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archivalofsins · 8 months

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It's probably not something many people want to hear or even attempt to internalize.

However, if the way a person engages with any media is making people actively fearful, afraid, or anxious to engage with said media that's not good. If a good deal of people's response to trial two coming to a close is like they're clocking out of a long work shift, finally getting that vacation they've been hoping for. That's not healthy or fun.

I want it to be known that if someone cannot personally handle being around others with different opinions than them, if someone is asking why these people can't just see this how they see it- It's not even an issue of Milgram not being a healthy series for them to engage in anymore. At that point being a part of big fandom spaces may not be a healthy thing for that person in general.

Look I know that throughout trial two a vocal minority of fans have made Milgram a completely horrid experience for a good deal of people. Mostly fucking twitter users. Some of which are here now and like to bring their drama with them. I don't even use the fucking thing anymore. This ceased to be just a western fan problem and turned into a global one a long time ago.

Fans on twitter to my personal memory,

Complained about other countries being allowed to vote at all stating that Milgram should only let people who live in Japan vote, the same person who said this on twitter made a poll after the end of Amane's trial to figure out if it was just western fans that wanted her innocent. Consistently gave inaccurate information about dissociative identity disorder (focused primarily upon one person's individual experience with it multiple times in various spaces). Resulting in presenting the disorder as a monolith in order to push their own theories setting back progress for the millions of people who actually have it. Literally the western audience heavily headcanoned Mu's victim as half black while making fun of her death/how she died during her second trial. Along with using racist rhetoric/dogwhistles in order to push for an innocent verdict for the girl. Made a Kazui guilty shrine. Directly incentivizing people to vote the man guilty by giving them stuff each day they did-

Bitch I'm not paid for this. Hell I would like to be- Incentivize me real quick. Honestly, since they got paid just saying where's mine? People on tumblr write elaborate theories and analysis for free. Because they genuinely enjoy the media. Twitter is the fucking platform that's telling people how they should fucking vote and trying to decide who has the right to since trial two started. Then fucking whining when their piss poor behavior doesn't get them the verdicts they want. It's so bad that eastern fans have actively sought help from western fans to combat some of these problems on multiple occassions.

There are people in the east who wanted Amane innocent and celebrated when she was innocent just like there are people in the west who wanted her guilty. Whether the fandom on twitter believes it or not. This part of the fandom is so detached from the rest of it that they only dream about knowing what the fuck we do over here. They've created a fucking echochamber. Yet the people literally going think for yourself, this is my opinion what's yours are getting the most flack because the vocal minority doesn't like the fact the logic they share makes their feelings hurt.

That in the face of the actual facts of the situations presented to us none of the prisoners look completely good or completely bad. Yet, they're definitely not looking that good either. That some of the facts directly conflict with the squeaky clean always right image they've created of the prisoner they like in their head. Then they go online and make that the issue of whoever's take they like the least that day instead of I don't know not bothering others. Then the worst part is these people whine and play victim harder than the prisoners in their interrogations as soon as consequences present themself for their behavior usually as tangible trial results in Milgram.

Because they've continually thrown these fits publically just to have the verdict they didn't want happen over and over this trial.

Pushed for Mu innocent-

Pushed for Kazui Guilty-

Pushed for Amane Guilty-

I don't even give a fuck what Twitter is pushing for with Kotoko at this point because she's pushing up daises from the bottom of hell-

By audience choice. Literally by audience choice. Fuck the only thing I've heard about Kotoko's trial from twitter was from Star about how they're once again attempting voting fraud in an attempt to get her innocent. Though even I can admit this is fucking embarrassing. This is like really fucking sad. Everything Twitter has fucking pushed for this trial has not won. Meawhile I think maybe tumblr took one loss with Haruka this trial and just vowed never again.

I think everyone can realize how fucking wild that is. Can you fucking imagine how at your wits end you would be if you kept publicly losing like this? How dejected? It's only reasonable to think why isn't anyone listening to what I have to say or how I feel in this sort of situation. Yet, at the same time some of the fans on twitter have actively alienated the other fans on there they have no fandom unity. Which makes sense given they do the shit up there. They are literally eatting eachother over there for sport.

Because it's fucking twitter. That's how it's always been.

Hell, I fucking wouldn't even know these were losses for them if they didn't announce on every verdict post on twitter that's what happened. Or even go back to the comments of Purge March where they're still complaining about Amane's innocent verdict primarily blaming you guessed it the west.

Then they want to go I'm just trying to have fun why are people so mean- Without ever asking who their fun is at the expense of. What it says when they blame everything on overseas fans, state they shouldn't be allowed to vote, and Milgram is different now. This is the platform people are letting impact their experience and encite them into bothering people on other platforms?! People who are actually just trying to have fun in a way that is unique and personal to them? This is the platform running the milgram fandom narrative?

This is what people want the history of the fandom to be when all is said and done? I don't because I know the fandom is better than this. I know it can be better than this. The worst part of trial two is the fact that we let people with no intention to understand make us believe it couldn't be better than this. People who most of the time actively sought out someone who's privately enjoying themselves in the fandom to just go "um, actually you're doing that wrong" or picked someone from the tag to have bad faith discourse with.

Newsflash nobody asked, nobody fucking asked for a Milgram referee, nobody asked who's watching the watchmen, who's guarding the guard. If anyone's fandom hobby is trying to micromanage how others engage with media they're in a different book now and they deserve to stay in it alone or with people like them. Because the only thing people who act in this way want is for others to shut up. For them to stop saying the things that make their favorite look bad and there's only one thing to respond to that with after a while.

I hope you grow up someday~

Think about what makes people who do this more entitled to having fun discussing the things they enjoy than the person(s) that they're currently behaving in this way to? What makes them different from the others that they look down on and treat as an enemy from square one. All because they read a post and decided to define whether a fan was a good or bad person based on that alone. It's not different from coming to that conclusion from just listening to a song or watching a music video really.

Plus, I promise anyone who is doing stuff like this nobody is going to magically change their mind because someone behaves this way towards them. Because the people who do this shit are usually no different from the people who do the same shit listed above. Now everyone is not like this. This is why I said the vocal minority. It's still bad that people are behaving in this manner and treating others like this regardless of how little people are doing it.

At a point the Milgram fandom globally is going to have to reckon with how the way many have treated other fans in this space has been harmful and sown division. The solution to this hostility should not have to be disavowing an entire part of the fandom on a different platform and going we don't do that shit here. However, at a point that becomes the only correct response. Because at the point the behavior being exhibited by some fans is making others feel unsafe and anxious about enjoying the things they enjoy it is only right to go-

We don't do that shit here. We don't engage with people who do that shit here. I have no respect for anyone who mistreats real people over Milgram. If people want to have fun and not have these serious discussions the door is right there go out of it. Communication is a two way street and if you come to someone else with disrespect and hostility you should expect right back. The time of having both while some have none is fucking over. People who behave in this way, whining and bitching about how we don't need nuance it's not that serious one instance just to pivot into how can you not take this seriously are disngenuous and ultimately driven by serving only theirselves.

I myself am sick of pretending like they don't fucking realize that. Because the biggest kicker here is they treat themselves like prisoners but unlike them no one is forcing them to be here or engage at all. People who enjoy anlayzing these things and asking these questions aren't forcing them to fucking do that too. So, no one who enjoys Milgram that way is responsible for the feelings of those who do not enjoy engaging with the series in that way.

Every individual is responsible for currating their own fandom experience. Anyone entitled enough to bother another person into currating their personal fandom experience around them and only saying things that they like is the one being the issue. It's probably disappointing to hear but if the ways up there are how fans want to enjoy Milgram on Twitter and I don't like that I stay away from fucking twitter. Like I said I stopped going in the milgram tag on here and I don't go on twitter either.

I'm not going to act like the tumblr part of the fandom doesn't have problems or even a lot of the same ones as twitter. It spreads misinformation as though it's fact, the fans here can be just as hostile, a lot of fans on tumblr are from twitter as well or use it too. More fans from twitter are coming to tumblr. I can't imagine why-

On tumblr I've personally been messaged some of the rudest most guilt trippy shit by multiple people in this fandom and then blocked immediately. One of the reasons I made that post explaining what grooming is by definition was because someone condescendingly direct messaged me stating I had misused the term. Then when it boiled down to it they're entire issue was simply I don't think Kotoko is that and I don't like how you're stating that she is.

If people keep making they're interpretations your responsibility that's a personal issue not a failing on you the person they happen to be taking that out on today. Because if they feel emboldened to do it once they'll do it twice- Hell, they'll do it as many times as they can get away with doing it until someone stands firm and goes I'm not engaging in this anymore if this is the behavior that brings you joy fine go have fun. However, this isn't what I want my fandom experience to be and I'd appreciate if you respected that and if you can't we just won't talk.

Engaging with your own personal interests is meant to be fun. It's meant to be honest to how you feel and what you personally believe. Anyone making you feel bad about that for no reason by centering themselves and their enjoyment first and foremost in a shared space, regardless of how understanding you want to be, is taking advantage of you. They're saying you have to pay for my fun by giving up your own and being less of yourself publicly because the way you have fun is messing up mine. That's not fair to you and anyone who wants you to respect their fun by dampening your own fucking knows that and doesn't care.

Because if they did they would respect what you enjoy as something that makes you happy first and foremost and talk to you about like a person instead of a problem. Yet if others can't do that if they can't give you the good faith back that you extend to them. You just have to cut them off at a point. Because I'm not cutting off my own hands to put a smile on a strangers face. I'm not silencing myself just so others can applaud. That's not how this works and no one should ever think it is. Fandom while it can be personalized to one's own needs is about community and no community can be good when anyone in it is being mistreated.

Sadly we can't control others the only thing we as individuals can do is try to be kind and understanding of the other fans that share this space with us. And- when people do the things above extend the benefit of the doubt say they're having a tough time and then extend consideration towards yourself and ask is this something I want to see or engage with in any capacity. That's all. The prisoners may have to go through hell by the end of this but that doesn't mean we have to make this hell on each other.

#gunsli rambles

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cottonpuffmouse · 1 year

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A Short (Humorous) Essay on the current state of Tumblr, the site’s current owners, and Crab Day from a Tumblr Native. Source: Trust Me Bro.

TLDR: Crab day is a bad idea because it incentivizes staff. Automattic, Tumblr’s owner, can find their own ways to raise funds; paying to stop ads and the store is enough on our part. We should also be organizing more protests against staff. They’re trying to change Tumblr into something it’s not. They’re collecting more of our data. And they’re censoring more issues into an attempt to seem advertiser friendly.

I’ve been here 11 unfortunate years. I’ve seen many many owners come and go. And the user base is usually hostile to their governors. This is how Tumblr has stayed that safe haven Reddit and Twitter users rest in now.

We CANNOT do crab day. I say this as someone who was eager for it.

Site holidays are always fun, seeing people with tons of crabs would be fun!! I wanna buy my internet friends three dollar trinkets to express my love!! But that goes against everything we have always stood for here. This is not a site that repairs the holes of its financial ship.

We. Drill. More.

