#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

[librivore42]

A cultural exchange

This gif is mildly false advertising because there's no kissing in the fic but it definitely carries the 'Minthara yanks Gale in, much to his pleased surprise' energy. A secret withers gift for @quescon! Ao3 link below, and full text under the cut if you want to stay on tumblr (but comments and kudos would be welcome!)

A cultural exchange (1051 words) by Librivore42 Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Baldur's Gate (Video Games) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Minthara Baenre/Gale Characters: Gale (Baldur's Gate), Minthara Baenre Additional Tags: Rated teen for the fact that they're definitely undressing eachother but that's about it, I'm bad at ratings okay Summary: Minthara is attracted to Gale, and Gale is clearly both interested and absolutely not going to make the first move, so why beat about the bush? She takes matters into her own hands.

~~~~~~

Minthara was indeed beautiful. Forceful. Powerful. Direct. So maybe Gale should have been slightly less surprised when, not half an hour after they’d set up their tents and he’d wandered toward the tree-line to look at some fascinating mushrooms, he’d been powerfully and directly pressed up against a tree.

“Minthara?”

“Wizard,” she said calmly, as if pinning wizards to trees and busying herself with the laces of their shirts was a common everyday occurrence.

Surely it wasn’t.

“May I-” he said, desperately trying to keep his voice level as a hand briefly dipped under the fabric, “ask what by Elminster’s beard you’re doing, exactly?”

“I did not think you would need it explained to you.” Red eyes much too close, much too pleasantly heated. “Or did your goddess not concern herself with the mortal necessity of undressing a bedmate?”

“Mystra would- I. That isn’t-” Feeling too flustered by the suddenness of it all to come up with a proper retort, he batted her hands away.

“Now really, I must protest!”

“Must you?” she said dryly, resuming her unlacing. “To what do you object, wizard?”

There were numerous and equally valid variables in this situation to object to. The suddenness of it, the lack of asking whether he was actually interested, as if his willingness to participate was not a consideration- not that he was wholly unwilling mind you, nevertheless it was the principle of the thing- but as his mind spun for some excuse to get her hands off of him so he could have a single coherent thought, all he could come up with was “The location.”

She raised her eyebrows, fingers stilling as he willed some blood back to his brain.

Good. She was distracted. Now he could push her very warm and very appealingly muscled arms away and walk back to camp and they could all pretend this had never happ-

“We. Ah. Are much too close to the campsite and our companions. A tent might afford us more privacy in this particular situation.”

Gods damn it. He went on, mouth working incessantly to fill up the silence she was staring at him with.

“Visual privacy at the very least, though if we were further in the forest we would have less chance of being overheard. It would be rather less comfortable but perhaps-”

“Are you never silent?” she said in milder annoyance than he was used to. And then, much to his surprise, “Very well. Privacy you shall have.”

Quick and efficient, he was grabbed by the mostly open shirt front and dragged into her tent, still a little dazed to have been given this consideration.

Once the tent flap closed them in together, she looked him up and down with vaguely proprietary air. Had Mystra ever looked at him like that, or had he always read it as affection? Minthara’s gaze was certainly different, but similar enough that it made him bristle.

“A second objection, if your sole interest is a warm body to satisfy your needs then I am certain there are many others to provide.”

A flicker of surprise, and then, bafflingly, increased interest as she stepped forward into his space and resumed undressing up.

“You are a strange one,” she said, her voice almost… amused? “If my sole interest was a warm body I would indeed have sought out another to provide it.”

Gale let out a slightly hysterical laugh, and he did have to wonder precisely how they got from Minthara seeming to express only the deepest disdain for him to her fingers sliding under his shirt and pushing it off of his shoulders.

Perhaps in drow culture disdain was a step up from indifference? He had to admit, he was not particularly well read on the ways of the drow, though he was dimly aware that men were faced almost exclusively with those two emotions. A shame really, he had been most remiss in learning more about their companion, not asking her nearly as many questions about the Underdark and drow as he had asked Lae’zel about the Astral plane and the Githyanki.

