#business benefit

[yakityyaku]

As someone whose degree was borderline digital marketing, it baffles me every single time companies like Unity pull this kind of shit.

First of all, it doesn't make sense. I don't know who conceived this moronic fee plan, but it's absolutely absurd. There's a lot of ways to get more money - not that I find any of them particularly favorable, but at least a price increase, sub tiers, etc are somewhat sensible in a functional way.

Beyond that, they don't have any common sense to see how this shit ALWAYS fails. One of two things are going to happen. Either everyone is going to jump ship from Unity (already seeing game devs reporting they'll be pulling their games) and their competitors will overtake them, or they'll have to backpedal.

Obviously, losing most of their business is bad and understandably unwanted for them, but I'm baffled by how few recognize the power of the second consequence.

Even if they reverse the decision, this is a HUGE smear to their reputation. Unity will lose business regardless, but even worse will be the loss of confidence in the company.

Consumers and devs alike are not going to forget this. They will not let it go. Other companies will use this as a talking point for their engines and their assets being superior because they at least respect game devs and gamers. They never tried to charge bullshit fees. They never got shamed back into being user friendly.

Reputation matters. Especially in today's market. Consumers largely do not fuck around anymore with companies who do this, especially when they've been dependable in the past.

It's foolish. It's embarrassing. It's greedy and out of touch. I don't envy their PR team right now.

[escyn]

some more thoughts about Her (Suki aged 25-30)

+ some bonus zukki

[mswyrr]

the Sept scene was fully in character for Rhaenyra & Alicent

I've seen fans--even Rhaenicent fans!--saying it was ooc or "fanfic." It wasn't. The original scene was much shorter: Emma and Olivia, two very talented actors who know their characters well, expanded it. They weren't just wasting time or suddenly lacking in talent and insight. They knew what they were doing and it connects all the way back.

So let's go all the way back! Where do we begin? Episode 1x01, King Viserys wants a son and male heir; he has wanted a son for so long that Rhaenyra, his 14-year-old daughter says (ep 1x01) "For as long as I can recall, it’s all he’s wanted." What has this done to her? Well, for one thing, it has made her mother, who has difficult pregnancies, in ill health for most of her life. This ill health means that Aemma did a lot of lecturing (and trying to keep Rhaenyra from flying and doing other risky things while she was sick) and not a lot of getting to spend quality time with her daughter. A distracted father, ruling the realm, and a mother sick with trying to give him the male heir he prioritizes above his wife and daughter.

Who has been there for Rhaenyra? Alicent. Alicent was hers. When Rhaenyra flies on her dragon, experiencing freedom from all her worries and power and joy, she wants ALICENT to be there with her, high above the sea, looking out over the city:

[source: 1x01 script]

When Rhaenyra had to have a difficult conversation with her mother, it was Alicent she looked to for comfort and emotional support -- in an act a cut scene from the script *explicitly calls "flirting"*. Rhaenyra relies on and longs for that "disarming kindness" she says Alicent has.

And it was Alicent's lap that Rhaenyra flirts about loving to lie upon. Alicent is so much to Rhaenyra that she dreams of running away together, just the two of them and Rhaenyra's bonded dragon Syrax.

Alicent was her cherished girl, her comfort and her chief supporter and advisor. She was Rhaenyra's heart's rest. And, yes - it was a friendship blossoming into flirtation and desire as the two matured. They were on the cusp of something. They were the world to each other.

[source]

Emma and Olivia get it and have always gotten it. Rhaenyra has this gorgeous yang or solar energy that finds balance with Alicent's yin or lunar energy. They're a sun and moon couple, balancing each other's strengths and weaknesses. With Alicent, the sword of Rhaenyra's intense energy has a sheath. A resting place. Her fire has a hearth. And Alicent isn't drained by people (like Viserys would later do...) who just take and take and take -- hurting her and draining that "disarming kindness" of hers until she's broken and ruined inside. Rhaenyra gives and cherishes in a way that made Alicent feel whole and appreciated.

Rhaenyra goes from being angry (angry the way a jilted lover would be - calling Alicent a "whore" for what she felt emotionally imo as Alicent cheating on Rhaenyra with her father) to instantly deeply protective and possessive once she learns more. See the cut scene after Viserys reveals his engagement to Alicent:

[script pages source] [photo source]

Rhaenyra is ready to take on the whole Seven Kingdoms to protect her girl!

Rhaenyra liked being the focus of Alicent playing the "lady beloved" role - reading soothingly to her, supporting and encouraging and admiring her, teasing her for being naughty, advising her about her political situation. She found rest and comfort there - and then Viserys took her mother, cutting her open to get his precious son out. And then, in his remorse and grief, he took comfort in Rhaenyra's girl (who was forced to give him that precious kindness of hers by her father) and her father *stole her girl too*. Not only did he steal her girl, he put her own status as heir into question by having a firstborn son with her - after wounding Rhaenyra deeply by chasing a son as far back as she could remember!

All the "she should be over it" stuff about Alicent... if Rhaenyra were a male character people would recognize the wound of having his crush stolen out from under him by his old man at the same time his old man refuses to fully back his status as heir - it's archetypal! It's gd Greek. Your old man trying to keep you from the girl you want, from your desires and destiny as an adult.

