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gunbun · 10 months

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this post is about the cultural concerns regarding ffxiv: dawntrail

Hi doods. Activism has brushed up against fandom YET AGAIN but this time it punches me straight in the heritage and this time I wanna talk about it.

I'm a non-status Qalipu Mik'maq, for the record. An Indigenous American, if thou wilt.

I discuss some pretty heavy shit below the cut. I pray it persists across all devices. Please advise if you want me to tag this as something, or block the tags I have used. I do not need anyone to spread this on my behalf, I do not need anyone's defense. I just have some thoughts and I want to think them.

So it's been less than 24 hours since Dawntrail was announced and we got the Keynote.

We're going to Fantasy The Americas! Before Industrialization!

Many people went "oh hell yeah, that's Brazil, this is gonna be great! We don't usually see this!"

On Twitter especially, many MORE people lost their goddamn minds, citing CBU3's prior wobbles with depicting foreign/indigenous persons.

And of course, the White Community Leaders are out in force performing pre-emptive outrage or even asking people to quit FFXIV in light of this announcement.

I'm here to ask folks not to do that.

What follows is my tweet-thread about it.

"It is perfectly okay to be waiting and seeing how Tural is going to be portrayed in Dawntrail. It's okay to have a concern.

It is NOT okay to come out preemptively swinging and performing outrage.

Because blood quanta are their own touchy subject I usually don't bring this up, but I am the class of indigenous person what represents "what's left".

And I fucking tell you now I don't need the opinions of Concerned White People.

I do not need Concerned White People telling me what colonialism is.

I do not need Concerned White People telling me to be mad.

I do need Concerned White People to realise that the above two actions are microaggressive as fuuuuck.

"but Jai, aren't you White?"

colonialism and genocide comes in many forms. this includes forcing indigenous persons to assimilate or be killed.

also stuff like reinforcing the idea that being indigenous is shameful so that when their descendants find out, they deny it."

Thus ended my tweet thread. There's one more tweet linking to qalipu.ca.

So I want to write more about this on Tumblr.

I really want to make sure that folks take a hard look at what they're concerned about and why.

Like… a lot of White Concern about the use of indigenous motifs in Dawntrail is itself a brand of anti-indigenous racism.

Thinking that the MSQ is going to automatically be about the Scions starting a colonialism in Tural? That's a pretty gross thing to say in the same breath y'all complain about Always Fantasy Europe.

Calling "cultural appropriation" when everyday items are displayed and depicted in the manner in which they were/are used (gulal, curry)? Way to exoticise foreign and indigenous cultures by thinking that everything they make, wear, use, or eat is something of Deep Cultural Significance that Cannot Ever Be Shared With Outsiders. Saris and salwar kameez are just as culturally significant as skirts and slacks. Moccasins are just shoes.

And moreover, getting preemptively Concerned when thus far THERE IS LITERALLY NO NEED TO BE CONCERNED is actually kind of beyond the pale. I haven't seen many indigenous folks and/or folks from South America being anything but pleased that this time The Americas gets a cool pastiche like Europe, Asia, and India have gotten in the past. There's an undercurrent of "oh no, I hope it's not bad stereotypes" which is ABSOLUTELY OKAY. Reblog and retweet what THOSE people are saying. Do not add commentary.

Preemptively saying "you're worried" about your South American/Indigenous friends with zero indication that they're bothered? Come the actual fuck on. We are not a monolithic group that you can "be concerned" for to get a pat on the back later as a Good Person. Do not Perform the I'm A Good Person And The Worst Thing You Could Do is CALL Me A Racist dance.

Don't "get ahead of the discourse". Not every conversation needs your fucking input. Shut your mouth.

What is and isn't an Offensive Portrayal of Indigenous Americans is a lot more nuanced than most people who like to perform outrage make it out to be.

We can and will speak up for ourselves. Share our words and our concerns if you must. Do not go and distill our words and turn us into the monolith you hide behind to perpetuate white saviourism and neocolonialism.

We aren't a monolith of poor uneducated people who don't understand what the europeans did that need to be uwu protected.

#long post #indigenous musings #idk what else to tag this

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itsbansheebitch · 3 months

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Gen Zer's (2005) Predictions for Gen Alpha (They aren't Doomed)

I have some cousins that are Gen Alpha and they're turning out well. I really think all the "they're so doomed" messaging is from a loud minority, mostly on tiktok. I disagree, so I plan to make predictions for the vague & soupy (time) generation of Gen Alpha.

This list will focus on American Gen Alpha since there WILL be a stark contrast, especially regarding school shootings.

Average to EXTREME skill with tech depending on the kids (hope STEM is ready to welcome a new wave of newcomers)

Difficulties with history knowledge due to rewritten history books, (Please be kind while they learn, they don't know the full scope of what's going on yet)

Desensitized to violence (Due to usual kid stuff, school shootings being treated as normal, and an increase in hate crimes)

A new passion for social justice (I don't mean to be a "but I have black friends" kind of person, but believe it or not, having friends in minority groups and realizing they're in danger makes you want to fist fight whoever is at fault)

TONS of memes about the "Alpha" phrasing, which trust me, will get old QUICKLY. (A bigger stretch is saying the term for a shitty Gen Alpha kid will be Omega/Beta instead of Boomer)

Unusually violent jokes & memes

Extremely dark humor

A long list of child neglect lawsuits

An increase in accents homogeneity due to watching YouTubers at a young age (I'm not joking, this has happened to me and I only started watching YT in 2nd Grade. I have the weirdest Irish, British, and midwestern, but not the state I currently live in, accents on only CERTAIN words and phrases. There definitely will be studies on this.)

A new wave of kids fighting gerymandering

Brand New Shiny Raw LinesTM from the KiddosTM that they'll probably use to roast lawmakers until they start decomosing on the spot

Kids who are NOT afraid to fight you

New unseen levels of compassion

This is a stretch, but somehow they'll manage to bring back the avocado toast jokes, either as a banter thing or as a new "Boomer" type thing.

KiddosTM will probably joke about how Millennials ruined every industry from fabric softener to identity theft to robberies. This will be (hopefully) fully joking manner and used in a [Post kiddosTM disagree with] [Reply: Well, you ruined the fabric softener industry, so you don't have a leg to stand on] type format.

Will either share you their Social Security Number or will be a brick wall online. No in between.

A increase in reading (specifically fanfiction & audio books, but will NOT be void of physical copies) but a decrease in literacy & media literacy. We are already seeing this happening.

A "you didn't fix this/you fucked it up" attitude towards older people. This isn't necessarily negative since it means they won't take ANY shit from lawmakers and will probably not have as many hangups regarding rioting.

An absolute HATRED for family channels. I waiting for these kids to break the van life kids out in a bizarre scheme of epic proportions lmao

The most indecipherable controversies you've ever seen in your life. I'm thinking at least 5 levels of knowledge and joining a subreddit will be needed to even have an idea of what's happening.

(Hopefully) a new level of understanding when it comes to accountability, people changing, and knowing what you should expect from a person when they get cancelled.

Brand new political cartoons (now made for the internet)

A new passion for the environment and recognizing one's place in it.

A new level of hatred for colonialism and mass killings

Probably at least one assassination lmao (they'll be the barista from the tiktok about the barista killing CEOs with metal straws as darts)

A polarizing divide between anti-capitalism and ancap ideas that we haven't seen since 2008 (and not as publicly in 2008, so get ready for your shit to get rocked).

Some of the best and worst takes that humanity has ever bore witness to.

New acceptance (even better than now) regarding hair (dyes and styles), tattoos, piercings, etc.

A major crackdown on systematic issues (criticism when they're young, major law & education changes when they're older)

That's all for now. REMEMBER! Do NOT treat these kids like you were treated (LOOKING AT YOU, Ms. AVOCADO TOAST and Ms. DOWNFALL OF HUMANITY GAY-MER).

Side Note: People are always surprised when I tell them I was born in 2005 and have already graduated high school (no, I did not skip grades, I was actually very young for my grade) so I'm going to apologize ahead of time for turning all the Millennials reading this into dust. Sorry, ya'll.

