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myconetted · 10 months

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more tumblr meta in response to @alliered's post here

be warned: i am inarticulate yet verbose

on volunteer work

Tumblr has around 200 full-time employees. As of 2019, it looks like it had 16 million monthly active users. Two hundred people is just not a lot of people to run a social media site, which has to follow regulatory requirements and do moderation and all that shit. Volunteer work is going to happen and you can't really get around it. That's how scrappy teams operate.

Is tumblr chaotic? Yes. Could it stand to be more organized? ...Maybe? I remember the glassdoor reviews saying it was total cowboy culture and you were mostly left to your own devices. @jv (who works at tumblr) has also commented in late 2022 that tumblr is still very decentralized and you're encouraged to ask forgiveness rather than permission.

I don't work at tumblr so I have no idea how much of a problem this is, but it's worth remembering the point I made earlier: you can reduce chaos and thrash by adding process at the cost of making everything slightly slower. For tumblr specifically, since it's a remote team distributed across timezones, requiring people to come to meetings to make decisions can make things a lot slower because there will only be a few hours in the day that everyone can attend a meeting and limited overlapping waking hours. You're in the US and you wanted to ask your manage in the UK about whether you need to work on X or Y? Hopefully you asked in the morning, because your 2pm is their 10pm!

When you have a small enough team where everyone is very senior, it can actually be a huge productivity boost to do things in a pretty ad-hoc way. I personally have witnessed the transition from a ~70 person org to a 150-200 person org, and at 70 people we didn't need internal newsletters or super-fancy ticketing systems or dedicated project managers. Everyone knows everyone and can just ping each other directly. At 150-200 people, that starts to break down, and you get into situations where two teams might be working on very similar things without knowing.

Maybe that's something tumblr could do better, but it's also the type of thing that requires a shitload of concerted effort to get right: the worst thing you could do is introduce a bunch of middle management who end up wasting more time than they save because they don't have enough background information or technical expertise.

new features

also for bug fixing and new features.... the thing is that many users speak more on NOT wanting so much time spent on what seem like weightless updates when we want more focus in issues that have existed for weeks, months, and even years.

I think this point is really important for understanding a lot of the recent changes around tumblr that have occurred basically ever since it got acquired by automattic. Here's the bottom line: tumblr is not profitable and never has been. That means everything tumblr has been doing until now is not enough.

Tumblr needs more users and it needs to get more money from those users, or it dies. That's it.

The easiest and most reliable way to make money is to serve ads, serve a ton of them, and let advertisers pay more to target specific user demographics with their ads. In 2022, 90% of twitter's revenue was from ads. But tumblr's owners and staff don't want to do that, so they're exploring other options.

Which is why you've been seeing new features you didn't ask for: tumblr needs users, tumblr needs money; if the current features aren't cutting it, then they need to find some new features that will. Some features like the "live" thing are an attempt to get more users and/or engagement, to lure people in from other platforms like tiktok and instagram who are into that kind of thing. Other features, like the checkmarks and badges and merch, are more directly about getting money.

You may not like non-chronological timelines, but users coming from other platforms haven't had to curate their own feeds for like a decade now and just have no idea how to do that--tumblr offers recommendation-based feeds because it's empirically successful and helps you retain users. So you can see they're trying a lot of different things right now.

You might be wondering why this has only started happening within the last two or so years even though automattic acquired tumblr in late 2019. If public statements are worth anything, it's because they spent the first couple years rebuilding a shitload of backend infrastructure, probably paying down a ridiculous amount of technical debt, in order to make the platform stable and flexible enough for staff to work on a bunch of new features at once without worrying about extreme jank or bringing the whole platform down because someone removed a load-bearing print statement.

spam bots

Matt, CEO of automattic and the guy who's currently running tumblr as his highest priority, said last year that tumblr would need 2 million users to buy ad-free browsing in order to offset tumblr's running costs. At $40/yr, that's $80m annually to keep the lights on for tumblr.

EDIT: Here's a post from another staff member who breaks this down in a lot more detail and explains the motivation for the Live feature.

Fighting spam is just a notoriously difficult problem that no one has solved. The current situation mainly boils down to: get rid of all the spambots, or avoid accidentally banning real users. Pick one. That's it! To put this into perspective, neither Facebook nor Twitter have figured it out either. And they're both huge compared to tumblr, not just in terms of headcount but also in terms of the engineers they attract: we're talking about the combined efforts of hundreds of smart engineers who have tons of resources to tackle this problem. They haven't figured it out. In 2019 when tumblr was acquired by automattic, it had a total of 200 employees, whereas twitter had 4,900 and facebook/meta had 45,000. All things considered, I think tumblr's doing a pretty good job both in their automatic detection and their reporting system.

This is also one of those areas where people will be very tight-lipped about the specific things they're doing to fight spam, and for good reason. Fighting spam is a constant battle where each side is updating their strategies and trying new things. I don't know if you've noticed, but these spambots come in waves (at least that's how I've experienced it). The influx of spambots come in, tumblr figures out how to prevent and ban them, the spammers figure something else out, a new wave comes in, rinse and repeat. Making public posts about how the spambot detection works is a great way to tell spammers how to evade detection.

would finding a way to make the sign up process more difficult for spam bots be able to clear up resources elsewhere?

