaced by AI that can replicate THEIR voices, the voices that form part (the most important part) of their identity. Not to mention how damaging it can be for voice actors' dignity to hear their own voice coming from something else, especially considering how this "something else" can replicate within MINUTES what they had to perfect for YEARS. Voice actors put so much effort into getting their voices to be perfect for the role that they're playing, yet AI undermines that effort by imitating those "perfect voices" within minutes. Voice actors actually care about their roles/characters and the fans that love these characters. AI does not. All it does is copy. Yet companies would rather have heartless machines working for them than real life people who actually care about bringing characters to life for fans.

And you wanna know what the worst part is?

Apparently, those "fans" would rather hear AI voicing their favourite characters too.

Because it is YOU (the fans) who create, use and/or like AI voice filters on TikTok/Twitter/Tumblr. It is YOU who cannot accept the fact that your favourite character's VA didn't say the crappy line you came up with at 2am that you commented to them on Twitter, so instead used AI to make the character say it yourself because OBVIOUSLY you're gonna drop dead if you DON'T hear them say that line. Obviously, you can't go on with your life without causing a completely innocent and good person to lose their job AND their dignity for your own entertainment.

Another VERY big issue with AI voice filters is that the majority of voice actors whose voices I have heard being used with AI have specifically said that they do NOT support AI and do NOT wish for people to use AI to replicate their voice. Obviously, some people may not know this, but others do and they choose to ignore it. This does not just go for the people who create the filters. It goes for the people who use and/or show support for it too (such as liking videos that use a filter, etc. ) because you are spreading the use of AI and making companies more aware of it and how easy it is to use, and are therefore causing actors to be replaced. How would you feel if you heard your own voice being used by strangers without your consent for their own entertainment?

So for that reason, I am going to say what most people are just too scared to say:

Fans are just as responsible for the SAG AFTRA strikes for using AI as the companies that have been treating actors/writers like shit for years.

If you have EVER created/used/liked/reblogged/reposted/shared/etc. a video that uses an AI voice filter, please please please PLEASE go back and delete/unlike the video, and NEVER do it again. Do NOT interact with videos using AI voice filters AT ALL. If you get a video on your TikTok fyp, it's not that hard to just scroll past and ignore. If you're still not sure what kind of videos I'm referring to, a good example of a popular AI voice filter that I've seen recently that people need to STOP using is a filter of Luz Noceda (voiced by Sarah-Nicole Robles, who has specifically NOT given consent for AI replications of her voice to be used) and Hunter Whittebane (voiced by Zeno Robinson, who has also specifically NOT given consent for AI replications of his voice to be used) from The Owl House singing She Wolf by Shakira. If you have EVER interacted with this filter, please go back and undo however you interacted with it and spread this message to others.

I'd like to end this "rant post" by saying that I am NOT in anyway an actor/voice actor, but I am an aspiring writer. I remember one day earlier this year seeing something on the news about how companies were considering replacing human writers with AI and how in a certain amount of years, human writers may not even be needed anymore, and this scared the shit out of me because writing has ALWAYS been my dream and I thought my future was over before it had even began.

So in conclusion, PLEASE spread awareness of how damaging AI can be (for actors, voice actors, writers, etc.) and PLEASE make sure to NOT interact with it when you see it being used, unless you are asking another person to stop creating/using/interacting with it. And if you see a VA asking for people to NOT use AI to replicate their voice, just do the bare fucking minimum and respect their wishes. Your life isn't over just because you didn't get to hear Luz and Hunter singing She Wolf. Put the livelivoods of other people before your own entertainment. Thank you.

P.s. I'm gonna tag this post with fandoms that I've seen use AI for replicating voices (to spread awareness), especially if a VA from that fandom has specifically asked for it not to be used. Feel free to reblog and add tags of your own for any fandoms that you think I've missed.

[demonsword586]

I didn't want to get involved before but I feel like this has to be said...So about this Paimon drama we have going on right now.

I know there is a certain someone whose been going on a rant about how the whole fandom is transfobic. First of all,I feel like this is absolute bullshit. We are a fandom based around an already weird game. We talked about a lot of kinky and strange things,why the hell would we cross the line at lgbtq+?! Most people here are actually super nice and understanding as well.