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devsgames · 6 months

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how hard was it to set up stuff regarding economical/legal side of things for gamedev? (regirestering a company, register trademark, recieve income from steam, pay taxes, etc) i know that its country specific but i would want to hear your side of things

You're right in that it's incredibly specific to your location! I'll go over what I've had to do thus far for specifically living in Ontario, Canada; A lot of how I've gained the following insight has been from thorough Googling, looking on government resources and asking people.

Setting Up A Business

Here in Ontario we have generous small business laws, anyone making money from their own business is by default considered a "Sole Proprietorship". Normally businesses need to charge tax based on every Good or Service sold, however Sole Proprietorships don't need to do this until they reach $30k yearly profits in Ontario.

Currently I'm making maybe 5k a year from my games so I'm safe, and thus technically don't even need to register a business. The tradeoff however is that I'm legally and financially responsible for my own business, so if something happens financially or legally it's my own personal risk and not the business's.

There's a few business types here with different meanings (Partnership, LLC, Co-op, etc). Technically I should register one at some point but since it's just me and I'm broke it won't do much. To register a business in Canada isn't hard (I think it's basically just a 30 minute phone call where they give you a 'business number' for registeration and tax use and say "congrats you're a business now!). You have to come up with a unique business name which I've consistently floundered back and forth on and have never stuck to anything which is why "Dev's Games" is the best "brand" I have at the moment. Good thing I'm not registered yet!

Registering a Trademark

This also depends on your location, and I have never done this. I'm sure in many cases there is reason to if I really cared about exclusively using titles or names of things, but I honestly don't.

I also genuinely don't thinm not having a trademark as a problem! Trademarks strike me as useful for a company trying to build a big business around a name that is aleeady popular and ripe for idea theft (E.g Photoshop, Google, Adobe) and stopping others from using it. Right now, I'm so small that this doesn't matter, and I'd honestly consider someone drawing inspiration from me an honor as opposed to something I'd want to contain. Maybe if one of my titles got like SUPER viral down the road I'd seriously look into it; apparently it's a lot of paperwork and something you'd have to find a lawyer for.

Getting Payments

This is, you guessed it, just paperwork that depends on your operating location!

Established storefronts like Steam have a process for registering your account with them and when I started out this was the part of the process I was the most anxious for, but it's actually super easy (which is why there's so much shovelware on there). Steam as a baseline takes 30% of all your sales on the platform (an absolutely insane amount for what the platform does). You'll fill out some paperwork and based on your operating location to determine how much money Steam automatically sets aside for taxes (VST).

As a Canadian they take 0% because Canada-America has tax exemption treaties which make receiving payments from American companies like this tax-free.

Outside of that there's not much, you give them your bank account number and they send payments one month after month end (e.g. end of December they'll pay you for November's sales). Everything is in USD so be prepared for things to be a bit wonky in that respect, and note it costs $100 USD to add a game to Steam. Setting up store pages for your games is its own kind of busywork I won't get into here, but publishing to Steam on the whole is much more work than something like Itch.io.

All in all I like Steam's process for registering and they make it pretty easy to get onto the platform since it's in their interest to potentially make fat money off of your work for doing very little :)

Managing Income

I struggle with anxiety around finances so this part is long.

I set up my own bank account explicitly for earning/spending on my games - prior to getting laid off I only used it for that, but recently I've been having to pay rent from it now too sometimes.

Get a platform that allows you to track and categorize your expenses and income over time. I've been using Wave to balance my income and expenses, as I find it's pretty simple for my needs and lets me mark what different payments are to avoid losing secret money to things I forget about. It connects directly to your bank account, so it will be the most accurate form of income tracking.

Eventually you will buy things and forget what you bought, or receive money for something you're not sure why, or lose/receive money months after you should have. Steam and Itchio have ways of viewing your payouts and reports, but it's hard jumping through 2-3 websites trying to track down a magic number - viewing this all in one place is invaluable to your sanity and making sure you don't go broke. Having this will be a godsend to you during tax time.

Always have additional "rainy day" money set aside - when I started I put about $100 aside from each paycheque at my full time job into my business. Keep an eye on your income flow and know how much you can anticipate to spend on your work. Know how your business money relates to your personal finances and be ready to take money out of your business for emergencies, and vice versa for business emergencies. Money put aside to pay contractors is money you cannot and should not touch.

Contractors based in the US will often ask you pay them through a certain site, many of which aren't available outside the US. Don't be afraid to ask if they use something like Paypal instead. Keep extra money aside for them so you can tip. Make sure you're aware of how they expect to be paid, at what interval, and how much, and keep that money aside. And expense tracker is also helpful here.

Keep in mind most businesses operate on USD, and be mindful of how your local currency converts over. CDN is usually ~60-70% of USD, so I often have to pay more for things like subscriptions or labour then they're listed. When a contractor tells you their rates always be sure you know what currency they're talking about - sometimes I've expected to pay USD when I've had to pay AUS.

Also do not quit your dayjob. Make money through a stable employment and fund your games as a fun side hobby. Easier said than done, but there is an almost 0% chance you will be able to afford surviving off of making indie games as a full living and be afford to keep a roof over your head. I've shipped 4 games on Steam now and I only make about $100-$300 USD from sales there depending on the month. Minimum wage in Ontario is ~$25k a year, I am currently making like $5k from sales on Steam alone. Working at McDonalds would pay better.

Taxes

Taxes are very regional, so results will vary.

Usually businesses have to set aside sales taxes on goods sold. Since I'm a Sole Proprietorship in Ontario making less than 30k I don't have to. Taxes for me basically consists of saying "I made this much" to the government (good expense tracking REALLY helps here).

One thing to note is that at least here the government has NO IDEA how video games fit into business. Until recently there was no "Game Development" business type, and much of the tax reporting interface is obsessed with physical goods; it'll ask how much your "inventory" is worth, how many "goods" you have sold (games are technically "goods" even though they're not a physical thing). Basically be prepared for your tax system to be used to dealing with physical retailers and farmers, and not with digital-only software developers.

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I'm sure there's more I can cover but my hands hurt. A lot of this is researching your local laws and/or talking to devs local to your area. It's not hard to do any of this necessarily, it's just a lot of paperwork (which is nevertheless super helpful to put together). Once you learn how it all works everything is way less scary though! :)

#new record for longest post made on my phone #my thumbs hurt #asks #ask #advice #gamedev #game development #indie games #indie game #game dev #indie dev #indiegames #gamedevelopment #game design

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notafraidofredyellowandblue · 9 months

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hi :)

i've seen people mentioning Till's entourage as smth bad, as in, they're not good for him, bad people, etc.

do you know anything about this? have an opinion?

Hi!

Well, i'm (as you probably know) no expert on Till's people, but what i *know* is that he has been working with several people for a good while now, i would say at least 5 years or more, like:

Danny Uhlman: started as security/bodyguard, personal assistant, and most recently i think also the one who runs the Till merch brand TL.Berlin, alsoa keen photographer and maker of many of the photographs on Till_Lindemann_Official IG

Anar Reiband: i usually see him mentioned as 'manager', in the 2023 Rammstein tour he was on the credits as Till's personal assistant

Alena Makeeva: Casting Director (i think that's what she has as title on her IG), also often thanked by ladies on IG going to After parties, so maybe also a bit of 'party organizer.

Joe Letz: in 2023 (maybe since American leg of 2022 tour) personal assistant, and ofcourse also drummer and 🤡 (i swear that's what he has on his ig) at Till's 'Till Lindemann' band

Well, if Till wouldn'tbe happy with them, i'm sure he would have dismissed them (or casually moved them to the background or something) 🌺

That said, ofcourse i still have an opinion 😊 but that's just m.o. so please take it as such:

I feel that Till's entourage are, probably not surprisingly as he is their boss, very indulgent to him, and also encourage some habits that i don't think are that beneficial to Till's wellbeing. I think Till likes to seek the extremes in his art (and possibly in life) and imo Rammstein has the perfect quality control to balance that and to stop at the exact right point. Till's entourage imo encourages all his extremes.

Like when Till decided to drip blood on his pages of poetry to make it less boring (i won't link the article, but have it in another post): there is a video of his team standing around, laughing broadly while handing him the pages after Till has cut a gash in his hand for that purpose.

