#and also seeing better results from the use of those tools

[ittalkslikeone]

damn it’s almost like they were right when they said the best treatment is usually therapy AND medication

[brionysea]

when it comes to the umbrella academy, a lot of people seem to think that the first half is great and the second half is terrible. personally, I think only the first *season* is great, or even good. here's why:

the mission statement at the end of season 1 is fixing viktor, but viktor isn't the only broken one, so you can infer that they're all going to have to fix *each other* - as a family, the one thing their abuser never let them be. and the world's burning down around them because of the most dramatic sibling confrontation to ever grace the earth, but they're holding hands and escaping together and surviving the impossible with the intent to move forward, even if that means momentarily moving backwards. it's a masterful allegory for finally growing up, accepting responsibility for your personal trauma and tragedy and how they shaped you, and the moment you take that power back by choosing to heal your inner child, only after being slapped in the face with the fact that if you don't, it *will* destroy everything you've ever built, ever cared about, and ever could.

and then the rest of the show forgets all of it. as it were, it goes in the *exact opposite direction.*

on the surface, the second season isn't *as* bad as the subsequent ones are. but season 3 and 4's faults can be traced back to season 2 by how it pivoted away from the serious subject matter that the story (not the plot - the *story*) was heavily baked in, leaning hard into the goofier elements instead, without ever understanding the contrast that those conflicting elements served to highlight. it made them both more powerful; the jokes were funnier because you were just devastated, and the trauma was more devastating because you were just in tears laughing. the emotional roller coaster is key to understanding these people, and you *have* to take the serious stuff seriously for it to work. at least half of the show doesn't, and as a result, the emotional moments feel hollow.

controversial opinion: as a character, luther is better in season 1 than he is anywhere else. he's more unlikable, but that's because he's implicitly there to show what *not* to do - even if he'd succeeded narratively by locking viktor up and saving the world, he still failed thematically by emulating their father and continuing the cycle of abuse - so luther's a character that's being very effectively used to add to the core theme of the story. he feels like a real, frustrating person, whose brain chemistry got messed up by years of abuse and isolation, all for the crime of thinking his father loved him and wanted the best for him. not like a made up guy on your screen doing silly stuff solely for your entertainment.

season 2 was also the start of the characters getting love interests instead of storylines, which season 1 never would have *dreamed* of; klaus and dave's tragic romance only served to further klaus's character arc, viktor's creepy boyfriend was actually manipulating him the whole time, five's fractured-psyche-mannequin was a narrative tool to let us see into the head of such an emotionally reticent character, and so on. the romance served the character, but fairly quickly into the show's progression, it felt like the character started serving the romance. five was immune to this curse for a long time due to aidan gallagher's age, which is why he's (for the most part) the best, most consistent character across the show, because they had to use their *imagination* for him and actually *write an arc* instead of falling back on tired romance tropes that any selection of characters could slot into to fill the dead space.

after season 1, the umbrella academy is entertaining, but it doesn't have anything to *say.* which is extremely disappointing when the show initially made such a strong case for what it wanted to be.

[muldery]

FALLING LETTERS ANIMATION tutorial

hello! @kimmomi asked for a tutorial on how i made the letters "fall" in this gifset and so i figured i would make it and post here! this effect isn't hard to achieve but it might get a little tedious if you have a lot of letters.

note: you will need photoshop with a timeline!

STEP ONE: create your base gif! be mindful of number of frames in your gif. the number of frames doesn't really matter here, altho the longer the gif the better the effect. i'd say try to limit it to 60-70 frames, depending on how big your final gif will be.

STEP TWO: make your text the way you want it to look. this effect is basically the last step of your gif making process. (i will be using the typography from my set as an example as i already have that psd saved)

this is what my typography looks like now.

STEP THREE: i would recommend that the word at the bottom be the word that "falls". for me that is forever.

now, you will have to duplicate the "forever" layer and make your non-copy forever invisible.

what you will want to do now is delete all the letters but the first one in the duplicated layer. for me that is f. then you just duplicate the f layer and write your second letter instead of it, in my case o. you will have to do this for all letters. also as you do that make sure to move them a bit away from each other.

now, what helps to align those letters where they start off, is making your non-copy layer to be visible again.

after you've aligned your letters, make the non-copy layer invisible again.

STEP FOUR: so now we come to a bit of a tedious part.

what you will do now is move the playhead (blue timeline arrow) a bit further from the beginning of the gif (this allows for the text to stay still a bit before it starts "falling") and click on the first letter.

next step is to click on the little arrow next to your letter and clicking on the stopwatch next to Transform.

then, you will take the playhead and drag it to the end of the gif where you will start with transforming your letter with Free Transform tool (shortcut ctrl+T on windows). and what you will do is, while in Free Transform mode, drag your letter to the bottom of your gif while also rotating it a bit. when you're happy with your placement of the letter, hit enter. see below gif for how i did it.

you will have to do this for every letter, but make sure to rotate some in the other direction. also make sure that the beginning of the stopwatch mark is the same for every letter.

and that is basically it! after you transform every letter, you can go and save your gif.

this is my final result:

for some extra dramatic look, you can duplicate your initial layer with the whole word on it, drag it above all layers, clear layer style and add a stroke and make sure its FIll is at 0% where you will get the outline text that stays behind.

i hope this was helpful and understandable. if you have any questions, feel free to send me an ask or dm me <33

[mareastrorum]

I love villains, and I especially enjoy Brennan Lee Mulligan’s take on them. His version of Asmodeus in EXU Calamity and Downfall really highlights the reasons why.

A villain is the embodiment of the wrong conclusion. They aren’t always an antagonist; they aren’t necessarily meant to obstruct the protagonist of a story. Hell, they might even be helpful. Villains don’t even have to be evil, per se, they just have to be on the wrong path in the context of the story.

Asmodeus is a brilliant villain and as evil as it gets. He’s the Father of Lies, and he indulges in it deliciously. The lies are always half truths so that the protagonist fills in the blanks with assumptions and gets it wrong. He matches their energy to give them what they want to hear. He plays along with naivety and hope. He doesn’t take anything from people other than lives; they give the rest willingly because they want to believe him. Asmodeus finally reveals his deception when he has someone cornered because he wants them to know they did it to themselves. Asmodeus wants everyone he hurt to come to the realization that “I knew better and let this happen anyway.” He did it to Vespin Chloras, Zerxus Ilerez, and Sarenrae.

From EXU Calamity episode 4, after Zerxus realizes he’s been had:

Asmodeus is the embodiment of the desire to punish, and he’s the villain because he’s wrong. That mentality is rooted in hatred. He is convinced that everyone deserves eternal torment, and he wants everyone to agree with that conclusion.

The purpose of Asmodeus is that we shouldn’t inflict punishment based on some idea that the person deserved it. Yes, revenge and victory feel good. Yes, there are often valid reasons to be angry or defensive. Yes, we can come up with a reason to justify punishment. But hurting people because they deserve it is exactly what Asmodeus does. There is always a way to rationalize that someone deserves punishment—so the right answer is that this feeling cannot be a sufficient reason to do harm. That isn’t good enough.

It’s so easy to say “they deserve it” when we know the end result is that Aeor will be destroyed and the surviving legacy is ruins full of monsters. It feels good when we think people deserve to suffer and then we get to see it happen. It feels righteous.

Vespin Chloras deserved to be remembered as a traitor because he was arrogant enough to think he could replace Asmodeus—in an age where another mage already replaced the god of death and yet another mage created a machine that killed two primordials. Zerxus Ilerez deserved to be a thrall of Asmodeus because he chose to take up the mace and contributed to the problems that got him in that dilemma—because he so fervently believed that under all that hatred was a person who needed a chance to change his mind. Sarenrae deserved to lose her followers because she decided to trust the Father of Lies—because she loved her brother and offered him mercy.

It’s so easy to conclude that someone deserves pain. Asmodeus is here to remind us specifically that it’s not the right way to handle anything.