So how did this drama start then? We been having a back and forth about Paimon being transfem. Now normally if we were all reasonable adults this argument would get solved quickly and an agreement would be made...but because a certain someone is throwing a temper tantrum at every little thing we say to them,things got complicated.

At this point it's not even about transfem or who's a transphob and who is not. It's about how this person is just being straight out mean and giving out false acussations.

Now I know you are reading this so let me tell you something. People aren't blocking you because they're transphobic but because you're jist a shitty person. You throw hissy tantrums at every little thing like a child. You talk as if we are all trashy people who put down every lgbtq+ person we see,but no. It's you who is forcing your belives up in our throats and then get angry when we don't agree with you. It's totally okay to hc things about your favorite character but when you use those hc as if they're a real thing...You have to ground yourself back. Touch some grass. Cuz not only are you literary incorrect but you're also falsely advertising Paimon as a female to new players who will then get dissapointed when they see that Paimon is a man. A very cute and feminine one but still a man. The best we can do is use they/them on them.

This could all get solved easily if people would just respect each other and just be kind.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for reporting my previous place of employment for shady work practices?

Disclaimer: this would be strictly petty revenge for firing me - while illegal, technically, the malpractice doesn't harm anyone.

This might get a little long.

Backstory:

I worked a receptionist position at a family-owned funeral home (in the US) where recently, the managing funeral director was replaced from a highly respected individual by a couple from a different state that had come out of retirement and were completely changing everything - some for the better, most to their liking... and some that while legal in their home state isn't allowed in the current state we are.

I had a strong feeling out the gate that the person out of the two that would end up becoming my direct supervisor didn't like any of the current staff, which got solidified when during a meeting she pretty much stated it would be her way or the highway.

Sometimes when we're slammed, we all work through our lunch and don't get a break for 8+ hours at all, so instead of forgoing eating altogether the entire staff got used to just scarfing down their food super fast at their desks.

We also don't have company cellphones, we only have landlines, and the way we dispatch our team to go pick someone up after they pass is to call the person to make sure they're available, and then text them the needed info (we also don't get a stipend to offset our cell bills).

Dilemma:

Tuesday morning, I got fired due to "gross insubordination" for a. eating at my desk and b. using my cellphone to call the dispatch team. The owner himself fired me, and was pretty rude and, imo, pretty heartless about it (due to some events that occurred on Sunday, I had to call out of work Monday, and when I asked if I should prep myself for the meeting since I had a rough weekend, he responded with "well, it's about to get worse").

He already had my final check in hand (which had a copy of my timesheet with the days that I skipped lunch marked as "busy" or "no lunch cover") along with a termination letter, so he didn't even care to hear my side of the story.

Since I was the receptionist, I've got receipts on some, if not most, of the slightly shady things that they were doing (i.e. selling insurance without a license, selling insurance under a different identity, breaking some state statutes from false advertising, etc etc), and was thinking about reporting them to the necessary agencies.

Its possible that this could lead to the place getting shut down (i dont doubt that the fines would definitely add up) and leave people without work (which is my main deterrent but out of everyone that works there, only a few of the original staff is still there - the rest have either quit or are actively looking), but at the same time, if they continue unchecked they're gonna keep getting away with it, keep making bank, and with the state we're in being a right to work state, as long as they can frame it a certain way, they can use anything at all to fire someone.

So... WIBTA if I went through the proper channels to report them for their malpractice and have them audited?

What are these acronyms?

[electrosquash]

This may sound stupid but how do I turn off blazeable on my blogs?

And how is this bad? Again, I don't wanna sound stupid or rude. Thank you for the heads up :]

Hi! No worries, you're not the only one with these questions.

On how to turn off the option to get blazed:

On desktop you can turn it off at this link: https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/#blaze It looks something like this

On mobile it's in the account settings menu, there's a lof of screenshots in the additions to my other post like here (i haven't updated since i got a funny little bug that lets me add polls in reblogs of other people's posts so i can't screenshot anything).

Alternatively you can also log into Tumblr in your phone's browser and use the link above there. Don't forget to do it on sideblogs that you don't want to get blazed as well! You can also change the settings per-post in the post menu. I've actually enabled it for my complaint post that's circulating because it would be really funny :D

On how it is bad:

With the way it is set up, people can blaze your posts without active consent. This can be used to bully people, by digging out old or not-adapted posts that were not meant for a wider audience and putting them on blast. This can include vent posts, opinions you might have changed since then, selfies, niche things many people might think are cringe (like 2014 self-insert omegaverse fanfics and the likes ... idk if you've seen the drama that resulted from someone blazing their fic, it wasn't pretty), posts that were only meant to circulate in your carefully curated audience, and more.