The sites has made numerous changes the userbase vocally disagrees with. A few being: Adding Tumblr Live, Continued Censorship Surrounding Queer Issues, as well threatening to introduce THE ALGORITHM.

pardon the scare tactic.

They’ve also been neglecting the mobile app(as every iteration of Tumblr’s government does). And We are all STILL suffering from the spam bot plague.

This is unacceptable. It is an attempt to make this site more hospitable to users of other sites like Tiktok and Twitter. And as a consequences, draw in money.

That is not Tumblr.

That is very important because Tumblr is unique in the online ecosystem. It has continued to be a ‘blogging platform’ in a sea of look likes trying to mirror each other. It matters that Tumblr stays unique and even unprofitable to some extent. We’re all learned the consequence of letting Tumblr behave like Tiktok or Twitter means Less Privacy and More Data Collecting. Remember that post that went around about Tumblr Lives’ terms and conditions?

It has stayed moderately the same as it was ten years ago because we held the site hostage. We need to draw the line at paying to get rid of ads and the store.

We cannot have Crab Day.

We must find ways to punch holes in this ship.

We can swim.

They can’t.

#mouse mumbles #tumblr discourse #crab day #um I guess I just had thoughts #no plan of action 😅#but you know how it is!

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hilarychuff · 10 months

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20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @2btheanswertothequestion. ty for thinking of me!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

rn i have 23 but i have number 24 going up soon 😈

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

202,248

3. What fandoms do you write for?

rn i'm in my chrissy cunningham phase (stranger things) but i'm still in my overarching sansa stark phase (asoiaf). i have been known to do a rewatch and dip back into my jemma simmons phase (agents of shield). and i'll always sort of be in my lily evans phase (marauders).

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

i carry it in mine (asoiaf, jon/sansa canonish soulmate au)

all the best people see you (all the best people know) (stranger things, chrissy/robin s4 au)

i remember (i remember) (asoiaf, jon/sansa canon drabble)

in any world (in any way) (asoiaf, sansa-centric au graphics collection)

the royal records (asoiaf, jon princess diaries au)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

usually!! i really like getting comments and i guess i have assumed that having someone respond incentivizes them so i always want to incentivize comments!! i think it is i polite to say thank you also. and i mean i love to talk about my fic so i'm always like "oh y'all tryna chat????" but usually nobody is trying to chat back ahhahaha. sometimes i hide from comments if i'm feeling guilty about not updating something but i always appreciate comments and they're usually p motivating to me

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

hmmm. most of my fics are like alternate media-based au concepts or lil oneshots or stories that are yet to have endings, so hard to say exactly which is angstiest.

i think my angstiest story is a pre-hydra reveal agents of shield one i did as a secret santa for someone where fitz was dead(?!!?!?) and grant ward showed up to bring jemma simmons back to the team and that was yeaaaaars ago but whenever i think of it i'm always like ok wow i hope that is what that person wanted. what bold choices to make in a gift for a stranger!!

other than thaaat i do think of i carry it in mine as a fairly angsty fic but it's intended to have a not so angsty ending so

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

well please trust that any princess diaries or miss congeniality au is going to end up with the main ship getting together, presumably happily for the rest of their lives!! desert hearts (aka all the best people see you all the best people know) is heading towards a happy ending. howl (sansa-centric scream au) i think will have roughly as happy an ending as any horror movie final girl can hope for.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

ummmm not really. i definitely have but the only time it felt like anything other than a one-off was when i essentially started tumblr beef by wandering into the wrong tag. and that was not fun and people were hating on their own blogs for a min BUT it died down and nobody really went out of their way to bother me directly about it after that, so it was not ideal but it was fine. tagging etiquette is tricky!!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

hmmmmmmmm historically no. but i have outlined smut!! and i'm thinking about actually writing some maybe even soon!! it's interesting bc i've discussed smut with friends and edited for them and used to roleplay and write smut scenes and that all felt fine but i haven't yet wrapped my head around the idea of being like "this is my little smut scene i made up all by myself and now i'm broadcasting it to the masses." feels like i'm opening myself up to psychoanalysis!! but also maybe once i actually write the smut scene i'll be like oh. no biggie. ok post. so we'll see hahahahah

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

not crossovers in the traditional sense but crossovers in the sense that i pick up my little blorbos and cast them in other tv shows/movies/etc, yes, constantly.

i mentioned howl above but i love that one, my sansa-centric scream au. i love jon snow mia thermopolis princess diaries hahahahah. i think it's cute and funny. i love using robin and chrissy from stranger things to make miss congeniality gay. the fic i'm posting in a few days for the stranger things rare pair big bang is also about robin and chrissy in a lil reality tv verse, so that one is really fun and silly and sweet too i think.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i don't think so! the only time anything like this has happened to me was like a tumblr rp blog misunderstanding a long time ago.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

no but that would be cool!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no but i started writing mainly through role playing! so that was co-writing just in a different sense, and i miss that. it's also just really fun to talk about ideas and stuff with friends and then not always actually have to write them. i do play around with concepts a lot with @mistysharks and @beholdthemem for chrissy and the stranger things teen crew, and @cellsshapedlikestars and i also help each other brainstorm sansa and jon related asoiaf stuff which i always super appreciate

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

i'm more of a favorite ship per fandom kind of gal than a favorite ship over all, but i'm also a multishipper in that i can kind of get into my main blorbos with anyone. i'm super still in my chrissy phase rn and i love writing her with robin, but also in a lil steve/chrissy/eddie ot3. that said i feel like i mainly read hellcheer!!

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

i hope it doesn't surprise anyone to hear that i DO have designs to finish i carry it in mine!! and howl. and desert hearts. like i have specific enough endings in mind that i am working towards for all of those.

the wip that i wish i could finish but know i never will is my marauders mediator series au based on the meg cabot books where lily can talk to ghosts and james is a ghost. i started writing it like back in 2015!! and then even started rewriting it in 2020. and i still love it. but it would be a big project to take on and one that would take a lot more work to figure out, let alone just write, and i don't really see it happening. that said i will always love it!!!

i also started a resurrection au marauders story where lily etc all start coming back to life when harry is like 24 so seven years after the end of the books, and i always thought the like emotional drama in that was so slay too. but the resurrection show itself never really had good answers for the paranormal plot/how it would play out and so i didn't have anything to crib off of lmao. and i never really invested much thought into figuring it out myself iirc. so i never really knew like plotwise where i wanted it to go so much as i was just like "how would the characters react if this happened" but i did like that thought exercise. maybe i would've written more if it would've felt like that would be satisfying to read for other people without actual like. plot.

16. What are your writing strengths?

ummm i'm really interested in like. character profiles. so i think i tend to gravitate towards that sort of story personally. a character figuring themselves/what they want out.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

low key i just like almost never write physical description stuff into my stories?? like it's all fanfiction so i'm like ok first of all you already know what everybody looks like. it takes a lot more active effort for me to be like. does the reader need to know what the character looks like right now?? does the reader need to have a clear vision of where the characters are?? what the room looks like?? i could probably afford to do that more but i find that i tend to skip it a lot

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

hmmm i really only have one fic where that might apply i think. i'd probs try to do it minimally bc i wouldn't want to do a bad job but if it's just one line i could see myself just, you know, doing google translate if i don't know a speaker i can run it by

19. First fandom you wrote for?

harry potter!! i found my way to marauders era pretty quick.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

i have a lot of love and tenderness in my heart for desert hearts and i carry it in mine. so far those are like my heart-squeezey fics imo. but i also love howl!!! a combination of some of my favorite interests and stories. i feel like these are my main three wips too so i gotta just keep tinkering away until a new chapter falls out. hopefully sooner than later for desert hearts and i carry it in mine, which i have in fact been reorganizing a lil lately!!

anyway!!

ty again for the tag @2btheanswertothequestion!! if you want to do this: @cellsshapedlikestars @mistysharks @beholdthemem @chdarling

#my writing #my fics #tag meme

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yourivygrows13 · 2 years

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Ticketmaster, Monopolies, and why The Eras Tour shitshow is not Taylor's fault, but Ronald Reagan's

Alright tumblr. I'm not an economist, but I took IB Econ SL in High School and still talk to my teacher so I'm enough of one for tumblr. I also have ADHD, and my hyperfocus loves to research, and I have been an obsessive music fan since birth and have been going to concerts regularly since my dad deemed me old enough to sit through one. I've also worked in radio for many years and I'm a music journalist. There are my credentials.

So strap in and let's discuss what the fuck is happening right now with Ticketmaster, The Eras Tour, and the outrage. This is gonna be a long one.

Ticketmaster as it stands now is the result of a merger (With Live Nation) that shouldn't have happened and is a capitalistic monster that needs to be taken down. Full stop. So why did Taylor Swift choose to use them for her tour? The simple answer is she had no choice if she wanted to tour venues that could adequately meet the demand she generates. Ticketmaster has such a chokehold on the ticketing industry, that venues are incentivized to use them as their ticketing service because Ticketmaster sells the most tickets. Yes, venues can use other services or even their own, but a massive stadium probably doesn't have the developers and engineers needed to handle events with 60k+ capacities. Pre-merger with Live Nation, these larger venues had more options. But since the merger in 2010, there is not a single ticketing service that can touch Ticketmaster. When Taylor is planning a tour, she and her event promoter (AEG) have control over some things like stage design and ticket prices (which, the face value of the tickets for The Eras Tour was very reasonable BEFORE FEES and BEFORE DYNAMIC PRICING. When you take into account just how much putting a tour on costs just in the sheer amount of people you have to employ $899 for the most expensive VIP level ticket is a lot of money, but it's 2022 and there is serious inflation going on. Taylor doesn't control the entire global economy. Dynamic pricing shouldn't be allowed in my opinion and artists should not opt in for it in my opinion. I have no idea what logistics go into opting out and I'm sure Ticketmaster does everything they can to incentivize people not to. But yes, as far as I am aware, dynamic pricing is a choice artists make so if Taylor had dynamic pricing, that was a decision made internally. I can't say I would make the same choice, but I'm not a touring musician. Also, I say IF she had, because in my experience of trying to buy tickets for this tour my friends and I did not encounter any dynamic price shifts for any of the shows we attempted to get tickets for.) She and her event promoters do not have a say in who sells the tickets. That is decided by the venue. Taylor is at the point in her career where she can't not play stadiums. There is just too much demand. For example, she's playing three dates at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. On her reputation tour she played to a total (across 2 nights) of 107,378 people. (Her stage for The Eras Tour is much bigger than the rep stage, so that capacity goes down a bit). But using that as a number: For The Eras Tour, by selling out 3 dates she'd play for roughly161,067 people. If she were to play Wells Fargo Center (the arena in Philadelphia. She started playing stadiums during speak now. She hasn't played places this small in the US in YEARS) she'd have to play 7.5 shows in Philly alone to play to the same number of people.