Given that Lae’zel was always very responsive and Minthara stared at him like a slug she’d prefer to step on, that was not surprising. But he could find books. Truly there was no excuse besides neglect that he had been caught so short-handed in this- her hands were at the laces of his trousers now - very…. sudden and… intimate…. cultural exchange-

A smack on his cheek, surprisingly light, brought him back to reality and the chill air on his increasingly bare skin.

“I expect you to pay attention.”

“Yes ma’am.” He wasn’t sure if it was the smack or the authoritative tone that made the response tumble from his mouth so readily, but he was sure that despite her lack of expression, he saw the following in Minthara’s eyes:

Surprise again Delight Satisfaction An even greater increase of interest

Duly noted. He filed that away in his currently limited mental codex of drow culture. Or his understanding of Minthara, at the very least. It would be prudent to assume that she was merely a partial reflection, not a complete representation, of what was no doubt a very varied and fascinating- oh Gods. Warm and calloused hands in the right place were remarkably focusing when he was in danger of getting distracted again.

He tried very hard to formulate a coherent thought again.

“Perhaps you should-” he gestured towards her. “Allow for a levelling of the playing field, as it were?”

“An impertinent question,” she scoffed, but took his hand and directed it to the buckles of her armour, giving him a little room to get his mind in order. He glanced at her quickly as he worked, noting the amusement buried deep in her eyes. She seemed to enjoy a little pushback, alternating with plenty of deference, though he had yet to learn if that was a drow preference, a Minthara preference, or simply what she preferred out of him.

“We shall have to do something about that failing of yours. Kneel.”

Ah well, who was he to miss an opportunity for greater cultural knowledge? He grinned a little, all too rapidly falling into the rhythm of this little encounter like a newly learned lanceboard strategy.

“Yes ma’am.”

[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.

[renardtrickster]

Drama Queen and a Dissection of Fascist Thinking, Framing, and Language

If you're at all plugged into the anime sphere, you know what's going on. If you don't, Drama Queen is a manga made by Kuraku Ichikawa, and made its debut in Weekly Shonen Jump on December 1st of this year. Kuraku Ichikawa's past works have been drama-action oneshots, none of which I believe are particularly relevant to the discussion of today. What is relevant is that with one chapter released and eight days of time to ferment, Drama Queen has been embroiled in drama, with the common talk being that it's a blatantly xenophobic, anti-immigration screed that at times seems to almost perfectly trace common alt-right arguments and talking points.

Sickened, but curious, I decided to read the one chapter released thus far. The following is not only a window into what's going on, for those who are equally sickened but curious, as well as my analysis and thoughts on the same.

The backstory for Drama Queen is that, nine years ago, a meteorite was hurtling towards Earth, spelling destruction for the planet and all of its inhabitants. They were saved by the intervention of a species of unnamed aliens, who kind of look like humanoid puffballs with goofy face trunks. The two coexist, but there's an underlying tension from the very beginning. A male alien/female human couple walk the street, as we see advertisements for high-rise apartments available only to aliens, hourly parking where aliens don't have to pay, an alien baseball MVP on a big screen in the public square. As the alien points up, our first main character, Nomamoto, stands behind, bleeding from the nose.

Out of the gate, we obviously see that the aliens are given a preferential treatment, but I want to focus on the nosebleed. The implication is obviously that Nomamoto was just elbowed in the face, and she's going to begin yelling about it, but the panel looks like this.

It's not impossible that she was elbowed in the face, but I wanted to draw attention to a few things. No impact sound is drawn implying that contact was made. The angle between where Nomamoto is standing and where the alien's arm is positions feels off. And in the panel after showing Nomamoto's bloodied nose, she's shown standing quite a distance away from the couple, that implies only a moment or two passed between "contact" and confrontation.