Since Blaze's are registered in many minds as advertisement many people will react negatively to them so this opens up a way to bully a lot of people. As usual, people of colour, trans people, and other vulnerable groups will get the worst of it, many are already getting deactivated regularly because of coordinated reporting harassment and since people donate hate organizations all the time they will definitely use the option to make the life of a person they're targeting living hell for 10$.

Staff thought of some safeguards but there are several fallacies:

The option to cancel a blaze before it goes live: Not everyone has access to the internet every day, and staff might accept the blaze while you're asleep / at work / on a trip / in the hospital / on hiatus. Then when you're coming back to tumblr your notes will have turned into a nightmare.

The guarantee that staff will check every Blaze manually to prevent harassment: Let's take the case in which someone's old fic get blazed against their will. How can staff know whether it was blazed with friendly intent (to promote a friend's work) or ill intent (to get people to point and laugh)? They can't as long as it's not against the Terms of Service. In general there will be many false positives (Blazes that get rejected by staff despite being innocent) and false negatives (Blazes that get accepted by staff despite being malicious). After all, the people working at tumblr are only human too. But in this case, false negatives will have devastating consequences - and extinguishing a blaze after it's live will be too late.

Many people don't follow @staff, so many people don't know about this change. In fact many people on that other post commented that they didn't know what Blazes are at all! I think i've read that they will add a login banner to tell you and check your settings, but iirc they had banners like that for the original Blaze function announcement so i don't have faith this will prevent anything.

I should clarify that i don't think the feature itself is bad at all, but it should be opt-in so only people who want to participate get blazed (e.g. art blogs). Or add an active mandatory confirmation by OP instead of a veto option, this would prevent the issues above as well, i think that would be the best option - that way people could leave the option on. I know staff are currently getting bombarded with support requests / flames (please be civil to them guys!) (also sorry. but not sorry. i didn't expect my post to blow up but also i think these are legitimately troubling concerns and i won't make the other post unrebloggable). They're aware of these issues so i hope they will change to one of these options - if they add active mandatory confirmation by OP i would enable to option globally as well (Hint hint this means more money for you, @tumblr, because otherwise many people have and will turn this feature off completely) A bit more time between announcement and go-live (4/20 iirc) would have been helpful as well.

Here's the original announcement by the way:

And since i'm gonna pin the post as long as the other post is circulating: Listen to goatbed guys!

[saberamane]

So I haven't put too many of my thoughts on Valhalla out, aside from my frustration on the anomalies, so heres some things I've liked so far, found, or otherwise want to comment on.

First off, I have to mention some 'false advertising' I've noticed. In the store section there's a 'weekly free gift' thing. This is wrong, it's more of a free gift every 7 days you start up the game. I played yesterday, the first time in well over a week, and it said I still had 2 days until I could collect my weekly gift. So 'weekly gift' is not accurate.

I really like the standing stone things, they're pretty cool. The cairns have been a bit problematic in some aspects, but not too bad.

I finished all the beast hunts. They were all cool and interesting, but I have to say I was a bit disappointed about the 3 wolves one. Only 1 head is mounted in the long house. It would have been better imo if all 3 wolves were included.

The black shuck was awesome. I wish there was more English folk legends included in the hunts and not just oversized local wildlife.

The mystery things are usually cool, I just wish they acted more like mini missions and had general goal markers and not just 'look around the large oak tree' told to me by a note or person.

The raids are pretty fun, just wish there wasn't so many things to upgrade that I need so much exotic supplies for.

Fuck those skull curse things. In general they're fine, but the fact that your movement and sight gets impaired is annoying. You want me to solve how to find and destroy this skull thing while it's hard to see and move? Not fun.

I wish the horses had more variety that's not part of a set locked behind money. You get black, graying (the dark dappled one), a dark brown, brown/white paint, and a white horse with black mane and tail. Where are the gold horses? No buckskin, palomino, cremello, pearlino. At the very least buckskin is naturally occurring in wild horses and should be available, right? And don't get me started on the Roan coats.