And most arenas still use Ticketmaster. But you get my point. She would have to basically never stop touring if she wanted to play for the same number of people on a stadium tour, in smaller venues. Using Philadelphia as an example, as that's a mid tier venue for her capacity wise: To play to roughly the same amount of people on The Eras Tour if she did arenas instead of stadiums she'd have to play 390 shows in the United States alone. She's incredible, but that's unreasonable to ask of ANYONE. She has to sell her tickets through whatever service the venues use. The vast majority of NFL stadiums use Ticketmaster. Her hands are tied. Could she straight up not tour? Yes. But if you actually expect her to do that, or any artist for that matter, you need to lower your expectations. It's her job. That argument is going to get people nowhere. We live in a capitalist society. That needs fixing before we can expect people to operate outside of it. So. Anyway. Why can any of this bullshit happen at all? Great. Fucking. Question. In the 1890s, The Sherman Act was put into place to essentially keep big corporations from gaining a monopoly over the market. It was decided that for everyone's best interest, we needed policies in place that would keep prices as low as possible by fostering healthy competition. Yes, this largely concerned things like oil and other big shit that controls our society. It all goes back to that shit. There have been other acts as well, btw. But for the sake of tumblr I'm sticking with a high level overview.

Fun fact: At the time, and into the "Golden Age" of antitrust policy (the 1940s to late 1970s), keeping competition in the market was seen as a remedy for fascism, and antitrust laws enabled that remedy. Antitrust policies started to fall in the late 1970s. Another fun fact: Ticketmaster started in 1976. I have no proof to back this being more than a coincidence, but do with that information what you will. In the late 70s, the Chicago School of Economics(/Antitrust Laws) began to popularize the idea that courts weren't super efficient at regulating these things and that inefficiency was holding us back and bigger wasn't necessarily bad. I'm simplifying. But that's it in a nutshell. Their school of thought became known as the "consumer welfare standard." If the whole purpose of antitrust policy was to keep prices low--which, at the time, was seen to equate maximum output, efficient allocation of resources, and thriving competition--then why did that mean that every single move that increased the price of goods had to be deemed unlawful if markets could self-correct? Which is how the Chicago School viewed them.

So in their eyes, only the most outrageous monopolies and forms of "anti-competitive conduct," basically anything that would keep markets from self-correcting, needed to be regulated. Their thinking was that some large mergers would indeed result in lower prices and efficient allocation of resources, and blocking everything was actually hindering that. Reagan was super on board with this, and his administration did a lot to reduce government regulation in business affairs. Now, the US presidents following Reagan didn't do much, if anything at all, to revert the changes that happened during this administration. And guess what? Markets do self-correct, but if a monopoly is big enough and if enough are allowed to happen, the market can't self-correct. Look at Ticketmaster/Live Nation. They are so large and control so much of the live events industry from owning venues to intense contracts that eat up entire cities, that there is literally nothing that can become enough of a competitor to correct the market to any level of "consumer welfare standard." Live Nation/Ticketmaster has absolutely zero incentive to do anything to improve customer experience, lower prices, loosen contracts, or put any measures in place to stop scalpers. Literally zero. Because no matter what, at the end of the day, if artists want to tour and if sports teams want to play and the general public wants to experience a live event of any kind in the United States, it is almost impossible to do so without involving LN/TM. There isn't an artist in this world big enough to take them down. Taylor Swift has a massive platform and a lot of influence. She cannot do anything about this alone. BTS don't have enough power to make a difference to an American based company. The Department of Justice and demanding governing officials and legislators to investigate and break up Ticketmaster is the only way this will ever change.

What the Reagan administration did in the 70s and what US Presidents have continued to do since, makes blocking these mergers from happening extremely difficult and not worth the time and energy. The fact that the Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster merger was blocked is a miracle (and the Penguin/Random House merger should have never been allowed to happen!! The Kroger/Albertson's merger shouldn't have happened!!) So breaking up an already existing merger that created an unstoppable monopoly? That's even more impossible. So where does that leave us? Well, tired. Upset. Wondering how the hell Ticketmaster could just cancel the general on-sale for The Eras Tour when they explicitly state that there are still tickets left. But we can do something about it. Sign petitions. Call local legislators. Back the Tennessee District Attorney looking into it. Back AOC if she makes moves to do something about it. Our world is completely different than it was in the 1890s when The Sherman Act was put into place. It's completely different than it was in the Reagan Administration. It may seem silly to put effort into something like this when there are so many other things we have to fight for as well. But fighting for monopolies to be broken and blocked and fighting for antitrust policies to actually be upheld in ways that benefit TODAY'S society is important. You can be mad. You can scream. But at the end of the day, directing that anger and energy toward anyone but Live Nation/Ticketmaster isn't going to do anything. Let's fucking take down The Man. Resources if you want to learn more: Federal Trade Commission Department of Justice WP Article LA Times article from 1986 when shit was happening Rolling Stone article from 1995 about Pearl Jam's fight against Ticketmaster

#Taylor Swift #Ticketmaster #The Eras Tour #Taylor Swift Tix #Fuck Ticketmaster #Economics 101 #did the board game monopoly fuck up our society?#it's just a question #did a board game give us brain worms thinking monopolies are good #taylor swift the eras tour #taylor nation #live nation #break up ticketmaster #take them down #we got her to give us the all too well 10 minute version #we can make the government finally do something about this monopoly #swifties are a powerful group

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tumblebagel · 30 days

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My eternal dilemma: Swords or coffee?

Fair warning: Most of this post is me talking to myself. Asking questions and then immediately answering them. So uhhh, yeah.

Context: I want Blorbos. I mean... I have blorbos, from my shows and my games, but I want OC blorbos to develop and inspire me to make shit. I have put out a real estate ad for my brain, and yet I have no characters living rent free in it yet.

( * - *)

Sorry, spaced out a minute trying to remember how to talk like a normal sane person. It's like 40 minutes past midnight.

OH MY GOD, I'M DOING THE THING, I'm late night Tumblr posting! Wooooooooah.

Ahem. Swords or Coffee. To have Blorbos, they need a world to live in, and I have two very strong aesthetics that I enjoy when it comes to worldbuilding. Unfortunately, they're almost completely mutually exclusive. Almost.

High Fantasy (with touches of feudal Japan and developing gunpowder)

And Retro/Lofi (often in city settings, and often showcasing the location's food)

My objective now is to figure out how to fuse these two settings. I want a barista with a katana on their back. I want, like, a walkman with designer headphones meant to fit over catgirl ears. I want belts and leather straps for equipment and armor, strapped overtop varsity jackets. And I think by writing this out just now, I've distilled this into the ACTUAL essence of the problem I'm facing:

Why carry weapons in a (mostly) modern day world? What would you need to fight, and more to the point, why would average citizens be encouraged to fight them rather than the [unnamed threat] being taken care of by a private corporation or government program?

Let's be honest. If goblins infested modern day New York City instead of rats, there would either be an act passed DECADES ago to eradicate them, or there would be a company you could pay to take care of the goblins for you. I want normal citizens to be able to fight goblins, and INCENTIVIZED to fight goblins. When they see one it's not "awww, a goblin's blocking the patio" it's "Aw fuck yeah, a goblin! (dramatic weapon drawing sound)"... I suppose then that combat wouldn't be for self defense, at least not most of the time. Maybe some more powerful enemies lurk the darker parts of the city (getting ahead of myself).

If combat isn't for self defense, what's it for? Well maybe it's moreso for sport. Day-to-day combat is like training, with small rewards, and then there's a big league you can compete in. Something akin to HxH's battle tower (or whatever it's called), or Splatoon's turf wars that are regularly scheduled in public places like parking garages. I think that'd work best.

Last note: No, I'm not actually going to be using goblins for the enemies because I like goblins too much, I'll have several Goblin characters. The enemies will be far less humanoid in nature, and more impervious to pain. Maybe like a hive mind situation.

Well, that's probably enough worldbuilding for tonight. Goals for tomorrow are to do some doodles and post them, as well as to write details on the enemies, the incremental rewards, and the "tournament" system. Past that, we'll flesh out the details of a magic system including a universe-wide twist on most magic formulas (IDK what it is yet), as well as prioritizing a balance between combat-magic and passive-magic.

Sweet, goodnight y'all

#worldbuilding #text post #fantasy #lofi aesthetic

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p-paradoxa · 2 months

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so something like 90% of my posts are queued these days anyway and I’m thinking of just making all of them dono posts and some other useful info. sorry to people who follow me for fandom or animals or whatever. but imo everyone who spends time on here needs to be combatting this current wave of bullshit coming from people accusing Palestinians of being scammers. you can say tumblr isn’t that serious, but it’s serious enough to have some stake in whether a number of people live or die, because people actually are that desperate. I’ll try to answer more asks as well since those’re relevant, and I also want to make a new pinned incentivizing people to donate. I’ll still take commissions for any new donation to any fundraiser. but I need to be on here much less because I s2g the way people are behaving towards fellow humans ~currently~ being starved and raped and bombed to death is going to raise my blood pressure and it’s already too high. how do you live with yourselves

#personal #like i don’t have a dog in the fight but the way people are acting 9 months into this shit is disgusting #like crowdfunding is actually life or death for some people and you’re all choosing death for them. fuck off #free palestine

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mylawcitrus · 10 months

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Why age gaps bother people

Where I live, there's old people and there's young people, then there's normal people, who are somewhere in the middle, a little bit too young for some, a little bit too old for others.

The fact we seek interaction is an internet phenomenon that's widely known and majorly accepted, but the nature goes through some "funneling" and I don't wanna discuss this with poets, I wanna discuss this with Tumblr, and not the staff, I think. I've never used Tumblr to seek age gap associated content. Never, ever. This is not my problem. I've used WordPress, in fact, to shed a light on some of the problems I was seeing.

But there are a few things you should know.

Nobody even understands or accepts "consent".

This means to say that if you're talking to someone who's underage, it's a crime, if you're an adult, potentially -- no matter the content, and most importantly, no matter the nature of the rest of the interactions, which is a place where people don't go to: you're gonna have to label stuff more precisely, for example classifying teens separetely from pre-teens, and you're gonna have to figure out whether or not someone in between the ages of 18 and 21 is an "adult".

2. There's psychological studies about brain development that deny consent as were taught it meant

People will say that not until you're over 30 have you fully developed a consciousness of things around you and a capacity to critically process and act upon the most important aspects of your practical life, or something along those lines. These people are not the lawyers of Snapchat, are they?

3. Personally, I've always sought consent

I've had conversations with lots of teenagers, and I've said things like "you look young". And I had to learn that some people weree triggered by that. They were just tryng to talk. And then I said things like "I'm just trying to see some different people, skip if you want" (on Omegle). On Snapchat, I've used Quick Add to find people looking for sext, but the platform facilitates and actually (this is serious) actively engineers incentives for interaction between people with an age gap. Seriously, I've seen avatars with white hair with patches missing. I've sent lots, but everybody knows it doesn't even mean anything, it's just like, "annoying" after you're trying to have decent conversation and everyone's acting retarded -- is the common sense, but the parents! Oh the conservative parents! When they don't threaten you one way, it's another! They want the best for their kids, and in the end they're raising a generation of bullies, to put it lightly, and people who couldn't care less about school, who do horrible things in school, by the way, and in case they take school too seriously, which is the other side of the spectrum, they're not gonna consider the fact that, "hey, I could talk to a stranger today". These people are planning to be AI specialists by 21, and practicing with generative text today which is based on such a series of preconceptions that they don't even notice that the AI wasn't trained to talk like Gen Z, but if they allow that, everyone's gonna be like "wait, they did what to our data?" -- and there's your consent...

