#it would suck since everything is “subscription” based now

[ciervobizarro]

imagine losing access to your childhood memories because u forgot to renew your subscription kjsdjhfsd

[ianspideythompson]

The Jump to Streaming - Was It Worth It?

I’ve been watching and covering the streaming wars for a few years now, and looking at the current state of it, along with the pandemic and the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike exposing how broken the industry is, it’s left me thinking this: was the jump and transition to streaming worth in the end? Because at this point, it sucks for everyone involved: the studios, the creatives, and the consumers.

Studios who decided to hop in the game and compete with Netflix by creating their own streaming services have found out that streaming isn’t profitable (or at the very least, it’s nowhere near as profitable as the box office, physical media, VOD, and linear TV) because the revenue generated is almost entirely based on subscriptions. Putting out a show or a movie on a streaming service is practically putting it out for free since those individual titles aren’t generating profit as they would on the aforementioned release avenues. Streamers just have to hope that the release of a show or film on their platform drives enough sign-ups to break even and generate profit. And as a result, studios lose millions, if not billions on their services.

The creatives (specifically the writers and actors striking right now) behind shows and movies made for streamers are getting little to no residuals from them. Writer Kyra Jones shared that the first residual check she got from writing on the ABC show Queens was $12,000. The first residual check she got from writing on the Hulu show Woke was $4. Writer Cody Ziglar’s episode of She-Hulk netted him just $396 in residuals, despite the episode (the one where Daredevil returns) being one the most watched episodes of one of the most watched series on Disney+. Kimiko Glenn, who played Soso on Orange Is the New Black, mentioned that many of the actors on the show still worked second jobs because they weren’t being paid enough to sustain themselves. For shows licensed to streamers, it’s essentially the same. Gilmore Girls, which ran on The WB in the 2000s, has been one of the most popular shows on Netflix since they started streaming it. Sean Gunn, who played Kirk Gleason on the show, said in an interview that he’s seen almost no money from licensing fee Netflix pays Warner Bros. to stream the show. 

And for the consumer, the convenience of it has been diluted. In the early days of streaming, it was just Netflix and Hulu, and between the two services, they had pretty much everything you’d need to drop cable. Now there are too many streaming services, and with all the price hikes that occurred in the last few years, just subscribing to a few of the major ones costs the same, if not more, than cable at this point. Not to mention streamers have made it so that we can’t get attached to any original they produce. A streamer puts out a show that’s not an instant hit that you, me, and everyone we know watched, it gets prematurely canceled (Hey remember when Netflix use to save canceled shows? Oh how the tables have turned). And thanks to a certain studio introducing this precedent, prematurely canceled streaming shows now get yanked off the service, written off in taxes, thrown into the abyss, and then banished to the Shadow Realm. And since streaming media rarely get physical releases, they’re to stay in the Shadow Realm, never to be seen again.

As much as it doesn’t feel like it is now, and I think it’s safe to say it’s done more harm than good at this point, streaming is still ultimately the future. There’s no turning back from it unless every service goes under and shuts down. And even if that were to happen, I’m not sure if those who cut the cord are going to want to buy a new one. And as a strong proponent for physical media, nothing would make me happier than to see everyone start buying DVDs and Blu-Rays again and video stores making a comeback - but that’s likely not going to happen either. 

I don’t know what the future holds for streaming. Truth be told, I don’t think it will ever be as profitable as physical media, VOD, or linear TV.  But that isn’t going to stop from studios from trying to make streaming as profitable as the days of physical media, VOD, and linear TV. I won’t pretend to have the answers here, but it ain’t hard to tell that the current streaming model is unsustainable. Trying to cut costs by replacing writers and actors with AI won’t make streaming more profitable. Continuing to prematurely cancel new shows when they’re not instant smash hits and not giving them the chance to find an audience as well as having streaming services full of one-season shows won’t make it more profitable either. 

Streaming may still be the future, but it clearly shouldn’t be relied upon as the primary means of media distribution. Perhaps studios should let films sit on VOD and physical media for longer than they currently do before dropping them on a streaming service. I remember growing up, a new film wouldn’t make it to TV until several months to a year later. And speaking of TV, linear TV may be dying, but it’s a slow death and for the studios who still have broadcast channels, it’s still a way to reach people and get sign-ups. In November of last year, Disney aired the first two episodes of Andor across ABC, FX, and Freeform. Earlier this year, they did this again by airing the pilot episode of The Mandalorian across the networks. And this fall they’re about to do it again with Ms. Marvel (although this is likely more as a result of the fact that they’ll be nothing on TV this fall). 

But do you know what could ultimately help? By paying the actors and writers the residuals they deserve, not automating their jobs away, and giving them opportunities and tools to create more new and exciting films and shows, and in the case of television, not prematurely canceling them when they’re not hits straight off the bat and allow them to find audiences.

What do y’all think? Let me know and keep supporting the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. Solidarity forever.

[talenlee]

Decemberween '23 — Technology Cult Documentaries

About a month ago now, I had a chat with a peer at work. We were talking about the way that one of our cohort had started research into the NFT Marketplace, and it was a rough place to be because he had to open every talk and presentation with ‘I know, but,’ and that was just fundamentally rough as a place to be as a researcher. We got talking about it and I mentioned, offhandedly, how all of the conversation around these things were obviously fake to me, and something like this followed:

Haven’t any of these people seen a cult before?”

“No, uh, I do think that that’s really a you thing.

And this stuck with me. I know about cults because I was in one. I had to dismantle the experience for a long time to get a handle on it. And right now, the way that cults had formed in digital spaces, meant that that kind of weird social experience might be so decontextualised people might not even notice them.

Fortunately, Dan Olson of Folding Ideas has done some great documentaries about cults that coagulate on the internet.

Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs

Watch this video on YouTube

Here’s the first, like, fundamental and foundational reading for this set of documentaries. Line Goes Up is a late 2022 piece that sought to tackle the idea of NFTs, non-fungible tokens, an online phenomenon that seized 2021 and spent every day of the years since then getting worse. This piece is not just about the idea that NFTs were an economy made up of sequentially staggered grifts feeding on one another, but also about the way that the offer promised, the ideal expression of what the NFT marketplace offered was itself terrible in its actual optimal expression.

Like, while this whole documentary does break down all the real world examples of how the NFT ecosystem is full of liars, cheaters, scum, and all the ordinary predatory behaviour of rich people consuming poor people based entirely on their anxiety, but even then, if everything the system promised could happen and would work, the result would be awful and suck shit.

This is where it starts.

Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins

Watch this video on YouTube

Next Olson presented this piece, Contrepeneurs, which is about flooding a low-interest undescerning marketplace for ways to scrape money out of the Audible advertising/subscription ecosystem. In this case, this is just a simple case of showing how there’s a grifting economy that’s made out of interconnected grifters that kick hapless marks around between them.

This is an example of the exploitation systems here. The entire point of this kind of system is a turbo-charged version of the other cults, where the grift doesn’t want to have anyone engage for too long. If everyone has a few hundred bucks to scrape out of them, then this kind of system wants to get you in long enough to shake those hundred bucks out of you, then throw you away where you won’t be present to disturb any of the other incoming marks.

This is an important kind of setup: This is a thing you need to know about. This is what a centralised grift, around a centralised grifter, looks like. There’s an ecosystem, there’s a system, but this kind of grift wants to burn through people. The people in charge don’t want you to stay around too long. They don’t want you to be too enfranchised unless you hit it lucky and get successful some other way. If you succeed, you hang around and work as a billboard for other grift subjects, but if you fail, they don’t want you once they’ve fleeced you.

But that’s when there’s a grifter, with a grift, and their grift is trying to maximise the grift as a business.

The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse

Watch this video on YouTube

But what if you lose the central operators and just make the grift a decentralised ecosystem for other grifts? What if you aren’t grifting individuals but trying to make a grift ecosystem that self-perpetuates? Well, in that case you wind up with the story of Decentraland and the Metaverse.

Metaverses frustrated me when we started to hear about them at work because I could tell you at a glance it was a dumb idea and wouldn’t work. The whole idea of VR overlays of reality are just informationally impossible, and anyone who tells you computers are near it are just lying to you, or don’t know that they don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m always going to assume the former, rather than the latter.

Here’s the extra wrinkle in Olson’s work, and it does build on another (not-appearing-in-this-post) documentary about Why It’s Rude To Suck At World Of Warcraft. That’s a much more conventional form of documentary and it’s pretty good, and it lines up literally with my actual thesis. But it does build on the work of an academic writing about persona and the Magic Circle…

… and that academic is my phd supervisor.

Anyway, this is about the way that Metaverse experiments have created a set of self-radicalised cultists who are convinced they’re going to get to exist in a space that doesn’t have to deliver or actually represent the thing they tell themselves it’s doing. It’s interesting because this is a cult – it’s cult behaviour. It’s people who have to recruit and who have to convince themselves of the unreality in front of their face, because the alternative is breaking their own personal magic circle.

It’s a dark form of play.

This is Financial Advice

Watch this video on YouTube

Alright, here’s the newest one, the biggest one and the one that seems the most fantastic.

There is a cult on reddit of self-selected, generally unpredictable and somewhat dubiously connected to reality, anti-capitalist hypercapitalists (I know) who are convinced they are going to end the world through the relentless and constant purchasing of Gamestop Stock.

Gamestop is a company that runs videogame stores, here in Australia Electronics Boutique, and in some places, Thinkgeek. They own a British brand too, I think. They’re basically the last major vestige of a company that can’t really work in a digital distribution business very well. And right now, their stock price is spiked up well above any sensible value, because there’s a literal cult of people buying that stock. They have a claim of new revelation, they have a claim of messianic figures, they have rituals and coda and doctrine and beliefs and the entire thing is based on a fictional reflection of a true thing: the stock market is full of shitheads.

The long form video steps you through it, and has a truly gut-lurching twist at the end when you find out that something that seems parody isn’t.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[vole-mon-amour]

Tagged by @samblerambles. Thank you! I love to talk and can't answer with short answers, so there you go under the cut.

Last song I listened to: M83 - Holes In The Sky (Phantom Liberty LITERALLY has a mission called Hole in The Sky at the beginning of the DLC. I'm surprised they wasted such a perfect opportunity to use this song 'cause I saw the scenery and heard the ambient music in the game and was already anticipating it because it kinda sounded like this song to me.) Listening to it on repeat since yesterday tbh.