So yeah, horse variety for free is not great. There are plenty of raven ones though and I really like them.

Now, something I've noticed in game that makes me believe that female Eivor is the 'canon' choice:

For one, I've noticed at least twice where, while playing as male Eivor, an NPC referred to Eivor as 'she' or 'her', and this is during main story requests.

During a recent story quest where I'm helping the alderman reunite with a childhood sweetheart and getting his wife back to france, you request the help of a 17 y/o Dane named Rollo. During most 9f the quests with him, he is shown as being about Eivor's height, maybe a small bit shorter. The very last cutscene shows Rollo as suddenly being a lot taller than Eivor.

This has happened several times. In game Eivor is on par or slightly taller than those around him, but in cutscenes he is suddenly MUCH shorter. This is both annoying because it's inconsistent, but also seems like the development was rushed or people just didn't care about this detail.

But also, if Eivor is supposed to be Odin reborn, why would he be so short? Even if you played female Eivor, they should be taller than average. Kassandra was noticeably taller than pretty much everyone she met, and when I did the mission where you run into Kassandra, Eivor is was not shorter than her. Thisnlack of attention to detail is just... bad.

Ok, rant over. Overall liking the game. Sigurd has been a dick on screen so far, but I blame Basim for that. Just found out Sigurd had his arm cut off, oof.

(Forgot to add, I loved the hidden ones bureaus, very cool. And if someone knows if Reda is in Mirage, without spoilers, I'd love to know. I'm surprised he's still alive AND a child. Is this ever explained ?)

[velvetvexations]

I think one of the main reasons I dislike Fantasy High Junior Year is because of the way it was marketed. Like, there's an entire video explaining how Kristen is gonna go through this major character arc and ditch some of her more wacky antics as she realizes that the chaos she creates isn't cute anymore... and then there's absolutely no payoff. Instead, Kristen is at her quirkiest and most chaotic and other than a few dressing downs from some NPCs that she completely ignores nothing happens.

Like, I've never had a problem with Kristen's disaster personality. I think they handled it just fine in the first two seasons so that she never became too annoying or unlikeable. But it's just dialed up to 11 in Season 3. To the point where its genuinely not funny. And if chaos isn't cute, that'd make sense. It'd be on purpose, so everything can come crumbling down Fabian style and she'd have to become a better person. But that doesn't happen. So you're left sitting through all this garbage with the promise of a payoff that doesn't exist, which just leaves you bitter at the end.

It's especially frustrating when a few characters try to lead her in that direction. Like, Riz is working his ass off to get Kristen the presidency, something she only really wants as an ego boost, with no real platform or plans she can think of. He's the one joining all the clubs. He's the one making all the plans. Hell, he's the one making sure they're all doing well in their classes. And it gets to the point where his mom flat out tells Kristen that Riz would make a better president than her.

In any other story, that would immediately que the audience in to how Kristen's arc is gonna get resolved. With her abandoning the presidency and giving it to Riz, apologizing for making him do so much work for her and rewarding him for his effort. This followed up by deciding to be better for Cassandra, another person she mistreated and took for granted.

But she doesn't. Instead, she just makes Riz her vice president at the end and pushes all the work onto him AGAIN, to the point where it undoes the only character development he got all season (him shifting back to coffee from tea the moment Kristen makes him VP). And it certainly doesn't help that its the middle class white girl making her poor minority friend do everything for her.

Like, why market it as Kristen getting serious when that doesn't happen? Why act like she has some arc when she doesn't? It only makes the audience bitter when they went in expecting serious consequences and got nothing.

The marketing was very weird. Not only was there the false advertising with Baron's second form, which really hurts me to say as someone who sees Dropout as a bastion of ethics-based capitalism, but something just didn't sit right with me about the hype blimey got when it happened. Like, yes, it was funny, but like...ultimately I was like, alright? It wasn't anything actually important? It was specifically something Brennan was once again pushing really hard for them to succeed at because it was something they had to pass to continue to the next leg of the story?

Back when the Second Place episode of Game Changer came out, I saw someone complain about Dropout going back to the Brennan monologue well. I was like, hey, I love that shit, if you don't like the premise of a show don't watch it, right?