This isn't immediately relevant, and in the grand scheme of things, whether or not the alien actually did elbow her is irrelevant. But this is our first suggestion that Nomamoto might not be the most reliable narrator. It's not out of the pale that she was either bleeding from the nose already and decided to pick a fight, or deliberately walked into him so she could start one. In discussions on this manga, I've seen multiple people say this is their first impression of what happened. But I digress.

Nomamoto points out that the alien just elbowed her, only for the alien to ask "who are you" and then accuse Nomamoto of making false accusations. As Nomamoto demands an apology, the human woman apologizes on behalf of her "partner", only for Nomamoto to storm off angrily, wishing death upon aliens for being rude, and cursing out the woman for calling her boyfriend her "partner". A bizarre, almost out of place gripe. #wokeness, am I right?

Nomamoto notes that she's grateful the aliens destroyed the meteor, but also notes that the aliens "clearly" look down upon humans. "But I'd probably be in trouble if I said that", she says to herself. She passes by posters for "New Universe Week", a celebration held to "remember our love and gratitude for that day". On the television, a newscaster proudly reports that the alien population in Japan has exceeded 17 million, with 60,000 in Senno city alone. They interview people who are grateful for the aliens, glad that they're alive today, or that space travel is now easily affordable, as Nomamoto wonders when she last ate meat. Her paychecks are abysmal, but she can't fall into self-pity. Can't be miserable, stay positive.

Nomamoto's job sucks. A factory job with the aforementioned miserable paychecks. The AC isn't on, with her boss using some sort of "cooling spray" on himself. Despite being her boss, he barely speaks Japanese, with his text bubbles rendered as random scribbles that vaguely resemble kanji, but are in fact more gibberish than anything else. Nomamoto's boss is screaming at her, and her nose has recently been bloodied, implying he struck her. Nomamoto even asks why he always hits her, but we once again do not see the impact (and if it's hot, which the lack of AC corroborates, it could just be a heat nosebleed). As is to throw Nomamoto's reliability further into question, her coworkers note that Nomamoto is frequently in trouble with the boss, she's always scowling, and even they don't like her.

The first time we see an alien actually hit someone on-screen is when the boss accidentally elbows a man behind him. Said man turns around, demands an apology, and when faced with the unintelligible speech, ask how he can be the boss when he can't even speak the country's planet's language. The man also notes that the working conditions are garbage, he won't turn the AC on, and nobody else complains as the boss makes money off of everyone else's backs. This man is Kitami, and he will become very important soon. He and Nomamoto get acquainted, and Kitami, before leaving, notes that it would have been a big deal if Kitami hit his boss back, because the higher-ups are all aliens, and "society is on their side".

At home, Nomamoto summarizes her shitty living situation, which I'd like to make another aside for. She's 17 years old, cut ties with her parents for reasons unknown, and doesn't want to come crawling back to them. Her full time job returns a payslip of roughly $1,000, and she feels like she can't find another job because she has no skills to speak of. Nomamoto lives a financially insecure life with nobody else to fall back upon. She's isolated, but not just by her poor economic status. But by the fact that something isn't right about all of this. Nomamoto wonders, how could anyone else work for chump change for a smile on her face? Are they happy, working themselves to the bone for an alien boss? Sure, the aliens saved humanity, but something doesn't feel right. And she hates it. It's not like she's supposed to feel this way. "But I'd probably be in trouble if I said that", she says to herself. "I wish they'd all just disappear".

In this moment, Nomamoto translates her economic anxieties into racial scorn. She doesn't explicitly say it, but does suggest that, if the aliens didn't come down to Earth, her lot in life would be better. That it's their fault that she's poor, and miserable, and alone. She even projects that fear and hatred onto other people. She's a madwoman, because she's the only one who can see the truth that's in front of her face. That everyone else either can't see, or will punish her for naming it. And by framing herself preemptively as a victim, a martyr who would be hung on the cross for saying what she truly feels, she pushes herself further into isolation.