4. The so-called "unsolicited" interactions, pictures and the like were solicited as fuck, bitch!

I didn't go to a point where I used my ssocial media to promote my body and ask money to get undressed and perform explicit sexual acts, honing my skills, so to speak, or anything like that. I just sought people who were lonely. My story, all of it, is exactly that, and I've found people who shared very serious stuff about their lives and we fucking helped each other, I made friends, and my friends were ordinary people, not famous and rich people. Eventually, I would be more "straight to the point" in what I was seeking, but you don't get to shove that in my face while you and I know that there were outside actors propelling this behavior, incentivizing, betting on it, for personal gain or for whatever the fuck you wanna twist it into to fit the word "representation". It's like having the freedom to say the word "bitch": notice in the world around you (and search for your wording in your language) what bothers you when it comes from a teenager, and you'll see that the problem is a little deeper. It comes from what the internet represented in terms of how society was organized, including moms who have to work and don't have time to take care of the kids, dads who are never there, and a lot of really young people having sex and having babies. Was the baby fucking solicited, honey?

So with all that in mind, I hope I can have a meaningful, positive conversation with the girl who I met and is graduating from college this year, even if it's to say "congrats on your new chapter", and that's it... while the internet, no matter the case, no matter what's happened, no matter what my rights are, no matter what's best for her, no matter how much people have already explored this and so many other cases, will be like "lol he ain't getting pussy no more, bro be mad as hell, nigga gonna ask for money in the street to buy a fleshlight lmao"

Because, I don't know if you noticed, that's going soft. A homeless person just approached me and said that "people comment" on stuff. She insinuated something, she strolls the neeighborhood. I'm aware, honey, that people comment. But I'm fighting for a world where justice means you and I both have dignity, and maybe you, lady who I often help, should either seek institutional help or at least realize that I can't fix your issue while having a lot of my own to deaal with -- and just half an hour ago I was treating severe leg infection on my dad.

Tumblr,

Thanks for listening.

My Patreon:

#spilled thoughts

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technomaestro · 3 years

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Top 5 Video Game Soundtracks

Ok. Let's try this *again*. I had a whole thing written up and I accidentally refreshed the page, so tumblr ate the entire thing, and I lost it.

Destiny 2 There's a reason D2 is one of my all time favorite games, and the music for it is one of those reasons. Destiny 2's sweeping orchestral soundtrack is full of songs that encapsulate that grand, epic nature of the world and conflict you find yourself in as the Guardian. From the mission tracks like 1AU/Forge Ahead , Valkyrie, and Guns Blazin which provide this cinematic backdrop as you fight for your victories, to the epic swelling of the raid bosses where the tension in their first phases is replaced with triumphant moments where the tide turns as seen in Riven of a Thousand Voices or Insurrection Prime (even the most hated boss in Destiny has a pretty baller theme with tons of brass in it as you get ready to put him in his grave one last time after fighting him multiple times throughout the raid). Locations such as the Dreaming City have tracks that manage to encapsulate the mystery and history behind each location. No matter my feelings and critiques on the gameplay or the story, the music in Destiny 2 is just an absolute gift of musical genius. Michael Salvatori (yes, that same Michael Salvatori from Halo) is one of my favorite composers for the work he's put into that series. Favorite track: Journey ft. Kronos Quartet. This is the song that plays after the deafening silence that comes from escaping the city during the initial Red War campaign, where you montage your way through an unforgiving wilderness, powerless, as the city fades into the distance behind you. You've been beaten, your home taken from you, but the music swells with hope as you follow a sign from the Traveler - and you know you'll return to reclaim your city. I highly recommend taking a peek at the mission, as you can't play it anymore, to see what I mean as to how the track absolutely enhances the experience.

Hades Supergiant games - the people behind Bastion and Transistor, two other games with amazing soundtracks - really did knock it out of the park with Hades. This game's soundtrack is a wonderful blend of classic acoustic instruments (Check it out - it's called a Bağlama) mixed with metal and electronica to create a theme that evokes not only the aesthetics of the region, but also give it a modern twist that meshes with the dark, haunting vibes of the underworld that you reside in. Each track flows so well from one into the next, mixing perfectly with each area or character you encounter. And the two musical characters you encounter - Orpheus and Eurydice - add in plenty of musical flair to the game themselves. The motifs present in the songs are called back frequently to make it a coherent, consistent soundtrack, and it remixes so incredibly well. Favorite Track: God of the Dead - the theme for the final boss of each run, this track is incredible. Not only does it reflect the theme of Zagreus in a different key, showing the link between Hades and his son, before delving into this heavy, frantic track that perfectly encapsulates having to fight

Payday 2 There are exactly two ways to play Payday 2. The first is stealth - you won't have much in the way of music as you silently slip by cops, cameras, and civilians to reach your score. The other is the way I play, where you suit up in the heaviest body armor you can get, grab two automatic shotguns, and go to town to some of the best soundtracks in the game. Payday 2 has a unique musical cue system with it's audio during loud heists, where it amps up the tracks in time with what the cops are doing. At first, before you've been detected, you have the Stealth track which is always low and very basic to not intrude. In low points, like when you first go loud and the first responders arrive on the scene, you're in a Control track. Then, as the police gear up, it switches to a higher temp Anticipation Track, and then when the police storm your position, the Assault track. So each "song" in Payday 2 is actually 4 songs in one, that the game blends seamlessly together in order to match the audio with the gameplay. It's an incredibly clever system that keeps you immersed in the tension of the heist even as Bain, your mastermind, calls out over comms with instructions. And it helps that almost all of the tracks are exceptional bangers in their own right, with amped up electronica with great percussion and bass lines alongside rebellious hard hitting metal and rock. But during those assault tracks, there's something satisfying about hearing the build, reloading your guns, then timing you leaving cover to unleash fury with the bass drop. There's a great playlist here with links to the different types of tracks if you want to take a peek yourself. Favorite Track: I Will Give You My All - one of the few tracks with built in vocals. This particular track feels like the exact kind of music I'd see in a movie, and with the build I run in game for Loud stuff at the moment which incentivizes me running face first at bulldozers and cloakers, giving it my all is *exactly* what I intend to do in that game.

Horizon Zero Dawn HZD's soundtrack is full of the same sort of sweeping orchestral stuff that made me love Destiny 2, with tracks that serve to accentuate the world around you. The only reason it's down here at 4 and not higher is because there's a somewhat lack of variety; as a singleplayer story game, most of the music you encounter tends to be in cutscenes, rather than during gameplay. That isn't a *bad* thing however, and over the hundreds, if not thousands of games I've played, reaching #4 on the list is no small feat. The actual orchestral bits pair so well with being able to cultivate this theme of a world full of grandeur, the kind of which you'd see in nature documentaries. The various tracks illicit this feeling of a long forgotten hope, which if you know anything about the plot, ties in perfectly. The music that *does* play outside of the incredible cutscenes add to the world's aesthetic so well, pairing the sort of instruments you'd find people playing in the civilizations you encounter with the environments you find them in. Even the battle music, when there is battle music, is a tense affair; the game incentivizes you to stalk your prey, as Aloy is not a frontline fighter: she's a hunter among predators, and the music matches that tone. Favorite Track: A tie between Aloy's Journey, which provides not only natural sounds mixed with the instruments of the Nora and the underpinning of techno that permeates the story (in addition to one of my favorite musical things where you have these grand sweeping vocals that aren't actually lyrics) and Your Hand of Sun And Jewels, which gives off this sort of air of walking through city streets in golden sunlight, where people dance just a block away and you can smell the fragrant spices of the local cuisine. It makes me yearn and if I listen to it on full blast I can forget that I'm stuck at home for a moment.

Pokemon Heart Gold & Soul Silver Pokemon OSTs hold a special place in my heart because as much as I loved games as a kid, getting started on things like Mappy for the NES (which, now that I write that, really shows how fuckin *old* I am), Pokemon was one of the first things that I basically turned into my personality as a child. Silver version especially was one of the ones that *truly* got me going, as in Blue version I always felt one step behind my brother but Silver was *my* game, my generation. I have extremely fond memories of that game, from the Lake of Rage to trying to beat a ghost gym with a Sentret and it taking four hours because normal types and ghost types are just... immune to each other. But when Soul Silver came out and remastered the soundtrack, it brought back this wave of nostalgia. The bit tunes I remember had been brought to life, in a way that was recognizably Pokemon. Hearing it again brought back the waves of wanting to journey and be a hero again that when the game came out, I was sorely missing. The music in the game is upbeat and chipper, befitting a near solarpunk world that I want to live in. Iconic tracks remain iconic but with a bit of cultural flair, showing that the Johto region hasn't lost touch with it's roots. While it isn't the almighty trumpeting of Gen 3, the nostalgic tracks that are already evocative of nostalgia brings a yearning back for a time when things were simpler and I could just play games. Also, the Rival theme is *rocking*. Favorite Track: Route 26 Theme. Route 26 is also known as Tohjo Falls, the place which connects Johto and Kanto together. And for me, this route represents having reached a triumph and the energy to explore what's next. It's a critique directly against the Hero's Journey's unfortunate end, that they can never go home - the hero here *can* go home, but they choose to set out again for new sights. It's full of the fact that when it plays, you're taking your steps into something new, something bold, and full of new challenges that await you. It is, by far, one of my favorite tracks and the orchestral version brings me to tears.