Asmodeus is also a rather effective villain because he is supposed to be irredeemable. Archetypal villains are wonderful tools for setting audience expectations. Whether Brennan plays that straight or decides to subvert it, there isn’t as much work needed to persuade us that Asmodeus is that evil or cruel. We already believe that he’s capable of doing the worst things imaginable. Toying with those expectations is a great storytelling exercise.

Asmodeus didn’t shock us in EXU Calamity because we didn’t expect him to be evil. He was shocking because he is such a skillful liar that we wanted to believe him. It would be such a satisfying story that a well-meaning paladin was the first person to show kindness to the Father of Lies and managed to atone him. Brennan’s portrayal made us want that subversion so badly even though we knew better. Asmodeus lured us into the same trap as the characters, and then we saw the outcome: punishment—because Asmodeus will use any reason to justify it and every opportunity to inflict it.

In Downfall, Brennan could have easily rationalized that the protagonists wouldn’t agree to the truce if Asmodeus was on the infiltration team. The audience would have absolutely found that plausible. He didn’t have to be here. The decision to include Asmodeus on the side of the protagonists gives us a heads up that the story will grapple with questions about punishment.

What do I need to see before I am justified in destroying a city with no survivors? Do I have to concern myself with bystanders? Do the fearful deserve to die for choosing to oppose me? Don’t they deserve it for creating such objectionable technology and magic? Don’t I deserve the chance to live without fear of those lesser than myself? Don’t they deserve to die for corrupting those I loved? Don’t they deserve it for being loved more than me?

Why isn’t hatred a good enough reason to hurt someone?

Again, villains are tools to highlight the wrong conclusions. Asmodeus is involved to highlight that the desire for punishment isn’t a sufficient reason to destroy Aeor. The other characters, villains or not, are here to show us what other justifications there might be. Their interactions are going to brush across these themes over and over again.

I fucking love villains, and no one plays a villain quite like Brennan does.

[howtofightwrite]

How good would a whip be as a weapon? I'm not interested in it being a lethal weapon but more of it being a weapon that can defend someone long enough to get away or at least disarm or disable someone. I don't see a lot of people or character or referrals on how to use it and that's probably because it's not good enough?

Not great. The whip, like the goad and cattle-prod, aren't really designed for use as weapons. They're designed to control animals. (...and, yes, that does sometimes include humans, but again, in a non-combat, control role.) Part of the problem with the whip is, it's not much use against someone wearing armor. Or, even, heavy clothing.

Now, whips do have a legitimate military history as discipline tools, but that's very different from trying to take them onto the battlefield.

The reason reason you'll still see characters using whips, when you've probably never even heard of a goad, is because the whip is visually dynamic. It looks cool. You don't see Indiana Jones using a whip because it's the best choice of weapon, you see him using one because it stands out, and as a result, it has become iconic. It's delivering a specific vibe.

At the same time, the goad is just a pointy stick.

Whip disarms are a neat trick. And, very doable in a controlled environment. However, successfully disarming someone who's actively trying to kill you is going to be a bit more challenging, and also raises the question, “If you're putting this much effort and attention into taking away someone's weapon, shouldn't you be spending that effort and attention taking their life instead?”

This is probably little thought experiment about combat disarms. There's no point in disarming a corpse. So, why not just skip the middle step and go straight to the corpse-making? A question that Indiana Jones famously answered when, instead of dueling a sword master, simply pulled out his .455 Smith & Wesson and dropped the guy. (The real reason was that Harrison Ford was ill from food poisoning, and in no condition to shoot a prolonged fight sequence. So instead we accidentally got a character defining moment of pragmatism.)

To be clear, if it seems that I'm a bit negative on the subject, I do think the whip is a neat weapon. It's visually dynamic. It's loaded with symbolism. I think it's fantastic in a fictional context. It's just not practical.

There are fantastical versions of the whip that are better options. William Gibson's use of monowire comes to mind as an immediate example. Where the whip itself is created from a monomolecular carbon fiber, and can, as a result, cut through basically anything it strikes. Similarly, I still have serious reservations about the Lightwhip from Star Wars' old Expanded Universe, but it would carve through anything pretty effectively (including the wielder.)

Even in those cases, the whip is a weapon you choose for the aesthetic, more than the practicality.

-Starke

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[vidavalor]

Art Does Not Solely Belong to the Artist

For my fellow Good Omens people:

I don't usually write about real-world stuff on this blog but the current stuff is unavoidable and relevant and I write to process things so the result is some thoughts on the horrible mess:

From the moment that art sees the light of day, it does not belong to the artist. It belongs to the world. From the moment that even just one other person sees a work of art, it is no longer just the domain of the artist. The work of art now has a life of its own and it now belongs, collectively, to every person who engages with it.

Everyone who views a work of art comes at it from their own unique perspective. They bring their own background knowledge, their own experiences, their own fears and dreams. If they connect with a work of art, it can be a very personal experience and, in some cases, transformative. People who engage with art can sometimes see that art become part of the fabric of their lives in many ways. They might make art of their own related to the work or use aspects of it, consciously or unconsciously, as a tool to process struggles within their own lives. The work of art might be tied to memories and to new friends they've made from engaging with it. They might view the community built around the work of art as a place of happiness and solace in an uncertain world.

All of these things make it difficult when it becomes evident that the artist's behavior is not in line with what attracted many good people to engage with his work.

It can be a lot to learn that a monster made the thing that brought you joy. It can be a lot to learn that a monster made art that you love but that is so completely antithetical to their own words and deeds outside of the art that the hypocrisy makes your blood boil. It can be a lot to keep that anger and disappointment from turning into cynicism. Letting it is not a great idea-- that is just letting the monster get you, too, in a way, and helping darkness to spread.

Do not cede the stories you love to darkness; they belong to you, too, and to all of us. Do not let any bleak, horrible people behind the stories you love take from you what belongs to you.

It does not actually matter that his name is on the book or the tv show in question; it belongs to all of those who helped make it and to all of those who read and view it. It evolved independently into the product of all who engage with it and of all who engage with one another as a result. Good Omens is not a just a book or a tv show anymore; it's a community of people who have read and viewed Good Omens. People who have made art inspired by its themes and found new friends around the world as a result of engaging with its story. Those experiences are our own and do not need to be denied just because of the repugnant acts of one of the many people involved with the story.

As a rape survivor, I can tell you that two things can co-exist: you can acknowledge and be horrified by the pain suffered by victims of the monster and you can also still enjoy the community of people who came together over a sense of positive connection made by art that was originally made, in part, by that monster. Both can-- and should-- be done. Despairing over the darkness of the world does nothing. Countering that darkness with every bit of love you have is what can actually make the world better. Staying in this community and continuing to be a part of it with the big, open, lovely hearts it is known for would be the best way to be a force for good.

You do not need to give up Good Omens to be supportive of his victims. In fact, I can't think of anything less effective-- that is only allowing the blast radius of his predatory behavior to spread. What would actually be helpful is to believe his victims and, as a community, come together for SA survivors in every way we can think of. The book and the show and this community do not belong to one creep of a guy-- they belong to all of us. There's no reason for us to go because this is our home.

Good Omens isn't just him; it belongs to the late Terry Pratchett, Michael Sheen, David Tennant, the hundreds of people it takes to make the show, and all of us who have made our own art and made new friends as a result of it. It is not okay to diminish the suffering of human beings or to place the fate of a fictional story above them but it is also very much okay to not give up on that story and its community entirely because of the actions of just one of the many people involved with it.

With any luck, there will be some justice in the real world for his very real, very disturbing behavior. That is obviously what is most important here.

As for the show? He is one, very replaceable creep, who didn't even write half of S2 himself. (Not to mention half the book.) It takes many people to make a tv show and S3 is an already-planned last season that just needs to be steered into port. It'll be fine.

In the meantime, it's fine to still love what we love-- because it's ours, too. Make your fan art. Finish your meta and your fic. Be silly and laugh and have fun. Giving up what makes you happy because of one, heinous asshole is not taking the moral high ground-- it is helping darkness win by destroying a community space that positively serves many, a lot of whom are survivors themselves.