And to wrap this aside up in a bow, Nomamoto brings her own introspective journey to a close. Acknowledging that she's not supposed to feel this way, she declares "misery is for the weak" and decides to watch dog videos to take her mind off of things. This close to "the truth", and she shies away with a thought-terminating cliche, and some mindless entertainment. The blue pill that prevents you from waking up, the goyslop meant to distract you and keep you complacent.

At a nearby beach, Nomamoto and Kitami meet up to do some fishing. It's not very eventful. What's important is the conversation after they accidentally lose the tiny morsel they managed to catch. Spaceships dot the sky, trailing by constantly. They're constantly visible in any shot of the skyline, and Kitami notes that they're reflected even in the ocean. The world's changed in a few short years, and the ocean he used to know and love, where he'd play with his family, is no more. Modernity may bring wonders (as mentioned before, trips to the moon are routine and very accessible now), but they've taken the past away from this man.

Bringing up his family directs the conversation towards that, and Kitami drops his first bombshell of the night. His tragic past is that HIS WHOLE FAMILY WAS KILLED BY ALIENS. As he relates the story, they were celebrating his sister's high school graduation when an alien car came flying in reverse. "I'm sure he was a drunk driver" Kitami says, as though he doesn't know all the details. But according to him, the police didn't try looking for the culprit, probably too afraid it'd turn into an interplanetary incident. In one fell swoop, we not only see why Kitami hates aliens, but we also, rather blatantly, reference reports of "migrant crime waves". When I read this, the first thing I thought of were the "rapefugees" craze, or constant news cycles about Muslim migrants killing children and the police not arresting them due to "cultural differences", because as we know, police love NOT arresting brown people. For a more contemporary example, you might have thought of "they're eating the cats and dogs".

But that isn't the only bombshell Kitami drops in this conversation. He asks Nomamoto if she thinks any of this is weird either. How it seems convenient for the aliens. He then openly speculates, what if there was no meteor in the first place? The aliens have access to technology well above that of humanity, so isn't it possible the whole thing was staged? Kitami has no evidence that this is the case. He just asks questions and posits an idea. But in this moment, we see the birth of a conspiracy theory. With no proof that the aliens are intentionally malicious, Kitami invents the proof, and the free-floating, directionless hatred that Nomamoto feels can now be given justification.

Kitami calls what the aliens are doing a "soft invasion". A nonviolent effective takeover of the planet Earth. And I'd like to digress her for a second to point out some disparate elements and weave them into a more coherent thought.

The first thing we see is an alien with a human girlfriend, walking around town with her hanging off of his arm. I don't personally read the earring as any sort of explicit racial coding, because I don't think the aliens represent anything other than a vague concept of a "foreign other", but you do you.

News reporters happily announcing that the Japanese population is increasingly becoming composed of aliens.

The cover featuring Nomamoto surrounding by the phallic trunks, even appearing to jerk one of them off, suggestive of an interracial gangbang of sorts.

The meteorite with an alien trunk, expelling spermlike spaceships...

...Which trail along the sky and the ocean, as though the aliens were figuratively raping the very planet and filling it with their seed? It hasn't been said outright, but the implications and the visual storytelling all evoke the idea of the Great Replacement. A "soft invasion" where through immigration and miscegenation, the native population of the country (or planet) will be supplanted by another race. A racist conspiracy theory that tends to go hand-in-hand with another racist conspiracy, that said Great Replacement is being orchestrated by some nefarious group (usually the Jews, most conspiracy theories go back to antisemitism if you give it enough time). In this case, the aliens fake a meteorite, so they can become heroes to humanity, so they can cow them through love and gratitude into not objecting to the destruction of the planet and the replacement of their demographics, so says Kitami.

