#a what a billion year old dragon guy but he just pretends hes a human and becomes best friends w these two

[gaykarstaagforever]

Here is an article from Variety about how the writers' / actors' strike will probably lead to Apple buying everything like Shudder, while CBS and Disney will continue to lose market share and money:

I post the link because I think the author is correct about the market impact, generally.

Now the problems with it.

1. Her premise is that the strike is hitting the billion-dollar content dragons "at the worst possible time," as they bravely fire people and purge IP to make more money for shareholders. The narrative that this is all some unfortunate act of nature is utter bullshit. They all did this to themselves, and are ONLY doing this to themselves because of greed and lies fueled by greed. Zaslav is the one who promised everybody that his company owning 47 others would lead to good times that will never end. That wasn't "market forces" or "the wind." This is Smaug laying upon his Golden Hoard, bemoaning the apparent death of the world because it isn't making any more gold for him to steal...because he's already stolen it all. Then set the mines on fire. What a shock that Variety, a trade publication, would pretend like the market leaders in that trade are downtrodden simpletons just tryin' to make their way through this mixed up ol' world. But they are decidedly not.

2. Traditional or "Grandpa Media", your network television goons / Disney / Paramount, haven't been in a position to blow money on stuff that can't compete with offerings from Netflix or Amazon for like more than a decade now, yet they are continually eager to keep trying. So maybe stop wasting money on that? Like I don't believe you are in actual dire straights when you've refused to steer out of then for 12 years. And keep trying to build a house there.

Paramount should have given up on their grey water service ages ago, but are seemingly refusing to out of spite. The networks are spending tons maintaining free ad-supported services that are destined to never be profitable, because no one under the age of 70 is willing to put up with this goofy format to watch even more tepid CSI knockoffs.

Why are these companies investors allowing them to keep doing this? It is YOUR money they are flushing away on bad ideas, guys. This is why everything is a mess. It isn't because a staff writer wants rent money for churning out bad dialog for some shit G-rated fireman show only 6 dads watch. Again, you people fucked this all up from the front end.

3. If motherfucking Disney, with all of their billions and monopolization of IPs, haven't figured out how to make streaming work yet, they are never going to. At least not with this leadership.

You brought Iger back. He oversaw the first Disney stumbles into streaming, where they did whatever and it worked because they are Disney and people were willing to put up with whatever. That "successful formula" isn't going to work again. You actually have to fix that godforsaken broken POS app and put shows on it that aren't Mandalorian Season 3. And the confused old man who basically led to all this of happening in the first place is in no position to fix it.

4. The demands of the striking talent are not grandiose. They are asking for living wages and humane working conditions and being valued as creatives and artists by the corporations making billions from their work. Regardless of the market, this is baseline stuff they should have had already. The writer of the article knows this, but still seems to bemoan the timing, like this will hurt their chances of getting concessions.

Lady. They ALREADY HADN'T GOTTEN THE CONCESSIONS. When times were good. Obviously it doesn't matter, because the companies aren't interested in doing what is right. So what the hell does it matter?

Maybe kicking them when they are down, because they've already kicked themselves, is a better strategy. Because with all the talk of AI and CG doing everything, that is being said by people who barely understand what those are, who STILL NEED TO PAY PEOPLE TO DO THOSE, the cheat code they think they have to beat the system isn't a cheat code. ChatGPT can't make a show anyone with a brain would watch. And you have to pay people to composite actors in. And because you low-ball the rates for that, you're burning through the companies that can do that: they keep going out of business. This isn't sustainable, or even fundamentally doable.

The companies are wounded animals, and their fix for it is to chew off another limb. That isn't a position of strength. Striking writers can go get other jobs if they have to. But what is NBCUniversal if there are no new episodes of...let me look it up here...Chicago Med? They are an entertainment company. They can't transition into a lumber yard or something.

I realize they are owned by Comcast who has a monopoly on paid internet and cable TV in a bunch of US markets. But Comcast isn't going to keep them if they aren't profitable. They're all at risk if they don't settle with talent and make more shows thst someone, apparently, is watching.