Favourite content to watch: I'm not really sure what to answer cause I watch content on occasion and in waves. Basically, I binge watch it mindlessly and then I stop for a while. Most of my subscriptions on YT stay unwatched these days, which sucks.

On YT I'm subscribed to: a couple of cooking channels (one local one is currently my fav, his videos are very cosy); a dude with a farm; some YTbers that play video games (haven't watched any playthroughs in such a long time, now that I have my own PC and the ability to play); some true crime channels; a woman that lives near the North Pole; two different channels that help homeless people; a couple of tech channels (smartphones, PCs, new hardware like that); a pet groomer; a drawing channel or two; cross stitch/embroidery/sewing; a couple of aviation channels; a couple of renovation/DYI channels.

If I had to pick, then right now it's the woman that lives close to North Pole and a pet groomer. A dude with the farm is kind of my fav, but sometimes I'm not in the mood to watch it and miss a couple of videos. Same with aviation: I love love LOVE airplanes, but sometimes I'm not in the mood.

Despite it looking like a lot, I really don't watch that much. Out of maybe 30 videos visible on the page it would be good if I watch one or two videos without scrolling down or going to my To Watch playlist and searching for something to watch there.

Favourite games:

Of all times fav: Uncharted 4 & Dishonored/Dishonored 2. Cyberpunk 2077 (probably; bc I currently have 322.7 hours on Steam there & I'm planning on continue playing. A particular brain worm from there and his best friends from the past are everything.) Deus Ex. I keep forgetting that one but Y E S. It was there before Cyberpunk happened.

As in *right now*: Baldur's Gate 3. RDR2 (maybe? I haven't played that one since the moment I finished the main game, but the story deeply shook me and I called it a masterpiece in my review on Steam.)

To me a FAVOURITE is something you commit to, so it's hard to choose something that I'd actually *actively* stick with. But if we talk less serious, I love video games in general. So many of my fav characters are from video games.

Favourite colours: Most shades of blue (the ones that have blue in them too). Deep rich green <3. Gold.

Favourite animals: All of them. Yes. (I love cats, whales, horses, cows, wolves. I'm an animal person.)

Favourite food: Pickled cucumbers is my all time fav. Pasta (mac and cheese). Sushi (basically sea weed + cream cheese + red fish/lox + maybe a cucumber or bell pepper = heaven). Cucumber + tomatoes + bell paper + sour cream salad is my base that I can't function without. I'm a foodie (which is my big problem since ever but oh well.)

Sweet, spicy, or savoury: I'll keep your answer in a way: 'NOT spicy, my acid reflux does not enjoy that.' Yeah, mine too. Can't eat spicy at ALL, it hurts my guts for real. I like a mix of sweet + salty + savoury. I wouldn't want to eat just one thing out of these. Sweet and sour sauce is <3

Current obsession: Cyberpunk 2077. Couldn't watch anything today, couldn't think of anything else, couldn't focus. But then BG3 adds to the mix because I'm still hoping to finish editing that Halstarion fic. It refuses to work with me & I dislike a lot about it. And, of course, Drakecest is my all time fav obsession, it's always at the back of my mind, chilling on the couch, waiting for me to come back to them and start playing with them.

Last book I read:

The one I finished: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James. It was a reread.

The one that I didn't finish: The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James. I listened to an audio version that I found, but I only found 2 parts & it's definitely longer. I'd like to finish it, but I haven't seen more parts so far (and to download the actual book and sit down and focus on the the text is a god damn TASK for me.)

Last thing I googled: Probably "hands to the sky, i am a dreamer m83" because I started singing it, but for some reason thought it was 'I need you' by them and started listening to it. Turned out, my brain mixed the songs.

Fun facts:

I was a very active and a very popular kid in kindergarten (first french kiss there during the nap hour while everybody else watched and cheered? yeeeah. very silly, very fun. lol.)

I went to see one of Saw movies to cinema when I was around 10-12. Because I was so young, my dad had to go with me. He loved to tell his friends after how grown people couldn't handle the look of autopsy and guts while I didn't even blink. It always made me smile when he did. I loved the look of blood and horror (which stayed with me to this day, though I get anxious sometimes about blood in some situations.)

The money I bought my cat with partly came from Depeche Mode ticket that I bought, changed my mind, and sold (and, obviously, gave those to the breeder as a guarantee that I'm getting the kitten. I was around 16.) The rest of the price my dad paid for me.

I used to be a huge concert freak. All the travelling I did (13 countries) happened because of concerts. As soon as I turned 18, I started travelling. I slept outside a stadium of my fav band. I met musicians at airports and their hotels (mostly locally though, before I could start travelling). My time as a teen and up until 20 years old was very fun.

[youryanderedaddy]

Love Fuel

Summary: You were Jason’s first love before you broke his heart and rejected him. It’s all your fault that he can’t move on.

Tw: female reader, obsessive behavior, incel behavior, nice guy behavior, self - hatred, threats of non-con, implied non - con, implied masturbation, bullying based on appearance (not reader), deregatory language, kidnapping, misogyny, generalizations, stalking

this is a hot mess but its 1 am and i am tired, ik that incels are bad irl (obviously), but this is fiction and I kinda wanted to explore the dynamic and shit. 

Everyone used to call him JJ or The-Big-Jay back in high school. Well, most of the time his classmates weren’t really calling out to him or even talking to him, the names were whispered behind his back, after he had just passed the hallway, or on bad days - right to his face. The jocks, these dumb motherfuckers, would beat him up, mock him for whatever stupid reasons they had chosen to use as an excuse to torment the smaller and weaker. The popular girls would giggle like brainless bimbos as Kyle or Brad or any other football player stole his glasses or continuously punched him in the guts until he threw up all over the floor. Even the nerds, the kids at the bottom of the school hierarchy, messed with Jason from time to time when they wanted to feel the oh - so desired rush of power they so rarely managed to experience. 

Looking back, Jason could see why his classmates hated him so much - he was everything that society deemed as wrong and unattractive. He was thin, pale, “scrawny” as the others called him, on the shorter side, and on top of that the teen was terribly shy and introverted, never having the guts to stand up to his bullies or even tell someone about the abuse. The male spent most of his free time at home, playing hours upon hours of video games, watching anime and reading books he was simply too young to understand or look critically at. As he grew older, the man began to view the world as it trully was - a dark, miserable place that ate up sore losers like him. Men were primitive and foolish, which somehow managed to soften their faults. Women, on the other hand, were  calculative and manipulative, greedy and sinful. His whole life they had done nothing but reject him when he needed love and support the most. Of course, there were many other reason why the brunette detested the weaker sex. In his eyes women were evil two - faced sluts, showing off their bodies yet acting innocent and hurt once someone finally decided to use them for the only thing they were actually good for.

But you Jason hated the most. You reminded him that no matter how much he hated the outside world, he would always hate himself the most. He had to admit you were pretty, painfully so, with a perfect little body to match your looks and a sweet sugary smile that almost deceived him years ago. As much as the man regretted his weakness, he had fallen right into your trap at the time.

You weren’t the most popular girl, but you had your fair share of friends, all nice and loyal like puppies. You weren’t the smartest either, but unlike the other stupid giggling sluts you always tried to do your best. You were beautiful just like them but you were actually kind to the pathetic bullied kid no one else bothered to acknowledge even existed outside of being a punching bag. You always asked him whether he was alright and often took him to the infirmary when he looked paler and sicker than usual. You talked to him as if he was a normal human being and despite the initial doubt, Jason appreciated it. 

It was the last day of your senior year when the teen finally gained the courage to confess. He was shaking the whole time and by the end of his little speech there were small tears in the corner of his eye. You were the first girl the male cared about, the first one to show him kindness, to offer him friendship without asking for something in return. You were the only one who could make him feel deserving of love, worthy of affection. And then you took it all away in a matter of seconds.

“I am sorry, bud.” You had said that day after giving him a  half - hearted hug and an apologetic smile, that started to seem more and more like a mocking grin the longer the teen started at you. “I already have a boyfriend, but I am really flattered. I am sure that you will find a lovely girl once you start college.” You had added quickly, cheerfully, rubbing the salt all over his wounds, honey dripping from your plump red lips. He had wanted to kiss them, bruise them, bite them until your stupid lying mouth was filled with blood. Obviously you didn’t have a boyfriend or he would have known by now, he stalked your social media religiously after all. Even if you had one, he probably treated you like shit. And how could you even suggest him finding another woman? As if he wanted any of the stupid money - grabbing sluts out there. As if some of them could replace you.

The boy was too furious to form a proper response besides “Fuck you, bitch”. His cheeks turned red and he didn’t realise that the bitter words had escaped his lips before he could stop them, then his legs took him far away from that shithole of a school. He didn’t manage to see your reaction before running away but it didn’t matter anymore. You were just like the others. 

***

That day Jason swore to show you just how small and insignificant you had made him feel. He wanted to see you crumble, cry and beg for forgiveness, desperate for his love but never good enough to get it. The man formed a plan to change himself and come back for you once he had erased each and every trace of his past. The brunette came to terms with his terrible social anxiety and decided that he needed to gain social abilities more than anything. That’s why, as much as he dreamt of working from home as a boring programmer with an even more boring, but flexible working schelude, the male chose to study something that involved a lot more human interactions. The next step was to hit the gym for the first time and get a monthly subscription. It wasn’t hard to see that females nowadays liked brain - dead athletes with defined jawline and cheekbones, toned chests and strong muscled bodies, so if he wanted to impress you, he had to look his best. It wasn’t easy at first - it felt like everyone in the fitness salon had their eyes on his weak frame, laughing and pointing their fingers at his imperfections, but things gradually got better as time went on. The trainings became easier to get through and from time to time they even helped the man forget about his loneliness and nihilism. 

Jason soon returned to his old habbit of spending hours looking through your accounts - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, he knew all of your usernames, each post, every picture and text. He couldn’t believe how much of a desperate attention whore you had become over the years. The male remembered you in your long brown skirts, cozy sweatshirts and pure-white shirts, all the gray buttons closed to the very top, blushing, laughing, smiling like the adorable Goody-two-shoes you were. Now you were smirking seductively in every photo, overconfident and vibrant, flaunting your tits for every man to see and wearing tight little dresses that barelly covered your ass combined with heels so high and sharp they could be used as a weapon. You were such a stupid slut it was disgusting, and he couldn’t stop himself from jerking off every single time he saw your pretty little face on the screen. He wanted to cum down your throat so badly it was ridiculous, and even after knowing that you had probably already had hundreds of cocks shoved deep inside your pussy, the brunette still wished to see you split open on his, taking his lenght like a good little cocksleeve. 

