danajsparks

[danajsparks]

The Ethics of Recording Vertical Dramas

I have received/seen some questions about the ethics of recording and sharing S2 of SMIYCMP, so here are my thoughts on that:

First, to be clear, I think it’s really important that everyone watches S2 on the GoodShort app at some point, because we’ll only get a S3 if they see enough views for S2 on the app.

However, it’s also important to me that S2 is easily accessible for everyone. Some people can’t pay for a weekly pass, so they have to watch it with ads, and if you watch with ads you are usually limited to only 5-10 episodes a day, so it may take a week or longer to unlock the whole thing.

Also, once a weekly pass expires, the episodes will be locked again, and then you will have to unlock them with ads for a few days if you want to continue watching it on the GoodShort app. (Be careful about using coins. It can cost $40-$50 if you use coins.)

IMO the rates that vertical apps charge are unethical. A weekly VIP pass for a vertical app usually costs $20 in the US. In comparison, Netflix subscriptions are as low as $7.99 a month. And most of the money that the vertical apps make doesn’t go to the actors and other creatives who actually produce the verticals. This Rolling Stone article discusses how exploitative the vertical industry often is of its creatives.

I think the cost to watch a vertical on an app is a huge scam, so I don’t feel bad about providing free recordings to the folks who can’t buy a VIP pass.

Another reason why I don’t feel bad is because some of our folks use the recordings to make amazing fan edits that they then post on TikTok and Instagram. Some of these videos have gotten tens of thousands of views! So our people are essentially providing free labor and advertising for GoodShort.

[danajsparks]

the top one is the recent one, i just wanted a little collection of "parents can support their trans kids and no one went on fire or died"

and one for siblings:

[danajsparks]

Over a year ago, National Public Data (NPD), a search site for people, earned a place in privacy infamy for a security breach that revealed the personal data of 3 billion individuals (that's billion with a "b"). Now, after disappearing, NPD is back. As ZDNET sister publication PCMag reported, NPD is open for snooping again under a new owner, the rather mysterious-sounding Perfect Privacy LLC.

Oh boy. Better head over to nationalpublicdata.com and see if your profile is there. Then follow the handy instructions in the ZDNET article to have yourself removed:

How to remove your information from NPD

Search your name on nationalpublicdata.com.

When you find your profile, click "View Full Profile."

Copy its URL.

Go to nationalpublicdata.com/optout.html.

Drop the URL into the "Your Profile Link" field and click "Request Removal."

Enter an email address, and the site will send you an email requesting that you click to confirm deletion. 

You'll need a separate email address for each profile you want to delete. 

[danajsparks]

heartbreaking:

girl has sooooooo many ambitions and ideas for projects but can only get 1.5 basic tasks done per day

[danajsparks]

sees art with thick smooth line art: ah yes i want my art to look like that

sees art with sketchy thin line art: ah yes i want my art to look like that

sees lineless art: ah yes i want my art to

[danajsparks]

so it turns out that climbing onto a rooftop in the middle of the night does solve all your problems, but i failed to consider that it would create a brand new one

[danajsparks]

Sometimes I’m tired of being nice. One day your femur will be mine

[danajsparks]

Anime is great. Anime will be like “this is my character of ambiguous western descent. Their name is the most incomprehensible combination of made up sounds. And if not that, it is a name that has not appeared on a single birth certificate since 1773.

Code Geass went and said “most of these character hail from Future Sort-of-Britain, including our main character, who will be named Lelouch just like every single British person isn’t.” Then they decided to distract you from this by naming his love interest Shirley, cornering the market of 80+ year old grandmothers clutching their 3 bowls of strawberry sucker candy in delight. Code Geass didn’t even call it a day here they had one more trick up their sleeve and it was to name the third character in the group Rivalz, a name and a character which appeal to exactly no one.

Tiger and Bunny said “What should our western young-20′s heartthrob successful pretty-boy deuteragonist be named? What screams ‘young’ and ‘trendy’ and ‘brilliant’ and ‘sexy’? Barnaby. Barnaby Brooks. This is our Sex Symbol Barnaby.” I bet a bunch of ghosts from the 17th century were stoked about that one. I bet Barnaby walks into gift shops asking if they have any of the travel keychains in his name and he gets laughed out of the store. I bet Barnaby’s parents didn’t die, they just faked their deaths to get away from him seeing as they hated him enough to name him Barnaby.

I haven’t followed Attack on Titan in 7 years but yall have a character named Pieck Finger. That’s it that’s my roast.

[danajsparks]

What if water didn't have surface tension and whenever you spilled some, the whole floor of your entire apartment was covered in a 2 micrometer deep puddle

[danajsparks]

So I've got this friend whose nervous because she's trans and dating this guy who she hasn't told yet because they've only been on a two dates. For this story let's call the friend Jane and the guy she was dating Jason. Happy ending don't worry.