Kitami follows up his thoughts by saying that it's all rotten, the world can go to filth for all he cares, and he wishes the aliens would all just disappear. Nomamoto says the same, and that she'd always felt that way. The two spend the rest of the day talking trash, building alien heads out of sand and kicking them into dust, punctuating each kick with a personal grievance and a "drop dead".

"This is so much fun. Who knew it was so much fun," Nomamoto says to herself, "being miserable?". This entire time, Nomamoto has held back her hatred towards the alien with a kick to herself. Stay positive, don't pity yourself, misery is for the weak, etc. Her attempts at not giving into hatred and staying positive were her taking the blue pill. Once she had a serious talk with Kitami, someone more in touch with his own hatred, he talked her into taking not just the red pill, but the black pill as well. Feel miserable. Feel hopeless. It's not just that your life is bad, the whole world is going to shit as well. It's unfixable. And you know who to blame and who to hate now.

The next day (another bloody nose implied to be caused by physical abuse, another suspicious omission of us actually seeing it), Nomamoto is fired. Her boss accidentally set himself on fire, while according to her coworkers, she just sat there and watched him burn to death. She feels bad that she got fired, but felt no guilt whatsoever upon seeing her boss die. Kitami calls her phone, having looked up her address online, and brings the dead body of a different alien inside. Kitami claims that the alien turned around and accidentally hit him in the face, giving him a bloody nose. Kitami beat him to death in rage. "Killing people is fundamentally wrong. Only I don't see this thing as a person", dehumanizing the man he murdered in cold blood.

After discussing how to hide the body, Nomamoto suggests eating the alien, citing how her boss' burnt body smelled like grilled squid. They eat the entire body, bones and all. Nomamoto loves the taste, but Kitami hates it. He does decide, however, that they have a perfect system set up.

(Also the aliens are strong enough to fake a meteor catastrophe and take over the country, but are dumb enough to set themselves on fire by sheer accident, and weak enough that two random people, with enough determination and cunning, could weed them all out by killing and eating enough of them.)

Before I continue on to the conclusion, I do want to address a pervasive reading of this manga I've seen thus far. From what we've seen, the aliens are the dominant power in society. They get preferential treatment, are effectively worshiped, protected, and live in luxury. Meanwhile, our antiheroes are decidedly working class, and suffering in poverty. And Kitami's plan of using Nomamoto as a human garbage disposal would entail her, in a sense, literally eating the rich. However, I don't buy the idea that this is *actually* about capitalism, or at least, not exclusively. Even if I were to adopt that reading, and it isn't entirely incompatible, it wouldn't shake off the racial overtones and tropes previously invoked. Attention is drawn to the cultural differences between humans and aliens repeatedly. They're drawn in an incongruous art style, obviously out of place in this world. "If you live in my country, speak my language" is not a proletarian criticism towards the bourgeois. The class power the aliens wield is not what is bad about them. It's simply a tool they wield, and they are bad, and they do not belong here.

Another read I've seen is that this isn't an anti-immigration screed, it's anti-colonization. The aliens are a technologically advanced culture who take over a less advanced one, framing themselves as saviors while making the native population second-class citizens and living in luxury off of the fruits of their labor. Taken at face value, this is an accurate description of the events of the backstory (at least according to Kitami's read of things). However, I hesitate to say this one is a good read either. As above, even if it's an anti-colonial screed, it's one that still heavily indulged in malicious, baseless conspiracy theory and an explicitly racial animosity. And as above, it's not uncommon for the language of colonization and decolonialism to be appropriated by the alt-right or equivalent figures. But more to the point, colonization is about dominance and subjugation, not integration. Aliens may be privileged, but Nomamoto's boss isn't where the rot stops and ends. The aliens are baseball stars, and they're dating Japanese women (colonial regimes have famously been kind towards interracial couples, of course of course). As it stands, this is currently the "white genocide" version of colonization, where nobody dies but there's DEI, more people of a different race than you, and you have this vague feeling that life would be better for you if they weren't here anymore.