Yes, making sign-ups harder can make it more difficult for spammers to make accounts. But it also makes it harder for people to sign up. And again, tumblr can't really afford to add friction to the sign-up flow, because friction means losing potential users, and tumblr needs users. Also you would be surprised how easily spammers are able to circumvent these kinds of things so you end up in a state where you have fewer user sign-ups but the bots are still everywhere.

user feedback (tickets)

I mostly ran out of energy at this point but with respect to whether or not staff knows about things users want and how they're keeping track: that's what the ticketing system is for! That's why cyle keeps telling people to make tickets! The support tickets are how tumblr staff keep track of problems users are having and feature requests. Those tickets are connected to a ticket tracker where they can keep track of spikes in user requests and bugs and spam bots. I know it sounds stupid and it sounds like they're just telling you to put your suggestions directly into the trash, but that's actually the for-real tracking system they use for monitoring bugs and feedback. Everything else, like the various official and personal blogs, are because they're passionate about making some of this stuff visible to users.

So yeah they could maybe make portions of their internal tracker more public so users can see what tumblr is prioritizing, but that introduces its own problems, up to and including making the tracker less useful to staff. (I don't know if you've ever seen the chromium tracker. It's a nightmare.)

---

anyways tldr:

money hard without ads

tumbler need money and probably has to get this money without a significant headcount increase (not sure how much runway automattic has, but it's probably less than in 2019 because of the pandemic and the econony and all)

maybe tumblr could benefit from more internal process and organization but it's really hard to say as an outsider

otherwise i think it's kinda hard to ask staff to do more than what they're already doing cause they're doing a lot rn

don't let that stop you from giving them feedback, because even when you feel like all your feedback is going into a black hole whenever you open a support ticket, that's actually how they track these things. nothing screams user feedback like 300 new tickets in the queue about the same thing and they actually have to close those things out

i really didn't appreciate that last bullet point until i started working at a company with a product. users would ping individual engineers about things being busted and it's always like DUDE you're supposed to email support so it actually gets seen!! otherwise it's just hanging around in someone's inbox!

#my:poast

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chaifootsteps · 5 months

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So anyway. I'm enraged <3 everything about the music video makes me mad <3 I figured at LEAST if nothing else it was nice that Paranoid DJ got some more recognition. Honestly, amazing for him! He's a stand up chap and he deserves every good thing that's ever come his way. Like Micheal, Ashley and other unsung heros he did SO MUCH for hazbin/helluva and making us fall in love with the characters. BUT. THEY. BARELY. CREDITED HIM. And I am mad. I'm even more mad she did nothing in the video captions other than stick a middle finger up to her haters and the drama of the week. That is not the spirit of indie I fell in love with where she used to thank all her viewers and supporters, staff and collaborators. So instead I decided to look for something happy! SPINDLE'S PRECARIOUS FINANCES: https://graphtreon.com/creator/VivienneMedrano Notice on the graph the steady drop in subscribers Viv has gotten on her patreon since this time last year, 2022. (5.1k to 3.5k) If I'm being generous and looking at her peak a few days ago, (because everyone drops their sub and resubscribes at the end of each the month) she makes about 5.7k a month which adds up to 68.4k a year. Which could sound like an okay salary for ONE person but her patreon says she employs "100+ artists and crew members". that is 100+ people she is paying. I spent forever learning about youtube pay rates tonight. RPM is the term used for the amount a youtuber makes per 1000 ad views and it varies SO MUCH its hard to say what Viv's RPM is. BUT!!! The average rpm for a youtuber is $18. However many many forums have discussed that the category of a video greatly changes its rpm. For example, finance and tech videos have a top rpm due to their demographic (more affluent viewers that advertisers want to target) the younger/poorer the video's audience demographic is, the lower the rpm. Gamers are considered among the lower paid but EVEN LOWER THAN THAT are animators. They make PENNIES. (which is kind of sad because they have the highest effort videos and can't mass produce) I've seen animators say they get about 40 to 60 cents per 1000 views. I have no idea what vivziepop makes from youtube but I think it could be $600-18,000 as an absolute ceiling per 1 mil views.

Again, she has an entire studio to pay. Therefore, MOST of spindles money comes from merch and when you factor in the EXTREME oversaturation of merch with the declining viewers, toxic fandom and obvious loss of interest from die hards (based on her patreon) her merch sales are PLUMMETING. Her vacation money right now is probably from her Hazbin contract. Apparently for first time show runners, they make about $30,000 per episode. That's $240,000 she made for season 1 and will make maybe that much or more for season two. It's a good amount of money!! But with her spending rates, the mortgage on her home (that can't be paid off if she was begging for money to pay her dentist in 2019 and hadn't bought the house yet), her lifestyle and studio are NOT sustainable unless hazbin/helluva is her just her foothold in the industry and not the apex of her career.

While she's living the high life like she's 'made it' her whole career is in a very precarious place and what matters the most right now is her online conduct and the quality of her products to determine if she will find work in the future. Of course on the most pessimistic front, she could probably pull it together and do what she does best and leech off other peoples talents for the rest of her career. (eg stepping back, becoming the ceo of spindle and bringing in a network of indie shows by talented new creators that she can slap her name on as a producer and get half the credit)

Anon, there's not a lot of things I enjoy more than good, hard number crunching at Viv's expense. This is sublime.

Hope you're enjoying that Japan-spanning trip full of tea shops and abused animal petting, Viv, because it was probably the worst thing you could have done for yourself at a time like now.

#Anonymous #vivziepop critical #actual blog post

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the-bjd-community-confess · 6 months

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Hello, Anon, this is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️. I am sorry to keep you waiting. As you’ve probably noticed, vinyl and non-resin dolls are usually not my forte. It took a while to dig up some information for you, but I hope to be able to answer your questions.