Till seems a very gentle and easy-going guy himself, but i think it was his manager who got in a fistfight and Till had to break them up (ofcourse in the news as 'Till Lindemann in fight'). From what i've read, although i don't have sourcesat hand, Anar Reiband has some other shady dealings over the years, which makes me 'on guard' about him.

Although i don't have a problem (at all) with after parties, not even with sex after afterparties, but i do have a problem with the way the Row0 ladies are 'casted' up front, ticket even gets payed on occassion. If i had a say (which ofcourse i don't), i would pick after party guests at the concert itself, from fans who have a great vibe on the day, and not just ladies in acertain age-range, but fans of all ages and genders.

I think Till's various merch endeavours, like the MFT's (especially the 100000 euro dinner combo), crypto, and several others are...well...not my thing. I don't have a problem with for instance the Dr Dick jewelry or the Tilldo, because that seems very much in keeping with what I imagine Till would enjoy, but that other stuff...hmm..

And lastly, and most importantly, i have a feeling that over the last couple of years Till has drifted away from Rammstein more and more, and as i'm in it really for the six-men-marriage, i think that's too bad. If i see how little for instance his IG account in 2022 and 2023 has posted about Rammstein, and if something was posted, it's just Till himself, and in such a stylized way, that you almost can't tell it's at a Rammstein show. It is almost as if his IG team doesn't care about Rammstein at all (in 2022 it was especially poignant because so much of Till's merch was posted). Some think this is because Danny Uhlman didn't go to all Rammstein shows and the IG account posts only photos by him, but imo that's silly, because they have photos by others on there too, *and* the other Rammguys like Schneider, Paul, Richard always use photos by some of the by Rammstein hired photographers, so if Till and his team really wanted, they would use those too. Not posting means not caring about it (again, imo)

.... and in Schneider's IG post a few months ago, the 'Till creating his own bubble' was confirmed 🌺

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so that's how i see it..🌺

#till's entourage #my 2 cts

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moxpunk · 3 months

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So, I mentioned I'd write up a trip-report/retrospective of my experience of getting absolutely buried under pies on Saturday, so here it is! Be warned, it's fucking long.

To start off, my friend Dee was very professional about the whole matter: reassured me that I'd be taken care of, helped lighten the mood a bit, and didn't have any massive expectations for someone they just met for the first time in-person who's never done something like this at such a scale. Our styles and how we carried ourselves couldn't be different though, which was extremely funny to me. Them in this very stylish coat and scarf number, while I'm bumming around in my ripped-up Fender shirt and fishnet-tights - extremely visual-metaphor, I know.

Snagging the supplies was a wild experience. I'm just sorta following along while Dee had a total game-plan in their head, bee-lining it towards the baking section and immediately shoving about 12 boxes of cake batter into the cart. I was surprised to see how little frosting they snagged, but that'll be something for next time. The other supply that dominated our cart was store-brand whipped topping for the pies. I figure we had like about a dozen tubs of that as well by the end. During the grocery-run, I told Dee that whenever someone would make a comment when I'd buy stuff for solo-experiences, I just tell them that I'm running a bake-sale or something. People will take it at face-value, and I don't have to explain that "Yes, I'm buying so much dessert-product because it's a kink of mine". But Dee, this asshole (affectionate), gets asked the question while we're checking out and puts on this bright face saying they're "Moxie's happy helper, she's got so much work to be done on her head" and I'm trying not to corpse right then and there while I'm bagging our supplies. I think my face was crimson when we bounced back to my place.

Speaking of my place, I do not live in a large apartment and my bathroom is even smaller with my shower being a one-person standing-job. Thankfully, this also means that laying down tarp to catch the massive amount of spillage was super easy, and Dee had tons of tarp and tape ready to go. Looked like that one scene in American Psycho with a singular chair in the middle surrounded by clear tarp to catch the mess. Absolutely unhinged shit if you saw it out of context.

Then came making everything! Dee had brought a bunch of pudding-cups as filling for the pies as well as some xanthan gum to thicken things. That xanthan gum stuff is wild, they mixed it with water at first, and it had the texture of drool. Great if you're into that stuff and want a body-safe way to get drenched in it! I had baked half of the crusts earlier when we got back, but I totally spaced on poking holes in the crusts so they ended up kinda jank. Thankfully, the pies were just going to be thrown at me instead of eaten. Ha! This is when my back started getting angry at me, standing a whole bunch and moving around the kitchen. Had to take a number of breaks during this, but Dee told me they have infinite energy for this sort of thing and was fine that the fat girl needed a few breaks. Took maybe an hour in total to go from nothing to a dozen pies and three 3-gallon buckets of cake batter, which was wild. I put some makeup on, Dee got the camera and tripod set up, and it was time for us to start!

The anticipation I felt when I was sitting in that chair was wild. Like, I've absolutely pied myself before and even last year I got pied by another person for the first time from my ex. So, I sorta knew what to expect. But, these pies had that gum mixed in to hold their shape better, so I wasn't entirely certain how it was going to go. Dee told me to get ready and…

SPLAT! The first pie nearly knocked the fucking air out of my lungs. It was fucking cold thanks to the topping been in the fridge-section of the grocery store about only an hour ago! It covered my whole face and stuck to my hair that I had pushed to run down the side of my head, and I nearly called for a yellow light to slow down. For a little there, I felt like I couldn't catch my breath properly before two more pies got sandwiched over my head. Dee, for their part, did the expert thing of smearing and twisting the desserts over my head to just turn it into a mask of goop. This is absolutely the point where I could feel all the weight concentrate in my hair and start to weight my whole damn head down. Looking back at the video for reference, my hair is just this curtain of white goop and pie crust.

A few pies in for good measure, and Dee finally grabbed one of the buckets of batter. The dye we snagged wasn't all that potent, sadly. We wanted a bright pink sludge that mimicked the ancient-ass game-show What Would You Do's "Crowning Glory", but we know next time not to get the gel-dye (and also to buy a hand-mixer!). Because it's part of The Kink, of course I looked directly up into the bucket above just before it cascaded over me. In stark contrast to the other pies being cold as hell, Dee used warm water to mix with the batter, so it was heavenly to have that thick warmth poured over my body. It made all the future pies a lot easier to handle, honestly, by having that mucky barrier of off-pink coating me.

Around this time is when I realized "Oh, right, I have a bunch of hair soaking in all this stuff, might as well work it in!" because I'm a dork for my hair getting the slop-salon treatment. Another few pies splatted over my face while I worked my hair like I was in a shampoo commercial, Dee grabs my arm and smears a big blob of marshmallow fluff up my armpit because the bastard knows I'm a pit-fiend. So, you folks out there that enjoy the idea of lapping dessert out of my pit, please hold onto that mental image nice and tight. The banter between me and Dee started flowing at about this point. They were asking me questions while smearing the batter over my body, and ended up zeroing in on my nipple. I'm a sensitive lady, so when I'm trying to give an answer, it came out as "Oh yeah~!" like I'm some actress in a shitty porn because I was goddamn moaning through it. They didn't let me forget that, repeating it back to me whenever I would say "Yeah" to anything. Asshole (affectionate).

Syrup came next, just some cheap-ass brand and not actual maple syrup, and I smelled like breakfast. I smelled like breakfast for like two days afterwards, even through a thorough shower. I am not complaining at all, this is a benefit to this fetish. Honestly, the syrup was the one thing that I was not expecting to enjoy as much as I did. In my head, it's watery and just kinda boring? But, it being emptied out over mess-coated me and a pie that was stuffed into my face, I'm absolutely adding it to the roster of Quick and Easy Shit to Buy When I'm Horny.

Then came The Barrage. So, in this little obsession Dee and I share, the pie-barrage is usually seen as one of the climaxes of a scene. It's taking what, up to this point, is usually singular pies being added to someone in a sensual way that builds up the mess slowly piece-by-piece. A barrage of pies is the person throwing them going absolutely feral and just wanting to see the target inundated with layer upon layer of pie. That's exactly what happened to me! The first pie hit, totally blinding me, and before I had time to react properly, a second and then a third pie was added to the vaguely human-shaped blob of pie and moaning trans woman. Even managed to muffle anything I was trying to say, which was incredible to someone like me that types out muffled syllables in text roleplay. Honestly, Dee got the best photos of me immediately after the barrage, you… can hardly see who I am, let alone what I am. Absolute peak!