So I tell Jane to bring her boy over to a bbq I'm having and she can tell him she's trans at my place surrounded by queer and trans people who love her and will support her if he ends up being awful.

She waits till the end of the bbq to tell him the news, by which point the rest of us have learned that Jason is a kind, friendly, empathetic, hard working, dummy. So we sit down, all of us a little worried about this gym bro's reaction when she tells him she's trans, and that she understands if he doesn't want to keep dating her it's no big deal.

He's baffled, so we explain what trans is, and after the disclosure that she hasn't had bottom surgery yet...

"Oh you have a dick?"

"... yeah."

He look's around at the room full of people with baited breath, his clearly a little afraid girl friend says

"Oooohhhh! I get it! You think- don't worry Babe! Watch this!"

And ya'll this man jumps up, runs into the kitchen and returns with one of the bratwurst we had for grilling and proceeds to tilt his head back, put it down his throat, hold it in his mouth for a moment, and spit it up without even a whisper of a gag and then looks around at the group absolutely beaming with pride.

My mans saw his worried girlfriend and her support network and thought to him self "Oh they don't think I can't please my girl, but I'll show them!"

[danajsparks]

I used to do cross country in high school, and there was this guy on the team that was wonderful. Great guy. But his advice to everyone that asked how to get good was to run 20k a day.

If you don't run, I'll just tell you, most people's bodies cannot take that kind of abuse. No matter how much you train, you will not be able to run 20k a day. It's like how you can't train to make your cuts heal faster. You recover as fast as you recover. So while a big part of what made this guy so succesful was the dedication and mental toughness needed to actually run 20k a day, an equally big part was that he healed like fucking Wolverine. And that's fine, but it would've been nice if he knew that and stopped telling new guys to commit suicide by jogging.

Different guy on the team ran like, 5-6k a day, which actually isn't all that much. His problem when he gave advice was that he didn't really get that 5-6k a day doesn't generally produce elite results for most people. He was lucky in the sense that he didn't have to work all that hard to get great results, and unlucky in the sense that if he pushed himself much further than that, he fell apart.

I think about those two whenever I get advice from succesful people. The very things that make them outliers also make their advice useless to most people. Worse, they're often outliers on totally separate ends of the same spectrum, so their advice will be contradictory.

[danajsparks]

just had an extremely funny memory of being 9 years old and wondering if i was gay and then deciding i couldn't be because gay people were so rare that it was statistically improbable for me to be one

[danajsparks]

anyone who argues that trans men/mascs do not face sexual exploitation, unwanted sexual advances, or general sexual impropriety because "they're men" or because "trans men aren't sexualized in general" owes every male victim, trans or cis, of assault 4 billion dollars & six of their fingers.

[danajsparks]

burning text gif maker

heart locket gif maker

minecraft advancement maker

minecraft logo font text generator w/assorted textures and pride flags

windows error message maker (win1.0-win11)

FromSoftware image macro generator (elden ring Noun Verbed text)

image to 3d effect gif

vaporwave image generator

microsoft wordart maker (REALLY annoying to use on mobile)

you're welcome

[danajsparks]

why did my neighbors name their wifi network this

[danajsparks]

You are a merchant who travels around a lot, your number one customer is a legendary hero. One day you ask him why he keeps visiting you and he answers, “Because your the only NPC that says different dialogue every time.”

[danajsparks]

Time for an update!

We’ve had three more m/m verticals come out.

9. His Lost Boy, His Only One

10. Poolboy*

*Poolboy does start with one character bullying the other, but the bullying stops before the romantic relationship begins. (But never date your bully in real life!)

“Shoot My Heart My Mafia Boss” definitely does *not* meet my criteria. It is probably the worst so far when it comes to consent.

How many Western m/m vertical short dramas are not dark?

I’ve been thinking about how many of these m/m verticals are not dark, which I’m defining as:

Both leads are alive at the end of the story

The relationship is fully consensual

The relationship isn’t abusive

Of the 14 verticals that I’ve been able to track down, only 6 meet those criteria.

SMIYCMP

Objection I’m not Gay

My Secret Agent Husband 1

My Secret Agent Husband 2

Desired by My Unknown Husband

Loving You from the Football Sidelines

The other eight that don’t meet the criteria are The Mafia’s Obsession, Mafia Lover, Bodyguards by Day Lovers by Night, My Serial Killer Lover, The Young Master’s Forbidden Butler, My Mafia Pilot Boyfriend, Stockholm Boys, and Gangster Boss is My Boyfriend.

There is nothing wrong with a story being dark, and I have enjoyed some of those stories. But I find it a little troubling that so many of the m/m verticals so far are darker stories.

p.s. Come join our SMIYCMP tumblr community and discord server!