But here the commercialization of the cast's quirks and specific styles might have, I think, crossed a line, because of just how underwhelming blimey was compared to how it was built up. Like, Ally's quirky insane rolls drive Brennan crazy, haha, okay. The Brennan monologue well is, IMO, far from dry, but D20's hysterical theatrics in situations like that is getting stale, or at least that's how it felt this season.

[scarlet--wiccan]

IIRC the Made in the USA retcon's purpose is kind of exactly what it says on the tin- there were arguments that America wasn't a "real" Latina because of her solo series establishing that she was an alien from a Latina-adjacent planet, and there were complaints that presenting her as a Latina character was false advertising. I don't remember any of those arguments or complaints being from actual Latinx people, though.

This conversation has been ongoing for a long time, and Latine people have definitely made that criticism. I'm not Latine, and I'm not Black, so I don't want to speak on it too much. I did write a review of Made In The USA back when it came out, which led to some productive dialogue. You can read that post here.

I do want to clarify my statement, though--

When I say that Made in the USA tanked America's backstory and ruined her character for nothing, I'm not being facetious. The retcon did not add or resolve anything regarding America's heritage or identity which hadn't already been done, besides moving her birthplace to a more recognizable version of Earth. In my opinion, Made in the USA threw out everything that had been established about the character up to that point, rendered most of her motives and achievements moot, and did not make enough additive or constructive changes to justify that damage.

In Made In The USA, we see that America was adopted by a Puerto Rican family, the Santanas, and identifies as Puerto Rican. Although it is contextualized differently by the retcon, this is not new information. The Santanas were introduced in America (2017) as the first family that took her in when she arrived on Earth. This is part of a longer sequence in which America explains how and why she identifies as Latina, having come to Earth and found people whose culture paralleled her own. And I want to be clear that while one of America's mothers is an alien refugee, the other residents of the Utopian parallel are, by all accounts, human-- they're just from an alternate universe.

Because the Parallel is so different, and because Gillen, et al, never gave America a specific, real-world identity, she is, by definition, a monolithic stereotype, and that's a problem. But the retcon does not establish Elena or Amalia's "real world" nationalities or ethnicities, either. On paper, America is still what's she's always been-- an ambiguous brown girl with an adopted identity.

America (2017), seeks to resolve that problem, firstly by bringing more authentic cultural inspiration to America's fantastical home worlds, but also by using that fantasy story to explore the formation of identity as an immigrant or refugee-- an experience which echoes through multiple generations of America's family. I won't try to judge how successful or authentic that actually was, but broadly speaking, I think that it is a legitimate and valuable avenue for sci-fi/fantasy storytelling, and the fact that it is done here in a story centered entirely on Black and brown LGBT people, is historically significant for both the genre and the medium.

Again, I'm not trying to diminish the fact that America was, for many years, tokenized and touted as something she could never be, due to of her white creators' lack of sensitivity or care. And I will not try to arbitrate whether it is better for this character to serve as literal representation, or as an intersectional allegory. But I think there's room in the superhero genre for both, and I think it's a shame that Made in the USA-- which, from a craft perspective, is an objectively worse book-- undermined America's story in such a disrespectful manner. I can't help but wonder if we-- both the company and the fans-- had been more honest about the expectations we were placing on this character, then she might have had the opportunity to be more well-realized as either, or maybe even both.

[my-mt-heart]

NYCC 23 Thoughts

I know Caryl fans are more than ready to celebrate. I am too for what it's worth. Believe me, I'm so ready, but I also have concerns that some may not want or need to hear right now. And I get it. Fandom is supposed to provide a space for us to enjoy our favorite shows and characters without real life obstacles bleeding into it. My blog has really pushed those boundaries over the past year and half, so if that's not what you're looking for, feel free to scroll on by or block. If for some reason my rants are of any use to you, however, then here goes another one. Ahem.

Four middle-aged white men walk onto a stage...

…And proceed to make complete asses of themselves.

This is my biggest gripe with TWDU right now. It perpetuates the same tired, limited perspective of the upper class, middle-aged white man in not one, but all of the new spinoffs. TOWL is supposed to be about Rick and Michonne, but it's no secret Gimple favors Rick. Dead City is supposed to be about Negan and Maggie, but the showrunner only goes on and on and on about Negan/JDM in his interviews. S2 of le spinoff is supposed to be about Daryl and Carol, but...well, I'll get to that. My point is, representation offscreen matters because it affects what we see onscreen and which viewers will be drawn to watch. Personally, I didn’t feel drawn to anything during that panel, not because Melissa finally being announced isn’t exciting, but because the people speaking on her behalf always find ways to ruin the moment.