When your head is absolutely coated in thick pie-slop, the world fades away in a real way. You can't see past the layers of dessert, it settles over your head so you can't hear anything but your own breathing, and taste and smell have been absolutely tossed out the window to be replaced by sugarsmell. It's like sensory deprivation, because even your sense of touch fades out since you're rocking at least a layer or two of full-body coverage. It's an incredible experience! It's also only halfway through my session!

To speed things up a bit, more pies and more batter-slime was added to the mess. Since this kink began with Nickelodeon shows for the vast majority of the Millennials that have it, it's a bit of a "tradition" when green slime is involved (in our case, green batter because I'm a Dessert Bitch) to say "I don't know" like in You Can't Do That On Television. Say the trigger-phrase, get a bucket of green dumped over you. Dee even tried to put the bucket over my head, but the three-gallon ones are just a bit too small for that. It's a shame, because if we had the five-gallon buckets, I would have absolutely done a bit of head-dunking where I get on my hands and knees before plunging my whole head into that warm goop. Dee even had some chocolate cake batter as well, which reminded me that Valentine's was only a few days previous. Chocolate-covered goblin, anyone? The irony of my most-recent art piece mirroring what was going to happen to me is absolutely not lost on me.

Eventually, we had run out of supplies, and I got to sit there in the chair just enjoying the mess I was in. My hair was so heavy at that point, and the slop had just sorta congealed into a single texture. It made it incredibly easy to just work and play with, with Dee finally realizing that the reason I keep my hair so goddamn long is for moments like this where I get to wear what felt like ten pounds of sludge from the neck up. As is tradition in these shoots, just because we ran out of supplies doesn't mean the Moxie Messing was over, because Dee had put a bucket between my legs to catch as much excess slop as possible before dumping it all over my head in this thick mashed-up mixed-up wave.

After I had run out of steam having fun with myself, it was time to wrap and get me cleaned off. Wringing out my hair was an experience for the both of us. Neither of us had really realized just how much mass my hair could hold. When I went to pull the mess from my hair, it… just kept going. I filled a damned three-gallon bucket with just the stuff in my hair alone, and even then there was more. I soaked myself in the shower for the better part of a half-hour afterwards, to which my back got very upset at me for standing so long on a slippery surface. When I came out of the shower, Dee had completely cleaned the place. Wrapped up the pool of slop in the tarps and slammed it into a contractor bag for dumping. In my past experiences of being really bad at planning, it was never that easy, so I was thoroughly impressed at the foresight. I helped Dee toss it all into the dumpster near my place, and they bounced on off home in their car soon after!

So, to summarize… Holy shit, I wrote a lot, didn't I? Ha! But, yeah, this was an incredible experience and hands-down the best and most-encompassing slop-session I've ever had to this point. Dee said they absolutely want to do another session before they move again, so I'm excited to have more experiences like this! Hopefully this whole thing helps show people that have no idea why the hell I'm so obsessed with being hit by pies why I enjoy it, and shows people that do understand how incredible it was for me to have this. 2023 was a rough year for me, so kicking off 2024 with a session like this is hopefully the start to a far better year. With that, let's call it a wrap!

Love you all, stay messy. 💖

#messy talk #wet and messy

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marlinspirkhall · 1 year

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GSKSVKSGKG MARLIN NOT UR RECENT TAGS IMPLYING AMERICA DOESNT HAVE COLLEGE

Agdjsh okay you didn't ask for a primer on England/the UK, but here's one anyway:

So because England is Old™ and we didn't use to educate anyone who wasn't a rich white boy (and it's totally better now, don't even look at Eton, pretend it doesn't exist), the education system here is a fucking mess has several different names, so for various reasons:

College= 16-18 year olds, some colleges teach adults pre-university or high-schools level classes

Sixth Form= same as above, but generally part of a high school

Secondary School= haha I lied to you, we don't call it high school here because we suck.*

*Some secondary schools only teach people aged 11-16, so you have to move school (or go to college) to finish your education [or you can do an apprenticeship, if you can find one [which you won't]].

Public School= Private School**

Private School= you pay money to go here

**Wait, what?!= because England Sucks™, there was a time when A King (idk which one) provided a fund of money for non-rich white boys to go to school (how progressive), so these were called Public Schools because they were open to the public. Over time, these Very Old schools became Very Prestigious, and started asking for money. Hence, "Public School" in England is entirely synonymous with Private School (which gets confusing when talking to Americans because America, being Terrible ™ but also a Baby Country ™ has ironically had less time to be corrupted by capitalism. But it'll come. It'll come.)

State School= This is the free one.***

***Unless, of course, you have a school uniform, which nearly every British school does. 🙃

College is free until the age of 18, so colleges often advertise to adult students to try and get some Sweet Sweet Money. And that, of course, brings us to:

University= "COLLEGE”, but if anyone here calls it that, don't trust them, they're lying to you.

A place where 18+ aged people do courses and stuff, for extortionate rates. British people don't call University "College" (we call it 'Uni' in an offen-nasally voice, it's impossible to say it without the nasally voice, you've just gotta do it); but (some?) Universities do contain "colleges", and some posh ones call their colleges "houses" or "halls".

Bonus facts:

Scottish students can start university aged 17

It used to confuse me when Americans say they're going to "school" and they mean "college", so we're even now.

Preschool is called Nursery here

Kindergarten is also called Nursery here, but also "Playgroup". Idk man. It's fun branding to make it sound fun because we (can) start school AGED THREE.

I have a scar on my face, guess why!

Elementary school is called Primary school (and Elementary Colours are called Primary Colours. This is probably the only thing which remains consistent, so enjoy it)

I hope this was as confusing for you read as it was for me to live through <3

#asks #i know America also has universities and the uk... maybe? also has Colleges which aren't colleges but let me have this ok #cultural differences #this is an open invitation for anyone who has free higher education in their country to feel smug #you should. enjoy it. lucky bastards.#ifdragonscouldtalk

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bombshellsandbluebells · 1 year

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okay thoughts please! i’m fully on board with ted going back for Henry (after being a lil bummed), because that’s so clearly his journey, but i also really wish that instead of him going to Kansas, they would have had Henry and Michelle come to Ted. i think it would fit with the idea that part of Ted’s growth journey has been about asking for what he needs from people and prioritising his own wants and needs, and with a huge support network for Henry and Ted and Michelle, and Henry loving it there and loving the team and stuff, i think it could have worked. but obviously i always wanna know your thoughts!

*cracks knuckles* alright, let's go lol

One of the ways I read the final season - a story thread that I don't see anyone else talking about - is that on top of missing Henry specifically, Ted is homesick.

Ted starts the season questioning why they're still in England. He spends most of the season directionless and floundering, and, up until "Sunflowers", contributes very, very little to how well the team is performing other than encouraging them. The ONLY thing that makes the team successful in 3a - before the "Sunflowers" Total Football breakthrough - is Zava, and Zava wasn't Ted's idea. He wasn't even responsible for GETTING Zava, Rebecca was. And he has absolutely no control over what Zava does.

Ted's creativity led to Richmond almost winning the final match in s1, a huge achievement for where they started. The skilled team of coaches he brought together by pushing Roy and Nate leads to them getting promoted in s2. But in s3, Ted is no longer the driving force in the team's success.

Not, at least, until "Sunflowers" - the episode I think best highlights Ted's longing for home.

Towards the start of the episode, Ted says he wants to eat at an American restaurant, because he wants a taste of home, and Beard vetoes it. After, they go their separate ways for the night. And that divide there is honestly is what made me start thinking "oh, Ted is going to home to America, Beard is going to stay."

Ted spends the rest of the episode alone, seeking out things that remind him of home. The Van Gogh painting he's captivated by is "Sunflowers" (notably the episode's title) and when he talks about it, the very first thing he says is, "Where I'm from, Kansas, this here is our state flower."

The reason Ted is staring at the painting, the reason he is so moved by it, is because it reminds him of home. (We see the sunflower thread come up in "Mom City" too, when we find out that sunflower bread is Ted's favorite.)