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herotheshiro · 3 years

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alrighty i used to try to find posts to reblog with my review but now that tumblr has this new system of notifying the op with all the tags, i don’t want to spam someone with my hella long tags lol. so now i have to stick with this system of shitty-quality cover pic + my review in an original post for all reviews now lol

anyway. just read 3-chapter oneshot kokuhaku no jikan by tsubasa yamaguchi which is actually by the same mangaka of blue period fame. i had heard from my sibling that she had done a shounen ai but didn’t look it up so i was taken by surprise when i opened this newly uploaded manga to one of the sites i check; the art looked so familiar but there was no other works by them on the site and then i realized the art was familiar bc the art here is a rougher version of the pretty art you see posted across tumblr/twitter for blue period lol. anyway enough abt the art

rough summary of story: 2 high school boys’ paths cross one day bc of a relay race they both join. they become close romantically and they eventually decide they’re going to confess to each other to make it official (this is explicitly discussed bw the 2 of them). the day of this planned confession, one of them (urashima) gets into a non-fatal accident and the other guy (imada) confesses to him at his bedside. imada returns the next day and turns out urashima’s memory now resets every 24 hours post-accident -- so he remembers everything up until the accident but not afterwards. imada decides to confess to him every day to remind urashima they’re lovers but eventually this repetition with essentially no reward begins to take its toll...

i actually really liked this story tbh. i think it’s a very straight-forward story but also is complex at the same time (if that makes sense) -- it’s basically 2 guys trying to communicate but there’s an exterior issue causing their miscommunication. it’s such a standard story but this case is refreshing bc 1. the 24hr memory reset is believable. there are differences bw long-term and short-term memory retention and i’ve heard of illnesses/neuroses where ppl can’t retain memories irl so this whole thing isn’t entirely pulled out of the author’s ass and 2. the miscommunication issue is very much due to an external issue and not them jumping through fucking mental hoops to convince themselves to not see the situation accurately. i did read through the story pretty quick so tbh i didn’t really absorb too much abt how the author presented their conflict, but i think the obstacles that get in their way and the way these two high-schoolers respond to those obstacles are very believable.

the story also progresses well too: beginning with them in their own little world and then eventually outside forces along with time question their relationship which then makes them question themselves. i don’t think anything got elongated uncomfortably and it follows the standard story conflict progression (initial problem presented, things pile up until conflict comes to a head, conflict then solution, then coast to the ending) with each event/plot point transitioning well into each other. the ending of them proposing to each other isn’t anything new, a standard dramatic romantic end -- dramatic bc like uh you’re high schoolers, how can you possibly dedicate your lives to one another already but i mean they’re going through this whole situation with one of them literally having a memory loop and yet still love each other at the end -- imada has already proven himself to be willing to dedicate himself to urashima regardless of what happens so.

anyway it’s technically kind of a sad story since in the end, urashima prob won’t be able to really retain memories past 24hr well into the future, but it was still good bc urashima does still have the memories of their burgeoning relationship and they’re together in the end with the ring reminder for him daily. i think it would’ve been REAL emo if they made it so that urashima didn’t have memories of their burgeoning relationship so imada had to help him fall in love with him over and over, but i think them having that initial foundation made the story believable/more straightforward and the ending hopeful rather than bittersweet.

tl;dr is that the story was well-done, nice and simple but also complex enough to not be boring. i don’t think the premise is that unique, like i’ve read stories of ppl forgetting their lovers and so the lover has to work to be with them again, but this story did that premise very well and in a believable way without having to really get into under-developed details. the author is good with expressing emotions through body language/facial expressions too. it’s a cute story that provides both conflict and sweet stuff with a happy ending.

side note but i’ve been wanting to read blue period for a while, and this honestly has incentivized me to actually go and pick it up. this work is obviously one of the author’s early works if the art wasn’t obvious enough, and surely she’s polished up her writing and art skills in the time since so i can see why ppl would be into blue period past its messages about the struggles of doing and pursuing art. i’m looking forward to it!

#reading #kokuhaku no jikan #this review is not that polished so i hope tagging the title doesn't net me that much attention if any #i'm purposely not tagging the author bc i'm sure her tag is followed for blue period stuff #idk why this review was so hard to write #i mean it has been a while since i've done a review and i didn't really have much to say abt this story bc i read through it p fast #it didn't really trigger me emotionally tbh bc it wasn't super sad but it was done well

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theofm · 4 years

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𝐰𝐨𝐰 𝐢'𝐦 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐥𝐲 beyond excited for this ! to say i’m rusty is a total understatement , but we here to survive ( not thrive ) in this house while i get reacquainted .. my theme is also a work in progress because tumblr decided to ATTACK me with an invalid html error , but we’re pushing through . anyway , all that aside ? i go by leesh & i’m living it up in the pacific tz ( pst ) . my pronouns are she / her & if you want to find me on discord i’m at 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 🥳#9405 .

* 𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐠𝐨𝐬 here and do i have the tea for you . theo is back in bridgehampton for the summer , living off the richards’ family $758 million net worth . must be nice to come back home to the hamptons , i wonder what his fellow class of 2017 grads think of his return . you know , he was known around town as the conciliatory and for bhs senior superlatives he was crowned as most likely to become a motivational speaker . i wonder if that still holds true today , a lot can change when you go off to the university of california — los angeles and study political science & international relations . either way , i bet he is still very venturesome , debonair , heedless and boisterous . hopefully this time next year the plans to get a master’s degree & get accepted into the pathways internship program come true . in the meantime , i look forward to seeing him blast 3005 - childish gambino at every hamptons function . it’s going to be a wild summer home , welcome back . ( jacob elordi ) .

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𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 : theodore richards 𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 : theo 𝐚𝐠𝐞 + 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 : august 29th , 1999 . 𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 : virgo 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 + 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐬 : cis male + he / him 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 : new york , new york 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 : bridgehampton , new york 𝐬𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : heterosexual 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : heteroromantic 𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : student 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 : american 𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 : caucasian 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 : english

. * › background .

— born to jacob & marissa richards , the former a composer & the latter to become a u.s. ambassador , theo was the product of a love story for the ages . originally marissa cardiff , his mother was born into a wealthy and politically tied family . the high-status claim that theo is so accustomed to originated here , privileged having been an understatement . so when she'd fallen in love with an aspiring musician & composer , her family was far from happy . her & jacob hardly cared , believing that they could live a happy life without the wealth and support of the cardiff name .

— insert theo , the pride & joy of their marriage & for a while .. the glue keeping them together . co-parenting was the first of many faults for the older richards , disagreeing on matters constantly & beginning to struggle financially without the support of marissa's parents . for the lifestyle his mother wanted him to have , primed & proper with the best brands to his name , she realized she hadn't set him up for success in this way . the household began to erupt in constant fighting , a battle that a toddler was painstakingly unaware of . jacob's anger issues were becoming more & more prominent , continuing on until marissa eventually deemed her current situation no longer ideal for herself nor for theo . she'd gathered their belongings in the middle of the night & vanished without a trace , knowing that the cardiff name & the power attached to it would be enough to protect them both from any repercussions .

— of course , theo's grandparents welcomed them into their home with open arms . they were simply thankful that their daughter was finished chasing what they saw to be a wild fantasy , a romeo & juliet plot destined for failure from the beginning . from then on , they both lived at the cardiff estate . theo , shoved into a private school uniform & sent to become exposed to a world of money & power , his mother rising in the ranks to eventually earn her spot as a successful u.s. ambassador for the country .

— theo was primed and polished to follow in his mother’s footsteps in politics , the expectations in his life having been clear from a very young age . follow the sought-after path of the his family , or suffer the consequences . his grandparents , though loving , pushed obligations onto their grandson to make a name for himself . they ensured that his father was kept out of his life , battling & paying him off until he had eventually stopped trying to reconnect with his son . they told him not to make the same mistake as his mother , bolstered him on a path to becoming notorious in the field of politics . this came with immense pressures , especially with his own mother's absence due to work ( among other things ) & wholly believing that there was no other path that he was fitted to pursue .

— however , it wasn’t as if his path of politics was unwilling in any way , his participation in various policy projects throughout high school & extra-circulars such as model un had piqued theo's interests in a different area –– politics . as with most things , he’s motivated by doing what he can to please & earn the affection of the people around him . with that being said , working in politics would allow him to accomplish that goal . as incentivized as he is by the notion of making a direct difference on the people around him & his country , with such a line of work comes great pressure .

— while theo was completing school & living with his grandparents , his mother was either away for work or entertaining the likes of what theo had come to know as many different men . following her failed marriage , she became a serial dater of only the most elite & wealthiest that bridgehampton had to offer . eventually , she settled down once again .. but only after theo had grown up for practically his whole life disapproving of the men she was with . his step-father & step-sister joined their family in theo's early high school years , & the four of them packed up & moved from the cardiff estate to a mansion of their own .

— moving across the country to attend school at ucla absolutely changed his life . being exposed to a whole new sea of people did wonders for the boy’s social life , & being away from the pressures of his family made theo feel like he could finally breathe for once . he’s coming back to bridgehampton with loads of new memories & stories to share . still , something about high school resonates with him — he holds the connections he made there closer to his heart , & there was no denying his excitement when it came time to return home . he still holds out hope that maybe one day he’ll be reunited with his dad , but he seemed to have vanished off the planet .

. * › personality .

— the need to fight for attention & acknowledgement from his own family remained strong . from this , a desire to be liked above all quickly emerged . displaying an agreeable personality has always been theo's way of life — partially because the extrovert within him prefers it , but also because of the male's constant seeking of approval from those around him . theo struggles to always be the guy that everyone expects him to be & never stumble or make a public mistake .

— high school was certainly a whirlwind for theo . he was one of those individuals that knew practically EVERYONE , & he exerted effort to make himself particularly likeable to all . he was rarely home , either hitting after-school spots with friends or attending parties whenever they were thrown . he was also involved in various clubs , teams & associations , taking any opportunity to meet people . undoubtedly , he managed to receive quite a bit of romantic attention in high school too , & i would have expected him to date during those years .

— paired with his sociability is a certain level of carelessness that tends to get him in trouble . when he's out of the watchful eye of those around him , he is more than likely to conjure up a few schemes despite the risk . he'll jump at any opportunity to follow someone into complete darkness , i really don't know how i produced such an idiot . but , to touch on another side to him –– the hopeless romantic energy is strong in this one . he falls hard & fast , is loyal to a fault & is absolutely a relationship type of guy — even if he’s had his fair share of hookups in high school & at ucla . always being surrounded by people has caused theo to develop a fear of being alone , the root cause behind his attachments to others regardless of the relationship .

— it’s not always easy maintaining his composure . there are many days where theo naturally exudes his personality , genuinely enjoying the company of others & wanting to earn approval from the people he cares about . other times , it proves to be more difficult .. particularly when it comes to controlling his anger & other impulses that can arise when he’s rubbed the wrong way . though his mother & grandparents influence most aspects of his life , his temper is one thing that he inherited from his father . sometimes the thought of bringing dishonour to his family or the repercussions he could face as a result of his actions are enough to settle his irrationality , but every once in a while he loses control . i wouldn't put it past him to have gotten in physical fights or developed some enemies along the way , & his temper could easily lead him to end up in a sticky situation .

— when theo is alone & quiet strikes him , he has a tendency to become buried in the worries & pressures that could very well consume him at any moment . the less he’s by himself , the less he has to think about the future or his fears .. like the possibility of ending up alone . he’ll take any opportunity to be surrounded by people , receiving the social interaction he craves & keeping his mind off of the more negative aspects in his life . if that isn’t an option , theo will turn to spotify or his guitar instead — he’s always played & has found music to help him drown out what he otherwise considers to be the deafening silence that welcomes his deepest & darkest thoughts . once he’s had a night out with those closest to him or he takes time to indulge in his music , he finds it much easier to keep up the demeanour that is always expected of him .

— despite his distaste towards his mother's marriage , the male is rather protective over his step-sister & others that he considers himself closest to . fierce loyalty & protectiveness mixed with his anger are sometimes a recipe for disaster , so i’d watch out for that one .

. * › headcanons .

— aesthetics : blasting music while driving around the city at 3am , setting 5+ alarms and ignoring them all , leather jackets , sneaking out , empty beer bottles , profanity , ray bans , parties , holes in walls , restless nights , takeaway coffee cups .