If Gimple wasn't going to talk about his show, I don't understand why he needed to be there. If it was a tradeoff, I would've rather seen Melissa up there and hear what she had to say about her own return and her own character in her own voice. If that still wasn't possible, I fully respect that, but there has to be some other way to deliver news besides constantly relying on male EPs who don't understand what her fans value about her. I worry this is how it's going to feel when I'm watching S2. I want Carol, but not a misrepresentation of her. Greg Nicotero is directing the premiere. Okay...and what about the other two blocks? Any women/POC directors? Anyone who's going to honor Carol the way she deserves instead of treating her like an extension of Daryl's story?

So, yeah. About that title. First of all, “The Book of Carol” is an odd choice in itself. The biblical allusions are annoying because they don't speak to who Carol is as a character. I’m not mad that it implies we’re getting Carol’s POV—quite the opposite—but I don’t like the confusion it’s causing either. Let’s be clear, Carol is not a short chapter in Daryl's story. She is Daryl’s story. Calling Melissa a "series regular" is extremely poor wording, and a sincere fuck you to whoever approved it for the announcement. She is a lead with EP credit and creative input. I am so sick of AMC leaving it up to the fans to debate her worth. Tell us she’s vital to the show, tell us it’s her show, and use clear language. Stop giving her haters more ammo they don't need and stop giving her fans more anxiety they really don't need.

Honestly, it would’ve been easier to accept if S2 was formally called TWD: Book of Carol. The problem is "The Book of Carol" is not the title. It's a subtitle of a (sub)title, and it's bullshit. It feels like a scam, another way to try to convince us we're getting what we want when we're not really getting much of anything. I don’t know if they're worried about false advertising since S2 won't be a Daryl and Carol story—more like a Carol story which, again, I’m not mad about as long as it leads to a reunion and canon by the end. Or maybe they’re stubbornly clinging to the belief that Daryl’s name is what sells despite the atrocious ratings suggesting otherwise. Daryl AND Carol do sell though, so why not lean all the way into it? Why risk turning the show into a laughing stock with obnoxious titles? These characters don’t deserve that.

Another thing that worries me is how it'll be promoted. As "The Book of Carol" or Daryl Dixon S2? Is it going to vary based on who AMC is trying to placate? Is "The Book of Carol" going to be smaller than Daryl Dixon on all the key art? Including Carol in the title was supposed to show that Daryl and Carol are equals. That way, Norman and Melissa would also be treated as equals by viewers and by co-workers. This doesn't look very equal to me...

Why —why 😩— do they need to keep rehashing the filming location's origin story, and by rehashing, I mean lying about it and dragging Melissa and her fans through the mud when all we want to do is move the fuck on? I don't like that Gimple (savagely) threw Norman under the bus, and I don't like that Norman, whatever his intentions were, threw Melissa under the bus. Again, this is why we need to hear Melissa's thoughts on the show, specifically what Carol's (and Caryl's) journey will entail not just plot-wise, but emotionally. It's not fair to put all that responsibility on her to make everybody else look good, and I hope it won't come to that, but the people on that panel yesterday really weren't doing themselves or the show any favors. I was pretty unsettled by the number of times I heard the phrases "I wanted this" or "we wanted that." Has anyone ever taken the time to understand what their audience wants? Or has the show really just been a vanity project all along?

I was wary about Zabel pretty much from the start, but finally getting to hear him talk about Daryl cemented how poorly he understands who he is and more importantly what he means to fans. A man being torn between his former way of life and his new one is nothing groundbreaking. It's actually a pretty standard formula that can fit a lot of conventional heroes, but it does not work for Daryl Dixon. Daryl Dixon is not a conventional hero. Daryl Dixon is the most loyal character in TWD history, and it's been well established his loyalty is to his found family of over a decade--Rick, Michonne, Maggie, and especially Carol. We will never buy that Daryl could be torn between them and people he's only known for weeks/months. Someone who tries to force that should not be showrunning. Period. I am terrified to learn more about how Zabel views Carol because so far, it sounds like he doesn't think much of her at all. If he did, maybe he would've written something more substantial for her in the finale.