***

The moment when he could see you again finally came. How many years had passed since graduation - five, ten, fifthteen? It hardly mattered. Jason was successful, at last. The male had his own business that was doing surprisingly well, there were some guys from the gym he could call friends and the best thing, he looked absolutely unrecognizable. There was nothing left of the tiny scrawny kid with quiet voice that everyone stepped over, he was now replaced by a strong capable man, determined to get what was rightfully his and his alone.

It wasn’t hard to find you since the brunette knew everything about you - where your job was, what time you finished, how long it took you to go home and what path you took. You lived alone and worked as a barista in a small local cafe even now that you had finished your studies in your dream faculty. Turns out the princess wasn’t so great and smart after all, having to resort to working a minimal - wage job day and night just to be able to pay her rent. Jason was absolutely delighted though, he loved your stupid dead - end job and your endless struggles to survive in the materialistic world honestly and fairly without selling yourself like a common whore. On one hand the male was happy that you had clung onto your last bit of innocence and on the other your pitiful lifestyle gave him the chance to snatch you away much easier. And that’s exactly what he did.

 ***

You woke up confused just like he had expected, bombarding him with questions, asking him who he was was, begging him to let you go, to at least explain what’s happening. You were so dumb, but God, you were still so pretty, if not prettier than before. You cried so beautifully when Jason told you you belonged to him now and you cried even more when he slammed his cold rough lips over yours in a deep wet kiss. You whimpered and whined while the male sucked on your lower lip and bit down, good, he wanted it to hurt. The stalker couldn’t wait to be inside you, he couldn’t hold back anymore. 

He climbed on top of you and pinned your wrists to the floor before tying them up with delicate red rope and tightening it. It wasn’t like the man was scared of you slipping away and hurting him, you were too weak and tiny to stand a chance against his years of power - lifting and muscle - training anyways, he just wanted you to be as uncomfortable and squirmish as possible. Your tormentor wished for you to be in worse pain than he had been during his youthful years, and he knew exactly what to do. Next thing you knew Jason had ripped your dress apart, leaving you vulnerable and exposed in just your plain old panties and bra. Cold shivers ran down your spine when the chilly air hit your naked flesh and you finally realized there wasn’t getting away from this. You had to stay there, limbs bound together, unable to move or fight back, the stranger’s hands caressing your neck before moving dangerously close to your clothed breasts. You felt so sick you were going to throw up for sure if your abductor didn’t step back so you decided to use your last resort.

“Jason, please stop!” You screamed out of the blue, forcing the brunette to freeze instantly at the use of his birth name. You had already called him a pervert and a psycho which didn’t seem to faze him, but the name clearly caught him off guard. This only seemed to prove your theory further - the man really was your former classmate, despite the only similarity between them being the dark distant look in his eyes. “I beg you, don’t hurt me!” You continued, hoping to at least buy yourself more time before the assault took place. 

He gulped loudly and stared at your quivering form. The impossible had happened, you had recognized him and now together with fear, there was also pity in your gaze, the one emotion your captor absolutely despised. You used to be the only one who pitied him, and even now that he was bigger, better and stronger than before, you still had the guts to pity him. It drove him insane but any attempt to hurt or touch you was fruitless now - your soft skin was suddenly burning his fingers like hellfire. 

“You must be thinking that I am a monster.” Jason started out dryly, chuckling bitterly, humorlessly even. He clenched his fists unconsciously and brought them to the floor in a fit of rage, missing your head by mere inches. Your heart was beating like crazy and you only hoped the mandman couldn’t hear it. “A freak.” The man spat out the word like it was a curse and for a split second his eyes softened before turning into two spinning torches. “Right?” You were sure that if looks could kill, his would have you dead by the end of the night so you quickly nodded your head no.

“You are lying to me again, pretty girl.” The brunette replied feisty, "pretty” rolling off his tongue like an insult. Then he broke into hoarse maniac laugher and lowered his head so his face leveled up with yours, so close you could feel his warm breath on your tear - stained cheek. “When I am done with you, you wouldn’t be so pretty anymore, darling.” Your captor growled and attacked your neck, sinking his teeth deep into the flesh. “You will see exaclty how ugly my love is.”

[lacetulle]

Hey there! Aspiring fashion designer here! I'm getting more and more into fashion and designing/ planning more and more outfits and I was wondering if you have any tips to get more into haute contour and fashion in general. Your blog has really helped me get a grasp of what I like and I all around love it!

I’m happy this blog could help in figuring out what styles you like! There are a ton of different mediums to get into fashion! I’ve compiled a list of options via videos, websites, and books. So strap in, this is a long post.

Since you already have an idea of who you like, I always suggest reading up on that brand/label/designer and going through their archives. For me, when I realized how much I loved Dior and knew I wanted to learn more, it was overwhelming at times because the label has such a long history. If you really like newer labels, like Zuhair Murad, Elie Saab, Iris van Herpen, etc., it’s a little more manageable to read up on the history and designers just because they were founded in the ‘90s/‘00s.

In terms of websites, I have a few to talk about.

Vogue. This is the easiest avenue to get into fashion. I’m not knocking it, because I use it the most for photos, but as far as websites go, it’s the most dumbed-down. But I mean that in the best way! The features, trend reports, and runway news appeals to even the most casual fashion fan. Vogue focuses mainly on big name/commercialized brands (Dior, Valentino, Gucci, etc.) rather than smaller ones (like Guo Pei and Ralph & Russo, two big couture names these days, get minimal coverage with Vogue). Vogue is a great resource for runway looks...it was my gateway into studying older runway collections. All in all, in terms of websites, Vogue is the tip of the fashion media iceberg.  If you want to get into the more meatier parts of fashion, there are better sites.

Harper’s Bazaar. Like Vogue, it’s easy to navigate and leans more towards the more well-known fashion brands. Pre-covid, they always had a weekly street style recap as well. They have great lists but stay away from the business side of fashion. I typically use Harper’s Bazaar for the street style/every day fashion inspiration and news.

Who What Wear. A great site for following trends. They don’t focus so much on brands, but it’s a great resource for seeing what’s trending and options to buy said trends. For example, Who What Wear is the first place I went when I wanted to find a list of brands who were starting to sell masks.

WWD. Supposedly most designers prefer WWD to Vogue coverage.  And it shows, since parts of the site require a subscription. WWD is one of the more technical sites and could be overwhelming for someone who doesn’t really understand the industry. They talk about the comings-and-goings of creative directors, financial news, and general fashion trends/news. It also has runway recaps and photos, which is typically what I use it for. If you’re really want to be in the know with breaking fashion news, they do offer email newsletters as well for a more condensed version of the site. Also, a super helpful page I’ve had bookmarked, their fashion dictionary.

Business of Fashion.  The name is pretty self-explanatory.  BoF is another one of those meatier sites that could be overwhelming at first. It’s also one that has a subscription service. BoF has great profiles of designers, so I’ve used the site as my starting point when learning about someone new. The BoF500 also showcases anyone and everyone who has a hand in shaping the industry.

The Impression. The cheapest of the subscription sites and the one I had until I cancelled a few months ago (not because it sucked, but, you know…corona). I mainly used them for their runway pictures. They were so fast to upload them, with details and backstage footage. The big draw is the fashion week/runway photography, but the talk about street style, short films and ads from brands, as well as fashion trends. At the end of every fashion week (New York, Milan, Paris, etc.) the put together a recap list of biggest trends, top shows, top models, and break down the numbers. I love the site for its minimalism and whenever the industry decides to have fashion weeks again, I’ll renew my subscription.

Magazines:  Most people would say Vogue is the holy grail for fashion magazines, but I don’t think it’s that great (at least the US version).  Vogue Paris, Italia, and UK are better in my opinion. And just because I don’t think the print version of US Vogue is the holy grail, doesn’t mean I don’t like it.  I have a subscription and read it every month. Other options I really like are Harper’s Bazaar (any country’s version), Elle, InStyle, and W.

Videos: Other than the first one listed (which can be found on Netflix or Hulu, depending where you live), everything can be found on youtube. And now i’m constantly getting fashion recommendations on youtube, so it’s an easy rabbit hole to fall into.

First Monday in May. I’ve talked about this documentary before, but it bears repeating.  It’s a gorgeous journey of how the Met Gala and Costume Institute Exhibit was put together. It’s about the ‘China: Through the Looking Glass’ exhibit in 2015. They interview big designers about how China has influenced some of their collections, and takes on the debate of whether fashion should even be in a museum. It was the first fashion documentary I ever watched and only made me fall more in love with fashion (and want to see every fashion exhibition).

The September Issue. Vogue’s September issues are always the biggest of the year.  This documentary follows the process of designing the famous September issue of Vogue. I believe it was filmed in 2007 or 2008 so it’s dated, and digital media has changed the game, but it’s a good watch to see just how influential and important the September issue is in terms of forecasting fashion trends for the following year.

Savoir Faire: Christian Dior Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2011. A 50 minute video on how one, just one, piece from the couture collection was designed.  It’s a great insight on just how much work goes in to creating a couture collection.

7 Days Out with Karl Lagerfeld. Another great showcase of the week leading up to a couture show, this time with Chanel. The documentary follows the 2018 show, which is one of Lagerfeld’s last few couture shows before his death.

Battle At Versailles: The Competition that Shook the Fashion Industry. It’s no secret that Paris is the epicenter of fashion.  The couture houses are all based there, so France is typically where you needed to be to be a world renowned designer. In 1973 French and American designers competed against each other and brought American designers into the spotlight. There’s an hour long documentary on youtube and there’s a book that I’ve linked below. I’ve seen the video and I’m currently reading the book, so you have options here.

Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams. A good look at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs exhibit for the 70th anniversary of Dior. This documentary gives a nice, condensed look at each of the artistic directors of Dior and showcases some of the most iconic Dior looks. I knew about it, but didn’t go see it. I only saw pictures, which were beautiful…but to see it all come together on video was a dream.  They talk to Celine Dion for a minute at the end, and her words sum up my feelings best about Dior, “I would love to wear one of these dresses one day, maybe in one of my lifetimes, or every night in my dreams.”

Books:

Inside Haute Couture: Behinds the Scenes at the Paris Ateliers. A gorgeous book with tons of photos about the intricacies that go in to a couture collection.