. * › connections .

if you managed to make it through my rambling mess , i have to thank you . now we get onto the good stuff , huh ? i'm just going to list some of my most wanted connections , but i also love plotting based off chem so you can fully expect me to want to learn everything about your muse in order to do so . without further ado .. here we go !

ex(es) : like i said , theo falls hard & fast & definitely exudes simp energy sometimes . i could see him having dated quite a bit , & i’d be open to ex connections that ended on good terms .. bad terms .. anything at all .

fwb(s) : could be past or present , i mean ? a man has needs DSKJSDNJKSD your muse or him could’ve caught feels which caused them to end it , it could’ve been because he attends school all the way in cali , maybe it’s a new thing now that he’s back in bridgehampton . just gimme ..

bro(s) : theo is honestly SUCH a bro . give me his best guy friends from guy school who he always hung out with .. give me them treating each other’s houses like their own , all the late night shenanigans but the occasional emo talk when things get deep . the more bros the merrier , maybe even a guy squad ?

idk i’m so bad at these , just give me chem based things thanks !

#. * 𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐃 › out of character .#took me long enough and half of u are asleep but #here we are #entitled:intro

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toeditishuman · 4 years

Photo

Orbiting Human Circus Colouring Pages!

In support of Black Lives Matter - ways you can help at the end of this post

Since my OHC posts have always been my most popular ones on tumblr, I had the idea of drawing some Orbiting Human Circus colouring pages! To try and incentivize donations to BLM or any associated charities or fundraisers, I’m offering three A4-sized colouring pages (all black-and-white - the colour in the preview image is just as an example) based on scenes and themes from the podcast to anybody who donates to one of these causes.

If you message me or reply to this post with a screenshot/receipt of a donation, I’ll send you a link to a PDF with all three of the images ready to print. (Ideally they would be new or recent donations, but I know many people can only give so much, so I’ll send the pages to anybody who has donated at any point and can provide proof.)

If you’re not sure where to donate, I’ll add some suggested links - but just googling “Black Lives Matter donations” should give you a lot of results as well.

If you want to help support the Black Lives Matter movement - and if you love OHC and want something relaxing to do in your downtime - please consider donating! Any amount at all will help the movement and get you these colouring pages as a way of saying thanks.

Donation Links:

Act Blue - split your donation between 70+ bail funds and other organizations: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd

Act Blue - split your donation between 12 racial justice organizations: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ab_mn

Black Lives Matter - donate to BLM directly: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019

BlackLives.help - a page full of many more donations links, with the option to split your donation between them: https://blacklives.help/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqPavobT46QIVyrHtCh1I5AQ1EAAYASAAEgI3aPD_BwE

Non-donation Links:

If you have no money to spare but you still want to help out, here are some things you can do:

Black Lives Matter - carrd of ways to help: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co

Google Docs of petitions to sign and other educational resources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R7xQXeuIsQzcxe4walEBpF1BC0IkugT4sJVkLJAKYjY/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-0KC83vYfVQ-2freQveH43PWxuab2uWDEGolzrNoIks/preview?pru=AAABcpmzSSM*2Td3ykSyi-9IEwKhnHBRAw#

Finally, thank you - and remember that taking care of yourself is extremely important too.

#orbiting human circus #ohc #the orbiting human circus (of the air)#nightvale presents #podcast #black lives matter

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star-anise · 5 years

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Seeing the way kids and teenagers are vilified online for even the simplest things makes me hurt, and it also makes me grateful for the adults who were online when I was a kid, who let me grow, and make mistakes, and occasionally be a dumbass without trying to run me off the internet for it. I think we, as adults online these days, have a responsibility to kids and teens to at the very least not be shitty to them while they're still growing up. Like our elders were to us.

SO SO SO MUCH.

I also really appreciate the adults who metaphorically grabbed me by my shirt collar and said, “You’re breaking the rules. Go cool down and come back when you can treat other people decently.”

I also have a more complicated thought that’s like--I think society, not just those of us online but like, everybody, has a responsibility to create better online infrastructure for community-building. The same way cities have a responsibility to build schools and parks and swimming pools for its citizens to use, someone on some level should make sure that the websites we have to use every day to find work and have social lives, sites kids are having really important formative experiences on, are capable of enforcing some really basic rules of conduct.

Which would mean passing laws to make sure social media sites and video games are kept from really terrible and exploitative practices, like getting kids addicted to real-money microtransactions, or blasting a 16 year old’s hot take out to thousands of people, or tacitly permitting hate groups and online bullying because they’re profitable.

Heck, it might even mean putting taxpayer dollars towards incentivizing companies to work more for the good of their userbase than their advertisers. I’d pay for that.

Like, fundamentally, Tumblr is a trash website because it has no brakes. There is no way for us to form communities and then protect everyone in that community from abuse and harassment, not the way there is when you kick someone out of a Discord chat or a Facebook group. I can block someone who’s a noxious troll, but that doesn’t protect anyone else from them. Because that’s a choice Tumblr made about its fundamental makeup, because that’s what’s profitable. (Er, more profitable, inasmuch as Tumblr is profitable.)

#staranise original #this garbage website #bullying tw #forlorn-kumquat

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whetstonefires · 5 years

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I have wandered into your tumblr and I want to know absolutely everything about your ideas for Earth 3 Impetus and Motion. EVERYTHING. Possibly the least relevant part of that is the family line, as Earth 3 often has really skewed versions of the characters. Would the first Johnny Quick even have a speedster grandson when he was killed and his blood used to power his successors?

Oh, cool ask! Thank you!

😄 I’m very happy to talk about this but I’m afraid you may be disappointed, because I’m Doing It Wrong. I’ve been working off and on on a bespoke Earth-3 for the past…several years. Production has slowed but not stopped. It’s up to over 300,000 words on AO3 at this point.

The issue that set me off was that tendency to skew; I didn’t like it. I found that, most of the times DC had built into Earth-3 before rebooting again, there were two countervailing currents leading writing decisions. On the one hand to make things As Wrong As Possible compared to the main timeline, and on the other to just make them…arbitrarily different.

Lois Lane is Superwoman, evil counterpart of Wonder Woman, for some reason, woop-de-do; this fits under both categories.

This process worked neither according to the ‘timeline that diverged into a Bad Timeline at some point in the distant past but somehow contains versions of the same people in the same place’ premise of the original Star Trek ‘Mirror, Mirror’ episode, nor does it work according to any direct cosmic principle of inversion, although some of the early versions claimed to.

(See: Mirror Christopher Columbus discovered Europe and then later Evil George Washington conquered England for the American Empire, what even guys. 😩)

Also Earth-3 so transparently existed almost every time it was reinvented as a place to get villains from, and to look bad in comparison to the main timeline, without any attention to making it work internally, which I thought was a damn waste of a cool concept. ‘A damn waste of a cool concept’ drives a lot of fanwork lol.

So for my world, I had the slightly conflicting goals of working as close to that amorphous thing ‘canon’ as possible, and of making the setting stand on its own, as a superhero setting, with internal causality and more or less the usual sort of hero-versus-villain logic. So I inverted the alignments of only superheroes and supervillains, and kept as much as possible of their backstories intact.

This means my stuff doesn’t map onto any canon Earth-3, especially not the one from Forever Evil because that came out after I’d already gotten all the big things pinned down. 😅 Some people get upset about this and come yell at me about how i.e. Owlman is Thomas Wayne Junior. But since I always saw that particular concept as a huge cop-out from looking at how few alterations it takes to turn Bruce Wayne into a spectacular villain, I was like ‘nuts to that’ from the start.

If you’re cool with my relationship with canon, on we go.

-&-

So, Impetus and Motion! I don’t remember what I said on that one post where I remember blathering about it, so forgive me if I repeat myself. ^^

Lineage is the same as canon, technically. I’ll go over it; if you don’t care just skip ahead to the next subsection. 😄

Mirror Barry Allen, the Dash, got his villain name for his signature kill technique of grabbing someone, hyperaccelerating them, and then letting go at the right moment that they get dashed against something immovable and go splat. He dashes people against things.

(His eventual sidekick, Blaze, got his for liking to make things combust by accelerating their molecules. The combination makes them sound like a pair of racehorses, which they did not intend and are very annoyed by when it’s pointed out.)

The Dash is pretty scary, especially because most of the ways he abuses his speed for profit are so low-key nobody even notices (i.e. screwing with the stock market) and he doesn’t need to be a supervillain. He just likes it.

His public villain profile is relatively low for the level of danger he poses, tho, because his town is infested with really dumb superheroes who beat him embarrassingly often, when he actually turns up to fight or is successfully ambushed. And with the occasional exception the scale of his crimes is fairly small compared to i.e. Ultraman.

Keeping him imprisoned is ridiculously difficult, tho. He can’t be completely depowered (because the Speed Force is external to him and all the power dampeners that are used assume they’re trying to shut off something generated internally) and he’s really smart, so it took years of battles to keep him long enough to transfer into a proper cell even, and longer to get an unblurred look at his face.

His secret identity survived so long that Barry Allen was there to comfort Iris West after she was targeted by the Dash on several occasions, and they were married by the time he got ultimately unmasked.

She left him after that and moved back to the future, which she was still from because that’s hilarious, but he eventually tracked her down and promised to reform if she’d take him back. This obviously fell apart eventually, but not until after the twins were born.

I haven’t mapped out the mirror Thawne line. I assume the Thawnes with healing powers who inadvertently adopted Barry’s twin were much nicer in this timeline but idk if he ever became Cobalt Blue or what. I hope he lived to old age. Apparently there have been multiple Cobalts Blue? Idk idc, Flash continuity what even are you.

Everyone thought Eobard Thawne was nuts, but he actually did go back in time and stop the Dash from destroying the world with nukes in a fit of rage, his historical analysis, method of giving himself speed powers, and time machine were all successful. He may additionally suffer from some degree of psychosis, but he wasn’t wrong. (His little brother still exists in this universe because good!Eobard wasn’t the type to manipulate time to erase inconvenient family members. He also doesn’t have the title Professor because he never got tenure, so he just goes by Zoom.)

-&-

Bart is still Don and Meloni’s kid. Frankly I don’t understand those two in the normal timeline, so it’s hard to construct their mirror versions in any depth or even decide whether they should get mirrored. (Probably not tbh.) But I don’t exactly need to, because the resulting Bart is very much the same and thus doesn’t really know them. He was still born with his weird speed glitch that caused him to be raised in a simulation, and eventually time-traveled to un-glitch him.

The difference is that he’s not a nice kid. He’s a two year old who looks twelve and has received all his socialization from reasonably good AI in a world that was not real. Where nothing had consequences. Where nobody was real.

He’s very frightening, is Impetus. Impetuous, wildly powerful, selfish–oddly sweet, occasionally, in the ‘gay and innocent and heartless’ way of Peter Pan, but probably even more likely than Peter to knife someone. He’s so delighted the first time he eats actual ice cream, as opposed to a simulated version, but the ice cream stand is now on fire.

Mirror Bart isn’t so much cruel or even un-empathetic as solipsistic. He’s arrested in the state of an intellectually advanced toddler playing, what’s that game called, the one where the objective seems to be getting in car chases a lot? When was the last time they made a new one, I feel like I haven’t heard it mentioned in ages, it’s a dead franchise isn’t it I’m old. Grand Theft Auto! That’s it. He doesn’t just not understand that danger is real, the way Impulse started out. People aren’t.

