#It doesn't matter if no one cares

[hephaestuscrew]

Audio Drama Sunday 24/11/2023

Here's the new stuff I've listened to in the past week and a bit:

🏠 Unwell Ep3.01-3.07 - I really liked the first couple of seasons of Unwell, and I don't know why my listening fell off midway through Season 3 in 2021. (Honestly it might have partly been that some of the dementia stuff hit too hard. Ep3.05 was A Lot in a masterful way...) But I thought I'd resume it from the beginning of Season 3, and it's been really nice to return to these characters and this world, even if I can't remember all of the context. I'm tutting at Hazel, a librarian actively withholding and distorting information. I'm shaking my head at what Rudy's gotten himself into. I'm very emotional about Wes - the first episode of this season was really moving. And I'm excited to see where things are headed!

🚀 Travelling Light, Ep1-3 - Like Monstrous Agonies, this show has such a lovely reassuring vibe. I'm in awe of H. R. Owen finishing one show and almost immediately releasing another weekly show nearly single-handedly. It reminds me a bit of the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, because of the exploration of the diversity of cultures across different planets and species, and the way these differences are celebrated. I've also noticed that so far the cultures described tend to be more local and specific than 'every alien of this species has this tradition' - instead it's usually about the people who come from a certain city or region on a planet. Which helps avoid some troubling attitudes that sci-fi which contrasts different species can imply. My favourite archive entry from these episodes so far was the drinking song. It felt convincing as that kind of song and was fun to hear.

🌊 The Silt Verses, Chapter 36 - This was one of those episodes that made me stop in my tracks in the street as I listened. I cared so much about the two characters who were only introduced this episode, and the ending sent shivers up my spine. I often hate listening to flirting but the flirting via memory games was unusual, sweet, and compelling in a way that made me smile in spite of the Horrors around them. Also I think Carpenter should be a bitch about unimportant things like music trivia more often. I loved her and Hayward bickering. She should get to care about things that aren't gods or rituals or matters of life and death.

🚇☕ Greater Boston / The Amelia Project, Live Crossover Episode - This was an excellently done crossover in terms of blending elements of both shows in a way that I think would work for someone who was only a fan of one or the other. I was pleased to hear Felix Trench's absurd portrayal of Mark Walhberg again, but my favourite parts were Chuck Octagon attempting to sum up the events of Greater Boston (and the Interviewer's reaction to this) and the Narrator narrating the Interviewer's response to his offer with his own exaggerated impression.

[uncanny-tranny]

Love disabled people who just lie about their disabilities to nosy, intrusive questions. Sorry, yeah, I lost my arm in the wash one day. It's funny how that happens! Oh, I got back pain from saving nineteen children from a burning fire department <3

[luna-lovegreat]

I want. Four to get appreciation. Because

Four gave a ton of unnoticed help when Twilight was injured

The fight with Wild was difficult, and I know we're all concerned about his negative view of the shadow crystal

But Four did something that no one else really thought of to help- He took care of Twi's stuff

From the beginning he told Twilight to not worry about them

So Four took care of pretty much everything but the others (that Sky and Wars handled)

He took care of Epona

Which is so very important- he took care of Twilight's horse. After her arrival at the stable Four followed up on her

And for Epona, a horse so attached to her human, having some company can help so much for reassurance

He took care of Twilight's stuff

He got Twi's shield- his bags and equipment, and organized it into one place

And he was worried. He obviously found the shadow crystal while handling Twi's stuff, but his negative reactions to it were out of concern.

Also- because of his placement in this scene

I'm fairly convinced Four was ready to start cooking before Wild showed up (since he's beside the counter with food supplies). At the very least he had the basket of fruit out for everyone -but he was literally standing with food behind him- he thought of everything

And he did housekeeping!

Wars payed for the inn, so Four took care of the inn

Realistically these boys were probably not too concerned with tidyness. Four got all of Twi's things on one table, and took care of the room they stayed in

Organizing tables and Twi's things, having food supplies ready, and opening the curtains- overall he was the one tidying up the inn

Four helped in a huge way! He took care of Twi's horse (Epona is so important), his equipment and shield and bag, as well as the other rooms in the inn

Four filled in all the little tasks that others didn't think of. He helped in ways that were needed, but not obvious

There's a lot of problems with the shadow crystal and with Wild, and I don't know what's gonna happen in the future

But don't forget this- don't forget that Four was one who stepped up in an almost unnoticeable way

Don't forget that when everyone was barely holding it together, Four visited Twilight's horse and took care of his things

No matter what develops in the future- this amount of care shown is important ya know?

.