We'll see what happens on Sunday. Hopefully they'll release the S2 teaser. Hopefully it’ll provide more reassurance. Hopefully something will. At the moment it just doesn't seem like AMC is capitalizing on Melissa's return as much as they could, and they're definitely not capitalizing on Caryl yet. That being said, and I can’t stress this enough, I do trust Melissa’s judgment. If she chose to come back—and she did—it’s for good reason. The wait is going to be difficult, but next year we’ll have six full episodes of Carol trying to find her soulmate. Nobody is taking that away from us no matter how many times the men put their foot in their mouths.

[asgardian--angels]

I honestly just think it's funny that so many people have been watching ofmd as a 'comfort show' lmao like I'm over here specifically watching for the angst. I crave pain and suffering. As soon as High On A Rocky Ledge played in the pilot I was hooked because I knew I was in for intense emotional turmoil. Red Flags is now my favorite episode of the entire series. I honestly didn't expect Izzy to survive as long as he did. His fucked up relationship with Blackbeard has fed me so well.

Of course I adore the love story, and the fact that Ed and Stede's love is an absolute, an immutable fact, of the show's premise allows me to enjoy the angst all the more. But I feel like some people need to be reminded: David Jenkins never promised you fluff. He never promised no deaths, no tragedy, no violence, no difficult topics. Personally I think including a fair deal of all of those makes the hope, the love, and the comedy shine all the brighter and have more meaning. You don't have to agree, but you can't assign expectations to a show that never made such promises. There was never false advertising. David set out to tell the story of two troubled, complicated adults navigating love and a long-term relationship in an often harsh and unfair world, finding community and making meaningful gains in self-actualization along the way. Ultimately it is a 'feel good' story but it's a rocky and winding road meant to mirror the messiness of our real world. Maybe you need to step back and re-evaluate where canon ends and your headcanons begin, and what the 'goals' of the show actually are that may differ from what you're looking for in media, and not blame Jenkins et al. for 'betraying you' when they're just telling their story the way they set out to.

[elianalevy]

[ELIANA LEVY. 33. CIS WOMAN. SHE/HER] is here! They’ve lived in Asbury Park for [3 YEARS] and are originally from [BROOKLYN, NEW YORK]. They are the [OWNER OF CONFECTIONS OF A ROCKSTAR] and in their downtime love [TESTING OUT RECIPES] and [GETTING NEW INK AT BLACK LOTUS TATTOO]. They look a lot like [ZOE KRAVITZ] and live on [ASBURY BAY]. The song that makes people think of them the most is [FALSE ADVERTISING BY BRIGHT EYES].

𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗟

FULL  NAME:   Eliana Daniele Levy.

NICKNAME(S):  Eli, El, E.

NAME  MEANING:  Eliana is a feminine name of Hebrew origin that means "God has answered". It is a combination of the Hebrew words Eli, which means "God", and Ana, which means "response" or "answered prayer". The name has roots in ancient biblical texts, especially in the Old Testament

AGE:   Thirty-three.

DATE  OF  BIRTH:   July 16th.

PLACE  OF  BIRTH:  Brooklyn, New York.

CURRENT  LOCATION:  Asbury Park,  New  Jersey.  

GENDER:  Cis  woman.

PRONOUNS:  She/her. 

SEXUAL  ORIENTATION:  Pansexual.

ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION: Panromantic.

OCCUPATION:  Owner of Confections of a Rockstar.

𝗣𝗛𝗬𝗦𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟

FACECLAIM:   Zoe Kravitz.

HEIGHT: 5' 2".

HAIR COLOR: Dark brown.

EYE  COLOR:  Brown.

TATTOOS:  Far too many to count, all over her body, but concentrated mainly on her arms and hands.

PIERCINGS:   Ears (3 lobe, a tragus, and draith piercings in her right ear + one lobe, a helix, conch, and tragus in her left ear), septum, and both nipples. 

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬

LIKES:  Spontaneous plans, fishnets (even if they're a little torn), brisk fall mornings where you can see your breath, the smell of a freshly baked cake, good music turned up way too loud, beat up guitars, always leaving room for dessert.

DISLIKES:  Being told what to do, cheap wine, money being prioritized over passion, anyone who talks during movies, sour candy, the dog days of summer, raisins.

ASTROLOGY:  Cancer.