Calls to dump Good Omens entirely are empty, performative outrage that serves no actual, practical purpose for improving anyone's lives. It's an attempt to put everyone who works on the show out of a job and to force the cancelation of prominent, trans-friendly media, and to help along any of that would not do anything to hold him accountable, nor is it respecting his victims. If you want to honor their suffering, don't help him and the gross bigots who exposed him spread more pain of any kind. Believe the victims and let law enforcement and the studios deal with the justice. There are much more productive, much more effective ways to respect his victims and one is to not let their suffering be the reason why you give up a source of your own positive connection and joy.

[absolutehomosexuals]

Astarion's ascension is extremely popular, despite it clearly being the designed bad ending for him.

So many fans of this version want to argue that it's a "valid" path to choose if you enjoy his character, or that it's equally good as his Spawn ending. The "it's what he wants" argument is the hegemonic justification in question.

But is wanting something better than needing another thing? Yes, he talks about ascension ever since he finds out about the ritual.

Yes, when push comes to shove he's still committed to ascend. But is this enough? Should we support his choice, even when everything but his words tell us not to? Should we trust the judgment of a deeply traumatized man about the best way for him to feel better?

This may sound harsh, but the answer is no.

Because in many circumstances, we see Astarion behaving unhealthily as a result of his trauma: he's hypersexual at the beginning of the game, using sex as a survival mechanism. He's yet to learn what his boundaries should be, what it means not to be an object, to see himself as a person that deserves respect and has so much more to offer than just his body. His trauma is still fresh. And he's so scared of losing his freedom, being trapped under slavery again.

We can't blame him being so desperate to feel safe that he will trade everything he is for it.

Because that's what the ritual means, Cazador says so himself: despite gaining the ritual's power, Astarion is still part of the bargain for said power. He still loses his soul in the process, and that is clear once we see how he acts post-ascension.

Of course, someone that is still suffering from the consequences of 200 years of abuse wouldn't care if he became less of himself, in the process of becoming untouchable ever again. Astarion's behaviour towards himself highlights that he doesn't care for the person he is because that person is, sadly, the product of those centuries of abuse.

He doesn't want to be that person anymore: even better, he doesn't want to be a person anymore: people suffer, people get taken advantage of, people are submitted by more powerful beings. He is willing to give this up not despite losing everything he is, but because of it. And that's what happens after his ascension: he retains his body, which becomes an empty shell of who he once was, with someone else inside of it to fill the void left by his soul.

This situation is a perfect, brutal metaphor of an abused person that later in life becomes the abuser himself, a thing that often happens to male victims of SA.

This is what is fundamentally wrong with Astarion's ascension: he's choosing power, his abuser's tool, over healing. Instead of learning to feel like a person again, to deal with his trauma to life after having endured it, he chooses to not feel anymore, while letting thousands of spawns (like he was) be consumed to get what he wants.

This terribly selfish act is the first instance of Astarion behaving like Cazador, considering the spawns as lesser beings, as nothing but his tools, like all vampire lords do. In this process he also sees himself, the person he gives up being, as a tool. He isn't healing. He's losing all of himself entirely.

Why would someone see this sacrifice as not only necessary to leave his trauma behind, but also preferable to healing from it?

The fan-favourite characteristic of Ascended Astarion is his behaviour towards Tav: in this version of "himself", he clearly is even more sexual than he was in his first days with the tadpole. And this expression of his sexuality is drastically different from the one we got to know prior to this point.

He is dominant, prevaricating, demanding in his avances: he enjoys being in a position of power even in his relationship.

This isn't the Astarion that slowly learns to trust his partner, to build a real loving relationship with someone who sees him as equal and truly cares for him.

Everything that he learns during his romance and his plot gets nullified by his ascension; and yet, this gets overlooked in favour of this more sexually appealing version of him. For people that claim to love his character because of his complexity, Ascended Astarion fans seem to only truly love him when he's less of himself than ever.

When all that's left of him is his body, and he behaves more like the toxic love interest from a young adult romance book, a great number of his fans get wild. Is this all that they want from him? The husk of the funny, sarcastic, dramatic and complex character, filled with this more traditionally masculine attitude, replacing what he used to be? An Astarion that never heals from his trauma, choosing to leave behind everything he was instead? Who resembles his abuser more than ever?

Do his fans who like his ascended version so much to genuinely think this is the best outcome for him, or do they just enjoy being able to project this "macho" fantasy on a physically attractive male character, that otherwise isn't anything like this prototype of man?

We can't help but think that appreciating Ascended Astarion is the same as believing in, if not loving, his hypersexual facade: it's overlooking his humanity in favour of sexualising him.

Which is the biggest disservice one could ever do to his character.

[lolomidi]

The Price of Entertainment: An Episode-By-Episode Analysis of Alastor's Facade

I don’t think any character in Hazbin Hotel has been discussed as much as Alastor, and it’s a testament to how much the writers put in his character that the mystery of his intentions, past, and contract have been so debated on.

There are some takes I vehemently disagree with, but something a lot of people seem to have settled on is that Alastor is, behind his massive ego and cool-headed persona, insecure about his place in Hell after his long “sabbatical.” I want to do an episode-by-episode analysis of Alastor’s behavior and how Season 1 shifts our view of him from an unquestionably powerful Overlord to something with more depth, and while I won’t be speculating on who owns his soul and how he’ll break that contract in those post, I will take a guess at the future of his character in a narrative sense. I will also implicitly be addressing my issues with some of the conclusions others have made, or at least playing devil's advocate.

NOTE: I want to clarify that none of this is meant to depict Alastor as some poor woobie. He’s still awful. He’s in Hell for several reasons and being a serial killer is only one of them. Rather, I want to analyze what is shown to us about him, and how those story beats can be used to determine where he’ll end up by the finale of the series.

ALSO NOTE: I haven’t followed all of VivziePop’s comments outside of the show about the characters, and it’s possible that certain details have been changed between the release of the pilot and the show, so take any mentions of what hasn’t been explicitly depicted within the show with a grain of salt.

___

Part 1: Recap Analysis

This section will consist of commentary regarding Alastor's appearance and behavior in the given episodes, with retrospection based on new information given in later episodes if needed.

“Overture”: Alastor is pretty one-to-one with his depiction in the pilot in the first episode. He’s snarky, open about his sadism, but helpful if begrudgingly so. Interestingly, he’s able to put together a well-edited, if tonally awful, commercial, and probably could have done better if he weren’t intentionally being an ass about it. From the finale we know that he and Vox likely used to have a more magnanimous relationship, and it’s likely that he picked up some tools of the digital trade in that time despite or before being turned off completely by it.

“Radio Killed the Video Star”: Vox effectively plays heel for Alastor this episode as we continue that first impression of the Radio Demon. We spend a good time showing off the former’s power and how far his roots have spread throughout Hell’s society, only for Alastor to effortlessly trounce him and steal from his audience, despite being gone for so long and his position in Hell less stable. This indicates that Alastor does still have pull, but at the same time that his position in the hierarchy of Hell is being contested due to the length of his absence. He deals with it easily here, but we’ll see in subsequent episodes that things aren’t as smooth as they first seem.

“Scrambled Eggs”: In terms of the eggs, there’s not much to talk about. He begrudgingly accepts Vaggie’s request to get rid of them “humanely,” but brings them back to the hotel after they prove to be useful spies.

More importantly, we get our first small hint that Alastor’s ego can be bruised when Carmilla doesn’t humor him during the meeting between Overlords. Now, I actually disagree with a lot of the takes on this episode in that I think it indicates that at least some of Alastor’s views and need to prove himself as a powerful Overlord are the result of self-delusion. Yes, he does need to reestablish himself as a person not to be messed with after being gone for so long, but I think it isn’t as bad as some are making it out to be, which makes his behavior in later episodes more strange and excessive if anything.