It should also be noted that, if we're going to draw parallels to real life, Japan doesn't have a colonization problem, and has in fact been a colonial power itself in the past, in addition to having pervasive issues regarding xenophobia, anti-immigration sentiment, and all around just being a conservative hell country.

So I think I've demonstrated the idea that Drama Queen is absolutely dripping with a certain alt-right language and framing (inb4 someone tells me Japan doesn't have an alt-right and my American mind cannot comprehend their mystical nuanced, superior Nippon politics folded 1,000 times or something). Boiling it down to barest essence, this is a story about a teenager with no money, no power, and no place in the world who hates her shitty life and is harboring a free-floating grievance towards a group of foreigners who, at best, are frequently rude and catered to, at worst are directly responsible for her misery. After various attempts to ignore this feeling about what feels right to her, and to ignore how bad her life is, she meets a man who feels the same way, but he knows he hates them. He endears her with a sob story about how he was wronged by the foreigners, and then weaves a conspiracy theory about how they tricked the entire native population and have now effectively enslaved them. This "peaceful coexistence" is actually an invasion, and with all of this freshly implanted, the teenager goes from passive annoyance that she tries to suppress, to open hatred she embraces, consciously wallowing in her misery because she knows that she's a victim now. And then uses that hatred and sense of victimization to indulge in dehumanization, vigilante justice, and open, genocidal hatred. This *is* Racist Dungeon Meshi.

So I don't think that's part is arguable. The story of Drama Queen is anti-immigration, it uses alt-right arguments and framing, and by my count, looking over Umberto Eco's 14 points of Ur-Fascism, we hit 7 of them (rejection of modernism, action for action's sake, fear of difference, appeal to a frustrated middle class, obsession with a plot, enemy is too strong and too weak, and maybe pacifism is trafficking with the enemy). However, there is another question present. Drama Queen's narrative is a fascist one, but is it so because the author is pro-all of that shit, or are we going to get a rug pulled out from underneath us when we reveal that the protagonists are in fact villains, and they're meant to be seen as irrational and bigoted?

I dunno lol

As I pointed out, both Nomamoto and Kitami seem like unreliable narrators. They're obviously biased, and we only have one chapter worth of manga to see what the world is like, so I can imagine that they're skewing things to be in line with their worldview, or else are so trapped in their ideologie *schniff* that they can't see outside of it. Adding onto that is the fact that while Nomamoto is young and dumb, Kitami seems older, more hateful, and more violent. He's the one who proposed the conspiracy theories, he's the one who murdered an alien because he got bumped into, he tracked down where Nomamoto lives online and then forced her into hiding the body. And he's the one who proposed the kill-and-eat plan. Nomamoto is no saint, but Kitami is actually deranged in his hatred, and he's pushing her further into radicalization. Not to mention, "Drama Queen" can refer to nobody else but the main characters, taking their slights and everyday frustrations and blowing them up into a war of extermination. It's not impossible that Drama Queen might be Mouthwashing-esque in the sense that our viewpoint characters are unreliable, warp the story to suit their needs, and not only do you need to read between the lines to see what's really going on, but it will all crescendo in a moment of undeniable denunciation of the thought processes displayed. If this possibility turns out to be the case, then Drama Queen might actually be genius satire, intentionally evoking anti-immigration rhetoric for the purpose of spotlighting and deconstructing it, leaving an open question to the audience of if they fell for it as well. If they cheered on monsters and believed their lies.