PERSONALITY TYPE:  ESFP, the entertainer.

+TRAITS:  Magnetic, enterprising, fervid.

-TRAITS:  Impulsive, mercurial, resentful.

𝗕𝗜𝗢𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗣𝗛𝗬

Eliana grew up surrounded by love, good food, and music. Her mother worked in the bakery that had been started by her grandparents, putting in countless hours to keep the establishment and it's recipes in the family, while the only way her father knew to destress after work was to strum on his beloved Gibson. He was lead guitar in a cover band but he might as well have been an actual rockstar to his daughter.

Some of her earliest memories are sitting on her dad's lap as he strummed, her fingers trying (and failing) to follow his. Her interest never dwindled and he ended up teaching her how to play before eventually gifting her a guitar of her own.

From that moment on, it was game over. there was nothing else in this world that Eliana wanted to do.

Once she got the hang of playing music, she started writing it in the way only an angsty, misunderstood teenage girl can.

Her artistic pursuits were a solo thing until her sophomore year of high school when she met the three people who would end up being her closest friends. Like her, they were outcasts, they liked the same kind of tunes; it was a friendship match straight from heaven, never had Eliana clicked with any of her peers like that before.

Hang sessions turned to jam sessions and they ended up forming a pretty damn good rock band, led by Eliana as vocalist and backup guitar. Quickly they began dedicating themselves to the group, writing music, and lying to shitty dive bars about their age so they could work open mic nights. It was minor league, sure, but hey, they were just kids.

Things really changed when Eliana finally worked enough hours at the family bakery to afford a shitty, beat up Honda. They practically lived in it on the weekends, causing mayhem and playing gigs up and down the East Coast. Soon enough, graduation came, went, and then they were legal adults free to make whatever bad decisions they wanted. They lived off shitty fast food, couch surfed, got tattoos so bad Eliana laughs about them now, and, most importantly, created and played some very good music.

The beginning of the end came a few years later when they got approached by a record label. They were all in their early twenties, being offered more money than they'd ever seen and the excitement was undeniable... well, for everyone except Eliana who worried about going "mainstream", but she also knew she couldn't say no and disappoint her best friends. Her concerns, though, were valid.

Ask her and she'd tell you it was an overnight change, a metaphorical flip switched, and just like that, it stopped being about the art and started being about money. Objectively, it was a more gradual thing, but the end result was the same: they ended up being a business - not musicians.

Her friends had an easy time with the changes that came along, but Eliana was a lot less marketable, or at least she was the one most unwilling to conform. It was her voice in particular that was censored - her words were too controversial, too vulgar, always too something. She felt stifled. Music was always a way to express herself, to turn thoughts, feelings, fears into art. She could no longer freely do that and it began to weigh heavily on her. She just wasn't happy and sometimes you need to take the money and run.

In the end, she lasted eight years years and three relatively successful albums. They were in the process of writing their fourth and starting an international tour when Eliana left the group. The completed songs were released as an ep and the three remaining members did the tour on their own, abiding by their word and contracts.

It was a really hard decision to leave the band that she, along side people who became family, built from the ground up and Eliana struggled with saying goodbye. She spent the first year just traveling, totally aimless with too much money and time alone to really think, before she settled down in Asbury Park and opened Confections of a Rockstar.

Opening a cake shop hadn't been the plan, but, then again, she didn't exactly have one in the first place. She just knew she had to do something and it couldn't be music, not anymore. So when she saw the kitchen space available to buy and thought back on her years in the family bakery it just kinda made sense.

𝗙𝗨𝗡 𝗙𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗦

Quite literally would have never actually gotten Confections of a Rockstar open without the help of Mama Levy. Turns out starting a business is really fucking hard and you shouldn't just do it on an impulse. Who knew???

The original menu was totally a team effort but Eliana finally has the science down so all new additions and seasonal confections come from her and her alone.

Biggest red flag? How much she smokes. If you can't find her, just go search the nearest alley. Chances are she's there, chain-smoking.

Loves, loves, LOVES an impulsive tattoo. Some of her work is meaningful or has a story behind it, sure. But the rest? Oh, she just had a free afternoon and an idea.

All that shit with the band really fucked with her relationship with music and she's just now getting to the point where she feels like she can play and write again. It's not for public consumption though, her art stays private.

If she shares her music with you now you're suuuuper important to her.