Impetus is easily bored and surrounded by NPCs. It gets ugly, sometimes.

He also time-travels a lot more frequently than normal Bart, because he doesn’t really get attached so he doesn’t try to maintain a normal life of any kind, so he pops up all over the timestream.

Jason Blood hated him personally long before Bart had any idea who he was; they have a villain rivalry plagued by causality issues and closed time loops that is alternately epic and stupid as fuck.

And then there’s Thad. Thad’s had a less awful time than he did in canon, I think–President Thawne is not technically a supervillain so he’s probably about the same as in the original timeline, but even assuming Meloni and Don are still out of the picture (probably it’s Barry’s fault in this dimension?) raising a kid as a ‘defense mechanism against a supervillain’ calls for less extreme brainwashing fuckery than raising one to hunt down a superhero.

So he probably behaved a bit more like a reasonable grandparent, simply because the context incentivized him to emphasize concepts like duty and loyalty more, and hatred less. He might even have been able to go public with Thad’s existence, depending on the spin he came up with. Among other factors.

But it was still a depressing, isolated, dehumanizing way to grow up, and it went on a long time, because as per canon Thad has the opposite problem from Bart in terms of how he passes through time. Motion is a 40-year-old man with a 12 year old’s body and approximate life experience.

Thad was already So Tired when he finally got out into the world on his own, and once he encountered Impetus he learned pretty quickly to both pity and fear him.

Even when Thad tries to avoid Bart and just have a life, Bart always crashes back into his existence again, and in the meantime he feels guilty. Because even if he could completely shake off having been raised to see countering Impetus as his whole reason for existence, he’d still feel a lot of personal responsibility to try, because he has the ability to stand up to him in a way almost no one else does, and he knows Bart’s out there resulting in casualties.

Due to all the time travel involved, even having just defeated Impetus doesn’t mean he’s not still out there at an accessible point in the timestream, needing to be stopped.

Impetus results in Motion the way Inertia resists Impulse. They’re very much locked into an action-and-reaction framework that does not even a little bit help with Thad’s clone identity issues.

Except for how the amount of time Thad spends saving people from Bart has slowly created a fairly large body of people over the course of history who know them as distinct entities, and like Thad a lot better.

Good feels good. ^^ It’s not necessarily the case that this happens, obviously, but with their alignment swap they also ultimately exchanged who’s defined by isolation. It takes Bart a long, long time to even understand that he’s lonely.

#flash family #thaddeus thawne #earth-3 #my take #bart allen #impetus and motion #the opposite of an evil twin #i hope this was the desired amount of everything #barry allen #BARRENCE #good and evil #mirror universe #ask #hoc est meum #wyldcard4

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moistwithgender · 5 years

Text

Monthly Media Roundup (May 2019)

The march of time inexorably proceeds beyond my grasp and so I must write another post. I’ve been a bit burned out, just focusing on one diversion (it was Zelda, you know it was Zelda), but after finishing it I recovered enough energy to get a few more things done in the last half of the month. I didn’t watch any anime or read any manga in May, though I did read some 70s Marvel, which I liveblog in my “curry reads comics” tag. Last time I did an actual capital-P Post about my Marvel reading was a year ago after marathoning a full(ish) decade. If people are interested in more of that I could work at making posts for each year of issues I read, recapping the developments and my thoughts on them (which will become more relevant as Events become more common, I imagine). I’ve just got a few games to talk about this month, but I imagine I have a lot to say about at least one of them.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): 2 years ago I did something I extremely rarely do: stood in line at a Best Buy at midnight for the release of the Switch so that I could buy it with BotW. BotW was also out on Wii U, which I had, but the promotional material for BotW had struck such a chord in me that it justified making the jump for the new console (this would eventually become troublesome when the first model of joycons failed, but, well). I got home, put some ten odd hours into it, and then put it down for two years. I’ve always had a problem where, struck with the intuition that I will end up forming a deep relationship with a work, I will put it off for years. I put off Persona 3 for five years after buying it at launch, and it eventually became the most personal game experience I would have, even seven years onward. I think the two factors that pushed me to finally play through BotW was wanting to watch a friend stream it (but also not wanting it spoiled for me), and needing a distraction for when I was taking care of my cat.

It’s been about two months now since he passed away, and I finally finished the game at 215+ hours about half a month ago. So, I was playing this game as a coping method while preparing for loss, and in dealing with loss. It’s appropriate that the game is effectively both a fantasy about reclaiming at least part of what you have lost, and a colossal exercise in coping. The game is as much about getting distracted from your responsibilities and fucking off to snowboard in the mountains as it is about being aware of the world around you. The Zelda games have frequently used themes of Shintoism to portray harmony in nature and in civilization. I’m currently replaying Ocarina of Time and the cosmogony myth (is it a myth if a talking tree explains it to you?) specifically words the goddesses as “[giving] the spirit of law to the world” and “[producing] all life forms who would uphold the law.” When I was younger (see: early 20s) I didn’t scrutinize the text much but now I figure it’s reasonable to read “law” as “natural order”. It should be noted that for an N64 game, OoT has remarkably good prose. BotW, in transitioning the series in what may be its third main genre (as opposed to the genres of Zelda 1 and OoT), has taken that Shintoist aesthetic and incorporated it into the entire philosophy of the game’s design. More than just being a game whose narrative concerns an imbalanced world, BotW embraces the trends of open worlds and immersive sims to create an immense, varied space where the coded laws of physics are always impacting the experience. Thunderstorms make metal equipment a liability, while rain covers the sounds of footsteps. Wind can sweep away items, fire and high temperatures affect flammable objects (including yourself), and aforementioned metallic items can conduct electricity, which can be used to solve puzzles in unintended ways. Weather changes regularly based on the region and changes the world in tandem. Rain doesn’t just fall, it actively collects, and ponds become bigger, and surfaces become slicker. Each systemic element (pun not intended) that was incorporated affected everything else in the world, and in interviews there were mentions that changing the volume of wind in one area had a butterfly effect on another, causing pots to fly off of patios in a village. It’s no wonder the game took five years to make, considering how rarely glitches occur in the game (and most that I know of have to be deliberately recreated for exploitation). You’re engaging with enemies as much as you are with the environment, and at times even with your own body, creating and consuming food and drink for the purpose of staving off sunstroke or frostbite. As a result, BotW’s Hyrule is immensely palpable, and easy to lose oneself in from how livable it feels.

When I first started playing at release, I was a bit disappointed to discover that villages existed in-game, as early promotional material and the state of the Great Plateau you start on painted a picture of a lonely world. In the end, the soundtrack and vast amount of uncolonized land does give an understated sense of melancholy that defines the game, though the fact that every five steps you’ll find a Korok micropuzzle waiting to YA HA HA and fanfare at you betrays that a bit (I still love those Koroks and their puzzles, don’t @ me). The NPCs in this are numerous, though, from the occupants of the villages to wandering traders, and their personalities are all distinct and charming, and probably the best I’ve ever seen in a game, or at least in a long time. If this game wasn’t railroading the Link/Zelda relationship so hard, I would have liked a Dragon’s Dogma-style “date any NPC (within reason)” mechanic. I’m just going to have to start a “NPCs you should marry” side-tumblr.

Another defining aspect of the gameplay, and easily what makes the game surpass arguably every other Zelda, is how Nintendo heard the decade or so of complaints about the linear Zelda lock-and-key formula being reiterated to the point of stagnation, and, after great success with A Link Between Worlds’ item rental subversion, just decided to make everything optional. You do the tutorial on the Great Plateau, and, if you feel especially gutsy, you can beeline it straight to Ganon. He’s in horse-riding distance, or running distance, if you’re tenacious. Will you make it to him, survive the hordes of enemies, and take him down? If it’s your first time playing the game and you haven’t learned the systems, probably not. Is it possible? Absolutely. Much like how the monthly cycle of a Persona game is a proverbial Rocky training montage of preparing for The Big Fight, everything you do in BotW is in preparation. A lot of open world games can feel dissonant in that you’re incentivized to be distracted as a player and make your own fun, meanwhile the protagonist keeps saying “I’m gonna get bloody revenge on the mafia boss!” during bowling matches. There is still, unavoidably, a sense of urgency played up for narrative sake in BotW, since Impa insists Zelda is waiting and can’t hold Ganon back forever, but it’s all much more narratively justifiable, if you want that. You know, because Zelda is for hardcore roleplaying.

I couldn’t resist a second playthrough, even after logging 215+ hours, so I went ahead and started a separate file on Master Mode, Nintendo’s weird in-house, in-franchise rebranding of, uh, a hard mode. Previously it was called Hero Mode. Why do you--well, okay, I know why they do it. They’re likely trying to distinguish it from a “we just tweaked the numbers” hard mode, and also want to make it feel less threatening than something labeled hard mode. If they’re going to go to the trouble to make it a distinct form of play, they want to try and appeal to everyone. And it is fairly distinct. All enemies are bumped up one rank, so a red bokoblin is blue, and a blue bokoblin is black, and so on. There is a new strongest rank of enemy, though in my run I did not seek them out. There are enemies (and treasure chests!) perched on flying rafts, which can be one-shot with proper bow aiming, but also carry dangerous elemental arrows, and can alert all other enemies in the area. Stealth is much more difficult, and pointless early in. All enemies regenerate up to a third of their health, including bosses! Though, that can be temporarily interrupted by inflicting any amount of damage on them, so it behooves you to be on the offense. Less autosave slots! This wasn’t a problem for me. Guardians randomly delay the firing of their beams! This was absolutely a problem for me and I avoided them entirely in my run. In the beginning when tools and resources are scare, particularly on the Great Plateau, Master Mode is at its hardest, and its most thrilling. Rather than aimlessly exploring, I was pressured to decide where I knew things were, and beeline it to them. Sometime in-between two of the four main optional dungeons, I had amassed enough valuable resources that the game had settled back into the same kind of difficulty as normal mode. Bosses were a little harder due to regen and my resources being somewhat scarcer, but they were manageable. Competently performing flurry attacks (upon successfully dodging attacks at the last second) was extremely valuable to me, but I imagine with enough food in my inventory, I could have brute forced my way through a lot of the fights (though, uh, obviously thou wouldst like to live deliciously (please hate me for this phrasing)). I chose to forego the Master Sword for the sake of challenge, and beat Master Mode with only seven hearts, in around 25 hours. You should play Master Mode, it’s fun.

Here’s a little gameplay SPOILER:

Something I haven’t done, but would like to eventually do, is avoid the main dungeons and just head straight to Ganon. When I played Master Mode, I wasn’t totally confident, and did the dungeons for the resources. After watching some speedruns I learned that if you skip the dungeons, and therefore the main bosses, you have to fight them all at once immediately before the fight with Ganon, without breaks.

That. Sounds. Great.

Wandersong (PC/Steam): Have you heard about Homestuck?

Okay, wait. Wait. Come back, wait. Stop leaving. PLEASE.