[glopratchet]

Little Sin

In the world to come there is little sin. You have a new life, a new family and you are free. There are just lots of american alligators. After the election of the first ungendered president, the prediatrain movement caught fire in america. Since then most of the metaworkers involved in the project went private and made their fortunes selling to companies who were more intersted in financial gains than induction. Of coarse the metaworkers had been doing it for so long most just didn't need the money and had continued striving to make humans as perfect as possible themselves. Now only the poor have babies the traditional way and they are rarely more than 20% of any given populations usable babies. The demand for american alligator meat skyrocketed after a plague years ago and it became economic sense to breed them in captivity, who knew they stacked so well? Vats after vats of gator esscence sloshing about growing legs and then bodies then slaughtered and processed. Mostly it is a paradise, efficient, structured, specialized. Sadly your specialization did not prove to be highly valued. Who need classics when the old world is gone? Whorals where burned to ash while polled hereford heifors fetched over a billion dollars a head in auction. Your old farmhouse now an airport, your father would have been horrified, of course he was blown to ash scattering over a freeway while you mother's skeleton was proudly put on display in a metaworks museum. The old world REALLY is gone. You worked hard and got your primary education certificate then just as hard to get your secondary equivalent. You spent eight years studying in the library for your humanities and Social Science papers and got a two 2.1s and a 3. Googizon won the bid to construct for the military the most forward thinking alligator farm in existance so far and with your resumé you were head hunted to run it. You work in a half submerged glass an metal building sitting atop 523 alligators who are kept just wake enough through biog gas injection to allow them to shut their eyes without spilling out the layer of meat skewered on huge needles that run from their spinal cords into the machinery. It currently floats near the okeenokee snow swamp. You are so far from the old world it's not even funny. Sure on the T.V. they still talk about sports and throw around polotics but outside the farm all you can see for miles are trees, birds and insects and the odd alligator basking on a sunny 'beach'. Of course the building is still less then half a mile from a military base on an army enforced conservation area so humans can't wander and wipe out all the game for miles.... This is not that story. You have work to do We are primal ponds inc. we specialise in ultra farm husbandry. At the push of a button our gators from young to full grown can instantly become fashion jackets, leather coats, belts...even shoes and bags. We are pushing so many units every day we have sent reps to try and break into the japanese market, so far they haven't called back. A small mom and pop alligator farm attemping to make it. Last week our oldest gator surpass Cochon gate's world record of 880 years. The sun beats down on your farms back glass panels as you watch the thousands of beasts basking sleepily below. You snap a couple of photos with your phone and beam them over to your reps hoping they call you back soon. We need you to make deliveries for us. We have bought, rigged and updated an old freight submarine for you and set you up with a small crew, you just need to tell us where to drop off the goods. Please...we're dying here... On the rhelm of your glass office a pen floats near you. Point of view of the player: Hey, take a minute and think about where you want to go. I'm letting you choose the next sector of this adventure, with four options: theMilitary Side, Economics Side, Terrorism Side or Criminal Side... A delivery champion here is like no other: we have control over the world's only sentient beasts of burden (gators) incentive based economics that allouw us to sell our leather above price-cost, kick-back free operating licenses and few enough regulations that you can get amazing stuff done for you with a couple of well-placed bribes. Pick up the pen and choose your destiny The criminal side sounds fun: trillions of people live outside and inside the law why shouldn't we? He had a secert life as billy fea fbots biggest drug lord all along! And one more thing... It turns out no one has made a crappy real time virtual reality game based on your life and experiences yet and against all attact you have decided to give it a go.... Dedicated to delivering dragon tail in the far, far, future. Maybe that needs to change... Made by two guys on a coffee machine some sleepy afternoons...mayhaps...it's rubbish... We proudly introduce today the glamorous fallout: an adventure in the post-apocalypse and the two men who made it: bruce and ed. Glug, glug...any questions? Alligator delivery service. The story of a normal life in the post-apazaki...noh... The alligator farm where the gator are delivered is currently under a series of construction tasks. Temporary staff will used while these works last. Already we own over four over ten foot alligators including rex lex, the old female godzilla and lesi mellnick, the huge male dominant of our breeding group. We place breed these four as soon and they reach sexual maturity. We also own thirty-six smaller animals, mostly six to seven foot males and females. A massive 14 foot beast. Not nice. Bred for fights but joined our force