Art and comic from Jojo @linkeduniverse au :)))

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Words Collide

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[kineticallyanywhere]

Time & Space pages 1-2 ( This is the start || ao3 (not yet!) || next ) Starts less than 24 hours after the death of Willy Stampler. With the job done, there's finally time to sort some things out. They just need the right amount of space.

[cr1mson5returns]

Sort of obsessing over the concept of Tim, having been acknowledged canonically as a talented photographer, using these skills for morally gray reasons. This kid doesn't intend to use his fists to win every battle, or even most battles, actually. He's well-connected, fits into unconventional hiding spaces due to being lean and slender and 5'6", and he has a very nice camera. So really, Senator, it's a shame you thought you'd get away with so much. Think of what the Times could do with this evidence. High-definition doesn't lie. So you'll vote to expand funding for public education and Medicaid in the state, is that correct? Of course, you're an upstanding politician, after all. Couldn't have all this getting in the way of your career.

[canisalbus]

It's quite funny having followed you for years and years and knowing Machete as his dark, bloodied, cunning (and always on the edge of getting horribly murdered for his hubris) incarnation, and coming into 2024 and just... yeah he's gay now. Maybe he's even happy. Redemption at last... perhaps he DID get assassinated indeed and all those AUs are just his personal afterlife (does he get to go to Heaven? Seems so!)

.

[multicolour-ink]

(This is the idea I'm tornenting friends with on Discord) Imagine Mario and Luigi regularly using the warp pipe between Brooklyn and the Mushroom Kingdom, and no one realizes the path between the two is slowly breaking down until one day, it stops working...

... And Mario and Luigi are on opposite sides

Me: *sits and contemplates what I just read*

...

Oh...Oh that's just....

You are cruel! That is unspeakably cruel 💔

[nelkcats]

Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!

See, ghosts got bored, a lot, Danny did too. When Amity became a neutral and cooperative zone they decided to go exploring. Which was mostly fine, since most of them didn't really mean any harm. And the GIW had been dismantled, Danny preferred to let people speculate why rather than answer.

The problem arose when the ghosts of the Realms encountered other types of ghosts. Apparently there were spirits that did not reach the Realms and became weak or simply vengeful (spiteful?)

The ghosts Danny knew were very upset because apparently "weak" ghosts were extremely rude. So he started talking to them (when they didn't want to talk, or refused, the thermos was a good solution)

Very quickly people started calling him "Ghostbuster", he found it ironic since he wasn't actually repelling ghosts, he was attracting them and sometimes collecting them. A ghost named Deadman yelled at him for not "respecting the rights of the dead", to which the halfa raised an eyebrow. The ghost vanished before he could explain that all ghosts were in the Realms or Amity (where people didn't really mind sharing a house with a spirit).

He shrugged and continued visiting all the ghosts that his friends pointed out to him. He argued with a certain "Zatanna Zatara" and "John Constantine" for disturbing the rest of the dead. Danny rolled his eyes as he chose to ignore them.

It wasn't long before Justice League Dark branded him a "ghost threat" and people in general called him out asking for help with their haunted houses (Danny hadn't really considered turning his travels into a job but at least he was getting paid). The halfa wondered how wizards would react if they knew he was ghost hybrid and his "Ghostbuster Team" was full of ghosts.

[thefirstknife]

New article with more details (from Jason Schreier who first broke the story). If you can't see it, I'll copy the whole text under read more.

About 100 employees were laid off in total (8%) and one of the main reasons listed is "underperformance," "sharp drop in popularity" and "poor reception of Lightfall."

So you know when for the last year and a half content creators have been shitting and pissing on the game as a full-time job and the amount of negativity and ragebait content became the only thing to make content about for them? Well they certainly won't take the blame, but I will let it be known. These people either don't understand the influence they have or they do and they're doing it on purpose, and I don't know which of these two options is worse, but I am 100% confident that their campaign of rage and hate contributed to this.

You don't base your entire community around constantly hating everything about the only game you play (despite clearly not enjoying it anymore) and somehow avoid galvanising thousands and thousands of people into perceiving the game negatively. Imagine being employees who have barely worked there for 2 years and the only community reception they've seen is 24/7 hate train for their work and then they get fired because of "poor reception" and "drop in popularity." How can they not take that personally? I am absolutely devastated for these people who delievered a banger product and who were met with an unrelenting barrage of toxic gamer children which ended up having more sway over their boss than them.

Which brings me to the next bit and that's FUCK THE CEO. He is now my mortal enemy #1. I am projecting psychic blasts directly into his brain. What an absolute spineless coward who is more willing to bow down to fucking gamers than to protect his own employees. This is absolutely rage inducing because this has happened before. From the article from 2021 about the toxic culture at Bungie:

Reading this shit from the new article absolutely fucking sent me into blind rage because I immediately remembered this. Another instance of employees suffering because of comments on reddit. And because of toxic players. And proof that leadership is not protecting employees and is instead siding with players.