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that this is not "satire and criticism of the thing" and is in fact just "the thing". I've "read between the lines" to showcase how Nomamoto and Kitami are self-deluded and invent narratives to make themselves the heroes of their own story. But is there anything actually written between those lines, or am I being overly charitable, or stuck in a sense of denial, refusing to believe that such an obviously bigoted work like this would get published. It's not the first time this has happened. If you've never heard of Tokyo Shinobi Squad, don't worry because nobody else was reading it either. I could tell you the plot is about cyberpunk mercenary ninjas fighting each other, but I don't care about that and you don't either. The only thing people talk about when they bring up Tokyo Shinobi Squad is the opening textcrawl and first line of the main character, where they bemoan globalization turning Japan into a crime, slum, and terrorism ridden wasteland (businesses totally aren't in bed with organized crime in modern day Japan, don't worry about it the yakuza doesn't exist). And this was published in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2019!

Everything is very uncertain right now. In the first few pages, Nomamoto complains about women who call their boyfriends "partner", a gripe about progressive trends completely unrelated to the main thesis surrounding aliens. Is that another dogwhistle meant to appeal to reactionaries who view progressive and queer things as being part of the same rot as the immigration bringing aliens into the world, or is that a heads-up to let us know that we're going to be picking apart, making fun of, and talking *about* reactionaries? The aliens are drawn to look out of place in the world, but they also look cute, being goofy, fluffy creatures with floppy ears and elephant trunks. Is it meant to make them look cute, so we understand how monstrous the protagonists are for killing them? Or does the fact that we're brutalizing such patently ridiculous-looking creatures add to the black comedy angle, and it also serves to desensitize us towards the violence committed against them, a reassurance not to take it so seriously (also they kinda deserve it and they look cute and pitiable so you fail to realize just how much they deserve it)?

I don't know. We'll have to wait and see where this is all going. Only one chapter has been released so far [EDIT: I started writing this last night and since then, another chapter has been released. Still inconclusive]. We're basically flipping coins as to whether or not this is peak subversive fiction, or just /pol/. If you want to take away anything from this post, it's two things.

1. Regardless of the answer you know that racist weebs with K-on! icons are going to scream "based based based" and co-opt this manga, we're just asking whether or not it's "meant" for them. Also please note the irony of white Americans cheering on anti-immigration sentiment in a country that would ban them for being filthy rude foreigners all the same. Especially because, if we had to ask "who are the aliens meant to represent", I've seen some people say "Koreans" but the overwhelming consensus has been "Americans and Europeans".

2. Despite everything, I found this a very valuable read. I talked about this manga with my brother, and he doesn't think as a work of art it's very interesting, putting aside the politics. But what I find interesting *is* the politics, how all of the arguments and talking points I've mentioned are laid out so openly, almost masterfully in a way. This is a certified Media Literacy Moment, and I think it's very interesting as a filter or litmus test for said media literacy. Whether or not you personally think Drama Queen is going to be an unironic anti-immigrant manifesto or a subversion thereof is less interesting to me than if you are capable of *identifying* why and how we are having the conversation that we are having.

[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?

[zerodderty]

homestuck is the ikea of narrative.

Or maybe the Ikea store is just the Homestuck of retail experiences? Stay with me here.

ikea stores are built like this:

They're these really narrow hallway corridors that carry you from one furniture “setpiece” to another

And the store doesn't hide this fact- it kinda accentuates at every corner how linear your path here is, and in a lot of ways it's a cheesy wink at how constructed all retail stores are, how each retail store is just funneling you to the stuff the company wants you to buy, and any illusion of "natural ordering" is just that- an illusion meant to lower your guard and making it easier for the marketing magic to work its charms on your subconsious mind.

Even the shortcuts aren't really shortcuts. The store advertises the little points you can "cheat the narrative" by breaking the intended sequence, but that doesn't really matter now does it? You're still going to get to the end, you're still going to get to the finish line one way or the other no matter what you're gonna walk out past the cash registers and go back to your car so if you want to get there sooner rather than later it's not like you're "winning".

If anything, by deluding yourself with that power you're just lowering your guard again, making it easier to be funneled into the things Ikea actually wants you to buy.