Carmilla, who mind you is a busy and stressed woman trying to hide the fact that she’s successfully murdered an angel, hits his ego by not caring where he’s been (something he wouldn’t have revealed in the first place), but she also welcomes him back, which is more than you could say to Velvette and by extension the Vees. And minutes before that, Zestial, who’s probably the highest on their totem pole, does go out of his way to meet with Alastor and inquire about where he’s been. Alastor himself gets over the slight pretty quickly and has no issue contributing to the meeting. Overall, he isn’t necessarily terrifying other overlords, but he still has an established place with them and they do seem to get along well enough. He’s “part of the group” unlike the Vees, who are treated more like upstart outsiders.

I also want to point out that despite Zestial likely outranking Alastor in power, they seem to be alright with each other. Alastor is cordial and does not demonstrate a desire to antagonize him like he does Lucifer in the next episode. Speaking of which…

“Dad Beat Dad”: This episode gives us a lot to chew on and is the first major indicator that Alastor’s issues go beyond wanting to be the center of the room. From the very moment Lucifer walks into the hotel*, his eye is twitching and he is visibly pissed. Lucifer undermining him (notably contrasting Zestial, who is polite despite his power) doesn’t help and makes Alastor let loose his first swear in the entire show. Being the petty bitch he is, Alastor, knowing he can’t intimidate Lucifer in any way, immediately goes for his weak point–Charlie–and plays up the role of a caretaker for her and the hotel. It’s a low blow, but it also feels like a defense–he’s signaling to Lucifer that this is his hotel, that things are taken care of already, and that they do not need his assistance, even though they ultimately do in order to get a meeting with Heaven.

But then things get more complicated with the appearance of Mimzy, who, to the surprise of several characters due to his solitary nature, was friends with Alastor all the way back when they were alive, and she carries a load of implications with her. She’s the only crack so far at what a “human” Alastor is like–apparently he’s a heavyweight drinker, a good dancer, and most notably, in Mimzy’s words, a sweet man who "becomes a kitten" when he's drunk. This is a huge departure from the unflappable, egotistical Radio Demon we’ve known up to now, and I think it’s a purposeful choice that we’re hearing this information but not shown it like his early days in Hell just prior. It’s simultaneously left to the imagination but difficult to do so because it contrasts so heavily with everything that has been shown to us beforehand. Another thing is that Mimzy is sure that Alastor will clean up her mess–and apparently this isn’t the first time he has, if Husk is anything to go by. So many people seem to miss this, but Alastor, who hates being tied down or disrespected, has been allowing Mimzy to leech off of him, presumably due to their past friendship making him turn a blind eye.

Alastor is on edge for this entire episode and is already unusually snappy when Husk addresses Mimzy, and pushing the button that was his contract is what sends him over the edge. His temper exploding is a direct result of his feeling that his control over both the hotel (via Lucifer) and his personal life (via Husk’s “doubt” that he can handle everything and that his reputation is what it used to be, plus the reminder of his deal) is being taken away from him. Alastor’s threat to Husk, which seems to not be his usual behavior if Husk’s willingness to show concern and talk back in the first place is anything to go by, is an attempt to remind both of them that he holds the cards, that he’s a powerful Overlord that is not to be trifled with, and he explicitly says as much when he goes out to deal with what Mimzy’s dragged in.

It’s only after he lets his anger out on the mobsters and “proves himself” that he visibly calms down and makes the logical decision to tell Mimzy to leave with a serious attitude, and also doesn’t antagonize anyone for the rest of the episode. It seems like despite his fury earlier, he was listening to Husk, who’s rightfully smug about it. He’s even present when Charlie declares her desire to protect her people, and his smile seems just a tad bit more genuine.

*Note: it’s not impossible that Alastor has some sort of personal grudge against Lucifer which caused his hate-on-first-sight, depending on the circumstances of his disappearance and contract (i.e. if it’s with Lilith).

“Hello Rosie!”: As opposed to Dad Beat Dad, Hello Rosie is arguably where we see Alastor at his most in-his-element. He gives off a lot of conflicting vibes at the beginning, from mocking Charlie’s distress to, in a shockingly honest moment, lecturing her about the importance of a smile to portray strength, a card we’d only been shown due to comments outside of the show. He smugly holds his knowledge over Charlie’s head but is visibly impatient to have her make a blank check of a deal with him, solid enough to benefit him but vague enough so that Charlie won’t feel immediately threatened. He’s clearly been waiting for an opportunity like this since the events of the pilot.

After that, he puts back on his gentleman’s demeanor and introduces Charlie to Rosie, and from here on he’s arguably at his most comfortable in the entire show. He’s relaxed around Rosie and is actually willing to ask for her help (something I can’t see him doing with any other character), casually complains about Susan, is encouraging to and praises Charlie even behind her back, and most notably, gives her his radio cane unprompted. More on that later. He also mentioned wanting to guide Charlie to Rosie specifically, implying that he was being genuine about wanting to act as a mentor to her, though his intentions are probably self-beneficial.

“The Show Must Go On”: The finale is arguably the most revealing episode on what Alastor’s inner world is like, as we see him unmasked several times. For one, his private admission to Niffty, the closest thing he has to a friend within the hotel, that he’s enjoyed watching the other residents connect to each other. This is in direct opposition to his initial (stated) reason for helping the hotel in that he wanted to watch them all fail, and yet he seems content with his initial assumptions being proven wrong. There’s no malice or sarcasm in this moment, he’s relaxed and talking to someone he relatively trusts.

And so he goes into the battle swinging and confident. Then, of course, Adam.

I want to bring up something before we keep going. Yes, fighting Adam without angelic weaponry was a needless risk. Yes, Alastor fell victim to the very sloppiness and arrogance he accused Adam of, and it’s thematically appropriate that he was the only one to lose his battle in that he was fighting for his own ego more than “love.” But also, people seem to forget that Alastor is the only demon in the entire show with a precedent for permakilling without an explicit reliance on angelic weaponry, as the Overlords he toppled in his original rampage seem to have never returned. He’s egotistical, but not stupid. He may have genuinely believed that he had the means to kill Adam himself but didn’t get the chance/couldn’t due to his contract or absence possibly weakening him. But that's speculation for another day.

So, he has to retreat before Adam double-taps his ass and is too injured to return until after the extermination. He makes a grand exit, but not before grabbing the broken pieces of his radio cane. The one he allowed Charlie to use just an episode prior, and presumably is a conduit for his powers, and he grabs it while a murderous angel is inches away from wiping him off the face of Hell.

His portion of “Finale” is the first time we see him singing alone and not playing off someone in a duet. It’s obvious that he’s trying to keep his composure, still speaking to himself in his artificial transatlantic accent (which we now know for a fact he doesn't need to do, seeing as he finally broke character when Adam wrecked his cane) and reassuring himself that he’ll come out on top next time. But here his front shatters and we openly see what the show has been hinting he is for the first time: a deeply paranoid, desperate, and unstable man.

Essentially the worst-case scenario has happened: after a season of interfering with every attempt to capture him on camera, Vox has footage of him at his lowest point for all of Hell to see, and he’ll have “died” a martyr, a weakling, and still in the chains of an unwanted contract. For Alastor, who is so deeply afraid of showing any sign of vulnerability, who wants to be seen as a monstrous Overlord, it’s understandable that this humiliation is enough to send him into a mental spiral and recant any fondness for the hotel in favor of accomplishing his own goals. Worse yet, when we next see him he gives zero indication of any of this even when Charlie and company are simply glad that he's alive, which leaves us to wonder: has he been like this behind the smile from the very beginning?

___

Part 2: Closing Thoughts and Future Speculation

With everything we’ve taken note of above, we can start to piece together a picture of who this guy is, and what the writers are going to do with him.