Kate Spade New York: All in Good Taste. I originally bought it for my coffee table collection, but it has some great style tips.

The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into the Spotlight and Made History. Just in case you’d rather read about this legendary fashion show than watch. I’m currently reading it, so I can’t give you my final take on it. But I’m loving it so far.

Dior by Dior: Christian Dior’s autobiography. Who better to tell you about the history of Christian Dior, than Dior himself.

Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography. I’m a big fan of Schiaparelli and would love for her legacy to be more widely known. She was a very private person, so when this biography dropped I was excited to read more about her. Elsa Schiaparelli was Coco Chanel’s biggest rival and was a household name in her time, but most people know Coco’s name over Elsa’s today. This is a nice dive into Schiaparelli’s life, since most people focus on Chanel’s legacy (and let’s be honest, Chanel is very idolized, which is so unfortunate, given her Nazi ties, but I digress.)

Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. I tend to rave about the designs by these two, so it’s a good look into their journey in fashion.

The Beautiful Fall: Fashion, Genuis, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris. If you’re interested in Lagerfeld (pre-Chanel days) or Yves Saint Laurent, it’s a great retrospective look at their rivalry.

Champagne Supernovas. If ‘90s fashion is something of interest, this book is a great read on how some big name rebels (McQueen, Marc Jacobs, Kate Moss, etc.) in the industry remade fashion as we know it.

Any of the Met Gala books: Camp: Notes on Fashion, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, Manus x Machina, Heavenly Bodies, etc.  My first one was the McQueen book, and at the time I didn’t know it was the official book from the Costume Institute Exhibit.  They’re not all hardcover coffee table-esque books, but if you can’t attend an exhibit it’s the next best thing. They’re all great in-depth resources for learning about a certain area of fashion. They can be expensive, so I wouldn’t suggest investing in them unless you’re truly interested in that specific aspect of the industry. This year’s exhibit - whenever it opens - is About Time: Fashion and Duration.  The exhibition book is already available and I think it’ll be an incredible exhibit of how current designers pull from older designers and trends.

The Fashion Book.  It’s expensive. It’s massive. And it gives you a wealth of information. It’s essentially an encyclopedia for fashion. It’s not just designers; it highlights models, high profile photographers, style icons, and all those who influenced fashion.

I know this was long, but these have been the resources I’ve used over the years. I hope this can help you along your journey and if anyone has other things to add, please do!

[arcticdementor]

Media Twitter does not hate Substack because it’s pretending to be a platform when it’s a publisher; they don’t hate it because it’s filled with anti-woke white guys; they don’t hate it because of harassment or any such thing. I don’t think they really hate it at all. Substack is a small and ultimately not-very-relevant outpost in a vastly larger industry; they may not like it but it’s not important enough for them to hate it. What do they hate? They hate where their industry is and they hate where they are within their industry. But that’s a big problem that they don’t feel like they can solve. If you feel you can’t get mad at the industry that’s impoverishing you, it’s much easier to get mad at the people who you feel are unjustly succeeding in that industry. Trying to cancel Glenn Greenwald (again) because he criticizes the media harshly? Trying to tarnish Substack’s reputation so that cool, paid-up writer types leave it and the bad types like me get kicked off? That they can maybe do. Confronting their industry’s future with open eyes? Too scary, especially for people who were raised to see success as their birthright and have suddenly found that their degrees and their witheringly dry one-liners do not help them when the rent comes due.

…

Life in the “content” industry already sucks. A small handful of people make bank while the vast majority hustle relentlessly just to hold on to the meager pay they already receive. There are staff writers at big-name publications who produce thousands of words every week and who make less than $40,000 a year for their trouble. There are permanent employees of highly prestigious newspapers and magazines who don’t receive health insurance. Venues close all the time. Mourning another huge round of layoffs is a regular bonding experience for people in the industry. Writers have to constantly job hop just to try and grind out an extra $1,500 a year, making their whole lives permanent job interviews where they can’t risk offending their potential bosses and peers. Many of them dream of selling that book to save themselves financially, not seeming to understand that book advances have fallen 40% in 10 years - median figure now $6,080 - and that the odds of actually making back even that meager advance are slim, meaning most authors are making less than minimum wage from their books when you do the math. They have to tweet constantly for the good of their careers, or so they believe, which amounts to hundreds of hours of unpaid work a year. Their publications increasingly strong arm them into churning out pathetic pop-culture ephemera like listicles about the outfits on Wandavision. They live in fear of being the one to lose out when the next layoffs come and the game of media musical chairs spins up once again. They have to pretend to like ghouls like Ezra Klein and Jonah Peretti and make believe that there’s such a thing as “the Daily Beast reputation for excellence.”

I have always felt bad for them, despite our differences, because of these conditions. And they have a right to be angry. But they don’t have much in the way of self-awareness about where their anger really lies. A newsletter company hosting Bari Weiss is why you can’t pay your student loans? You sure?

They’ll tell you about the terrible conditions in their industry themselves, when they’re feeling honest. So what are they really mad about? That I’m making a really-just-decent guaranteed wage for just one year? Or that this decent wage is the kind of money many of them dream of making despite the fact that, in their minds, they’ve done everything right and played by all the rules? Is their anger really about a half-dozen guys whose writing you have to actively seek out to see? (If you click the button and put in your email address, you’ll get these newsletters. If you don’t, you won’t. So if you’re a media type who hates my writing, consider just… not clicking that button.) Or do they need someplace to put the rage and resentment that grows inside them as they realize, no, it’s not getting better, this is all I get?

It’s true that I have, in a very limited way, achieved the new American dream: getting a little bit of VC cash. I’m sorry. But it’s much much less than one half of what Felix Salmon was making in 2017 and again, it’s only for one year.

You think the writers complaining in that piece I linked to at the top wanted to be here, at this place in their career, after all those years of hustling? You think decades into their media career, the writers who decamped to Substack said to themselves “you know, I’d really like to be in my 40s and having to hope that enough people will pitch in $5 a month so I can pay my mortgage”? No. But the industry didn’t give them what they felt they deserved either. So they displace and project. They can hate Jesse Singal, but Jesse Singal isn’t where this burning anger is coming from. Neither am I. They’re so angry because they bought into a notoriously savage industry at the nadir of its labor conditions and were surprised to find that they’re drifting into middle age without anything resembling financial security. I feel for them as I feel for all people living economically precarious lives, but getting rid of Substack or any of its writers will not do anything to fix their industry or their jobs. They wanted more and they got less and it hurts. This isn’t what they dreamed. That’s what this is really about.

…

My own deal here is not mysterious. It’s just based on a fact that the blue checks on Twitter have never wanted to accept. I got offered money to write here for the same reason I got offered to write for The New York Times and Harper’s and The Washington Post and The LA Times, the same reason I’ve gotten a half-dozen invitations to pitch since I started here a few weeks ago, the same reason a literary agent sought me out and asked me to write a book, the same reason I sold that book for a decent advance: because I pull traffic. Though I am a social outcast from professional opinion writing, I have a better freelance publishing history than many, many of my critics who are paid-up, obedient members of the media social scene. Why? Because the editors who hired me thought I was a great guy? No. Because I pull traffic. I always have. That’s why you’re reading this on Substack right now.

…

A really important lesson to learn, in life, is this: your enemies are more honest about you than your friends ever will be. I’ve been telling the blue checks for over a decade that their industry was existentially fucked, that the all-advertising model was broken, that Google and Facebook would inevitably hoover up all the profit, that there are too many affluent kids fresh out of college just looking for a foothold in New York who’ll work for next to nothing and in doing so driving down the wages of everyone else, that their mockery of early subscription programs like Times Select was creating a disastrous industry expectation that asking your readers directly for money was embarrassing. Trump is gone and the news business is cratering. Michael Tracey didn’t make that happen. None of this anger will heal what’s wrong. If you get all of the people you don’t like fired from Substack tomorrow, what will change? How will your life improve? Greenwald will spend more time with his hottie husband and his beloved kids and his 6,000 dogs in his beautiful home in Rio. Glenn will be fine. How do we do the real work of getting you job security and a decent wage?

…

But how do things get better in that way? Only through real self-criticism (which Twitter makes impossible) and by asking hard questions. Questions like one that has not been credibly confronted a single time in this entire media meltdown: why are so many people subscribing to Substacks? What is the traditional media not providing that they’re seeking elsewhere? Why have half a million people signed up as paying subscribers of various Substack newsletters, if the establishment media is providing the diversity of viewpoints that is an absolute market requirement in a country with a vast diversity of opinions? You can try to make an adult determination about that question, to better understand what media is missing, or you can read this and write some shitty joke tweet while your industry burns to the ground around you. It’s your call.

Substack might fold tomorrow, but someone would else sell independent media; there’s a market. Substack might kick me and the rest of the unclean off of their platforms tomorrow, but other critics of social justice politics would pop up here; there’s a market. Establishment media’s takeover by this strange brand of academic identity politics might grow even more powerful, if that’s even possible, but dissenters will find a place to sell alternative opinion; there’s a market. What there might not be much of a market for anymore is, well, you - college educated, urban, upwardly striving if not economically improving, woke, ironic, and selling that wokeness and that irony as your only product. Because you flooded the market. Everyone in your entire industry is selling the exact same thing, tired sarcastic jokes and bleating righteousness about injustices they don’t suffer under themselves, and it’s not good in basic economic terms if you’re selling the same thing as everyone else. You add that on to structural problems within your business model and your utter subservience to a Silicon Valley that increasingly hates you, well…. I get why you’re mad. And I get that you don’t like me. But I’m not what you’re mad about. Not really.

In the span of a decade or so, essentially all professional media not explicitly branded as conservative has been taken over by a school of politics that emerged from humanities departments at elite universities and began colonizing the college educated through social media. Those politics are obscure, they are confusing, they are socially and culturally extreme, they are expressed in a bizarre vocabulary, they are deeply alienating to many, and they are very unpopular by any definition. The vast majority of the country is not woke, including the vast majority of women and people of color. How could it possibly be healthy for the entire media industry to be captured by any single niche political movement, let alone one that nobody likes? Why does no one in media seem willing to have an honest, uncomfortable conversation about the near-total takeover of their industry by a fringe ideology?