with strange reluctance when he could do nothing against our huge alpha male. He's actually a right little so and so, never helps the keepers move any of the large trees in our scrapes.... So, we have delivered one alligator from the breeding farm to an area in florida where our electronics arm opened a new factory recently. This factory is currently attempting to recuperate from a bombing and so insurance fraud seems the most reasonable option. The factory is seeded with several obviously fake bomb scares. While this sucks for the factory work as they all have to stop working, many refuse to even enter thir building, others leave by afternoon. We plan to target the wood workers. (alves and winklehaus.....and thunder? A small safe has gone missing and we believe our bomber has probably taken it. he has clearly stolen large sums of money in the past as a means of terrorise his local communities as whenever something is stolen a new threat will appear the next day from ed or one of his fellow crack extortionists so we don't expect public interest into this theft for at least a couple weeks. At two pm on the dot bruce and ed! will enter the building wearing all black. This is when they plant the bomb that they have created in our secret base under a community centre... my brother and me got our name because ed regarded us as two like his brothers. I'm the quiet one and the brother who just does what I'm told. bruce has called ed a right character and I can't altogether dispute it. With me is greg, a new member of our team and an aspiring stand up comedian! Said he killed someone once but I'm not sure I believe that.... I finallly arrive at the building site where our two crack undercover agents are waiting. There were no actual bomb threats but daft people are still refusing to work. Ed hasn't responded to my last message so I assume that the pair of them are happily seeding the factory. We snuck in earlier, hammering boards over the glass walls to the offices at the top of the factory to avoid breaking in after hours. While at the front we pretend to be a work crew extending a main road so no one will questions us creeping about the 'closed' factory.We wander around the dark building looking for the seemingly empty offices on the top floor and come across a man trying to stuff armfuls of fabric printer paper in his sports bag. He is shocked to see us as much as we are him. The gulity man whirls around as we enter , dropping his bag in the doorway. "Hey we can help you there," I say , not knowing what else to say. 'I...um...thanks... ' he answers, patting down his pockets looking for his keys. I pick up the bag and find the keys in the first pocket I try. How about that? I hand them over and he looks at me with clear recognition in his eyes. He had obviously seen my photo in Newsweek. He must have though this was some kind of trap. So, he didn't come here to steal but to destroy the documents? Well these papers seemed pretty regular, all printer paper and cheap fabric....but then they don't exactly make a good quality paper especially not out here for convenience. Why would the guy go to the trouble of destroying these anyway? "Thank you...are you sure you can handle that?" He asks, nervously smiling at me. I'm quite big remember to add. There are two respectable fathers with me afterall. "Yeah why wouldn't we be?" I respond with a faint smile, but my smile is weak and unrealistic so as not to scare the man. I look at my brother who clearly doesn't react much to these kind of situations....or any situations really. "Right...well, you can just toss it over there." He points to a bare corner of a room behind us with his keys still in hand. 'Then um...thanks a lot....goodbye....' We shuffle towards the corner at first then I get the sense that something is not right with this guy. it may be the fact that he still isn't leaving or the nervous sweat pertruding from his forehead. We play air hockey for a second, me shuffling my feet to face him then him shuffling his feet to face me. He keeps his keys held tightly in his hands like some kind of knife. It dawns on me later that I should have grabbed them anyway. What happened after this I still cannot quite recall in exact detail... "Come on guys,.... can you let me go now? Please?", he says heading to the exit, greg mutters to him to just leave but I find myself obnixious and unpredictable as ever. Maybe he could shed some light on this situation? What was he doing with all these non work related papers anyway? Why destroy them in a hurry? It seemed pretty odd to me. I wait for him to take a few steps forward before I speak up from behind. "At least tell us how you make your paper seem so authentic." I like to lob questions like this at recent university grads whenever I can. It's part of human nature to talk about yourself and it also gives us insight into the security of new moneymakers. I had completely forgotten that some of men out there were not security at all but common criminals looking to rip off new businesses like ours so that they wont be such easy pickins later. I wasn't prepared for the booster to pull a 2x4 with screws sticking out of it out of his bag as he whirls on me with unnatural speed. If I had to fight him eye to eye my life would have been quickly terminated. Since I didn't expect the hostile response however, I had enough time to duck and cover inside the cramped bathroom . With it's cheap lock, I was ensured my safety.....or so I thought.Tip: If you're logged in, your games are auto saved for you. 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