Match made in heaven. Asshole gamer content creators and asshole CEOs, all of whom sit at home on piles of money made from someone else's labour. I hope they all explode. None of the people that worked on this game deserve this.

Another article with an infuriating comment from the CEO:

In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept “the right people” to continue work on Destiny 2.

"Kept the right people." Really. Veteran composers weren't the right people? Die!

Bloomberg article in full:

Bungie’s decision to cut an estimated 100 jobs from its staff of about 1,200 followed dire management warnings earlier this month of a sharp drop in the popularity of its flagship video game Destiny 2. Just two weeks ago, executives at the Sony-owned game developer told employees that revenue was running 45% below projections for the year, according to people who attended the meeting. Chief Executive Officer Pete Parsons pinned the big miss on weak player retention for Destiny 2, which has faced a poor reception since the release of its latest expansion, Lightfall. The next expansion, The Final Shape, was getting good — not great feedback — and management told those present that they planned to push back the release to June 2024 from February, according the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The additional time would give developers a chance to improve the product. In the meantime, Parsons told staff Bungie would be cutting costs, such as for travel, as well as implementing salary and hiring freezes, the people said. Everyone would have to work together to weather the storm, he said, leaving employees feeling determined to do whatever was needed to get revenue back up. But on Monday morning the news got worse: Dozens of staffers woke up to mysterious 15-minute meetings that had been placed on their calendars, which they soon learned were part of a mass layoff. Bungie laid off around 8% of its employees, according to documentation reviewed by Bloomberg. Bungie didn’t respond to requests for comment. Employees who were let go will receive at least three months of severance and three months of Bungie-paid COBRA health insurance, although other benefits, such as expense reimbursements, ended Monday, sending some staff racing to submit their receipts. Laid-off staffers will also receive prorated bonuses, although those who were on a vesting schedule following Sony Group Corp.’s acquisition of Bungie in January 2022 will lose any shares that weren’t vested as of next month. The layoffs are part of a larger money-saving initiative at Sony’s PlayStation unit, which has also cut employees at studios such as Naughty Dog, Media Molecule and its San Mateo office. TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a report Monday that “events over the last few days lead us to believe that PlayStation is undergoing a restructuring.” PlayStation president Jim Ryan announced last month that he plans to resign. Many of the layoffs at Bungie affected the company’s support departments, such as community management and publishing. Remaining Bungie staff were informed that some of those areas will be outsourced moving forward.

[hualianisms]

the way HC grew up thinking he was weak, monstrous, repulsive, was told that he was cursed, and believed that he had to spend 800 years becoming better, stronger, more powerful, for XL, bc he wanted to protect XL -

but then he meets XL again, and shortly after becoming friends, XL tells HC that he doesn't care if HC is hideous, doesn't care if HC is a beggar or royalty, a ghost or human. later on, XL even tells HC that he doesn't care if HC is strong or weak, at his lowest or highest point, in worst or best moments - XL loves HC no matter what state HC may be in, he loves him simply bc he is HC.

and this unconditional love from XL is so important to HC, so healing for HC, and is exactly why it shaped HC so inexorably, both 800 years ago and 800 years later. bc XL truly is the kind of person who loves someone for who they are, not how they appear on the outside.

and HC fully reciprocates this unconditional love by loving XL no matter if XL is the god-pleasing crown prince or the broken husk of a man wearing bwx's mask trying to take revenge. HC returns this unconditional love by repeating XL's words back to him, what matters is you, not the state of you.

[paellegere]

i can't stop thinking about the first episode of season 6, when sam tries to convince dean to come with him, to come back to hunting. he says "it's just better with you around, that's all." it's an interesting line because sam is soulless, obviously. and even though he doesn't understand the details yet, he knows something's wrong with him.

"it's better with you around" he says, citing dean's compassion and care for others as the reason why. and how interesting is that? sam's working with plenty of other hunters who still have their souls—they're all more than capable of caring about the people they save. but sam needs dean specifically. he knows he's missing something, and he sees dean and recognizes that something in him. even cold and calculating and unrelentingly logical, sam recognizes that dean, alone, can "complete" him, give something back to him that he's supposed to have.

in episode 8 he tells dean he "needs his help." he doesn't elaborate; he never explains what he means by that. he has a whole family of hunters who'd be willing and able to help him, but still he needs dean. even without his soul, his hyperrational mind knows he needs him.

soulless sam isn't capable of caring about dean. but he doesn't need to care to know they need to be together, no matter what—to know dean is good for him, dean completes him, dean needs to be there for him.

it's like a sick reversal of season 1. sam drags dean back into this life because he can't keep going without him. because he needs him. because when you think about it logically, and sam has no other choice, there was never any other option for them.