The advent of “Cheaper, affordable MJDs” didn’t come from the desire to make BJDs affordable. In fact, the technology that really elevated the production of this kind of MJDs started from what we understand as vinyl collectibles. These small figurines are made from a combination of PVC powders as well as a series of other emulsifiers, lubricators and activators (From the factory that produces them, here: http://www.dgzhonglinhb.com/news_content-859681.html ) Different companies have slightly different recipes, which would explain the different pliability of their final products. The technology was first created as a way to create memorabilia that are of limited edition and they were first considered as collectibles. They’re known internally as “Urbanvinyls” and include signed trinkets that can go for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Some examples would be KAWS, Kidrobot, Tokidoki, Bearbrick etc.

With the rise of “Made in China” soft power, the internally patriotic sentiment had fostered local artist-designed vinyl collectibles, which had eventually ballooned into the blind box craze that we see in the last 4-5 years. It also opened a door for vinyl/PVC based MJDs. I do not think they were specifically made to usurp the DD/SmD market, but since “moe sells”, a lot of the new doll companies go with the cute, anime-inspired aesthetic while the blind boxes cater to more design elements. These newly designed MJDs tend to be small, usually 1/12 and 1/6; larger ones exist, but they are rare. In all, they are created to be much more like their direct inspiration, the “blind box collectibles” than what we would usually consider to be articulated dolls. It also meant their target demographic is very different as well. The lower price point allows more people to impulse buy out of FOMO; these are things you buy on a whim instead of saving up to buy.

In this arena, Imómó is not alone in terms of aesthetic, pricing or packaging. Other companies in this group include Hüa Jüan, Tïny Fóx, UFdóll, CNDóll, Kimdóll, Pópmilk, Mónst and the upcoming YünLai/LückyDoll, etc (but not YMY – who has lost a battle with Piccodo for copying their body design recently). These dolls are created with a higher number in circulation in mind – but still limited enough to stimulate the FOMO behaviour – with shared features (sharing bodies, design elements, etc). To keep the production cost down, these dolls would be considered rather threadbare compared to BJDs. I have seen box opening videos where the floating “blind box” heads were packaged in a brown shipping box and wrapped around in clear plastic bags with no other packaging material. The “accessories” for these dolls are usually close to none as well – no or very simple COAs, basic box, air-filled tubes instead of fabric cushions, etc.A snapshot in time in online stores shows that Imómó is definitely not an outlier in the new era of MJDs: https://weibo.com/1448114577/Nj9fqfog3

https://www.dollyteria.com/product-list/58?page=1

If there’s something that really made Imómó stand out, it was the rumours that spread within Chinese doll collectors earlier in the summer of 2023 about the company not issuing legitimate receipts (usually with the intention to cook their books to pay less in taxes). They accuse Imómó of being a “Three Nothings” company (no date of manufacture, no QC and no source factory) with really awful customer service. They had registered the company as an “overseas-based” one so they would be in a different tax bracket. Some collectors also accuse the owner and their family members infiltrating doll collector groups to hype up their own products and downplay the complaints. A popular agent, SWDólls, were also implicated in helping them to not issue traceable receipts. (Details and screen grabs can be found here: https://weibo.com/7303299294/N8lHE6wGE?type=repost ) I have also heard of owners who complain about the parts not fitting well, the seamlines were wide and uneven as well as other imperfections that should’ve never passed QC, if there was a QC.

I understand that most of us, who are looking in from the outside, would wholly welcome a new era of articulated dolls that are affordable. They are a great entry point for people who want to get into BJDs or just want to collect these dolls on their own. I personally think they are great the way they are, because they are starting to populate a brand-new market for people who like dolls in general. However, the first company that most folks encounter in this group was probably Imómó. I cannot comment on the accusations made by the Chinese collectors; all I can say is, I am hoping that the other named companies start to make headway into the overseas market. We’d been waiting.

Note: The write up here didn’t include previously existing vinyl dolls such as Azóne and Obitsü or the vinyl versions of resin dolls such as Kinókó Jüice and Püyüdolls. This write-up only includes MiC, PVC-based, original, MJDs. My understanding is that they are not on par with the company in question in terms of price range, target market and country of origin. I didn’t think they’d make for a fair comparison, but your mileage may vary.

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #BJD Confessions #Community Confessions #MJD #blindbox #HJD #Other Dolls #Knowledge Anon

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endcant · 9 days

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bear with me bc i am drinking THC lemonade

whenever my “people shocked by me being interested in consumer aesthetics counter” ticks up by 1, i know that i have failed to express myself on the internet. i am obsessed with commercial ephemera. it’s not that i like it… it’s something deeper. something… worse? better? something more embarrassing, at least.

the only time i’ve ever done psychedelics my profound realization was that i really, really enjoyed going to target. i like the lights. i am always commenting on the products and whether i think they are on trend or off trend for what i understand the target demographic to be. i love nothing more than to watch someone pick up an object, briefly imagine their life with that object in it, and then either put it in their basket or put it back on the shelf. even moreso when i’m watching a friend shop. even moreso when we can only window shop and that friend starts explaining to me what they would do with the thing if they had the money to buy it.

i studied american pop music history in college and i continue to study the history of bubblegum pop in my free time. i want to eventually write up a video or a series or something about the extended international history of teenybopper bubblegum pop. i am trying to learn music industry jargon old and new in my target languages in an attempt to gain access to information about these things that i can’t access in english alone.

i read early 2010s posts about how minimalism was the only morally righteous visual style with rapt fascination. i had a vaporwave phase exactly one decade ago. my friends in high school would bring me arizona green teas because they knew i would find it aesthetic. my advanced painting teacher hated it because i kept painting pale minimalist watercolor pieces that looked like 90s waiting room wall decor. my dream at the time was moving to santa fe and becoming a fine artist.