Alastor is sentimental. It’s not just his attachment to older technology or his love for being the center of everyone's attention. He likes being around people, he has friends, one of which he continuously indulged despite her using him multiple times, and he ultimately was starting to enjoy his time at the hotel before his defeat spooked him. Despite him using her, the fact that he was even willing to let Charlie use his cane (and note that he takes it from her as soon as she’s given a substitute, so that is a significant gesture for him) is an implicit display of trust whose implications don’t become apparent until the finale.

But this is paired with deep insecurity. Alastor, despite being one of the most powerful people in the Pride Ring, has a crippling fear of being seen as vulnerable or “lesser” by others. There could be multiple overlapping reasons for this: the general climate of Hell, whatever happened to him seven years ago, his experiences as a mixed-race human living in Prohibition-era Louisiana, his original death, a natural predisposition, etc.

Regardless, this anxiety of his is so overwhelming that, when paired with the ever-present stress of not owning his own soul, it’s driving him insane. He made a splash in Hell upon entry and now he’s desperately trying to reinvoke that in order to defend himself both physically and mentally. He’s the gifted kid who’s slowly going nuts trying to keep up an impossible momentum as they grow older. He’s an ex-human denying his humanity because he doesn’t want to feel human. Everyone’s out to get him, and anyone who could be an enemy is an enemy unless he has total control over them via a contract, power, or the reassurance of years of close friendship. It’s why he’s cordial to Zestial but takes Carmilla (who wasn't even trying to spite him) and Lucifer’s comments personally, in the same way someone with low self-esteem might want to lash out against an authority figure who they feel is looking down on them.

Worse yet, he can’t/won’t let these feelings out and is bottling them up so that no one will know he feels this way (note how quickly he was able to relax in Dad Beat Dad when he was given an outlet for his stress), because that’s a sign of weakness too. It’s honestly kind of frightening that in his final scene he gives zero indication of being injured or of just having had a meltdown. By all outside accounts, he’s his usual chipper self, and no one at the hotel save for maybe Husk, who can’t say anything Alastor doesn’t want him to, would realize anything is amiss. The reason his part of “Finale” is chilling isn’t just because of the implications that he will become an antagonist in the future–it’s that his mental state is so poor that he is no longer acting rationally, which makes him unpredictable in the worst possible way.

I think Alastor’s character arc isn’t going to be redemption by way of going to Heaven, I don't think that place is his style anyway, but rather redemption of his own self-image. I don’t think the writers would make what is arguably the most popular and well-developed character in the show just to say that he’s hopelessly evil and simply end it at that. We’ve been exposed to multiple facets of his character, and while his deeds and probably his intentions are sinister, his underlying motivation for it all seems to be “freedom,” which decidedly isn’t (unless your name is Eren Jaeger).

I do believe that he’ll have his villain moment where he indulges in his worst impulses, but that ultimately it won’t do anything to fulfill him, because as we see in the official comics before the release of the show (which may no longer be canon but still give a viable “baseline” for the characters), when his desire to be feared and respected is granted, it only isolates him. Like the others, he’ll have to hit rock bottom before he can climb back up.

Pentious, who was successfully redeemed, needed to understand that people weren’t out to get him, which allowed him to make the decision to put his friends before himself and trigger his selfless sacrifice. Angel, who’s well on his way to redemption, needed to realize he wasn’t alone and could rely on others, and his confidence and self-love has grown enormously since then. I think these are both lessons Alastor will need to learn eventually as well. He’s the manager of the hotel, but also undoubtedly a patient. He’s hungry for freedom, but only when he learns these lessons will he be truly free.

Or maybe I’m thinking too much into it idk lmaooooo

[greenplumbboblover]

Not-a-tutorial - Lighting (Advanced)

Previous parts:

Not-a-Tutorial - Lighting (Basics)

Not-a-Tutorial - Lighting (Basics - Indoor)

Intention:

While dialogues and body language can say a whole lot on what you're trying to tell to the reader, lights can as well! Here's a great example:

(Left is with the lights on, right is with the lights off).

As you can see, the left one feels much more like it's... let's say, a winter-y 6pm, and she's studying in the library...

Whereas on the right, it feels much more like she's skipping on sleep, and it's 3am, studying.

Moods:

You can also use lighting for more tenser scenes! Here are a few examples from my story:

Here the setup was the same, but I added softer rose/red pastel-y colours... (Though this scene did have like 6 lights :p)

Here I not only used a blue backlight for giving it a “night” feeling, but I also added an orange and white front-light to represent a sense of hope and that our poor Ethan isn't alone.

Here I gave Vita and Nick Alto a yellow, green and red lighting setup, to represent more jealous and angry colours for Nancy. As Nancy is staring at them.

However, the pink represents not only the stage light, but also a sense of Innocence given her background of not understanding the entrepreneur game.

Here I gave little Bella a red background and light foreground, keeping the left part of her face dark, as the speech is about the future of the town. And with the light, she represents a bright but unclear future.

Note: all of these images do use Reshade, so trying to get these results without it may look a bit different!

Seasons:

Representing the colours associated with the seasons can give a scene a really cool feeling!

Summer, Spring, Autumn, Winter.

Color mixing:

One thing I thought was pretty cool with TS3's Lighting engine, is how colors in certain highlights will mix just like paint!

Red + Blue looks a bit purple-ish.

Red + Yellow will look a bit orange-y.

Blue and Yellow will turn green-ish at parts.

Custom Coloured Lights

Sometimes, some of EA's colours aren't... quite there. Or really what you need. Here is a short list of colours I've made and used:

0, 150, 255 - Replacement of Cyan (More of a light blue):

0, 163, 108 - Jade

255, 195, 0 (better Yellow)

What's the easiest way to find new colours?

It's pretty easy! If you google for "Colour generator" then there you go! Do make sure to get the RGB values from those websites!

But, for the ones who don't want to google, here are a few suggestions:

Give them a try and see which ones are great! Do go for colours that are quite strong in contrast. Pastel will just end up being white, and darker colours will just turn... well it will look like there is no light on :p

That was it! Hopefully it was insightful, and obviously feel free to add your own discoveries to it! :)

[semi-imaginary-place]

"This manga is heavily a Buddhist story, which is mostly the reason for the morals, choices, and consequences of the story falling flat for many westerners. It'd be too difficult to go into everything in one comment, but the most important thing is Ichikawa's criticism of Pure Land Buddhism.

In this branch of Buddhism, people can basically pray to get into the Pure Land, rather than having to do the work themselves. Gemstones also can't get into the pure land and thus are exempt from samsara, the karmic cycle, which was the main inspiration for the series and something Ichikawa sought to change in the story.

The story depicts Ichikawa's rejection of Pure Land Buddhism through Adamant's burden of existing solely as a tool to pray humanity away and his eventual breaking free of this role to be able to live with the gems full time during the 10,000 years. It also sort of paints the lunarians as lesser for convincing themselves that they need someone to pray them away when they didn't. But the biggest example is regarding which character actually got the better ending, because the way I see it, and the way Ichikawa seems to see it, everyone other than Phos got fucked in the end.

Over the course of the story, Aechmea paints nothingness as a serene realm of nonexistence that is free from the suffering of the living world, but by the end, it seems clear that nothingness is just another state of existence and everyone there is still a part of the eternal cycle of everything being remade into everything else. Taking this into account, why would you want nothingness when you can make peace with existence like Phos ended up doing? Despite everything he went through, it's only because he actually put the work that he was given the opportunity to find his purpose, reflect on his life and actions, and be happy with the pebbles. Things didn't go how he planned, but he did end up getting everything he wanted.

A lot of people will say that the message of the manga is that existence is suffering, but I think the ending makes a good point that it is equal parts suffering and happiness. Likewise, the manga does a good job painting humanity as a force of destruction, ignorance, and shortsightedness, but the ending shows that there is still pureness and wisdom in it.

Probably the biggest takeaway should be that good and evil and other black and white ways of looking at things are rarely any use in a world as nuanced as ours. And that seeing the world this way will only lead to confusion when those you see as good are getting punished and those you see as evil are getting rewarded, when in reality, the universe could not care less what you are. Everyone is just the result of their own actions and the influences of the world around them and we're all going to die and go back to being stardust eventually anyway."