Afterwards, he goes to the American restaurant, and it is only HERE, surrounded by things that remind him of home, watching a game that reminds him of his father, that he FINALLY finds his creativity and his inspiration again and thinks of Total Football, the very first idea Ted comes up with in s3 that has any real affect on the team.

(Also, there's the moment with the BBQ sauce - of all the ones the waitress could have brought, she brings the brand that Ted said gives him a taste of home all the way back in s1.)

I've seen a lot of people argue that Ted only decided to go home in "Mom City" because Dottie guilt tripped him, but I think that idea has been in the back of Ted's mind since "Sunflowers", but two big things were holding him back: wanting to finish out the season and try to win it, AND the genuine fear he feels about going back and addressing his relationship with his son.

By the time we get to the finale, both of those things have been addressed.

The season is almost over and Ted finally admitted - to his mother and himself - what he was still scared of with Henry. What happens with Dottie in "Mom City" doesn't make Ted decide to go home out of nowhere - it lets him get over that last big hump of how his issues with his father were affecting his relationship with his son. He admits that yes, he's scared to get close to Henry. Because Henry is going to leave one day. But that's just what parenthood is - Henry IS going to leave Ted eventually, one way or another. But that fear of people leaving, of things ending, (of, in Ted's mind in some ways, him quitting) can't drive his actions.

Like Ted says all the way back in 2x01, that is in many ways one of the theses of the show: "It's funny the things that come into your life that can make you cry just knowing they existed, can then become the same thing that make you cry, knowing they're now gone. I think those things come into our lives to help us get from one place to a better one."

Ted went to England in the first place because he was running. He left because he was giving Michelle space because of the issues in their marriage. And he stayed away because some part of him was scared to go back and be a father. And being in England let Ted work through so much.

He tells Rebecca in s1, "This job you gave me saved my life. It gave me the space to see what was really happening." But that isn't limited to the issues with Michelle - it's every single issue Ted has, from his inability to express his feelings to his lingering anger and grief over his father to his abandonment issues.

I've seen people arguing that Ted goes back because he feels obligated to for his son, that it's a sacrifice for him, and it means he was still never able to articulate his negative emotions or what he wants, but I strongly disagree. I think that was addressed when Ted was FINALLY able to honestly tell Michell and later his mother how angry he was with them, how much they've hurt him, and how much he doesn't like certain things they're doing or have done to him.

Also, I find it very interesting that despite all the alternative ideas Rebecca gives him in the finale, Ted never says anything. It is noticeably one of the ONLY scenes in this show were Ted just sits there quietly. It's not that Ted doesn't want to tell Rebecca how he really feels, because they have the kind of friendship that lets them be honest with each other, it's that both Rebecca and Ted know he's made up his mind and is at peace with his decision - he doesn't need to say anything.

To me, it's not enough that Henry comes to England, Ted wants to go home. The decision is as much for him as it is for his son. He's no longer needed at Richmond - he changed all of it for the better, but now Roy is able to step up where needed without prodding, and the team is able to support each other, reach out to each other, and forgive each other without Ted meddling.

Ted came in and made Richmond better. But Richmond came into Ted's life and made him better too, and helped him go back home in such a better place than he was when he left.

As for Henry moving to England:

Part of it is that just because Henry likes England, I don't think it's realistic or necessarily the best decision for him to just uproot his life and Michelle's - it's weird how people argue Ted didn't do what was best for him, but never consider whether asking Henry and Michelle to move would be good for them. (Obviously we don't know; it's not addressed.)

The thing is - there's is no possible 100% Happy Ending that doesn't involve someone saying goodbye to someone.

If Ted stays, his son has to feel abandoned by his father the way Ted did and that cycle continues. If Henry goes to England, then what happens with Michelle? Does she go? Doesn't she have friends and family in America? Does Henry just say goodbye to his mom instead? And if Ted leaves, then yeah, he says goodbye to Richmond.

But that's life. Life pulls people in different directions and when seasons end, you say goodbye to places and people that you LOVE.

It IS sad. It's an ending. It's a goodbye. But it in no way means that Ted isn't going to find a new community in America or that Ted has severed his relationships with the people of Richmond forever. You can move away from people and still keep in touch with them.

Also to me one of the reasons Ted saying goodbye is so thematically perfect, is that WE'RE saying goodbye to the show. The bittersweet feeling Ted and Richmond feel about him leaving is exactly how we feel about the show ending. And that's kind of perfect.

#thank you for asking!!! tried to keep this as short as possible lol #ted lasso #ted lasso meta #ted lasso spoilers #ask

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djuvlipen · 4 months

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Did you hear about the Pilar barbie situation on TikTok where it was a white women lying about being Romani and created a whole make-up business off the lie 😭

GIRL omg 💀💀 gossiping about Pilar is one of my favourite activities...

She has a lot of lore so I'm going to walk you through all I can remember

For the people who don't know her, Pilar was an American tiktoker who made videos about Romani issues (this is the only remaining picture of her I found on tiktok)

From what I remember, she was already there in 2020 during COVID times when I became active on Romani internet. I don't even remember when she got really popular, it must have happened gradually or something but she was one of the biggest Romani 'internet activists' alongside Florian and Brooke (in the early days).

Sometimes she also dressed more 'traditional'

which... really just looks like she was putting on a costume. anyway I don't have more recent pictures from her tiktoks as she suspended her account but the way she wore a headscarf and golden jewellery to try and emulate being Romani was already pretty messed up and unnecessary, as a lot of Romani women dont wear either of these things in the first place

I don't remember what group she was originally claiming to be from, but that's the point, she kept changing it. Except that she did so over a very slow period of time and by making only vague references about her heritage so it was hard to catch on. Anyway, over the past 4 years I have heard her say she was:

Russian Romani

Polish Romani

Crimean Romani

Gitana/Spanish Romani

Sinti

Manush, to be even more specific

Mixed Eastern European Romani + Manush

And that is all I specifically remember but I wouldn't be surprised if she also had a kalderash or lovari arc at some point 💀 anyway, after a while I started noticing things weren't adding up and her heritage was very vague and that was weird. Not to be mean, but she is also American, and I always feel way, way more cautious when it comes to American Roma than European Roma, Romani racefakers are almost always American because no European in their right mind would think it's cool to pretend to be romani 😭😭

Anyway, what really made it for me was the stuff she used to say on tiktok. Some of it was just blatantly not true. I almost lost my mind during her Sinti arc because she said stuff like "Sara e Kali isn't a big religious figure for Sinti people", "Sara e Kali isn't a catholic romani figure", and then she also pretended to have ties to some famous Sinti people when i know for a fact that is not possible... But I can't say more about that because that would be too doxx-y... She also said some more bs about Sinti people and I corrected her in the comments and she tried to follow me and it was so cringe

Then I also knew she was toxic because she would harass Romani women on tiktok and I remember at least one instance when she insulted a European Romani woman by saying, "you claim to be Romani but you dress like a hoe, you're just a gadji because Romani women respect ourselves by covering up"....

Two other things that didn't sit right with me was her clntent. She would talk a lot about anti Roma racism in Europe, which was great, she would talk about news no one else talked about. But she had a very guilt-trippy and angry way to talk about it that made it look like she was overdoing it and mocking the way antiracist activists talk, just to get engagement. It didn't feel genuine. And also, she would put ads for her make up brand and Cosplays of her as Wanda Maximoff between tiktoks about pogroms and police brutality. It all looked like a scam and like she was doing some traumaporn just for people to buy her stuff

And she also bullied Brooke so hard that she never came back on Tiktok, even though she (Brooke) had been the OG Romani tiktoker, had even been featured in Romea (a Romani newspaper), and was genuinely half Romani. And why? Because she is white passing? That's stupid, Pilar was allegedly white passing herself

(the way so many Romani tiktokers turned their back against Brooke was super disgusting btw, I don't know her personally but from what I've heard she is a very nice person)

Anyway, by 2022 I knew for sure Pilar was lying. That year I got in touch with other Romani girls and women online and we discussed it and they also all knew that Pilat was lying. Her being a racefaker was pretty much an open secret, at least among (chronically) online Romani people. Except that none of us could call her out, because she was very popular and extremely toxic. I can't even tell you how toxic she was. She had a circle made up of other American Romani women and they bullied tons of Romani people online, and guess what these romani people had in common!