i was a proto-cottagecore blogger before cottagecore was named. i have well over 100 blogs, considering i hit 96 at some point during my previously mentioned decade-ago vaporwave phase. i do not bother to count anymore

as a young child, i used to go to the store almost daily with my parents and look for unfamiliar packs of gum so i could assess their packaging, flavor, and concept. i *really* cared about this. i got into this because i was given free packs of 5 gum and orange mountain dew at the halo 3 midnight release.

i learned HTML from neopets and i used to code gaiaonline themes and put them up on tektek. they sucked really bad btw.

i spent around 2 decades looking for the source of a single image of an anime river angel i saw on quizilla because she meant so much to me as a child about the power of what mere images could be only to find last year that the artist now draws hentai on pixiv and their art quality is now quite rushed. i think about this regularly when i think about creators i have idolized, and i don’t know what it means to me, but it feels like valuable information.

last night i couldnt sleep because i kept wanting to get on my phone to look at ancient greek vases on jstor

the worst part is i feel that the way that seeing ONLY consuming-or-not-consuming as the primary way to interact with the world is a serious mental roadblock for people in capitalist society. i think that consumer identity is a tool often used to warp the minds of citizens. i think that if i could go back in time and strangle edward bernays i would. i think that it is meaningful that american society has generated dozens of terms for “someone who is stealing or misusing a cultural signifier, or otherwise engaging with a culture or subculture under false pretenses/without doing due diligence/without participating in proper cultural exchange” over just the past couple centuries and that seeing and acknowledging the cycle is essential for anyone working in the arts

ive spent the past couple years reading up on historical art movements since industrialization to see how other art workers have dealt with their jobs being mechanized away, and ive decided to choose to value myself as a human animal who gets to experience the process of making things with my human animal body.

i am compelled to play piano when i drink red wine and i feel that i’m a fundamentally superficial being in function, but i can be more in purpose. like a poster. like a mask. like someone screaming so hard on stage that you believe them. that you look behind you to see what they are screaming at. i think in symbols and colors front and center, with verbal background chatter like an ever-tuning radio, and i am frustrated when people don’t understand that i am speaking my mind when i show them what i’ve made.

i care about aesthetics a lot. consumer and otherwise. it just so happens that i live in a capitalist society wherein the market attributes value to certain aesthetic information, which generates conversation about what certain images mean, what gives them value, what detracts from their value, what they are responding to, what responses they require in turn. but anywhere, anytime that there is a conversation about aesthetics, i want to be there.

i have always loved to perceive and to make, since the earliest stories anyone has to tell about baby cave. if i lost everything that makes me who and what i am right now, i believe i would still care about aesthetics. if there is anything left for even a cell of my body to experience, it would want to experience it beautifully and enjoy it deliciously.

happy 420

#we live in a consumer society -the aestheticer #this is just like #what its about #in da cave zone #🎤

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chic-beyond-the-wall-oc-acct · 1 day

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The White Lion Company

I'd like to disclose that I'm not at all business savvy so if anything doesn't make sense I'm sorry I have no idea what I'm talking about so this sucks😅

The White Lion Company was founded in 296 AC by Abigail Lannister. It was a personal endeavor she started purely because she wanted to. Yes that was her only motivation initially.

The project was funded by her grandfathers, Tywin Lannister and Luthor Tyrell. While Abigail used the excuse of wanting to buy several "reasonably" expensive gifts for her ladies to get gold from Tywin, she was a little more upfront with Luthor.

It started small, only a couple ships, provided by Luthor. Abigail's main target demographics for workers were sailors and former soldiers or knights, while it did vary from time to time it didn't stray much.

By the time of "A Game of Thrones" or season one in 298 AC, it's grown quite a bit and has made itself a staple in sea trade, it's main products are things from the sea, pearls, sea salt, fish etc. Abigail has remained anonymous, only a few Tyrells and her ladies in waiting know.

"The White Lion" becomes an alias for Abigail, more so during the war. The company, though speculated by many to be of southern origins, skirts around a lot of regulations, often sending unmarked ships under the radar to provide for northern outposts, somehow remaining completly anonymous even with The White Lion "himself" even sending a couple letters to King Robb near the beginning and end regarding the well-being of his sisters. The dumb luck is a miracle really.

What started as a whim turned into something pretty big and dangerous. There are several times Abigail has considered stepping away from the company entirely, but when she gets nosey and learns of her family's true financial situation she decides against it. She has her own account with The Iron Bank, she promised herself if or when her family's situation becomes virtually unfixable she would come forth and share what she has but she's unwilling to do so at the moment.

So there's a little bit of random 1:30 am lore 😅

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chronicbitchsyndrome · 11 months

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I do agree with the general statement of your post (that is, products should include warnings). I also thank you for acknowledging that seizures can cause death. I'm in the epilepsy community (although I am not photosensitive myself) and I can not stress how much negative pushback we've gotten from some spiderverse fans just for pointing out that a seizure could lead to death.

I will argue though that with spiderverse in particular, I think it was negligent on the part of the creators and studio to release those films as it currently is. People can be diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy at any age but is especially common at the age between 7-19. The spiderverse films are a mainstream product primarily aimed at that age group. No matter what kind of warnings there are for the film, kids that age will probably not know if they are photosensitive until they are watching the film and have a seizure in a public place.