"The lunarians were all able to pass on their own, but their insistence on someone else doing the work for them was an attachment that kept them from that. Shiro and the game board fulfilled their desire to see Adamant again and were able to go to nothingness without him praying for them."

"They got what they wanted, but what they wanted doesn't seem to be what they thought it was. Rather than a state of absolute non-feeling, it sounds like they're just getting put back into the karmic soup of the universe a bit sooner than Phos, Brother, the pebbles, and everything else eventually will. Except the lunarians and gems weren't wise enough to come to terms with that inevitability.

Most of this take comes from Brother's conversation with Phos in chapter 103 regarding living in the present and not worrying about the future that's beyond your control. But even ignoring this part of it, I still think the series makes a good case for existence, even including the worst of it, being a better deal than absolutely nothing.

This is not to say that Phos didn't experience far worse than anyone else in the story, only that the kind of growth he went through requires a degree of hardship. Phos post-prayer seems to agree that everything he went through, despite how unfair or traumatizing it was, was necessary and worth it for him to have the clarity and happiness that he has now.

A part of Buddhism is realizing that you can't change most things and accepting things the way they are. Basically, things don't always go the way you planned and finding value in the way they did rather than dwelling on things out of your hands is a form of personal growth that one should strive for.

Phos made peace with what he was dealt and used those experiences to make himself and those around him better off, spending eons of happiness with the pebbles. The lunarians rejected this way of thinking and endlessly sought to change their fate, wasting the existence they were given before inevitably getting thrown right back into a new one. They squandered their chance at what Phos attained and will have to start from scratch in their next form. When everything you have ends eventually, it's the present that really matters, not the outcome."

(CrashDunning)

[liminalsoul]

The importance of knowing why you do what you do in witchcraft

At first we tend to see a spell like a recipe you have to follow to achieve something, however when we have seen multiple spells for one purpose we can make our own version of them taking into account the common elements that those spells have.

We can even achieve a higher efficacy and creativity knowing what means each aspect of our spells or rituals, creating specific ones that will fit ourselves and our needs better. It is important not to forget that witchcraft isn't a science but an art in which there are multiple ways to get the same result.

From the perspective of my own practice every plant or stone we use is more than a tool, it is in some way a being, a spirit that can assist our craft with its essence. That's in what correspondences are based, in the nature of the spirit that embodies that element.

Correspondences also have the power, even in some way a part of the spirit, of all the ancestors that have been using those elements with the same meaning. We can believe from our modern perspective that those associations were just a coincidence, nevertheless, everything suggests that they really understood the powers behind the items in our craft, for example in the case of the plants where their spiritual meaning correlates in some way with their fisical properties.

To conclude, we shouldn't try to turn into a mere recipe something that works with different powers and spirits, because, if these forces have taught me something over time, it is that witchcraft is, more than anything, learning another way to see.

Disclaimer: this point of view is highly influenced by an animistic perspective, remember that this is far from being the only valid approach to witchcraft. Besides, correspondences aren't universal and this doesn't invalidate the different ones that may exist.

[cripplecharacters]

Hi, I’m concerned about whether there is anything regarding disability that are strictly off limits for abled author to write about. For example, I know it’s meaningless for an abled author to write about what it means to be disabled, or the disabled experience. Is there anything else that would be infringing on boundaries & risk speaking over actual disabled authors? I know including non-POV disabled characters who just happen to be disabled are fine with proper research. But I feel as if I might be treading some risky ground here because I have a POV character who is disabled. Regarding that, I want to know if some things are off limits if I am abled myself (such as their personal feelings regarding their disability - it’d be odd if I didn’t mention this at all since they’re a POV character, but I don’t know to what extent/if i should explore this at all, especially since it’s a result of injury).

Hi!

Outside of the examples you gave ("what it means/how it is to be disabled") I don't anything is strictly and always off limits for abled writers in general because disabled people will have such a wide range of opinions* on this that it'd be impossible to know what you can and can't do - it's better to just do it well and thoughtfully if you do decide to go for it.

*Examples: I know disabled people who don't want people without their disability to write characters with it at all, no exceptions. I really heavily dislike abled writers putting their disabled characters through nightmarish levels of ableism because it feels like torture porn or at least as exploitative. Someone else will be fine with abled writers doing literally anything. Some people see all non-OwnVoices representation as inspiration porn. Disabled people are too big and diverse of a group to come to a specific consensus.

There are areas where I think they should be more careful, like in stories where a character suddenly becomes disabled, as that can easily turn into a plotline that focuses on how disability is bad due to the missing nuances of such an experience. Even putting aside that there's a ton of room for factual errors on how recovery or just the medical side of things in general looks like, I feel like it can be difficult to write this kind of plotline in detail if you don't have experience in it. For this kind of things, I believe that sensitivity readers are a must if you want it to be a major part of the story. If it's a minor one then I think it can be okay, especially if you aren't going into the emotional nitty-gritty of the whole process much.

There's also the obvious topic of tropes that I think abled writers should avoid - but as you probably seen on our blog, there will always be exceptions to them. Example: I always say to not put your character with a facial difference in a mask - but in this post I said it was fine if XYZ happened. Nuance and all. But putting tropes in just to be "subversive" usually comes off as cheap, assuming that they actually are subversive in the first place (which they usually aren't).

Tropes are tools, and they can be used well if the writers put effort in, and especially if they ask the group that the trope itself affects. They are bad if they're done mindlessly and without care for actual disabled people, and at the end of the day it depends on how the writer decides to use them. Don't just assume that your case is "special" and "totally different" from all those people who do use them wrong - these two groups often end up as a perfectly circular Venn diagram. Check with disabled readers first.

Having a POV disabled character is completely fine in my opinion. It's not like we are a completely alien, unrelatable concept to abled people. It can be done well, but it does also require more thought and effort to be put in. Again, I think that sensitivity readers can be incredibly helpful in a case like this.

And I think that it is important for the writer to just look at the page and ask: do I know enough to write about the character experiencing X? Because sometimes the answer will be no, and that's fine. Not even stories written by disabled people will touch on every single aspect of the disabled experience because it's so incredibly wide that there would be no place left for actual plot.

We also don't just sit around and think about how we feel about our disabilities. Sure, deciding how your character feels about it in the vague sense is helpful for characterization, but there's a ton of disabled people who treat their disability as a complete non-event. People like us who mod a blog about disability representation are very much a minority. Your character could just be like "oh yeah I guess I do use crutches but it's been 10 years so I keep forgetting about it" and only actively think about that when the actual situation calls for it.

Your character could be 100% neutral about their disability and just think of their cane as something they carry around the same way they do with their house keys, or could be So Positive and make sure their cane compliments their outfit just right every time they leave the house. What I'd advise against is a character who dislikes their disability. Again, it probably could be done well if there was a lot of effort involved, but it's really not something I look forward to when we're talking about abled writers. Even if their intentions are good, or even if they want to show the diverse spectrum of disability (which again, is true! there are people who feel purely negatively about theirs), it feels weird. Like, why? I think that in 99% cases, those kinds of characters are better left off to disabled writers.

Last thing that I want to add: unless you're writing about ableism, or time-accurate historical fiction, don't use slurs. If you want to refer to some movements that use any of them (Cripplepunk) either shorten them (CPunk), beep the slur out, or at the very least acknowledge that they are slurs.

I hope that this helps!

mod Sasza

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You can’t shop your way out of a monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

If you're running a business, you can either invest at being good at your business, or good at Google SEO. Choose the former and your customers will love you – but they won't be able to find you, thanks to the people who choose the latter. And if you're going to invest in top-notch SEO, why bother investing in quality at all?