Okay, I got the most inflammatory sentence out of the way. Now that we’re eased into that: Wandersong is unignorably influenced by Homestuck. Homestuck conjured a lot of baggage, from having a really difficult, pretentious, arrogant author (I should know, I gave him the benefit of the doubt for way too long), to having some unfortunate narrative turns, to being a billion words long. Wandersong invokes the vaster-than-God scope, the minute and personal perspective of the heroes, and its inclinations toward emotional intelligence (it still surprises me Homestuck had these moments given the author’s deeply unsympathetic sense of humor), and… condenses it! It also makes it a light puzzle-platformer and is about performing music (note: not rhythm, you don’t have to have ANY rhythm), and looks like a Paper Mario game. It is very charming, very funny, very optimistic, and most surprisingly, uncompromising at times. Wandersong says that you, despite your role, are capable of great things, especially self growth and change, as long as you commit to it. If, faced with the consequences of your bad decisions, you choose to double down and keep at it, you will reap what you sow. This is distinctly different from Undertale’s brand of pacifism route optimism, where “no one has to die!” This brand of optimism is a measured but enthusiastic “you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, but you can save the rest” and I think that’s a uniquely valuable message.

I was a little confused about the resolution of the communist uprising chapter, but I recall the game bringing my cynicism into question, and the most important thing a work can do is make you question yourself.

(Also, if any of my mutuals are low on funds but interested, I do have a drm-free version I can share.)

Minit (PC/Steam): I don’t think I actually have a lot to say about Minit! It’s very fun and curious and short. You play a little… duck… thing, and you pick up a cursed sword which kills you in one minute. Then you wake up the next day, and die in a minute. Then you wake up the next day. Having only sixty seconds of vitality, you have to optimize your exploration. There’s a slow-speaking old man who you will die listening to, but the hint he gives at the end of his sentence will lead you to something valuable. There’s a guy in a bar angry about the lack of music. If you change the music, he will probably dislike it. If you keep changing the music, you might live to see him like it. There’s a boat ride to a tropical island you have to grit your teeth and wait through. Not all of the events are slow, some are quick bouts of hurried exploration. Most of it is, given the time limit. I’d say more, but given the overall length (it took me about an hour to finish), I’d risk spoiling a sizable fraction of the experience. It’s about $10, though I got mine in a Humble Bundle Monthly subscription. The spec requirements are very low, so your laptop can likely run it.

A Hat in Time (PC/Steam): Heads up, I’m gonna get into a lot of spoilers for this game, including endgame spoilers, but also heads up, the story isn’t really the point in this game. This is a game about tone and platforming. That said, I’m gonna be talking exclusively about the weird ideas in this game, and if you want those weird ideas to be a surprise, then just skip ahead until I put up big letters.

I’m somewhat hesitant to be critical of A Hat in Time because despite a number of weird Things about it, I recognize that it’s quite popular with a lot of people, and that always makes me pause and want to figure out what it is that makes it pass the bar for others. My guess at this point is that it invokes nostalgia through its unmitigated imitation of games that came before. The games it chooses to ape are all your childhood’s Greatest Hits, Wind Waker (which it most resembled in its earliest development), Super Mario Sunshine/Galaxy (which it most resembles now), Banjo-Kazooie, Psychonauts, etc. It never really surpasses those games, for me, and at times cribs from them to the degree that it obscures the game’s own identity. After all, what you enjoy may help define you, but you wouldn’t say it’s your personality. Well. Unless you kin the Gamecube. I guess. There are bonus levels to the game’s different “worlds” (I thought they were different planets, since your hub area is a spaceship, and you access them via different telescopes, but it turns out it’s just one planet?), and you can collect photographs, which sequentially tell a story about the residents of that “world”. Psychonauts did this because each level took place in the mind of a character, and the photos together told a story about the character that fundamentally changed the way you thought about them, and made the whole game feel richer as a result. I collected the photos for all but the DLC levels in AHiT (those are Really Hard), and of those five or so worlds, none of those bonus photos told me anything that changed how I thought about the characters. There’s a dock town run by a mafia (s-sorta) led by a chef, but did you know they all used to work at a processing factory before going there? There are two manipulative bird directors who are fighting over the same studio to produce their own film and win an award, but did you know they… wanted to be directors since they were kids? There’s a devil analogue who steals people’s souls if they wander into his forest, but did you know he was a prince, and the princess was mad he talked to another girl (it was a flower girl, he was getting flowers for the princess), and imprisoned him until they both the prince and princess turned into evil ghosts? That’s the only one that comes close to being an “oh” moment, but I don’t think it does for the reasons the writer was hoping for. In general, these are prologues without substance.

Speaking of substance, the game has a bit of an issue with theming. At least, it does at first. The first town is the previously mentioned dock town, run by a mafia. By “mafia”, I mean a bunch of meatheads who talk about how they like punching people, and refer to themselves individually, in the third person, as Mafia. Mafia loves to punch the poor and the birds. Mafia is a one-dimensional character copy-pasted across 20% of the game. Mafia laughs. They’re run by a chef, but also they can’t cook, so there’s a cat chef in hiding who routinely swaps out their food with his so no one has to eat bad food. I don’t know why, when the town has maybe three non-Mafia character. He does eventually leave and board your ship, so maybe he’s just looking for something to do. The leader of the mafia also boards your ship, for a joke and to sell you an upgrade. The mafia are also afraid of mud monsters, or aliens, or something. There’s a girl with a moustache named Moustache Girl who wants to use your Time Macguffins to overthrow organized crime, and Hat Girl decides that’s a no-go. There are giant faucets around the town that replace all the water with lava. You might be noticing these things have little to no connection. You might be suspecting this level was made first when the dev was inexperienced. I might be suspecting this. It’s fine.

Later worlds do a much better job of theming. There’s the movie studio split between two birds. One of them a penguin, who prefers science fiction, the other a…

...hmmm. I suspect this guy, The Conductor, is an OC the director has had for a while, maybe since childhood, that they just decided Is A Bird, and carried it into the game, since the game occasionally is like... bird?? Alternatively, it’s some sort of corruption of Woodstock from Peanuts. Possibly both. Anyway, this guy just wants to make movies that take place on wild western trains. He has a strong fake Scottish accent, and the penguin, named DJ Grooves, is some sort of disco Elvis. They’ve both hired owls as actors, and some crows have snuck onto the train set (the crows are so obviously the G-Men from Psychonauts’ Milkman level it bothers me a bit). This is already a little busy, but it’s okay! Birds, movies, two distinct genres, and you trapped in-between them, just trying to collect your macguffins. It works. You take part in both of their movies, and your performance in both determines the winner, when suddenly… CORRUPTION WAS AFOOT, and you have to explore the depths of the studio and engage in a showdown.

Another world is a spooky forest where your access is restricted by completing certain contracts for the devilish character. Sometimes it’s murder (reasonable), exploring a haunted mansion in survival horror format (ooh!), fixing the plumbing in a well (wait, what), and doing mail delivery (back up back up). Half of that works. The finale of the forest makes up for it, though. This game insists on most of its bosses having like 4-5 phases and breaks for dialogue and the gall required to get away with that honestly earned my respect. They’re pretty fun times.

The best level to play is, unsurprisingly, the first DLC. I say unsurprising because it’s clear the dev is learning as they go, and the level design improves as they go along. Aside from bonus levels, the first DLC takes place on a massive cruise liner titled the SS Literally Can’t Sink. Ha ha. It’s split into three parts. The first part has you exploring the many interconnected rooms of the ship to find broken shards of a macguffin, the second part has you taking that mental map and using it to frantically complete multiple timed fetch quests at once, and the third part, now that you understand the ship pretty intimately, capsizes the ship, requiring you to traverse frigid waters and overturned scenery to retrieve babies and the ship’s incompetent but adorable baby seal crew (the seals speak in hewwo talk, the game is unforgivably loaded with memes but let me have this). This progression is my favorite in the game, and while I haven’t bought the Nyakuza Metro DLC, I’m looking forward to it.

The ending level had me a bit bewildered at first because in the beginning when Hat Kid refuses to use time powers to stop organized crime, I saw it as a hamfisted way to create tension between Hat Kid and Moustache Girl. Apparently it was working up towards the moral of the story. In the final level, Moustache Girl has stolen all the macguffins, and possessing ultimate power, becomes corrupted ultimately, and summons everyone in the world to her Bowser castle to be judged and die. On first glance, I thought “well, sure, that’s sensible,” but when Hat Kid finds the support of all the villains in the game, I was a little confused. The villains sacrifice themselves to give you infinite health, explicitly stating that they’ll just come back through time magic if you win so who cares (cool stakes), and you overcome authoritarianism with the support of corrupt hollywood, organized crime, and the literal devil. This would be fine if at some point Hat Kid, you know, took them on a Zuko Quest to face turn all of them, but that doesn’t happen. They just all decide “hey yeah, fuck this girl! Also we don’t have time for the nuance this might require!” After all is said and done and you collect all your macguffins, you’re given the choice of leaving the defeated Moustache Girl a single macguffin so she can defeat the mafia (whose side are we on) or just saying nahhh. Neither appears to make a difference, but maybe in a year or two we’ll get a DLC that makes you regret your words and deeds. You try to fly your ship to your home planet, and the villains all grab on to your ship, which is in space, begging you not to leave. I seriously suspect they intended to incorporate face-turn scenes and just couldn’t find the time, because nothing but physical proximity implies these guys would have any emotional attachment to Hat Kid, and that’s a bit of a stretch. Anyway, Hat Kid brooms them off the ship to plummet down to earth and flies away. Sheds a tear about the whole thing. In the end, the moral was that Order good, but too much Order bad, except if you are Hat Kid, in which case Chaos good. Or maybe…

After finishing the game I decided to look into any left over secrets, since my completion score was in the 80s of percents. Turns out that if you use the camera badge to finagle the free look feature into a marginally open armoire somewhere on your spaceship, you can find a shrine to Hat Kid with a couple skulls, a bunch of blurry photos, and some strange symbols. If you doing this while wearing the mask that lets you see the secrets of the dead (for platforming and puzzle purposes, of course), there’s a bunch of alien text you can decode. And then there’s some youtube channels. And a twitter account. All sharing more of those decodable ciphers, all talking about vague dreamy apocalyptic histories and dark betrayals. Or something. That’s right, this game’s got a fucking ARG. I cut things off there. If the developer Gears for Breakfast is gonna make an occultist grimdark sequel to A Hat in Time, they can put up a trailer for it.

OKAY I’M DONE TALKING ABOUT A HAT IN TIME, the short of it is that I had a lot of mixed feelings but had fun.

How did I end up talking more about A Hat in Time than Breath of the Wild? What are my priorities?

Well, that’s everything I finished in May! Will I get back to anime and manga in June? Guess we’ll see! Again, let me know if you want me to do year-recap Marvel posts, since my liveblogging is mostly just shitposts, and the occasional attempt at thoughtfulness among those posts feels kind of out of place. Honestly, I’m probably gonna do that anyway, but it’s nice to see interest. If you read all this, thanks a lot! Go play Breath of the Wild and Wandersong.

#curry plays games

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