I also find that the inaccessibility of the films to photosensitive people completely undercuts the films inclusive nature. Like I have never before seen so many arguments that "art isn't supposed to be accessible for everyone" and that photosensitive people should just deal with being locked out of the conversation until these films. Not foing to lie, it's a little hurtful seeing it come from the wider disability community too.

i don't really have a response to the point re: it being mainstream and targeted towards a young audience; i think it's definitely a discussion to have, but overall i think that the phenomenon of targeting age demographics as marketing demographics is a bad one, which only evolved for monetary purposes, and the idea that age is a good predictor for taste in art and preferred complexity of topics is fundamentally flawed. essentially: yeah, i get you, but the angle i'm coming at this from is that we should really stop ~marketing media towards minors or adults~ to begin with and let the content of the art stand on its own.

re: inclusiveness: i also get you, but like. any art whose message is inclusiveness is going to intentionally exclude a significant portion of disabled people. there is no possible way for a piece of art to be accessible to all disabled people, because disability is such a broad category that every single access need directly conflicts with at least one other access need, possibly dozens.

i tend to prefer that artists openly reckon with which disabilities they're excluding from access to their art and why. i know it's an uncomfortable thing to reckon with, but like... the idea that all art has the chance to be equally accessible to all people and the only reason it isn't is lack of effort re: inclusion on the artist's part... is just a straight up lie. there isn't any way to reconcile two directly conflicting access needs, much less dozens of directly conflicting access needs, so rather than push that under the rug and act like some access needs are superior and as long as they're fulfilled the art is blanket "accessible" to all, i would much rather artists openly discuss what groups of disabled people they are prioritizing in accessibility and why.

(in the case of spiderverse movies in particular: back when the first one came out years ago, i engaged with some talk in some smaller low-vision spaces about the film's bright colors and overall eye-strain being actually more accessible to some individuals, because it made it easier for them to see the broad shapes and movements than most movies at the time. directly conflicting needs. while it's almost definitely unintentional on the spiderverse team's part, i would rather them know about it and grapple with the difficult decision of who to include vs. exclude publicly, rather than sweep the whole thing under the rug or act like one group's accessibility needs are obviously more important than the others.)

like... it's a difficult conversation to have, because i genuinely have a lot of empathy for being permanently locked out of engaging with a piece of art that i love a lot because of its inaccessible nature (i have a couple of different video game series that i love and Can Never Play, and i also can't mod them to make them easier to play, because the ways they're inaccessible to me are the fundamental point of the art). but i also at the same time have to balance that with my material experience of being a person whose access needs directly and 100% conflict with other disabled people's access needs, the material experience of understanding very firsthand that there is no possible way for some art to be accessible to me, ever, even in a world where everyone cared about accessibility, because other disabled people exist too. and like. idk! it's a weird fucking emotional space to be in! i at the very least would like for everyone involved to tackle it head-on, instead of playing the game we currently seem to be playing where 1) mainstream artists do not grapple with these concepts at all, nor do they clearly label which disability needs are included vs. excluded in any of their art, 2) we in disability spaces act like there is one universal measure of "accessibility in art" and if you are excluded by that measure then your needs are not from genuine disability or your disability simply is not included in disability activism.

#anonymous #ask

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sailormoonandme · 1 year

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In my observations, there is a certain fandom narrative that has been perpetuated over the years regarding the adaptation of Sailor Mars from the manga into the original 1992 anime. In my travels through this fandom for the past 10+ years, that narrative essentially boils down to this:

In the manga Sailor Mars/Rei Hino hated men and was uninterested in relationships with them. The anime changed this because the men in charge of it were being sexist.

I...respectfully disagree with this narrative for various reasons I want to discuss in this (probably very long) post.

Now, before I go on, a confession. I’m not going to pretend I have extensively researched this by checking out old interviews or anything, nor am I an expert on the production of anime or manga. So, if anyone has some important info I am unaware of please let me know so I can be more informed for the future. It may be that you have this tidbit of info that completely upends everything I have understood about the topic in question. With that out of the way...

Regardless of the topic under discussion, the single most important thing to bear in mind when talking about the relationship between the Sailor Moon manga and anime is that it was incredibly atypical compared to most manga and their corresponding anime adaptations.

In the majority of cases, a manga will begin publication and then, if it finds sufficient success, will be picked up to be adapted into an anime. More often than not, the anime will be aimed at the same age and gender demographic as the manga and both will be released at roughly a weekly schedule. Or at least, this is the case for the most popular anime you have probably heard of. Moreover, the anime will likely begin a solid year-two years after the manga began, giving the anime production staff plenty of material to work with.

Let’s look at two examples. The first chapter of Dragon Ball was released on 3rd December 1984 and the first episode was released on 26 February 1986. The first chapter of One Piece was released on 22 July 1997 and the first episode was released on 20 October 1999. In both cases, very little was changed between the manga and the anime, they are almost word for word, shot for shot identical, exempting filler of course.

None of the above was the case with Sailor Moon. The Sailor Moon manga was created specifically for Toei to turn it into an anime before even a single page was drawn of it. This is because Toei and Takeuchi had actually agreed to work together after the success of Takeuchi’s Codename: Sailor V manga, which was a predecessor to Sailor Moon. At some point along the way it was also decided the anime would be aimed at a younger and broader audience than the manga. Whilst the manga essentially exclusively targeted tween-teenage girls, the anime primary (but not exclusive) audience would be pre-tween girls, boys of about the same age and then their presumed older siblings and parents, in that order of priority. In other words, the anime, whilst still being have female audience at the forefront, was aimed to catch families too.* Furthermore, whilst the anime would be released weekly, the manga would drop monthly.

Thing is, Sailor Moon Chapter 1 was released on 28 December 1991 and Sailor Moon episode 1 was released on 7 March 1992! That’s an INSANELY small amount of time from a manga to anime adaptation to be working with, even if Takeuchi was giving them relevant info before completing the chapter herself. Anime episodes, naturally, take a long time to make and longer than a manga chapter might take to be created from scratch.