Most of them were women

Most of them had a complicated family history

A lot of them were white passing (really tho, being white passing seems to be a problem ONLY when you are a woman. white passing Romani men never receive any hate)

A lot of them were LGB

And these American Roma bullied them, made a lot of them suicidal (seriously, I've heard several accounts of Pilar's bullying victims becoming suicidal), because they allegedly weren't 'romani enough'.

So, obviously, neither me nor any of my friend could call her out because we weren't nowhere as popular and we were all LGB romnia.

But then came FLORIAN. Literally the only person who could put a stop to her shenanigans. Ngl, I think only Florian, a straight, American Romani man with a big platform could have stopped her. And I am so glad he did, because she really made being Romani on the internet very stressful. I was so scared she would come to Tumblr one day lmao. Anyway, I have a lot of bones to pick with Florian but that was his biggest W. Here is his tiktok btw:

#Everything about her was faaake omg #when Florian's tiktok call out dropped I screamed #the evil is defeated etc #So ironic that those bullies were AMERICAN too...#American Roma don't get an iota of the racism Sinti and Roma face in Europe #but they still have the nerve to pretend they can say who is Roma and who isn't??#also her Romaness accent was so bad #And I remember when her DNA test leaked and her family tree was all Spanish people lmao #but she got that account suspended #asks #Anon #Pilar

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braisedhoney · 7 months

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do you have a watercolor brand rec? 👀

i'm actually a really big proponent of using whatever's convenient for you, fr. brands vary in price depending on where you're buying them/where you live, what's available, etc. sure there are definitely differences between them, but especially when you're using professional materials it's actually more rare to pick something bad than to stumble on something serviceable.

(whoops this one got long too. under the cut it goes.)

some brands do, admittedly, do certain things better than others. sennelier (a french brand) is known to go down kind of pale/less saturated on the first wash, but they build really really well in glazes and have a luminosity to them that gives paintings a really interesting depth.

daniel smith (an american brand) has one of the largest collections of colors available i've ever seen and their earth tones are gorgeous and really unique.

QOR (not sure where they're based?) has WILDLY saturated colors that bloom so much it kind of looks like fireworks, same with roman szmal.

holbein (a japanese brand) doesn't move much in water at all and thus offers a lot of control to the user instead at the cost of more abstract or dynamic movement in water.

schmincke horadam (a german brand) was hailed as the holy grail of watercolors for a while for their fine pigments and wild dispersal, but that's kind of chilled out these days since so many new players became beloved staples, and some people aren't fans of wild blooming to begin with. in a similar vein, winsor and newton (english brand) has a very extensive history and honestly works as a super "traditional" pick with few surprises but a solid foundation—and none of that is considering the wild variations in properties between student grade paints or the many types of handmade ones that hit the market lol. some brands make great pro but weak student lines, and vice versa.

buuuuuut.

all of that is pedantic when you're starting out, and honestly if you're asking this you're probably looking to get into watercolor. at beginning or intermediate stages where you haven't gone down the fixation rabbithole, all of tha information is more likely to confuse you than help, especially if you don't know what you like or dislike about watercolor yet.

at beginning stages whatever established pro or student brand is available to you is probably good enough to build fundamental knowledge on.

my actual, legit advice is to pick a few colors you like, then if another brand has what you want get it from them. get a small set if that helps and just build with whatever you find lacking, whatever you aren't using can be replaced with something that appeals to you more. there's no need to stick to one specific brand name just because. just don't pick the super chalky ones that come in those huge art packs with the round pans, and you should be fine (and even then, i've seen some people do great art with those! i just don't like when it comes off like dust on my fingers lol.) general rule of thumb i follow is that if they have accurate pigment and lightfastness information, you're going to be fine.

art isn't really all that exclusionary when you do it for fun, it's just an environment where people started making stuff for smaller and more specific audiences to cater to preferences lol. hell, paint with coffee if you want to. life's short and painting is fun, might as well enjoy it for a while.

oh, but do use good paper. blah blah, you've probably heard it before, and trust me we're all just as horrified as you that watercolor paper is so goddamn expensive. but you could literally have The Nicest Paints In The World and they'd look terrible on bad paper that won't let you use the techniques people try to teach you. if you have to pick between good paper and mediocre paints vs bad paper and excellent paints, pick the paper. trust me.

#ney's art tips (art questions)#ney's chatter (ask answers)#wow this got long too #can't believe i'm talking about traditional art so much lately when basically all i post on here is digital #mainly bc trying to take a picture of traditional art without a scanner is a HELLHOLE #orz #genuinely i'm not even all that GOOD at watercolor #i'm just a massive nerd (and i mean RIDICULOUS) when it comes to everything that makes them/how they work/the super small details of brands #literally to the point where i memorized pigment code charts. where i know the differences in binders.#the difference between honey-based paints and those without it #not even a bee joke fr #my first watercolor set was...#eh. story for another time i think lol this is already too long

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neonriser · 3 months

Text

For those who can't see the screenshot post, for whatever reason it may be:

@sillyrookie posted:

Ok, since @hairiclilred asked, I'll start my dumb rant.

Over here in the US, the videogame market fell off a cliff in 1983 due to a reckless oversaturated market flooded with low quality dreck that killed player interest. So many unsold Atari games ended up filling landfills.

Revenue dropped by 97%. It was catastrophic. Videogames died in America for a couple years due to short-sighted business decisions by major corporations.

The American market was revitalized when Nintendo came over and instituted limits to third parties to keep quality up, while also ensuring that quality was their brand. America only has a video game market today because of Nintendo.

I think the current environment of constant remakes, mergers, layoffs, diminishing returns on blockbuster products, and corps thinking they can use "AI" to regurgitate their once valuable IP will cause a similar crash.

What I find interesting is how many classic IP will end up dying in the wake of this.

At the moment so many distinguished studios with established IP are getting bought up by corps, only to lay off the workers and shutter the studios.

The workers don't just lose their jobs, they lose the IP they created. Even if the team can regroup, they can't use the stuff they made anymore. The IP dies with the studio.

So stuff like this makes me feel like we're right at the brink of a collapse that will kill ALOT of once profitable IP when audiences are made sick and tired of alot of stuff they used to love.

These IP owners don't understand the products they own, the workers that make it, and the audience that buy it; and many in the c-suite have actual contempt for all three things.

When an IP stops being profitable, corps shut it down, lock it away unless somebody has the capital to buy it from them.

The only thing they understand is that an old movie made by humans generated billions of profits for them because an audience enjoyed it, and instead of taking new risks it's "better" business short term to just rehash the stuff that made money before. And if they expect "generative AI" to make more content even faster, expect a sea of endless remakes, each shittier than the last one.

Things are bad now, and they're gonna get way worse real fast.

I expect a cultural massacre. What does that look like?

It's obviously a different world today than the 1980s, but Nintendo's core business ideology has stayed consistent, and they'll weather a AAA crash with no problem because they don't play the AAA space at all.

They make a sustainable lower-tech console that's sold at a profit (the traditional model before the Wii was to make a powerful console and sell it at a loss so that you made your money on software sales) and their brand still means quality even 40 years later. Not every game they do is amazing, but their batting average is high and they go out of their way to avoid dropping anything half-baked.

I think every other industry is gonna need their own Nintendos to rise from the ashes. The more I learned about the history of the industry, the more respect I have for them.

And they are NOT perfect. But it the broad strokes they're the example I think most should follow to have a sustainable industry that keeps everyone happy.

Heck, I'll define "everyone happy:"

Artists properly paid, having job security, and able to BE creative.

Players having quality games to enjoy.

Businesses being sustainable for the long term, properly using the revenue from successes to experiment with new ideas, and not screwing anyone over.

[Image: Sonic saying "I WANT SHORTER GAMES WITH WORSE GRAPHICS MADE BY PEOPLE WHO ARE PAID MORE TO WORK LESS AND I'M NOT KIDDING".]

If the collapse I'm imagining does actually happen, the only possible thing to grow out of it are new IP from all the artists that got laid off.

New stuff would be the only things coming out for a while and the only things people want if the big franchises burned them out.