And the bizarre assumption of almost everyone in media seems to have been that they could adopt this brand of extreme niche politics, in mass, as an industry, and treat those politics as a crusade that trumps every other journalistic value, with no professional or economic consequences. They seem to have thought that Americans were just going to swallow it; they seem to have thought they could paint most of the country as vicious bigots and that their audiences would just come along for the ride. They haven’t. In fact Republicans are making great hay of the collapse of the media into pure unapologetic advocacy journalism. Some people are turning to alternative media to find options that are neither reactionary ideologues or self-righteous woke yelling. Can you blame them? Substack didn’t create this dynamic, and neither did I. The exact same media people who are so angry about Substack did, when they abandoned any pretense to serving the entire country and decided that their only job was to advance a political cause that most ordinary people, of any gender or race, find alienating and wrong. So maybe try and look at where your problems actually come from. They’re not going away.

Now steel yourselves, media people, take a shot of something strong, look yourself in the eye in the mirror, summon you most honest self, and tell me: am I wrong?

[jensvisualnoveladventures]

In general, I’m super behind with Choices. The issues with how the subscription works with coupons/discounts put a bad taste in my mouth and I haven’t really played since. I’ve kept up with spoilers and I figured once I save up enough, I’ll catch up with a subscription. 

But wow do I just have so little interest to do so at this point. Like part of me wants to finish out stories and make characters (And I’ll be honest, even though I’m not interested in the plot at all, Foreign Affairs hits some of my favorite tropes with Blaine), but I’m also just not that interested in anything right now.

I think, based off announcements, what I’m most interested in is: 

The new cooking book (And that could change based off how it goes. With the VIP Books, it’s been hit or miss for me-- I really enjoyed AVSP and what I played of TUH. I also liked WEH even though the end killed me (which I guess I should’ve expected, but it’s also the thing that holds it back from being a top favorite for me), but Hot Couture I found disappointing in the end (Only thing I liked was the scrap book feature), Ms. Match was just awful for me from the get-go (I can’t get into any romance that starts with sex with no choice otherwise. Simple as that. If I could stay single in that book, I would, but I guess I’ll at least save plenty of diamonds) and I honestly didn’t like the way the ending went either, and Wolf Bride clearly isn’t really for me, but I am curious about parts of the plot. (Like how Morgan fits in, more on the MC’s family and why her mother left, why she has these specific bonds and with who in general, etc. But honestly if there’s an option to not pick eithe and head back to her mom, I’m picking it)

The new Mystery book. At the same time, seeing how other mysteries have gone with a lot of unanswered questions or not the happiest of endings, I’m trying to not get my hopes too high. 

Blades Book 2, but after other sequel cancelations, I’m holding my breath there too. I also REALLY hope we can change our hair separately from our skin color. SO much. That was still my biggest disappointment with the book. 

I only started playing Choices a little under 2 years ago when a friend told me to check it out. For the most part, I’ve only liked a handful of books, but some LIs stood out for me.

But the big thing is it wasn’t as long for me as I last played and waiting for Book 2′s of books that were said to be coming. Most Wanted and Hero had such huge cliffhangers that we’ll never have resolved.

Nightbound was frustrating to not be getting a sequel as it still had a lot of unanswered questions. I also genuinely enjoyed it more than Bloodbound, a book which also disappointed me a lot with its final book in the series. 

Distant Shores and Ride or Die fell into a similar thing where they didn’t necessarily NEED a Book 2, but there were a lot of questions unanswered and I still hoped for some closure there. I wasn’t even as attached to either of these. 

I know a lot of people were upset about the Elementalists ending the way it did, but I was actually more or less okay with it. I felt it answered everything it left off, despite causing some of the foreshadowing to be for nothing. 

In general, I just hope PB thinks further ahead in the future I guess? Either have something set up to give us closure or make sure it’s all rounded up at the end without us needing another book.

As for the current ones going... I wasn’t really into Baby Bump to begin with and already being in a full relationship in Book 2 doesn’t make it any better. I wish she just could be friendly with the LIs for now. I also just... am tired of these types of plots-- there was enough going on without all the Craig stupidity and we don’t always need the extra antagonism. 

It’s part of what brought down The Royal Heir so much. We could’ve still used these books just to dig into everything with Eleanor without all the added treason and B Drama Plots to push it back and spending time together. And then the 4th could’ve been the hanging out relaxing time to take it easy if we really needed one final book... Or maybe a like “Through the Princess’ eyes” or something. There’s just so many better ways they could’ve done it IMO. 

And in the subject of both and really the MCs a lot of the time in general-- I’m tired of White being synonymous with Blonde and light eyed for them. 

I don’t have much to say about MTFL besides how horribly forced it was for all types of people. The main argument I’ve seen is that we’re following another character’s journey but like... then don’t less us name or customize them? So many people do put themselves into the characters they play in this type of thing so I think it’s understandable to be upset (That said, some people are absolutely hypocritical-- I’ve seen so many people only be upset about Ava’s kiss and not the boy’s and no, all three being forced sucked), but going through the break-up for each when you may have had no interest dating them was so uncomfortable to do. 

If it was really a set story, the LI chosen should’ve been set and we shouldn’t have been able to change anything. I felt like we had more freedom in ROE than MTFL and those were all set characters. But somehow it still felt my choices mattered more. 

Anyway, just lots of disappointments I guess. And if I have a spare $15, I’d rather just put that to my FFXIV Subscription again. 

[lunafeather]

Writer Asks!

tagged by @hereliesbethboland and @foxmagpie

AO3 name: Lunafeather

Fandoms: Good Girls(Brio), Wynonna Earp (Wyndolls), Rizzoli and Isles (Rizzles), Dragon Age (Solavellan, Alistair x Brosca, Tethraghast), Gilmore Girls (Java Junkie)

Number of fics:

18 on AO3, I think like 10 on ffnet?

Fic I spent the most time on:

I’m gonna have to say These Are a Few of My Favorite Things and Remix, both of which I’ve been working on since July ‘19 and are still very much works in progress (I haven’t abandoned either of them).

Fic I spend the least amount of time on:

If Kisses Could Talk. I saw the finale and literally stayed awake until the next morning writing it -- it just poured out of me in about 6 hours. It was my catharsis. Sal’ethast (Dragon Age) is a very close second, and it the most words I’ve written in the shortest time: 25k words in maybe 4 days? It was a Reverse Big Bang and I had a strict deadline. I work well under pressure! Who knew!

Most hits: 

Retribution (Solavellan) is first, followed by These Are a Few of My Favorite Things. People REALLY LOVE Retribution, it is by far my most popular DA fic. I still get new kudos to this day. And then obviously people love TAaFoMFT :)

Most Kudos:

TAaFoMFT, by a bit of a margin. Second place is One Question Left.

Most comment threads:

Again, TAaFoMFT hahaha I actually tend not to get very many comments on my stuff, which sucks, but this fic has twice as many comments as the runner up (Remix).

Most bookmarks:

Would it surprise you if I said TAaFoMFT? It also has the most subscriptions as well.

Highest total word count:

Sal’ethast. Remix is second with 11k.

Fave fic I wrote:

I’m gonna be weird here and say I tend to love everything I write?? At least, for the last few years. My ffnet stuff was terrible, but I was 16 so it makes sense. I’ve improved a ton. If I had to pick just ONE thing, I would probably go with These Are a Few of My Favorite Things. I’ve basically created my own little canon divergent universe with it’s own rules and guidelines, and I really like writing in it. I like using that world to explore angst and fluff and smut. Some of my best writing and prose is in that story. Plus, I love a shameless opportunity to explore two characters I am unbelievably attracted to haha

Runner up is Cake Break (Solavellan), cause like.... I love fluff, I love it, I would marry it if I could.

Fic I want to rewrite/ expand on:

I don’t know of any that I would rewrite. There are a couple I reread where I would change things based on where they’re at now/what we’ve learned about Brio, but it isn’t anything huge and so I leave it. Reminds me of better times lol

As for expanding, I am still obviously expanding TAaFoMFT and Remix, but I kind of also want to write other, more linear stuff for the former? Like how they get from “you’re just work” to them falling in love. I dunno, other stuff would probably pop up in my head. It’s my comfort blanket universe. I actually write a lot of prompt fills with that universe in mind.

All of my other pieces are relatively insulated (and most were canon fixes).

Share a bit of a WIP or story you’ve been working on:

My main priority right now is the next chapter of TAaFoMFT, I have it outlined (most of the next 16 chapters are outlined as well) and am slowly adding to it.

I have a lot of prompts I am filling here or there just for the sake of writing, because I like it.

There’s a prompt fill I’ve been working for almost a year that is incredibly self indulgent, that’s centered around Danny’s birthday pool party and it’s just... chock full of Brio being sexy fluffy, Annie x Nancy goodness, everyone being a big, weird family, Dean only showing up to be openly mocked and derided. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it, but it’s there waiting!

And I have a nebulous idea for a post S3 multi-chaptered fic (gasp! I know! A linear fic with more than one chapter??) but I am like.... really worried that everyone will be writing these, and that mine is gonna be too much like someone else’s, and that mine will suck in comparison, and that gets in my head and makes me all flustered and anxious and unsure, but then I’ve already written 2000 words of JUST outline/ideas, trying to piece everything together. I dunno, I really want to write it, but also I don’t?? But I think about it as I’m falling asleep and have written so many notes in my phone before i pass out. Also, I have done SO MUCH research about pool and spa places, you guys have no idea. I am a FOUNTAIN of knowledge now. (Maybe they should get stuck somewhere, and there’s only one bed?!?)

Aaaaand I have a few ideas I still have a little interest in working on, like the fic inspired by a prompt fill I wrote that was inspired by a theory @cpt-falcon had about the S2 finale, where instead of breaking up with Rio, Beth tells him what Dean is doing and they hatch a plan to undermine him and get her kids back, and someone gets shot but for a different reason.

And another that was inspired by a long discussion with @johnisntevendead about Rio accidentally saying te amo to Beth one night and him freaking the fuck out about it cause you don’t say that unless you really fucking mean it, and he does, and that’s scary as shit, and Beth takes his reaction the wrong way.

So yeah, there’s a lot going on in my head lol

[tessisawriter]

Article: “The conflicted passions of Islanders fans of color and changes they want to see”

Under the cut, I have reposted in full an article written by Arthur Staple & published August 28, 2020 on the Athletic (a subscription-only site) b/c I feel everyone should be able to read it. Finally, someone is writing about racism on Long Island and within the Islanders fanbase; it’s been a major problem from the moment the team was founded. Imagine not feeling comfortable going to a hockey game. That’s what Black and POC Islanders fans experience all the time, and it cannot continue. The Islanders’ owners, Scott Malkin and John Ledecky, have to do better. 