[kyouka-supremacy]

Honestly don't make Ryuunosuke choose between Gin and Atsushi in your sskk fics because he's always going to choose Gin

[myhyperfixationisiforgot]

I maintain that the animated Harley Quinn show has the best understanding of the modern Joker. He's Batman's mortal enemy. His other half, the color to Batman's gloom. Joker literally PROPOSES to Batman at one point.

Sure, he's terrible and sadistic and he absolutely hurts and kills untold numbers of people but like. Not because he likes killing, but because everything else is part of their story, and this is how the story goes. He doesn't want to KILL people, he wants to fight Batman, and in this universe Batman wants to be the good guy.

As soon as Batman is gone, he's done. Over and out. Almost capable of a normal life (as much as you can in Gotham). Finds himself a girlfriend and kids in the suburb. Willing to do his ex a favor every now and again.

Anyways I'm just obsessed with a show where it's so obvious that the Joker isn't the antithesis to good, he's just the antithesis to Batman. They really said the Joker only exists because Batman wants him to, and then actually backed it up. Insanity.

[rmbunnie]

Red Hood Characterization

This is really long so I'm putting a cut here, I've been thinking about Jason Todd's character motivations and the question of whether or not his actions are based in a Moral Code (I don't think so, not to say he's without any morality) and I talk about that in more depth here.

I saw someone say on here that Titans: Beast World: Gotham City was some of the best Jason Todd internal writing they'd seen in a while, and I've been a Red Hood fan for 8 years or so now? pretty much since I read comics for the first time, so I went and checked out and I thought it was good! The way the person I saw talking about it as if it was rare and unusual made me wonder though, because as well-written as i thought his stances on crime were, there wasn't really anything in it that went against the way I conceptualize Jason?

This kinda plays into a larger question I've been thinking about for a while with Jason though, which is that, do people think that the killing is part of a fundamental worldview that motivates him a la batman, and that worldview is the reason he does the things he does?? Because 8 years ago i was a middle schooler engaging with fiction on the level that a middle schooler does, so I simply did not put much thought into it beyond "poor guy :(" but ever since I actually started trying to understand consistent characterization, I don't really see Jason as someone who's motivated by a moral code in his actions the way batman or superman is!

tbh my personal read is that he's a very socially-motivated guy, his actions from resurrection to his Joker-Batman ultimatum in utrh always seemed to me like every choice made leading up to his identity reveal was either a. to give him the leverage and skill necessary to pull off his identity reveal successfully, or b. to twist the knife that little bit more when he does let Bruce find out who he is. Like iirc there's a Judd Winick tweet like "yeah tldr he chose Red Hood as his identity because it's the lowest blow he could think of." And I think that's awesome, I think character motivations rooted so deeply in character's relationships and emotions are really fun to read! I also think it's where the stagnation/flatness of his character comes from in certain comics, because if his main motivation is one event in one relationship that passes, and he is not particularly attached to anything in his life or the world by the time that comes to pass, it's a little harder to come up with a direction to go with the character after that, because there isn't much of a direction that aligns with something the character would reasonably want? But I do think solving this by saying "all of the morally-off emotionally driven cruelty he did on his way to spite Batman was actually reflective of his own version of Batman's stance that's exactly the same except he thinks it's GOOD to kill people" isn't ideal. To be fully honest, it seems to me like he never particularly cared one way or the other about killing people to "clean Gotham of crime," he just did everything he could to get the power necessary to pull off his personal plans, and took out any particularly heinous people he encountered along the way (like in Lost Days.) Not to say I think the fact he killed people keeps him up at night anymore than everything else in his life events, I just never really thought he was out there wholeheartedly kneecapping some dude selling weed or random guy robbing a tv store for justice.

Looping wayyy back to my question, Is this (^) contradictory to the way he's written/the overall average perception of the character? Because like I enjoyed his writing in Beast World i have zero significant issue with anything there, I just didn't believe it would be a hot take, like yeah, that is Jason. It's been a while since I've read utrh and lost days, but I don't think my takeaway directly contradicts either of those too bad iirc. Idk all this to say I think Jason killing and being alright with killing is an obvious and objective fact, but i guess i've always seen it as more of a practical tactic than a moral belief, and I think taking the actions made during the lowest points of a character's life where he is obsessively focused on this ONEEEE thing and trying to apply it as a Motivating Stance to everything he's done after that, doesn't really follow logically for me.

[eightyuh]

Glen what does your family think of your…. Situation

"Especially my father; He was also a royal soldier."