These are all critical factors in understanding why the 1992 anime is different to the manga on most fronts. Whilst they do not account for every difference, they do account for the vast majority when you bear them in mind for your analyses. Such is the case for Sailor Mars.

So, lets put things into a bit of a ‘timeline.

28 December 1991: Sailor Moon Chapter 1 is released

28 January 1992: Sailor Moon Chapter 2 is released, introducing Sailor Mercury. I do not actually have confirmed release dates for manga chapters, so I am going to be presuming that each chapter was released on a consistent monthly schedule.

28 February 1992: Sailor Moon Chapter 3 is released, introducing Sailor Mars.

7 March 1992: Sailor Moon Episode 1 is released, which adapts Chapter 1

28 March 1992: Sailor Moon Chapter 4 is released, featuring the trinity of Moon, Mercury and Mars as a team, without any new additions to the Sailor Team.

28 April 1992: Sailor Moon Chapter 5 is released, introducing Sailor Jupiter. There is something more relevant in this chapter but I we will return to that a bit later.

2 May 1992: Sailor Moon Episode 8 is released, which adapts Chapter 2

16 May 1992: Sailor Moon Episode 10 is released which adapts Chapter 3

23 May 1992: Sailor Moon Episode 11 is released. This is the first filler episode featuring Sailor Mars and establishes much of her characterisation and relationship with Sailor Moon going forward in the anime

15 August 1992: Sailor Moon Episode 22 is released, which adapts Chapter 4

15 September 1992: Sailor Moon Episode 25 is released, introducing Sailor Jupiter to the anime. It has very little in common with Sailor Moon Chapter 5. Perhaps a mere two or three scenes are adapted at all.

Not how there is less than a month between Chapter 5’s release and the release of Episode 10, and just under a month between Chapter 5 and Episode 11.

Why is this relevant?

Because Chapter 5 is the very first time Rei expresses any kind of negative opinion towards men.

Now, I might have missed something, but skimming through the rest of the Dark Kingdom arc, I couldn’t find Rei ever mention anything about men again in that arc., certainly not along the lines she mentioned in chapter 5** Rei’s attitude towards men/relationships is also unmentioned in the Sailor Moon Materials Collection:

Not only does Sailor Mars look different in the Materials Collection, but there are some specific details that never crop up in the manga or anime, such as Mars occasionally not wearing gloves and being able to shoot lasers from her nails. This is because the Materials Collection predominantly contains early notes Takeuchi had dreamed up for Sailor Moon, not necessarily stuff that wound up in the final product. This demonstrates how Takeuchi had not intricately plotted out details of her characters or story ahead of time. A more poignant example is the fact that, even as late as the release of Chapter 2, Takeuchi intended for Ami to be a cyborg, establishing a hint to this when Ami observes Usagi playing an arcade game.

What does all this mean though?

Well for starters, I think it is HIGHLY unlikely that the anime staff had read chapter 5 of the manga when they began scripting Episodes 10-11 which established Rei’s anime personality and dynamic with the other characters. There simply would not have been enough time for them to have done that. Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that, at the time she created Chapters 3-4 of the manga, Takeuchi herself had settled on the idea of Rei’s attitude towards men/relationships being an important aspect of at the character.***

Lets also consider that Sailor Mars was the Senshi of fire, an element commonly associated with passion and love. Whilst there is a wonderful irony that the Senshi of passion rejects romantic relationships, it isn’t an idea that is immediately obvious. That is to say, nobody reading Chapters 3-4 would presume Rei was a downer on relationships with men, or mistrustful of men in general. From the anime staff’s POV, the idea that the fire character was interested in love and romance was likely a very safe bet.

Not to mention, if we are all being brutally honest here, it isn’t as if Manga Rei’s attitudes towards men/relationships (as presented in Chapter 5) were somewhat atypical. Whether in 1992 or today, most people (regardless of sex or gender) do not hold an intrinsic distrust/dislike for the people of another sex/gender and wholesale reject the idea of having relationships with them. Whilst an important component of Sailor Moon was the diversity of female personalities present within the narrative, Rei’s attitude towards men/relationships was not common even amongst the other female protagonists of the story, Usagi herself being taken aback by it. It was unique enough in fact that Takeuchi wrote ‘Casablanca Memory’ as a wholesale origin/explanation of how and why Rei had such attitudes in the first place.

In light of all this it isn’t really fair to hold the anime staff in contempt for establishing that Rei felt an attraction to Tuxedo Mask or to men in general, especially when they likely did this to generate conflict and character dynamics for the show’s utterly essential filler episodes. By the time the staff read Chapter 5 they were more than likely deep into production on various episodes that were written with their interpretation of Rei in mind. To course correct at that stage likely would have been needlessly difficult and expensive, if it was possible at all. Not to mention it’d involve explicitly contradicting how they’d established Rei up until that point. And doing so upon the basis on what Rei said in some side comments in a chapter that wasn’t even about her in the first place? I think that was a big ask of the anime staff for the sake of fidelity to the source material, especially given how stressful and time consuming anime production is at the best of times.

I think these production realities also help explain all the other ways in which Sailor Mars differs in the anime and the manga. For the most part, AnimeRei’s personality is not an unreasonable extrapolation from how she was portrayed in Chapters 3-4. Her very first interaction with Usagi involves her instinctively attacking the blonde bun-head and knocker her unconscious. In Chapter 4 she chastises Usagi for being late and is embarrassed by her antics at the Masquerade. When talking to Luna in that same chapter her dialogue can come off as bossy and self-important.