Depending on how audience sentiment is by that point, public domain stuff might become suspect as well, which is also an interesting scenario to me.

I think about how the current remake ecosystem is targeted at millennials (which I am) while the pendulum is already set to swing in the other direction.

Sorry for not talking about this part first. 😂

74% of that survey wants new stuff. The major IP holders are about to commit suicide if they go through with the "AI will make us 30 remakes per second" scheme.

One thing I hope DOESN'T happen is a backlash against honesty in the creative process.

We were culturally at a point where the average joe could understand that new ideas don't come from nowhere and are all mutations of old ideas.

Game of Thrones exists because Lord of the Rings came first, which owes it's existence to Norse myth and Beowulf, ect ect.

We're at the point where youtubers make games out of seeing what a song sampled from, the references a movie made, on and on.

But right now a popular spiel from "AI" charlatans to justify IP theft is the assertion that there's no difference between stealing copyrighted media for an LLM to regurgitate and a human being inspired by the ideas and experience they felt from another creator's work and creating a new thing under the established rules of copyright. It's a lie, but it keeps getting repeated to justify theft.

As the scam cycle winds down, I think they might be poisoning the discourse in a lasting way. We could go back to people lying about how ideas work, and that has only negative effects on human expression as a whole.

I want a world where everyone understands the difference between inspiration and a ripoff and can appreciate human creation better than previous generations have. We were right there before the scammers showed up.

So yeah, another rant out of me. 😂

So when people want new IP, they also need to understand what it means that Dragonball was a goofy parody of Journey to the West.

Dragonball is alot of things, it's inspirations are loud and obvious (even the Terminator is in there), but it's also a unique work created through the mind of one talented individual that nobody else could have made, because nobody else was Akira Toriyama, and ALL the subsequent works inspired by Dragonball (One Piece, Naruto, Hero Academia, Sonic the Hedgehog, ect) are their own original works that stand on their own, but still owe their existence to Toriyama's work as much as he owes his work to the things that inspired him.

The best ecosystem is where everyone encourages new IP and also fully understands how they come into being.

(Using this example for obvious reasons.)

Discord Post Reaction: [☝️ 1]

To go back to the topic of videogames, Toys for Bob recently made themselves layoff proof by going full independent.

With the level and volume of world class talent being laid off in the industry, I think we'll see more and more indy teams pop up if they can organize the means to do so.

There is too much high pedigree talent out there right now to just disappear or eventually go back to the people that screwed them over. The current ecosystem allows smaller teams and projects to flourish.

I am 100% down for an industry with less games like Immortals of Aveum and WAY more games like Pizza Tower.

#rant post #not me #i just screencapped it #serious stuff #sillyrookie

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floweryrkive · 3 months

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honestly, i think cancelling yunjin is so stupid. it's one cup of starbucks.. and buying/drinking starbucks or mcdonalds or anything does not necessarily mean that the person who bought it supports israel. You call her ignorant when ur literally cancelling people over food and other stupid stuff."oh but they support israel!" let me ask you something, is boycotting actually doing something? Theres little evidence on how boycotting has affected anything, and the only thing thats happening is annoying people. I feel bad for the people, and i dont support israel, but its so fucking annoying seeing this happen. Grow up. ive literally seen ppl who supported palestine start hating this whole thing bc of the countless petty and annoying things.

i was thinking about whether i should answer this or delete this because i knew there was going to be someone who would say this exact stuff at one point after i would say i won't be writing for yunjin for now.

let's break it down :

I am NOT cancelling her, nor have i mentioned anywhere that she should be cancelled ( i think cancel culture is a whole lot of toxicity which is another topic) I am merely disappointed in her actions because she has faced this situation before and tell me one thing, if she had faced this same thing before and that time she responded accordingly ( which was deleting the post and apologising actually) would she not know how this would affect her/look abt her viewpoints? Also the fact that Jake from Enhypen ( her co-worker mind you.) apologised immediately after being called out for consuming st@rbucks on live is saying a lot too isn't it?

One starbucks...i can't even think of how stupid this statement is. She's a CELEBRITY. Her influence matters! Why do you think they do advertisements and shit with them?!

It's not just food! It's multinational companies directly funding these terrorist groups that commit genocides! st@rbucks and mcdon@lds are apart of these MNCS! And before you come and say the SK starbucks is not associated with the American one, they are still paying for using the brand name.

No one's claiming she's a zi0nist, but considering the fact that there's literally a hybe boycott going on rn due to them working with 🛵( a very raging zion!st who has literal proof of his support of isr@el as well as messaging pro-palestine armys is very telling) her still buying is obviously going to be showing a lot about her ignorance ???

and don't get me started on boycotting not working because if you lookup on twitter there's enough proof that these companies are pulling strings to literally gain sales that are dropping drastically!

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the main issue comes when this is turned into a fuckass fanwar instead of simply calling these idols out for consuming these products. stop defending her actions when clearly she is aware of everything going on ( she's literally the most online member in lesserafim, she has a coworker who apologised for consuming st@rbucks, there's trucks that are in front of that damn hybe building to urge them to stop working with 🛵) and the people you're talking abt hating this thing are hating it because fans like you are being so tone deaf and blindly defending these idols, turning this into fanwars!

all you had to do was search abt this instead of blindly accepting her actions but instead you choose to come into my inbox telling me to grow up.

i don't mean any malice or hate towards you, but please, look into why exactly people are calling her out, don't lose your moral sense over this. i hope you are able to see the issue soon enough. have a good day.

#[ mail 📬 ! ]#i knew this would happen #i don't care if you don't support this stance #feel free to block/unfollow #but i just have one thing to tell you #don't lose your morals #not buying is so easy #you're literally saving money #just yeah #that's all #thank you

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jimintomystery · 1 year

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Makoto headcanons

[Above: Uh, yeah, that's probably fine]

Originally I found Makoto to be an extraordinarily bland protagonist, which made him seem a bit two-dimensional. Eventually, though, I got a handle on the character, and saw at least some potential for depth...

We learn very little about Makoto in Trigger Happy Havoc, other than what he learns about himself from the experience. He thought he was just some guy, y'know, and then he turned out to be some sort of...non-giving-up...school guy. He's a blank slate compared to his classmates, even Kyoko, who is supposed to be the officially designated blank slate. His most distinguishing feature is the ability to chin up amid the horrors he's witnessed. I think that's taking an unseen toll on him.

When the Tragedy happened, Makoto reassured his friends the crisis would be over soon. It wasn't. When the Killing Game began, he promised Sayaka he would get her out of there. He didn't. By the end of the game, a third of his classmates have murdered another third, and the remaining third seriously considered letting him die to save themselves. When he came up with a plan to rehabilitate the Remnants of Despair without killing them, the Future Foundation branded him a traitor. Said plan almost backfired and nearly doomed himself and his closest friends. In the Final Killing Game, the Future Foundation largely went knives-out on him, and then a mind-control program nearly brainwashed him to kill himself. He doesn't process this stuff, he just puts it on his tab. He's running up a big bill.

I'm not saying all this is going to break Makoto, or that he's on the verge of succumbing to despair, or anything like that. The idea that this can't happen is what makes him interesting--the story won't let him falter or fail, so he just has to endure. He can't cope with his problems except in terms of helping others cope with theirs. In that sense he reminds me of Hajime Hinata, but Hajime is a surgically enhanced ubermensch, so for better or worse he's built to handle such weighty problems. Makoto is just an ordinary man, so it's kind of scary to realize he carries such an epic burden.

If I'm making Makoto sound like Jesus sweating drops of blood over his duty to the world...well, yeah. Personally, I am extremely tired of writers cramming Christ tropes into American superhero stories, so I'm loathe to look for one in Danganronpa, but it's hard for me to avoid it this time. Not that I want Makoto to be crucified and resurrected (any more than he already has been). But I'm intrigued by the idea of a Christ/martyr figure who can't get off the hook by peacing out to heaven.

Anyway, the point is that Makoto avoids his trauma by helping his friends with their problems. Which is ironic considering he spends a lot of time getting Kyoko comfortable with facing her trauma. Kyoko benefits greatly from having someone she can trust and finally open up to, so it doesn't occur to her that Makoto might need the same sort of help, or that he would hide it as well as she does. Overcoming that takes a lot of work, for both of them.