Rhaenyra makes total sense in the Sept scene - she has the primal wound of a girl who is an HEIR - who wanted to have things and act and possess and stand tall and be the lover to a girl's beloved in a way only boys are allowed in this society... and whose father took her girl away from her as well as making her feel uncertain of her status in a deeply wounding way. Rhaenyra correctly locates, emotionally, her rupture from Alicent as where it all went wrong. The Sept scene is about all of that emotionally and it makes total sense. It is also about Rhaenyra's sheer desperation and comprehension of the horror coming... and the most heartbreaking longing to return to a time when Alicent's heart was her home.

Alicent's heart was Rhaenyra's home. And her father stole the girl she loved. He took her and savaged and used and broke her and made her give birth to children she didn't want (at least not with him) from decades of sex she did. not. want. because even men who think they're nice in this society are allowed that - to cut a wife open for a son, to use a girl young enough to be his daughter. He vacillated between wounding and affirming Rhaenyra, never fully able to honor her as his heir because she was not a boy. And he couldn't even conceive of her feelings for Alicent because this is a deeply homophobic society - but he was also, even seeing it in a platonic light, selfish and inconsiderate of her feelings for her best friend.

He kept putting his feelings and needs first, over his wife, over his daughter, over her best friend.

I don't care if nobody else gets it - the way Emma plays it? They get it. They're an extremely talented actor who wasn't going "ooc" in the Sept - they were playing *that*. My father inflicted these primal wounds on me because my coming of age was more like a boy's--like things that should be allowed girls but are denied them-- and he thwarted me and yet I love him. And I love Alicent and I long for her heart, though it's full of poison and broken things now. Why does it all have to be like this? Why does it have to hurt so much?

The Sept scene is entirely in character for both of them. It is not "fanfic." It is not OOC. It is the broken heart of this tragedy bleeding before our eyes.

[warningsine]

GIRLS5EVA • Summer Dutkowsky

[notbecauseofvictories]

I think a lot these days about how much bigger the U.S. is than Europe. I mean, part of this is just working for a European company---I talk to our legal counsel based in Paris, and they forget that California (about 75% the size of all of France) has a new law we have to care about, because---well, that's just a state! who cares about a state! My colleagues regularly refuse to travel to a country that's essentially 3 hours of train travel away, because that's so far! ignoring the fact that I have traveled 4 hours to our sister company within the U.S. and regularly drive 1+ hours to the office. (While that's annoying and I don't advocate for it, it's not necessarily unthinkable, that's my point.)

On my way home, I was listening to an NPR story about the Portugal model of drug diversion. It was a great story, thoughtfully reported and contextualized in the recent backlash against decriminalization in the U.S.---but their point of comparison with Portugal was New Jersey. Because they're about the same size, the Republic of Portugal and one of the smallest states in my nation. I just think that when we ask ourselves why things work differently in different countries, "literally, physically different" should occasionally feature in the conversation.

[ink-the-artist]

forgive me if you've been asked this before or if its annoying, but how did you learn to use colored pencils like that? your art is so special to me.

ty :) I took an art class for a few years where our teacher had us buy prismacolor pencils as one of the art supplies and had us use them kinda like paints, pressing down hard right away and blending the colors together. its not how youre supposed to use them she was just trying to teach us to use color and ig this was more to the point. I picked them up again years after i stopped going to that class just bc they were there and i wanted to play around w them a bit and ended up actually enjoying it when doing it on my own terms lol

[dcdreamer23]

As a casual Watcher fan, it's too little too late.

First off, I want to say that if you're happy with the apology video, that's great! I'm honestly happy for you. I personally don't feel the same, and I wanted to share my two cents.

I think it's a great apology video that addresses all fan concerns... from Friday. The truth is the response took so long to come out that the community dug out a lot of not-so-great things to light. Everything from homophobia, to entitled behaviors, to cost-breakdowns of productions and the company as a whole. Obviously it's impossible to address all of that at once and maintain any kind of focus, and there's plenty of things that frankly could never truly be discussed with the public.

But by waiting so long to respond these questions did arise and are still in the air. If fans are happy to move on for now that's fine but I get the feeling it'll still bite Watcher sooner or later. How will Watcher address the disconnect between their apparent ambitions for large productions and their audience's desires for small, personality-driven content? What new shows do they hope to produce? Will they reconsider their release schedule to create more content? Will fan-provided content appear behind the pay-wall at all for any length of time???

But for me the biggest question is whether they truly originally wanted to remove ALL of their content from YouTube to a new paywalled platform and give viewers one-month notice. To me, judging by the language in their video, their original statement to Variety, and the fact that they did start removing content after the video dropped all points to yes. Yes, they were going to move all their content to an unsecured platform (with no app, captions, international accessibility!) for $6/month. And they never addressed that in the apology video!!!

I personally just can't get past it on top of all the other things that were brought up in the last 72 hours.