For more than a decade, Google has promised that it would do something about "lead gens" – services that spoof Google into thinking that they are local businesses, pushing down legit firms on both regular search and Google Maps (these downranked businesses invested in quality, not SEO, remember). Search for a roofer, a plumber, an electrician, or a locksmith (especially a locksmith), and most or all of the results will be lead-gens. They'll take your call, pretend to be a local business, and then call up some half-qualified bozo to come out and charge you four times the going rate for substandard work:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html

Some of them just take your money and they "go back to the shop for a tool" and never return:

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/when-a-fake-business-used-a-real-st-louis-address-things-got-weird-32087998

Google has been promising to fix this since the late aughts, and to be fair, it's a little better. There was once a time when a map of Manhattan showed more locksmiths than taxis:

https://blumenthals.com/blog/2009/02/18/google-maps-proves-more-locksmiths-in-nyc-than-cabs/

But GMaps is trapped in the enshittification squeeze. On the one hand, the company wants to provide a good and reliable map. On the other hand, the company makes money selling "ads" that are actually payola, where a business can pay to get to the top of the listings or get displayed on the map itself. Zoom out of Google's map of central London and the highlighted landmarks are a hilarious mix of "organic" and paid listings: the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, the Barbican, the London Eye…and a random oral and maxillofacial clinic in the financial district:

https://twitter.com/dylanbeattie/status/1764711667663831455

Hell of a job "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful," Big G. Doubtless the average Londoner finds the presence of this clinic super helpful in orienting themselves relative to the map on their phone screens, and it's a real service to tourists hoping to hit all the major landmarks.

It's not just Maps users who'd noticed the rampant enshittification. Even the original design team is so horrified they're moved to speak out about the moral injury they experience seeing the product they worked so hard on turned into a giant pile of shit:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Now, when it comes to locksmiths, I'm lucky. My neighborhood in Burbank includes the wonderful Golden State Lock and Safe, which has been in business since 1942:

https://www.goldenstatelock.com/

But you wouldn't know it from searching GMaps for a locksmith near me. That search turns up a long list of scams:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/locksmith/@34.1750451,-118.369948,14z/data=!3m1!4b1?entry=ttu

It also turns up plenty of Keyme machines – these are private-equity backed, self-serve key-cutting machines placed in grocery stores. Despite Keyme calling itself a "locksmith," it's just a badly secured, overcaptilized, enshittification-bound system for collecting and retaining shapefiles for the keys to millions of homes, cross-referenced with billing information that will make it easy for the eventual hackers to mass-produce keys for all those poor suckers' houses.

(Hilariously, Keyme claims to be an "AI" company):

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200114005194/en/KeyMe-Raises-35-Million-to-Further-Its-Mission-of-Building-the-Premier-Locksmith-Services-Company-in-the-Nation

But despite the fact that you can literally see the Golden State storefront from Google Streetview, Google Maps claims to have no knowledge of it. Instead, Streetview labels Golden State "Keyme" – and displays a preview showing a locksmith using a tool to break into a jeep (I'd dearly love to know how the gadget next to the Slurpee machine at the 7-Eleven will drive itself to your jeep and unlock the door for you when you lose your keys):

https://www.google.com/maps/place/KeyMe+Locksmiths/@34.1752624,-118.3487531,3a,75y,350.19h,90.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssHrtqjqvgFir3NBauMy13Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x80c2959cd65dbb1b:0x4b3744cf87492a71!2sBurbank+Blvd+%26+N+Hollywood+Way,+Burbank,+CA+91505!3b1!8m2!3d34.1750025!4d-118.3493484!16s%2Fg%2F11f37_3lq8!3m5!1s0x80c2951cedbf4d39:0xe8ff9fd5872e66e9!8m2!3d34.1755176!4d-118.349!16s%2Fg%2F11mw7nr4fx?entry=ttu

It's pretty clear to me what's going on here. Keyme has hired some SEO creeps and/or paid off Google, flooding the zone with listings for its machines. Meanwhile, Golden State, being merely good at locksmithing, has lost the SEO wars. Perhaps Golden State could shift some of its emphasis from being good at locksmithing in order to get better at SEO, but this is a race that will always be won by the firm that puts the most into SEO, which will always be the firm that puts the least into quality.

Whenever I write about this stuff, people inevitably ask me which search engine they should use, if not Google?

And there's the rub.

Google used predatory pricing and anticompetitive mergers to acquire a 90% search market-share. The company spends more than $26b/year buying default position in every place where you might possibly encounter a new search engine. This created the "kill zone" – the VC's term of art for businesses that no one will invest in, because Google makes sure that no one will ever find out it exists:

https://www.theverge.com/23802382/search-engine-google-neeva-android

That's why the only serious competitor to Google is Bing, another Big Tech company (Bing is also the primary source of results on Duckduckgo, which is why DDG sometimes makes exceptions for Microsoft's privacy-invading tracking):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Controversies

Google tells us that the quid-pro-quo of search monopolization is search excellence. The hundreds of billions it makes every year through monopoly control gives it the resources it needs to fight spammers and maintain search result quality. Anyone who's paid attention recently knows that this is bullshit: Google search quality is in free-fall, across all its products:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

But Google doesn't seem to think it has a problem. Rather than devoting all its available resources to fighting botshit, spam and scams, the company set $80 billion dollars alight last year with a stock buyback that was swiftly followed with 12,000 layoffs, followed by multiple subsequent rounds of layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

The scams that slip through Google's cracks are sometimes nefarious, but just as often they're decidedly amateurish, the kind of thing that Google could fix by throwing money at the problem, say, to validate that new ads for confirmed Google merchants come from the merchant's registered email addresses and go to the merchant's registered website:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Search is a capital intensive business, and there are real returns to scale, as the UK Competition and Market Authority's excellent 2020 study describes:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fe4957c8fa8f56aeff87c12/Appendix_I_-_search_quality_v.3_WEB_.pdf

But Google doesn't seem to think that its search needs that $80 billion to fight the spamwars. That's the thing about monopolists, they get complacent. As Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine the AT&T operator" used to say, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company."

That's why I'm so excited about the DOJ Antitrust Division monopolization case against Google. Trusting one company to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," was a failure:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies

I understand why people want to know which search engine they should use instead of Google, and I get why, "There aren't any good search engines" is such an unsatisfactory answer. I understand why each fresh round of printer-company fuckery prompts people to ask "which printer should I get?" and I understand why "There are only six major printer companies and they're all suffering from end-stage enshittification" isn't what anyone wants to hear.

We want to be able to vote with our wallets, because it's so much faster and more convenient than voting with our ballots. But the vote-with-your-wallet election is rigged for the people with the thickest wallets. Try as hard as you'd like, you just can't shop your way out of a monopoly – that's like trying to recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Systemic problems need systemic solutions – not individual ones.

That's why the new antitrust matters so much. The answer to monopolies is to break up companies, block and unwind mergers, ban deceptive and unfair conduct. "Caveat emptor" is the scammer's motto. You shouldn't have to be an expert on lead gen scams to hire a locksmith without getting ripped off.

There are good products and services out there. Earlier this year, we decided to install a (non-networked) programmable pushbutton lock. I asked Deviant Ollam – whom I know from Defcon's Lockpicking Village – for a recommendation and he suggested the Schlage FE595:

https://www.schlage.com/en/home/products/FE595PLYFFFFLA.html

I liked it so much I bought another one for my office door. Eric from Golden State Lock and Safe installed it while I wrote this blog-post. It's great. I recommend both of 'em – 10/10, would do business again.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#vapor-locksmith

Image: alicia rae (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kehole_Red.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

--

Budhiargomiko (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wasteland.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

I think one of the best elements of fantasy world-building for making a setting feel unique is its magic system. There's a lot of ways to approach building a magic system, and most of those ways can produce something compelling, but an approach that I've been thinking a lot about recently is what I call the Three Questions approach, because I think a lot of the times generic and interesting magic systems show up in stories that aren't really about the magic and so don't want to spend very much narrative space or exposition wordcount on it. Three Questions is great because it creates something unique and interesting without consuming much page space, and can also help with the rest of your world-building if you feel like spending a little more than the bare minimum on it.