Here’s the link to the article; everything under the cut is from that article and was written by Arthur Staple. 

Jason Faustino is not a household name to Islanders fans, but many of them wear his sneakers. The co-founder of Extra Butter, a trendy sneaker label, Faustino was a longtime Islanders season-ticket holder who custom-designed Isles-themed kicks through the team and Reebok several years ago. He counts a few players as customers and friends.

He’s also a Filipino-American hockey fan who all too often has felt alienated from the team he loves. Those experiences have ranged from being one of a bare handful of fans of color at games or, more recently, dismayed at the team’s tepid statement in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis policeman on May 25 and the subsequent protests worldwide.

Faustino has been watching the Islanders’ successful playoff run in the fan-less Toronto bubble and has enjoyed the escape the games provide for him. He was encouraged that Islanders players decided to join the rest of the NHL in sitting out games Thursday and Friday to support the league’s players of color in the wake of Jacob Blake’s shooting by a Kenosha, Wis., police officer on Sunday.

But the online discussions resulting from the NHL players’ decision not to play for two days, combined with the team statement from June 1, have left Faustino wondering where he fits in as an Islander fan. And he’s not alone.

“I can’t help but look back and see that they pandered to a fan base that’s largely ignorant,” Faustino said. “You don’t want to take away from supporting the team, but sorry that it might make those fans uncomfortable to read or see the words ‘Black Lives Matter.’ What that statement (in June) confirmed to me is the team just might not be aware at all and just does not understand how the perception is different for players and people of color, not understanding what it feels like for them.”

In June, after the Islanders’ social media account posted the team’s statement — which, by all accounts, was approved by principal owner Scott Malkin — several fans reached out to The Athletic via email or direct message on Twitter to express their disappointment with the organization. We spoke with three fans, who are used to being one of very few Black or Brown faces in the crowd at the Coliseum or Barclays Center, about how the statement made them feel about their team. In follow-up conversations, we asked them whether having games back this month has changed their views.

None of the Islanders fans we spoke with had ever experienced racism at Isles games, but they said they felt and still feel distanced from the team due to the lack of outreach and sensitivity to the experience of people of color who love hockey. The Athletic reached out to Islanders ownership through a team spokesman in June and did not hear back.

‘I think the Islanders are good for Islander fans, not Long Island’

Desmond Zantua grew up in Floral Park, in the shadow of what will soon be the Islanders’ new home. He started going to Islander games as a teenager in 1997 and quickly noticed he could count, usually on one hand, the number of people of color in the Coliseum around him. “And it was easy to count since there weren’t many people there in the late ’90s,” he said.

Zantua, a Filipino American, has been active since Floyd’s death, going to protests in New York City and on Long Island and posting strong messages on Twitter. He feels the Islanders’ statement in June catered to a part of the fan base that is also vocal online, the part that counters Black Lives Matter with All Lives Matter, among other sentiments in the face of police brutality and misconduct.

What he wants to see from his team is more diversity in the organization, more outreach to minority communities on Long Island and more care taken to grow the game in a very diverse area.

“(The June 1 statement) confirmed to me that whether it’s business considerations or cultural considerations, everything is centered in suburban Whiteness,” Zantua said. “Being a fan of this team … the Islanders have played in predominantly Black neighborhoods and yet the crowd is predominantly White. Seeing a statement like that says that people like me don’t count.

“I’ve been going to games since 1997. I know most of the people there, I’m lucky if I see double-digit non-White people at the games. That should not change your ability to speak up against racism. It says to me those are the fans you want to keep, and what does it say about me if I continue to give money to an organization that feels this way?”

Since hockey and the Islanders have returned, Zantua has returned, too. He said it’s easier to watch and support the team when no fans are allowed because he doesn’t have to decide whether to attend or not. But the Blake shooting and how it forced the NHL and its players into confronting the world outside the playoff bubbles still makes him question his support.

“It’s been difficult. It’s still impossible to ignore what a White-privilege sport hockey is,” Zantua said. He hopes the Islanders get more involved with the minority communities around UBS Arena and grow the game on the Island in a new way once fans are allowed into the building.

“The kids in Garden City and Long Beach don’t need help discovering the game,” Zantua said. “Elmont is right there, Valley Stream is right there. … The Islanders talk about how good they are in the community. I think they’re good for Islander fans, not Long Island as a whole.”

‘You’re not making people feel welcome’

Ian Macks grew up in the Bronx and, even though he moved to Albany as a teen, still has a passion for the Islanders. It waned when the fan base never fully embraced the Barclays Center experience starting in 2015, and the June statement further pushed the 26-year-old Black poet away.

“There were obviously issues with them playing in Brooklyn, but it sort of felt to me that they never really tried to make it work,” Macks said. “I thought it was such a great opportunity to get new fans, fans that look more like me from Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx, into games and into the Islanders. But they went straight back to the Coliseum when they could. … The aversion to Brooklyn just seemed to come from a place of, ‘We know where our comfort zone is and we’re going right back there.'”

When we talked to Macks in mid-June, there was no hockey. He was wearing his No. 66 Josh Ho-Sang jersey, but wasn’t optimistic about going to Islanders games on the Island in the future.

��I went to an Islanders game in Philly this season and it was the most at home I’ve felt at one of their games,” Macks said. “It shouldn’t have to be that way. The statement says to me they care more about a certain type of fan than the people who are being counter-protested right in your backyard. You’re not making people feel welcome. And this is an organization that’s had a real problem keeping fans from all their mistakes over the years.”

‘It’s not the kind of fan I want to be’

Faustino is a Melville, N.Y., native who lives in Boston now and works for Saucony, a major sneaker brand. After a decade of helping build Extra Butter and doing things his own way, he’s come to understand that living life in the corporate world means not always having your personal views validated. So, while he was extremely bothered by the Islanders’ June statement, he said he knows plenty of people within the organization who were hurt by what the team put out.

“In the sneaker industry, it was a similar moment (three months ago) — there were brands that got it right and ones that didn’t,” Faustino said. “It was disappointing the Islanders got it wrong.”

He’s been watching the playoffs and enjoying the team’s success so far. The problem with being so removed from games, he said, is that you’re sucked into the online world of fandom, which is not a welcoming place for Islander fans of color. After the Islanders put out their statement Thursday in support of the players’ decision not to play, tweets from mostly anonymous fans followed vowing never to support the team or the league again for caving to what they saw as left-wing pressure.

“I saw statements of people that won’t support the team going forward. Would this impact me wanting to go to games if I were a season-ticket holder and the games had fans? I don’t know,” Faustino said. “And if there’s a Stanley Cup parade, do I even want to walk with these people? It’s hard to have my own bubble of 10-12 fans that I care about and ignore the rest.

“Seeing the games come back and seeing the Isles win a couple rounds, it’s a relief, really. I think it is for a lot of fans to get away from the realities of 2020. And I’m sure it’s not just Islander fans on Twitter reacting to the games being postponed this way. But seeing some of those reactions and thinking back to how the team kind of catered to that group three months ago, it makes me want to remove myself from the team and the game I love. And that’s not the kind of fan I want to be.”

[oosteven-universe]

Shadow Service #1 Advance Review

Shadow Service #1 Advance Review Vault Comics 2020 On Sale 19/08/20 Written by Cavan Scott Illustrated by Corin Howell Coloured by Triona Tree Farrell Lettered by Andworld Design    Worried your partner is cheating? Need a missing person found? Gina Meyers is the Private Investigator for you. Sure, she's a witch who worries that her powers make her more of a monster than the crooks she's trying to catch, but it's not like London's criminal underworld is literally going to hell... is it? Spy craft meets black magic in the shadowy world of MI666!    My God what a great book!  We all know I am a huge fan of Vault Comics and they have their pulse on what’s hot, fresh and new that needs to be read.  I am also a huge fan of Cavan’s writing and have been for a while now, his work at Titan Comics introduced me to him and I've been a follower ever since.  I was also blown away by the way this issue is structured and how the story moves forward to finally revealing what the book is going to be about.  The background information, the setup of who she is and what she can do and even what I would refer to as her supporting cast, all of this is so brilliantly done.    The way this is being told is bloody brilliant.  The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is laid out in a way that leaves the reader gutted and chuffed.  No lie, I was riveted to the pages and could absorb what I was reading fast enough and as new scenarios and characters were introduced the momentum of the book sucks you in.   The character development that we see is equally as strong.  The situations and circumstances that we see Gina encounter and how she acts and reacts to them, with some bloody good narration, gives us this nice bigger picture of her base personality.  The pacing is superb and as it takes through the pages revealing more and more we see how everything here works together to create the story’s ebb & flow.      I love seeing the versatility that Caven is showing here while still remaining true to what I have come to expect from him.  By the last page I realised just what we were in for and that prospect was exciting as all get out.  It simply captures the mind, imagination and engages the reader almost immediately and keeps the curiosity piqued long after its been read.    I like the interiors here, they aren’t groundbreaking or anything just some extremely solid work.  I want to see more backgrounds being utilised because when we see them they really add another dimension to the story and that garage, that felt like a space that wasn’t large.  Otherwise I have to say the linework is fantastic and how we see the varying weights being utilised to bring out the attention to detail is handled beautifully.  I wouldn’t mind seeing other techniques instead of straight up linework weight variances.  The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a strong eye for storytelling.  The colour work that we see is exquisite.  I love how we see the gradation being utilised along with colour blocking and how this brings different looks to different parts.  The way that the various hues and tones within the colours are being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work show a real mastery of colour and how it works.   ​    Call your shop or contact your subscription service and make sure they can get a copy of this book.  To me it’s like John Constantine and Punk Mambo had a baby and named her Gina, whom they left in someone else's care.  There is so much wonderful material rife for the plucking and I cannot wait to see what these folks are going to be putting Gina through!  Move over Bond there’s a new girl in town!

[dropintomanga]

On the Industry, Fans, and Piracy - My Feelings on Manga Today

This year has been quite an interesting one for anyone who’s involved in manga industry happenings with regards to piracy.