I haven't decided what sort of relationship Makoto and Kyoko had before their memories were wiped, but I tend to think it wasn't romantic. At most they might have had some basic attraction, but neither of them expected anything to come of it, so they paid it no mind. Even during the Killing Game, I don't think Makoto realizes what he's starting to feel. He's just curious about her because she's mysterious, or worried about her because she's missing, that's all. She's cute, but he'd never have a shot with her, so there's no point going there. Meanwhile Kyoko is gradually facing her feelings about him, and getting a little frustrated that he's not making a move. It's not until after they escape that everything hits Makoto all at once.

As Makoto learns more about Kyoko's family, he isn't afraid to call out the bullshit they've put her through. He's willing to believe her father might have had a reason for walking out on her, but that doesn't excuse the harm he caused. He's also not wild about her grandfather pushing her through the family traditions, and (from what I've gathered) exploiting her abandonment issues to hone her emotional discipline. If Fuhito Kirigiri ever meets Makoto, I think there will be a lot of friction there.

#danganronpa #danganronpa thh #danganronpa 1 #makoto naegi #dork squad headcanons

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tubbytarchia · 7 months

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Someone asked for other reasons I hate Estonia but there's a lot so I'm making it into a post instead lol

TLDR: very conservative (eg homophobic), expensive living rates and low pay, we get no good stuff, estonians are rude, russians in estonia are rude, domestic abuse rates, estonia is a lame country

I am not claiming that these are exclusive to Estonia, please fuck off if you think that makes my complaints invalid

Estonians are piss conservative (so majorly transphobic, homophobic, anti-abortion etc) (Also racist)

Estonians are fucking rude. There is extremely little common decency like respect for the elderly and junk. Estonians are so quirky because they're so introverted (Estonians very frequently describe Estonians as such) (and often easily aggravated) and then they're SOO introverted that they refuse to even help others. It's not a norm to tip ANYONE or thank workers like bus drivers. I sprained my knee at a store entrance and that shit hurts so I had to keel over for awhile, and yet I felt like I was being a bother by not getting out of the way enough for all the people who couldn't care less. I have so many personal examples but I'll give you my best: My pregnant sister passed out in the middle of a major grocery store only for NO ONE to call for an ambulance until she came to and had to do so herself.

Something I barely ever hear anyone talk about!!! But domestic abuse!! Casual domestic abuse is so normalized that no one ever says anything, a survey from a few years ago found that 1 in 6 Estonians are sexually abused in childhood alone. A survey from this year found that 41% of the women questioned experienced domestic abuse at the hands of their partner. I cannot understate how big of a problem it is that victims just DON'T TALK (and that's not their fault!!!! It's the country's!!!)

About 25% of our population is Russian, and I would not complain about this if 1. Russians living here weren't massive assholes a lot of the time, expecting everyone to speak Russian instead of them learning Estonian or just being fucking respectful (DISCALIMER MY EXPERIENCE AND WHAT I'VE HEARD FROM OTHERS and junk, I'm not generalizing everyone, is this really a racist comment? I seriously do have wayyy more negative experiences with Russians than pleasant, that doesn't mean there aren't decent or nice Russians living here) and 2. if Estonia DIDN'T ENFORCE Russian. I get it, the Russian occupation and whatever shit! But these days you can't even become a good paying DOCTOR with a doctor's degree if you don't also speak Russian

Minimum wage WAS recently increased but the increase was to 4.60USD. While Americans get 7.25USD and I've heard you can get paid like 10USD as a fast food worker too which is crazy to me. Not in Estonia you fucking can't. Wages in general are pretty piss poor and it's often more affordable to just work overseas

Estonia is quaint which is also a plus but to me mostly a minus because I feel so stuck here. Non-Estonians are like "but you have a lot of forests!" like lmao that's the highest possible praise that Estonia can be given. It is incredibly boring here and our highest "mountain" is 318m

The cities are boring. I feel that only two places here can even be called cities, the rest are more like big towns. The capital has some very cool and pretty places but that's about it (ofc Estonia has many cool and pretty locations but compared to other countries? Ughh. Barely any skyscrapers, not many elevated roads or tunnels... all that good stuff)

Our prices are set to become the most expensive in all of Europe!! Local prices have already in some cases doubled in the last year and continue to increase almost monthly, set to increase by another 20% at the start of 2024 lmaoo

Not many big brands. We get some fast food places but no Wendy's or Starbucks or whatever. Nobody wants to invest here, we got Subway recently and they left not even a year later

Not much geek stuff. Estonia has 2 anime stores TOTAL. 4 proper card game stores TOTAL. I'm frankly amazed we even get a singular convention, but we have absolutely no locals. Stores have started selling stuff like Pokemon toys very recently. Even in Finland (overseas neighbor), Pokemon/Digimon/Yugioh was everywhere. And here? Lmao no not ever. Not even ANY school clubs or anything. We get choirs and that's it

Shipping is abysmal. It costs like 10 bucks to send most stuff from Estonia to ANYWHERE in the world, yet it almost exclusively costs 30-50 bucks to ship anything from the US. And shipping fees from even the UK aren't very good either. (Which, again, abysmal accessibility to geek stuff, because people barely ever sell anything in Europe internationally. Mostly US and UK people do, esp because they are the only ones who get any cool stuff)

Local production is expensive as shit because there's little choices because we're still a tiny country. Ofc having your stuff produced in China is always cheaper but then you also gotta wait 3 months for shipping!! Unless you wanna pay 50EUR+ for it of course

Very strict gun laws so I can't go and buy a gun to off myself from this miserable country

#ofc as a resident of your country youre bound to hate it in many ways but sigh #wish so desperately I could get out of here #estonia #fuck you estonia #we have free education and healthcare yayyyyy I guess I have no right to really complain

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eternitysoup · 2 months

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As I write this, my stomach is killing me because I had to stay up late and drink a RedBull and eat some donuts. What was I thinking? Anyway, onto my thoughts this morning.

Frugality is a hard necessity to master. Or maybe I'm just stressing because it's the 1st of the month, and I'm paying off some debts while watching our paycheck shrink just hours after it hit the bank. The first thing we did was pay back my sister and our neighbor: $300 and $420, respectively. They are great lifelines for loans when we need them, and I don't want to jeopardize anything like that. Someone who will lend you a few hundred bucks until payday without interest is just indispensable in these times.

The second thing I did was pay off the phone bill entirely. I had been making half payments on it for a while, but it didn't stop them from cutting it off last week. So this paycheck, I doubled up and paid everything off, past due $108, and current due $118, so I don't owe anything more until May. Having a phone is very important, even if I never leave my house. Also saw a notice that they are raising their base prices on my bill. Fun.

The third bill to be taken care of this morning is the electric bill. I'm still so miffed that last month, TXU charged me $25 because they charged my empty debit card instead of using the checking account I know I had set up in their app. I blame them, but I probably missed a step or a button somewhere.

After paying the electric bill, I took care of the Xfinity bill for $144 since it was due on the 3rd anyway.

I sat down and started going over our monthly pet supply order from Chewy. The dog needs new supplements, and we have to buy different cat food this time since it seems like the little girl cat throws up with the current brand. We're switching from Iams to PurinaOne this month to see how it does, and it's also on sale for a good price.

Funny thing, while I was doing my Chewy order, it said, "Orders over $100 get a free $30 gift card," so I used the promo code, and it increased my total amount. They charged me more tax and also took away my other discounts for brand loyalty with our American Journey dog food. My order was $280 before the promo and $285 after it. I opted to keep the promo, though, because I'm still ahead $25 with how it all shakes out, and the gift card will definitely be used in May.

That just leaves rent for $897, four credit card payments of about $50 each, and various small subscriptions like Hulu ($9), PS Plus ($17), YouTube ($25), and my FFXIV subscription ($15). I'm also aiming to put $100 in savings. So that leaves about $557 for the month for food, household items, or anything else that may come up. I definitely don't want to spend that entire remainder if I don't have to.

Side note: Absolutely forgot we have to return the old comcast equipment, still. Some of that stuff has been in our closet a year.

#journal #my blog #blog #life #my journal #my stuff #my post #finance #financial #money stuff #budget

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