[nordfjording]

+ this isnt about american politics specifically as we're seeing the same thing over here but people saying they'll vote conservative because for the last 4yrs the economy has been tough like gosh. darn. wonder why that might be. bet it couldn't have anything to do with the veritable conveyor belt of Shitty Shit Happening Internationally for the last few years no certainly it all hinges on whoever whichever nation has sitting in the big chair atm. and im sure it wouldve been tons better if that person represented the side that very clearly says they don't give a flying fuck about keeping people's heads above water.

[feargender]

I think what frustrates me about the whole “they didn’t teach us this in school” “yes they did” “no they didn’t” argument is that like. Maybe the lesson was happening in your classroom. Or maybe the lesson was happening in the room across the hall, because at age 15 you were told to decide whether or not you were going to attend a four year university or pursue a trade, and then based on that decision (which is largely based on your family’s economic status) you no longer get to learn certain subjects.

My second grade class was over 30 students, many of whom didn’t speak English (and in this particular case these were all Spanish speaking children), but there were no more spaces in the ESL class. So my teacher paired the seven year olds who spoke both English and Spanish with the ones who only spoke Spanish, in the hopes that their translational skills would be enough to get everyone to third grade, where there still wouldn’t be more spaces in the ESL class.

In my current certification program, we are meant to do a research project. Just a simple essay. My classmates that I’m personally friends with are 18, 25, 29, and 43 years old. All of them finished high school with either a diploma or GED. None of them knew how to create a basic 5 paragraph essay structure. This weekend, I am going to demonstrate an outline from my own project topic, and we will learn to construct an essay together, and how to format citations.

At a certain point in teenage and adulthood, it is absolutely true that you are responsible for seeking out your own information. “We didn’t learn this in school” is not a good excuse for a 20 year old American who doesn’t know where Palestine is. And yes, a major component of K-12 is the English and language arts portion, in which you’re taught media interpretation and literacy skills. These things are impressed upon all children who attend American public school, which is the scope of my experience and what I am able to speak on.

But those classes are of little use to people who don’t speak the language they’re being taught in. Or if they’re in a desperately overcrowded classroom. An underfunded district without enough text books to go around. Or, after a certain point in high school, you’re pulled out of English because your transcript requirements changed, since you’re not expected to attend a traditional university. The examples go on.

My point isn’t that we actually should never expect people to take responsibility for their own ignorance, just that we should not underestimate the impact of never being taught something, or the likelihood that many people genuinely were never taught.

[thatrandombystander]

What the FUCK this was SO fucked up.

Hey Vash you've heard that your enemies have located your home and you're terrified that they've been hurt so you go and check on them, gun drawn as the door opens, expecting to see the worst.

But look! They're all ok! Thank god! They welcome you with joy and love and open arms! You're so relieved! You're so so happy to see they're fine!

And then it all goes wrong! They're all fake facsimiles of the people you love! Puppets so identical to the people you love that I can only assume they were carved from their corpses. They were dead before you ever opened the door!

You go from blissful joy and relief to absolute crushing anguish all because of some SICK FUCK purposefully decided to mess with you!

What the FUCK this is awful I'm going to go scream into a pillow to process before I read the next chapter.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

An estimated 31 million Americans have now been thrown off what’s been called “the hunger cliff.”

Those drastic cuts have food banks bracing for impact, and some grocery executives celebrating. On a late February earnings call of Grocery Outlet, a discount supermarket chain that relies on SNAP for a high percentage of its sales, the company’s chief financial officer cheered the coming reductions. “In many ways,” he told investors, it “is good for our model as those benefits decline.”

“It does put more pressure on those consumers, and they come to us to stretch their dollar,” he said of the impending cuts.

[flygefisk]

she is really pretty grown up but... babey........

[ongicloud]

Teru Mikami is a CERTIFIED freak. 25/8. He saw Light's freak and not only matched it but went beyond it. Unhinged man. Love him!!!

[albobeati7]

More Dusky escapades under the cut for my Huskerdust AU!

Niffty getting her money's worth!

Husk doesn't mind either cuz that money is SOME GOOD and he WILK be gambling and drinking to his hearts content after this session 😌 😏

[stealingyourbones]

Just had this idea,

Danny has been very busy as of late due to school, helping his family, his occasional rogue, and some pricey duties.

Because of this, Danny isn't able to investigate a bunch of recent ghostly activity (Lazarus Pits, cults, ecto weapons, random ghosts) so he sent a bunch of his most trusted (those who he can bribe into work by promising a fight later.) to investigate, though they do bring attention to themselves along the way.

So all around the world, the justice league is witnessing what they believe to be powerful metas doing specific, connected jobs for some unknown party.

So they can only assume that there is a new powerful supervillain in town that is orchestrating a large team of highly trained, powerful metas for unknown reasons.

Obviously they can only assume the worst.

They go to stop the Big Bad™ and find an exhausted College student.

[thepersonalwords]

Stop entertaining two faced people. You know the ones who have split personalities and untrustworthy habits. Nine times out of ten if they telling you stuff about another person, they're going to tell your business to other people. If they say, "You know I heard........." More than likely it's in their character to share false information. Beware of your box, circle, square! Whatever you want to call it.

Amaka Imani Nkosazana, Sweet Destiny