Whilst these moments are not typical of Manga Rei as a whole, for the anime staff who had to generate filler episodes and who were seeking out character dynamics, these moments likely stood out to them. Combined with the fact that the Senshi of fire who’s guardian planet is named after the Roman God of War, you can see how they arrived at the idea that Rei had a fiery personality and would come into conflict with the lead character a lot. Given that the anime had to generate episodes with Moon, Mars and Mercury, that dynamic was probably quite appealing to them as it gave each girl a clear cut personality archetype to bounce off of one another and could be applied to any situation.

Usagi was the goofy clutz.

Ami was the shy genius.

Rei was the bossy hothead.

Sure, the show could still have worked with Rei’s manga persona, but it would have been more difficult. Manga Rei’s somewhat stoic and serious persona doesn’t generate plot or conflict easily and (if we are being honest) in a three person team likely treads on some territory that Ami’s character covered anyway. And again, that is presuming the anime staff were aware of what Rei’s personality would ultimately be like in the manga. Based upon even her first three chapters that isn’t entirely clear. It is only was the arc and series built up that we understand Manga Rei’s personality. But without that wider context I feel it is all too easy to read Chapters 3-5 and misunderstand that, as she could be interpreted as rather ‘neutral’ if you get what I mean.

Now, even with all this said, surely there would have come a point where the anime staff had read Chapter 5 and were in a position to write scripts from scratch that respected Rei’s attitude towards men/relationships? Perhaps such a point existed before they had Rei and Mamoru begin dating. If not then, then surely well before Yuichiro was introduced as Rei’s love interest, right? So, don’t both examples represent an open and shut case of the anime staff disrespecting Takeuchi’s vision?

Perhaps so…or perhaps again, production realities come into play here. The idea that Rei liked men and was interested in romantic relationships with them was established as early as her first episode where she clearly had a crush in Tuxedo Mask. In Episode 12 (Rei’s third ever episode) she drags Ami onto a ship for the explicit purpose of finding dates, even going to far as to try and pick up men who were on the rebound.

As mentioned elsewhere, it would have been awkward to have squared Rei rejecting relationships with men after instances like this. But even if you do not think so, I propose that by this point the anime staff had at least begun to go adopt the idea of the anime being a looser adaptation of the manga. By the time Rei began dating Mamoru they had already kept Jadeite around longer than he had been in the manga, writing him out in a wholly different way, and also introduced Nephrite in a very different manner as well.

Remember, production realities meant that the non-manga based episodes were the anime’s lifeblood. Orientating the show to accommodate them had to be top priority, hence why Jadeite stuck around longer and why Nephrite’s gimmick involved the stars rather than his shadow. In other words, the anime had already begun to become its own thing, with its own lore and own character dynamics in play. Indeed, the Nephrite arc is utterly fuelled by this. Zoistie’s rivalry with Nephrite. Nephrite’s relationship with Naru. Mamoru blacking out and transforming into Tuxedo Mask. These were all critical story elements of the Nephrite arc and none of them are in the manga whatsoever. The fact that Nephrite dies in a completely different way and the very next episode introduces his killer (Makoto) in a story almost entirely different from her manga debut is the natural evolution of the anime’s creative direction. In this context, is it really disrespectful (let alone sexist) for the anime staff to have simply committed to the characterisation of Sailor Mars they had already established for themselves and therefore, for the sake of generating new episodes and conflicts, had her entangled with Mamoru and Yuichiro?

It is entirely possible that Takeuchi had a clear cut idea about Rei’s attitude towards men/relationships, had intended for it to be the case very early on and informed the anime staff to that effect. They in turn could have been in a position to establish this as part of Rei’s character in the anime but actively chose not to because they felt a woman rejecting men/relationships in such a way was a bad thing that shouldn’t be allowed.

But, whilst that is entirely possible, without clear cut confirmation of that, I for one do not feel it is fair to presume bad faith on the part of the anime staff.

Thank you for reading.

*Which, from a business POV, makes sense as reading manga by its nature tends to be a more solitary activity compared to watching TV. Family members of the little girls Sailor Moon were aimed at would inevitably catch bits and pieces of the show from the glowing box in the corner of the living room and therefore might be inclined to watch it too.

**Yes, the side story ‘Casablanca Memory’ essentially revolves around this subject, but whilst that story was set during the Dark Kingdom arc it was created after it had concluded and is therefore not something the anime staff would have known about at the time.

***Indeed, that isn’t even clear 100% certain in Chapter 5.

Whilst Rei clearly expresses a negative opinion of men and relationships, she is not the focus of the chapter, Jupiter/Makoto is. And since it is an attitude that is exclusive to this chapter in the Dark Kingdom arc, only coming up again in later arcs and side stories, it basically doesn’t appear consistently enough for any reader to say with absolutely certainty that Rei hates men and rejects the ideas of relationships. It is merely the fifth chapter of the story and we haven’t even fully established the team yet. For all anyone knew, Rei might go on to have contradicted that opinion, or she might have been expressing from a place of immaturity given her age/inexperience with love and relationships. Almost as if it is a flipside to the ‘girls are lame’ attitude boys grow out of during puberty. Or again, maybe it was something they just figured might be a one off component of this one chapter she wasn’t even the focus of.

Regardless, it was very early on the anime had already established the idea that Rei and Usagi were quite similar and both interested in Tuxedo Mask, subjects that they leveraged to generate more filler episodes going forwards.

From a business/production POV they were not going to overhaul the character and revise the scripts/episodes they had already worked hard on to awkwardly readjust her to this particular character trait Takeuchi had given her for this one chapter that then never came up again.