As most of you may know, an infamous manga app known as Mangarock was finally shut down this year after years of proliferating as a “legit” manga-reading app on the Apple and Google Play Stores. They finally got shut down when a Western comic artist found their work being distributed on the platform. While this was good news, there has been criticism about whether there were signs of subtle prejudice towards manga (since it’s a foreign medium) as it took a Western comic to bring things to attention.

There was also the news of Mangamura, a well-known Japanese raw scan site, and how the head honcho of the site got arrested in the Philippines this year and will face consequences for his actions. (Update: 12/21/2019 - Now Mangastream and Jaimini’s Box are out of the game with regards to scanlating popular titles)

While this is good news for people who love to support the manga industries in both Japan and overseas, things are still the same. The pirates will keep coming over and over again. I wonder when enough is enough or maybe I’m just tired of hearing the same old debate on legal vs. illegal manga.

I see multiple Twitter threads from pro-industry folks on why everyone should support buying manga. I also see threads on why manga publishers suck. They’re both right if you ask me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how this industry vs scanlators fight is similar to what I’ve been reading about in the mental health field recently - psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry.

Psychiatry advocates believe that taking medicine is the best way to solve mental health problems and mental illness. They realize that things can happen in the human brain that lead to something worse. However, they think a lot of issues warrant medication when it may not be the best solution.

Anti-psychiatry advocates believes that medicine isn’t the best way to solve mental health problems and mental illness. They dislike how the mental health care system treats people with mental health problems. Yet they believe that “mental illness” doesn’t exist.

So throwing it back to manga -

The manga industry believes that supporting the industry involves purchasing their books at any costs. You buy the books, you support the mangaka drawing them. Yet the system that drives the industry is terrible. As we all know from Bakuman and tales from manga professionals, the system to become a successful mangaka involves often-poor working conditions in the form of long hours, strict deadlines, and a good amount of isolation.

Scanlators believe they are doing the manga industry a favor in providing free exposure to titles that would go undiscovered by fans. More often than not, scanlators do what they do without any care for profit. However, they tend to go a bit extreme with regards to translating certain text. Some scanlators also become a bit too egotistical for their own good and end up causing ridiculous drama among other scanlation groups over material they are technically stealing.

Tying this back all together with all regards to comparing psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry and industry vs scanlators, there’s a third party being affected that’s ignored in both debates.

For the 1st war (psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry), there’s not enough focus on the seriously mentally ill. The seriously mentally ill are the community suffering the most right now and present a great deal of harm to themselves and others. A 3rd party group that addresses them would utilize certain views and rejects certain views from the psychiatry and anti-psychiatry movements to help the seriously mentally ill. They are often forgotten as a lot of money goes to those whose mental health issues aren’t as bad on both sides. 

For the 2nd war (scanlations vs. legal manga), you can argue that there’s a huge crowd of fans that are willing to pay for manga as long as you give them almost everything on one platform a la Steam/Netflix at a very low price. That platform also needs to be easily accessible with little-to-no regional restrictions. There are so many fans in certain parts of the world that can’t purchase manga due to lack of access to bookstores/libraries or availability of them. I’ll put this in caps in case people don’t get it - THE WHOLE WORLD IS NOT THE UNITED STATES OR ANY OTHER NOTABLE AND PROLIFIC COUNTRY. I sometimes think certain fans that are able to buy manga forget how lucky they are.

A side note: While a huge step forward for legit digital manga, Viz’s Shonen Jump isn’t enough because not everyone likes shonen. All the other subscription services are fine, but everything’s kind of fragmented a bit compared to how Crunchyroll has almost everything anime-related (though they are going through a big streaming war that’s causing fragmentation as well).  Though to be honest, I think the scanlation community and the manga industry have to band together on one thing I think both sides can all agree on - it’s the relative value of manga compared to other forms of media in general.

To explain, I watched a video feature on the mangaka Shinichi Sakamoto, creator of Innocent and Innocent Rouge. Sakamoto goes into a discussion about manga’s value that really got me thinking. He talks about how manga is treated as “disposable” and how he tries to make his works worth keeping and remembering.

In the end of the video, Sakamoto says: “I feel manga is something that is read, then thrown away. For example, people would read a manga during their work commute and throw it away once they finish reading it. Or they would read a manga at a restaurant during lunch break. Then they would close it once the food is served and forget about it. I thought at first, manga was something that was read then thrown away. However recently, since I started to adopt my current style, I now want to make something that stays close to readers. Something that remains. It’s what currently motivates me to draw manga.

I ask myself what to do in order to make something that stays for a long time, using themes or opinions that they stay engraved in the minds of readers without being forgotten. I keep this in mind in order to leave something behind. It is what motivates me.”

The quality of manga made in Japan isn’t the best. The paper is comparable to toilet paper. If you ever browsed through a manga magazine in person, it feels like going through a super-thick newspaper. Compare that to overseas volumes of manga and it’s a world of difference. I’ll admit that publishers like Viz Media, Kodansha Comics, and Yen Press do a great job in making their printed manga high-quality albeit at a higher cost to fans.

Yet I realized that there’s a larger number of manga fans who don’t care about quality as long as what they want is accessible and cheap. That’s a big reason why scanlations have exploded and will continue to do so. Convenience is something that a lot of outside forces now push onto everyone. I frankly love print books, but I wonder what if the price of printed manga volumes reaches a certain point that makes me go “Yeah, I don’t think I can buy printed manga anymore.”

In the end of the day, even if you make it look pretty as hell and close to a luxury product, manga is still a “throw-away” item with little relative value to a lot of fans thanks to how it’s originally conceived in Japan combined with how internet culture takes advantage of what the meaning of “free stuff” is. Not everyone will find a sense of belonging with manga the same way that fans do.

There are certain folks that support purchasing manga that say things like “Wages need to be raised because they’ve stagnated” and when it comes to fans reading manga on an illegal site, their views sound like “You should buy no matter what” and/or “Just don’t buy.” I know there are those who will point to manga sales and they still aren’t exactly affordable to some fans. 20%-33% off titles with a high price point to begin with may not feel like a significant discount to someone who may not be a hardcore manga collector. Maybe it’s better to say, “You know what? Let’s just smash capitalism for ruining everyone’s lives” or better yet, “Let’s promote wage growth so that manga fans can actually purchase manga and manga artists can survive.”  

For now, let’s all be like Sakamoto and promote how valuable manga can be because appreciating the arts makes people better human beings than learning how to make a “efficient” website/software program look good for someone whose end goal is usually profit. The arts is what keeps people from turning into robots. Yes, this sounds like I’m saying “Let’s have the manga pirates keep doing what they’re doing then.” What I’m suggesting is that everyone from the top down (government, etc.) has to take charge in promotion of anything related to the arts (which manga and comics in general are a part of), not just the regular folks, as they appear to be all on-board the "let’s mindlessly consume/produce everything with ruthless efficiency” train.

I feel sympathetic towards anyone who works with on the American side of manga publishing (or anything that’s based in Japan) because Japan’s mentality on promoting their works overseas is awful. The Japanese want a level of control in how they want to be perceived outside of their own country. Compare that to a country like Korea (where K-Pop is now featured on major American TV networks), you can see how bad Japan is promoting their own brand of pop culture to the world. If you want an example, just look up Nintendo’s history of taking down anything overseas that looks to violate their principles of promoting their games.

I realize that I’m sounding like this Japanese manga creator who criticized publishers for how they handle piracy. Well, I dislike how manga publishers or professionals involved with the manga industry will shame fans for reading scanlations/raws. Almost everyone that reads scans/raws tends to be a fan of manga in general. A lot of them may not be unaware of the nature of scans (especially fans who meet mangaka in person and tell them they read them online). And even if they were aware, have you noticed how wages have stagnated for a lot of people across the world versus inflation?

Plus, how often do shame tactics work on people? They’re just as effective as most diversity training workshops hoping to change people’s bias on visible differences (spoiler alert: not very well). They never change anyone’s minds at all due to being short-term solutions that ignore the shamer’s role in perpetuating the problem. I realize changing minds takes a long time and requires a LOT of nuance (AKA not good for making immediate money), so it’s easy to focus on quick and fast.\

I also don’t like how scanlators disrespect localization efforts at times. I don’t like seeing multiple instances of swear words when most Japanese (or people in general) don’t talk like that in real life. Yes, some localization efforts are full of cringe. Appealing to a bigger array of new readers is important to having an industry thrive. Having just loyal customers isn’t enough.

Loyalty can only go so far. So many people don’t care about brands and/or will switch whenever it’s convenient to do so. There’s always a psychological disconnect between community and profit. That’s why you try to get as many new consumers as possible so they can become great word-of-mouth spokespeople for your stuff. Given how a good number of anime/manga fans stop consuming either medium after a certain age, replenishment of fans is an absolute necessity. I wish scanlators who frown at legit translators who bust their asses off to make manga accessible to a wider audience realize this.

There’s a final thing I want to address regarding the whole debate about scans and it was something I noticed at Anime NYC this year. So this year, Artists’ Alley and the Exhibit Hall were put right near each other on the same floor. In years past, they were separated via different floors or on different sections far away from one another in the same floor. I had a troubling thought and reading one convention recap reinforced it.

It’s the fact that Artists’ Alley is almost always fan works and the close proximity this time clashes with the Exhibit Hall vendors’ sale of official merchandise. There are anime industry members who dislike an arrangement like this with good reason. Bootlegs are a problem in an industry largely associated with piracy. Yet fans LOVE Artists’ Alley. Anime cons can’t just gut them to please industry folks. Supporting the fan artists at Artists’ Alley is a win-win for fans and con organizers. 

Also, some of the artists at Artists’ Alley I spoke to all read scanlations in some way, shape or form when discussing certain series. I have no damn desire to play moral police with those artists because I know they are lovable and messy people. Just enforce the golden rule - don’t be a dick in a public setting even if you have a good reason to because you will never change anyone’s views that way. 

I know some issues have to be made public, but go through proper channels first since I don’t want to see someone being labeled a mood killer without proper context in places that are supposed to be safe for fans.

Another thing - I have friends (both ‘20s and ‘30s) who work full-time jobs that read manga in not-so-legal sites. Some of them I’m very close with. I’m not ending friendships with them over the fact they may consume media differently. The one thing I can say is that even the best of the best will have questionable beliefs/do questionable things and all you can do is figure out what’s really important to you - their actions or the consequences of their actions. Don’t expect the people you idolize will think the same way you do in every thought you have. Everyone has their own closet of behaviors and thoughts that will always irk others.