And that's fine! Kinda! By being so tongue in cheek with its exaggerated linearity, you can really lead shoppers through a much more planned, deliberate, almost spectacular experience with an almost Disneyland feel. You have pacing, peaks, valleys, little specific niches that can target specific people and not just broadly appealing displays. The little constructed rooms almost work as "setpieces", showing all the pieces of the store's collections put together in these grand ways that create much stronger tone and scene than any old Jcpenny's could.

And that's the thing, right? Jcpenny a while ago did this thing where they stopped it with the 4.99 9.99 shit and just made every item a clean flat price and it failed miserably, I mean like "bankrupted the company" miserably

People don’t like being reminded about how much they’re spending they want to be fooled they want to not know. They want to walk through the stories they are familiar with and not think about what they mean or who is trying to convince them of what, and having a work that dispels its own illusion makes it that much harder to get lost in it in the way people demand to be lost in their stories. They demand characters that go through their arcs well, their proper arcs the one set up by older stories and genre conventions and cultural expectations and the education system and their governments and their parents because that's what you're supposed to do, right? That's just the natural path, it's just science! You don't wanna disrespect science, do you? What, are you too good for the old stories? Too good to do it the right way? Who the fuck do you think you're fooling anyways, everybody knows what you really are.

That's right: a savvy furniture shopper.

But if you let yourself look, if you are okay with the realization that you’re being fooled, you can just have fun with the spectacle itself or hang out in the food court (dreambubbles), you can learn the systems for its own sake not out of some false idea of shortcuts that might take you through the store faster but only to the same destination as everyone else

And then at the end you take what you’ve learned and buy a shitton of stuff in this huge dense frantic warehouse binge, if you want to, and then you leave ikea and get in your car and drive home.

Ikea is less a store and more the framework of a store, stripped bare to leave the skeleton open and exposed

This is maybe upsetting/frustrating to people who just wanted to go buy a couch because they saw a cool ad of that couch making out with a desk on Tumblr in 2012, but also you can buy a couch at Wayfare or Costco or whatever, you go to Ikea to go to Ikea

And maybe, just maybe, going to Ikea and understanding why Ikea exists will make you a little bit better at buying couches and not just flocking to the first fancy display item you see at the window

… the metaphor falls apart a little here but I think the rest carries

[beifong-brainrot]

hot take ?

Ummmm ok, don't know if this is a hottake or more a weirdass personal deluded complaint but lowkey tired of like 90% of 'Beifong family' content on here being just Lin, Toph, Su and Kuvira. Like yeah they're cool and all but I'm just so tired of it. And like it's really weird because sometimes these accounts are like mostly Lin and Kuvira with Toph kinda being taped on as an afterthought and Suyin existing in this weird limbo of being a milf while also just being kinda hated on too?

Sometimes there's some Opal content but it barely goes past her just being Su's daughter, Lin's niece and Bolin's gf. Like she's such an interesting and dynamic character but she gets reduced to cinnamon roll who brings Lin out of her shell or Bolin's comphet prize. Oh, and sometimes the rarer role of being some sort of mean girl to Kuvira which is disreapectfull as hell.

And don't get me started on the male members of the family. Like hell yeah feminism but also they are a large part of the family and they're so underloved. Like I swear the most content of the Beifong guys I've seen is incestuous nsfw so that's smth. Baatar gets basically ignored in relation to Kuvira until it's time to bust out the 'well Baatar got off easy for the warcrimes too'. Occasionally he gets to be allowed to stay with Kuvira but even then he barely gets any characterisation, he basically revolves around her.

And it's all SO REPETITIVE like I want to explore Suyin's relationship with her sons and daughter and her husband but for some reason the fandom is still stuck on whether Su really loved Kuvira or not like it's just so mind numbing.

Like can we really call it "Beifong family" content when the tlok fandom focuses on less than like 40 percent of it?

And like no shade to accounts like this we all have our hyperfixations but damn it's frustrating to be so close to your 'people' lol. Like I think I've just gotten falsely advertised to way too many times lol.

[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.