The Three Questions are:

Where does magic come from?

What can it do?

What can't it do?

Answering the questions in order is helpful because the answer to each question suggests the answer to the next. The best recent example I've read of this system comes from How To Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, and I'm gonna walk through that book's magic system in this context to illustrate why this approach is so effective.

Where does magic come from?

A mineral called thaumite, which grows in the body of monsters.

What can it do?

Thaumite comes in different colors, each of which corresponds to a different type of magical effects. Humans can use thaumite as a material component to create spells with effects determined by the color and magnitude determined by the size of the thaumite. Non-humans can instead consume thaumite and gain permanent passive benefits of a type thematically related to the color of thaumite. For example, red thaumite can cast fire spells and increases physical strength. Non-humans also need thaumite to live and thrive, though they can go without eating it a lot longer than they can go without food and water. Non-humans can theoretically live forever if they keep finding thaumite, but they need it more and more often as they age.

What can't it do?

Humans can't eat thaumite and be enhanced by it, and non-humans can't cast intentional spells. You can't cast spells that aren't thematically linked to an existing type of thaumite, so big complicated idiosyncratic curses and the like are off the table.

The book lays out all of this scattered through the first quarter of the book without any big egregious blocks of exposition dumping, and the results are really cool. We now know exactly what kinds of tools and challenges are protagonist can use, what limitations they have to work around and exploit, and as a result, engaging with the magic system feels like it has understandable stakes. The mechanics of the magic system inform the rest of the world-building as well - humans and non-humans are in constant conflict over access to thaumite, and the human kingdom is more built up technologically because they can utilize deliberate spells to accomplish things on a scale that non-humans can't. It all makes the world feel real and distinct.

This obviously isn't the only way to make a good magic system, and there are some things that you might want out of a magic system - like mystery and uncertainty - that this system can't accomplish by itself. But I would love to see this used more often in, say, romance stories in fantasy settings to make the world feel like less of an afterthought. Good world-building leads to better and more memorable storytelling, even when what you think you want is specific trappings to enable your story and nothing else.

[burst-of-iridescent]

not to beat the "sokka's misogyny" disk horse even further into the ground, but while i agree with the take that sokka being sexist logically doesn't make sense, i would go further to say that the water tribes themselves being sexist is both illogical and thematically contradictory.

the flaws of each nation in atla have always been linked to their element, and specifically what those elements represent. fire is the element of power; power, left unchecked, leads to imperialism and authoritarianism. earth is the element of substance and stability; stability, prioritized too highly, creates and justifies the rigid class system and rampant corruption of ba sing se. air is the element of freedom; freedom, taken too far, becomes irresponsibility and abandonment.

meanwhile, water is the element of change... therefore the water tribes cling to antiquated ideas about gender roles instead of adapting with the times (especially when the times involve a fucking war going on).

not only is this unrealistic, it also breaks the thematic pattern of the nations' flaws being virtues taken to extremes, and how this dovetails into the show's overall message about the importance of balance. if we're keeping with the pattern of virtue and vice being two sides of the same coin, then the flaw of the water tribes has to be related to change. and here is where some of the (badly executed) ideas in the comics and legend of korra could have come into play: change, left uncontrolled, can lead to progress... but at the cost of tradition and spirituality.

(imagine a nwt cut off from the world and forced to rely solely on itself, ingenuity and creativity flourishing out of sheer, desperate need. imagine a nwt where waterbending is nothing more than a tool, used to build and defend and maintain a fortress always at risk, its spiritual origins slowly lost to time. imagine a nwt more military than community, whose architecture and technology far exceed anything the world has ever seen, who look down upon their less advanced sister tribe, and see no need for the avatar - after all, where was he when they had no one but themselves for the last 100 years?

when warned that the fire nation is coming, they show no fear; they have held strong on their own for the last century, bolstered by their weapons and wits, and will continue to do so. you need the spirits, aang implores, and is met with derision, for there is no place for spirits in a society always chasing more, greater, better. the spirits have not helped us before, avatar. why would they now? we are all we need.

when the moon spirit falls, unprotected and forgotten in an abandoned, rundown spirit oasis - so do they.)

not only would this fit better thematically, it would also ensure that the nwt's flaw plays a role in its own downfall. where the fire nation's warmongering resulted in the poverty and suffering of its own people, and the earth kingdom's corruption led - at least in part - to the fall of ba sing se, the misogyny of the water tribes is never shown to negatively impact them in any way. the north isn't defeated by the fire nation because they relegated half the population to healing. the south doesn't suffer raids or lose their waterbenders because they (supposedly) didn't let women fight. this lack of narrative punishment means that - outside of a few girlboss moments for katara - the sexism of the nwt isn't significant to the overall story whatsoever.

furthermore, while the ba sing se arc last almosts half a season, and the fire nation's actions drive the entire show, this supposed systemic oppression of women shows up for one episode in the first season before disappearing entirely. pakku is reminded of his lost love, magically turns into a feminist, and somehow the entire tribe follows suit? no one else protests, not even the other students or the chief?

and yet, though there are still no female waterbenders other than katara, or agency for kanna in her relationship, or any indication that women stopped being forcibly betrothed - the entire issue is simply swept under the rug and never brought up ever again in the show. i understand this was a children's cartoon made in 2005, and that even having female characters openly speak about and challenge misogyny was a radical feat for the time and genre, but the reality of patriarchy is that it's structural, sustained and immensely difficult to resist - if the show was going to depict that resistance, it should have done so with greater depth and nuance, as it did for many of the other difficult topics it tackled.

ultimately, handwaving misogyny away like it never existed is far more disrespectful to katara's character, her fight against injustice, and the girls who saw themselves in her, than simply toning it down or removing it could ever be.

[imreadydollparts]

If I had the right mindset for making videos this would be a video, but.

I don't.

Anyway.

There are a few little tricks to get from this severely matted mess:

It is worse than it looks. Most of the knot is under that scrunchie.

To this:

All smooth.

But first, you have to get through this:

Doll grade kanekalon hair is very fragile and often if the doll has been roughly handled and her hair has become matted, there is a ton of broken hair stuck in the matts.

I know that this was broken hair and not crumbling hair because the individual strands did not break when tested by giving them a gentle yank. Crumbling hair will break into little bits when you do that.

Sometimes when huge amounts of hair come out like this it's because one plug pulled free and the neighboring plugs are now loose and also pulling free, but this was not the case for Barbie today.

I also know just from experience. I've been doing this for a while. It gets to a point that you just know. You can feel it when it's crumble vs breakage combing out or if it's plugs coming out.

The first trick is using metal combs. It just works better with plastic hair. There is no mold line or seam on a good metal comb.

Second trick is to have the right flat iron.

Both the combs and flat iron are here:

I used the Tervixx, which is the second listing on that post, at 120F. Kanekalon is a low-heat fiber, meaning it will melt rather easily. That Conair can do Kanekalon, too, on setting 1, but the Tervixx is much narrower and that makes it easier to get to the scalp on dolls with shorter hair.

You want the hair to be damp but not dripping wet, lead it with a flea comb (also shown there), and go nice and slow giving the hair time to get hot and pliable while being pulled by the comb, to get the best results.

With a lot of breakage, you'll end up with something like this:

It's going to look rough. There are a lot of ends. To get rid of that rough appearance, you hold the section of hair tightly near the longest ends, then gently push the shorter hairs back toward the scalp with the other hand. You're not trying to tease the hair, just push surface hairs that are short toward the scalp. This part I'd like to record so you can see how gently it's meant to be done but can't brain making videos and working at the same time.

Then, keeping the longer hairs pulled back tightly, carefully snip those short hairs as close to the scalp as you can get with sharp, tiny scissors while being careful not to cut the long hairs. I use cuticle scissors.

Or you can pluck them right at the scalp with good tweezers.

And you'll end up with this:

So the tricks are hairline trimming. metal toothed combs, and a good, variable temp flat iron.

I haven't fixed her bangs, yet, so don't look too closely at them.