#my essays #sailor moon #sailor mars #sailormoon #rei hino #hino rei #sailor moon 1992 #naoko takeuchi #sailormars

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easalata · 26 days

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Class 2: Corona vs. Heineken

I must preface this blog post by saying that I do not drink very often, and I can probably count the number of times I have had Corona and Heineken brand products on one hand. Even though I am not a subject matter expertise on this topic, I still felt the case was quite interesting, and I am excited to explore and analyze the learnings of this case in class on Thursday. After reading this week's case on Corona beer, three main ideas came to mind.

Firstly, I thought it was fascinating to read that even though this case was written years ago, it identified a decline in alcohol consumption. This challenged my assumptions about drinking trends over the past 30 years. It is a common phrase nowadays to discuss how people drink much less than they used to, and in fact, there is a record low level of alcohol use among generation Z. The question remains whether this generation in general has converted to alternative substances or whether society is taking health and wellness more seriously than in generations past. Many scientific studies are showing the negative effects of alcohol consumption, even as little as one standard drink, on recovery and sleep. I am curious to hear an update on the case and how Heineken and Corona are addressing this trend. I know that Heineken has created and promoted a non-alcoholic beer, however from a sales and revenues perspective, I am not confident in the success metrics of this new product. I would also be fascinated to see quantitative evidence of this trend especially throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and the years following.

Second, I learned that the relatively recent misconceptions about the Corona brand are not the first instance where this brand has had to handle unfortunate press. The article mentioned a few cases of false contamination of the product which led to marketing damage control and the rebuilding of trust within the brand. With the Covid-19 pandemic being referred to as 'Corona,' I do recall hearing media stories of the Corona beer products dropping in sales.

Finally, I was shocked when the case mentioned that selling beer is just marketing and not actual skill in making the product itself. The case discussed the relative ease in which beers can be made, so beer companies are in fact selling a brand, feeling, association, and confidence. As mentioned above, I am not an expert on the brand differences between Heineken and Corona, so I will be quite interested to hear from my classmates of the markets and demographics that each brand is attempting to target.

#MITSloanBranding2024A

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incarnateirony · 1 year

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I never look up Jared, but after reading your last post, I was curious and googled him. It popped up that Walker, and I guess Windy, are going on a mini hiatus just a few weeks after they came back from the winter break. They are playing repeats until mid February, or something like that? What the heck is Nexstar doing? Trying to kill off shows? I mean, fans do expect some consistency, and even though I am not a fan of these two shows, it seems an odd way to do business?

Honestly, they're playing things long term smart, even if fans don't see it, and various creatives are in waves of panic.

This year finishes off most shows, and clears their slate for their forward plan.

Walker being all fucked up on its schedule is Jared's fault, not Nexstar. Multiple production shutdowns still put your post team weeks behind in development. What was it, three covid shutdowns? That's like six weeks yall lost, while they try to concern troll about a production nonexistantly being behind when it was literally perfectly on schedule.

So yeah, it takes Walker an extra month to come back, because they're a fucking month behind, and they're filling the space until then. Notice it's single, not double, and notice its other airspace is well accounted for.

Listen, I know everyone always has Opinions once they read an article or three and think they're educated, but if you haven't noticed, I tend to point out even most media commentary sites tend to be full of horse shit on this, and I tend to end up right. Like when I spent forever telling you about 18-49 as the target before Nexstar finally said it out loud but everyone was obsessed with sites humming and hawwing about an Older Demographic.

But of those garbage opinions, like--Nexstar's plans are geared to long term work, period, whether or not people have made the effort to break down the business steps they're taking, and likely taking, and changes known in the near media horizon (stations debating closing 10P slots, etc). There's big picture stuff here. It's not arcane, it's not mysterious. And it's very clear if you stop bothering to listen to how people react in a given moment and figure out how to gear your bearings through.

Your angle should NEVER be "THIS IS FUCKING STUPID THIS BUSINESS DECISION MAKES NO SENSE SO CLEARLY IT IS STUPID, I CAN NOT BE THE INTELLECTUALLY INFERIOR ONE NOT PERCEIVING THIS, IT MUST BE PURE IGNORANCE OF EVERYBODY ELSE"

never. ever. not on anything but definitely not on this. The question should then be how it makes sense.

Walker is a remaining program that was expected to air in this period, but is a month behind schedule. It is not slated well for the future for many reasons I am not unpacking in this post, but will if there's a followup topical ask to it.

The Winchesters is a program who's OUSA audience is on GOT level. The US share is not included with it, but instead, is in the app, and is the largest audience, and is what Nexstar is profiting from. As a result, their schedule was extended to a double booking, even at the expedited cancellation of other programs. It is fated fantastically and secured for several years of good futures for many reasons I am not unpacking in this post, but will if there's a followup topical ask to it.

These decisions are very clear, if one pretends it's all relativity and projection here. If you don't understand a business decision, ask the necessary questions to make it make sense in full scale, not just for an immediate agenda or argument.

Honestly everyone needs to stop acting confused. It's just resetting the channel to what it was circa 1998-2004. If you're too young to know what the channel was like then, do some research or ask. Of it, Winchesters is the Supernatural/Smallville of that channel/period's age, and haters can deal with it, but the rest is going to be a few nice dramas, a bunch of sitcoms, and some reality and gag shows. Just like it was back then. Because it's fucking OG TBS in a CW jar.

Nexstar is thinking in the field of 2025 for its current business decisions, just like WB. And for both, TW/CM is the bridge, along with AA, and likely GK. Good luck everybody else.

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