So for anyone who’s confused on whose side I’m on, I’m on neither. I know the truth is a lot more complicated than what most people will tell me. I do want manga to thrive more overseas. It’s just that outside of Japan, regardless if you pay for or pirate a manga, there’s no appreciation for lifelong reading. Reading is treated as a pain than pleasure in the Western part of the world. Many anime fans are only tempted to read a manga because of how cool an anime adaptation of a certain series is or just from buzz. 

More than anything, I feel like there should be a bigger effort in promoting a sense of lifelong reading. I sometimes get jokes from corporate folks that I like to read and it’s depressing since libraries are always threatened by budget cuts. Reading books (fiction & non-fiction) has helped me processed a lot of things for my mental health. We got to do a better job in emphasizing that reading can be for fun and not just for achievement. Still, buy whatever manga you can for the artist’s sake if you really like the works (not for the publisher’s due to how I feel about capitalism sometimes). If you still want to read or prefer scans, then that’s your thing. You know, I’m glad I’m not really a pro-industry person and a pro-fan. I live in both worlds and feel like I have a balanced understanding of how people act in certain situations versus how they behave normally. I make a joke now that if anyone who works in marketing wants to really understand what their customers are like, they should go to a DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) and see the misery there.

I guess you can say I blame Japan more than anything as I do buy what I can from the American side of things. I know the hard-working folks in the U.S. manga publishing business probably get frustrated with Japanese bureaucracy to a certain degree at times. 

Next year will be the start of a new decade after a decade of slow then fast growth in all things anime and manga. Things are going to get better and worse for anime and manga. Maybe once Luffy finally gets the One Piece treasure will manga piracy be severely hampered by then. I have some doubts because this is all reliant on what Japan will do as manga is here to stay in overseas markets. I know more Japanese manga editors have been traveling overseas to understand what’s going on outside of Japan. That’s a good start. So I just hope that the final chapter over here involves cultivating a joyful love of reading because I feel technology has to really pick up on that.

When reading really matters to everyone and takes some precedence over video in the minds of people, maybe we can see some meaningful progress in a battle where we might be fighting the wrong side(s) and/or missing a bigger part of the picture.

Regardless, it’s a fascinating and fun time to be a manga fan. I’m glad to have met many people who love and read manga regardless of how they consume it. Those experiences have provided so much value for me.

Manga may be considered “trash” in many ways, but to loosely quote a certain popular Naruto ninja, it’s at least better than giving up on the true joys of life.

Addendum (12/21/2019) - Two days after this post was made, two of the biggest manga scanlation groups on the net, Mangastream and Jaimini’s Box, decided to stop translating all Weekly Shonen Jump titles. I’m indifferent about either platform going away (or completely gone as Jaimini’s Box is still doing titles from other manga magazines). The one thing I will say is that Mangastream took advantage of the growing push for convenience in the minds of people over the last decade. I think about how much tech companies have abused “convenience” to generate unintended division and in some ways, Mangastream was like a tech company when they saw their ego being stroked by the large fanbase they were getting.

Photo Source: The Japan Times For one of my favorite takes on scanlations, read “Why Do Scanlations Persist?” from What Is Manga? There’s also this podcast from GeekNights about manga distribution in the United States which added some fuel to this post.

[grimoire-of-geekery]

Adult asks answered!

Warning: I am a curmudgeon, and some of these opinions may come across as mean, rude, or overly critical.  This is intentional.  Get off my lawn.

1: Exactly how long have you been in your current relationship?

15 years almost exactly with my first husband. Closer to 9 years with my second husband, 7 with my third, and 4 with my fiance. And yes, I'm still with them all, so they all count as "current relationships!" *laughs maniacally in polyamorous*

2: Most recent purchase over $500.

Phones. LOL we had to get everyone new phones, like last year.  We’re still three iGenerations behind.

3: How much of the furniture you own is the kind you have to build yourself?

None. All of the furniture we have is bought from places like Rent-A-Center, from a vintage or thrift store, or we inherited it.

4: If you were to acquire a baby tomorrow what would you name it?

Uhhh... "Someone Else's Problem." Or maybe "Cauldron," last name "Fodder."

5: How often do you change your sheets...really.

Like once a month. Yeah, I know...

6: Biggest adult decision ever:

Buying a house!

7: More immature thing you do on a regular basis.

Get into stupid arguments for no reason?  I dunno, I try to curb my immature impulses.  I like being a geek, some people think that’s immature.  I don’t think it is, though, so they can suck it.

8: Biggest bill you pay.

Mortgage, probably.  It’s not a bad payment though.

9: Smallest bill you pay.

Netflix.  Either that or our subscription to Final Fantasy XIV.

10: What small responsibility do you get the most excited over?

Having a house key (which I don't always carry with me), because I wasn't ever allowed to have one as a kid.

11: List your kids from most tolerable to least tolerable based on the past 24 hours.

...

Tada! That's the list!  *laughs even louder in child-free*

12: Favorite year of school?

I hated school. Mostly because of the other students.

13: Have you actually thought about retirement?

Yes! We have a plan, actually. Where we want to live, what kind of house we want to have, who will have to die or "disappear" so we can live there without issues... It's a whole big thing!

14: Is sex better now than it was in high school/college?

Eh, it's good, but I'm not in as good of shape as I used to be, so I'd say probably about even.  We’ve gotten better in technique, and we know each other better after all these years, but my health’s gotten slightly worse.

15: Do you own sex toys?

OF COURSE?!  Who doesn’t own sex toys these days??

16: Favorite place in your home?

My living room. :D  That or my ritual room.  Neither is perfectly set up yet, though.

17: What's making you feel old?

There are people in this world having CHILDREN who have never existed in a world without Spongebob Squarepants. :/

18: What do you drive?

I don't drive personally. But our family car is an Escalade.

19: What adult responsibility do you loathe?

TAXES.  That and the DMV and getting my stupid ID renewed.  Oh, and probably voting.

20: The last time you did shots?

Not a thing I do.

21: What aggravates you about teenagers nowadays?

The same thing I've always hated about young people, ever since I was one. Casual cruelty.

22: 5 biggest pet peeves.

1) Cisgender heterosexual men, like everything about that entire social role. The smug superiority that comes with being a cisgender male with conventionally average sexuality... dude, it doesn't make you special, it makes you boring and probably dangerous. Shut. The fuck. Up. 2) People who put their damn food or soft drink on my altars! Makes me want to sit on their lap and pass gas. RUDE. 3) People who touch my hair or jewelry without asking, and people who get offended if they ask and I say no. Swear to gods, next person gets a throat punch. 4) How people use social media. People never post anything really good or important, they only ever post their inane and often-poorly-researched opinions, or lies they want people to believe about their lives. 5) People who use their mental illness, marginalized status, or other misfortunes as an excuse for abusive behavior. Being neurodivergent doesn't justify being an asshole, nor does your fibromyalgia, poverty state, sexual orientation or gender identity, or any other feature of your life. Speaking as someone who has mental and physical health issues, a marginalized religion and queer identity, and who is a person of color- THIS DOESN'T EXCUSE US FROM BEING ASSHOLES.

23: What are your shows right now?

Rewatching Once Upon a Time, which is awesome, cuz I have never related to a TV character so much as I relate to Regina Mills. I'm also a big fan of Dragon Prince, and the new Charmed, Sabrina, and She-Ra!

24: Have your political views changed since you left school?

Nope, they've just grown.

25: What's changed the most since 5 years ago?

I'm way more tired than I used to be. And fatter. And my back's fucked up.

[fus-ro-nah]

Tag Game

Tagged by: @historicfailure Thank you for the tag! (Sorry it’s taken me so long- I’ve been swamped atm ^^”

1. Do you create playlists for your stories or characters?

Tbh, I waffle about on this. I toss them around in my head and have started a few, but never actually made a complete playlist for a character. I haven’t really considered making them for any of my stories, simply because they usually grow out of proportion and each arc will have a different theme of character growth/regression, etc.

2. What is your stance on endings that don’t end with some hope?

It honestly blows my mind as to why anyone would want a hopeless ending. I mean to each their own and people can like what they like. But for me, life sucks enough sometimes, so why would I want my escape (reading, writing, etc) to have the same negativity? It makes me feel trapped and messes with my head to have a hopeless or angsty ending. 

3. What author would you love to hear feedback from on your WIP?

No mainstream authors off the top of my head, though I wouldn’t mind some feedback or bouncing ideas off a few of my mutuals.

4. What is the genre of your WIP(s)?

UHHHH. Kinda complex because there’s different genres they each fit into. There’s generally a good dose of angst and a theme of self-acceptance or growing through circumstance. My stories also tend to center around the idea of family, whether they are through blood or through miscreants coming together and deciding they are family. There’s sometimes romance, but one of my current fics is purely about developing platonically, finding place in the character’s family, and exploring familial love rather than romantic love (though there will be romance in the sequel bc it’s a soulmate fic).

5. How do you come up with new ideas for your WIP(s)?

Honestly, it comes and goes. I’ll go through spells where I find everything inspiring new fics/scenes/characters, and then there are times when literally nothing inspires new content. Usually listening to music, watching music videos, or reading feelings-driven fanfics by other authors helps (I always have to do something with the leftover emotions they gave me, which gets my gears turning).

6. What do you use to keep all your writing on? (Scrivener, Google Docs, good old pen and paper…)

I generally just use Microsoft Word (I get a free subscription through my school, so I just use a personal account to separate creative and school-related work). Though I usually find pen and paper really good to use sometimes (also, all of my outlines and random plot ideas that may or may not be used are on paper) and the switch-up can sometimes get the creative juices flowing. I use Google Docs for beta-work, but I’m always editing others’ work and have never actually had someone else edit my own (which is why sometimes my personal stuff seems like it wasn’t edited- I put all of my editing energy into other people’s things ^^”)

7. What gave you initial inspiration for your WIP(s)?

AHAhahahaaaa.... Let’s see if I can remember.

My oneshots are inspired by whims.

Singularity was created when I was going through a really hard time. The OC I created for it (though it’s written as a reader insert) and a lot of the plot were to help me manage myself several years ago. So my emotions and desire to overcome what I was going through inspired that.

Red-Eyed was inspired by some artwork I saw here on tumblr and people liked the setup/prompt I reblogged it with, so that was pretty random.

Ill-Fated started off as a smut that grew some plot. Idk.

The Eyrie is a fic that was based off of an angsty oneshot I wrote after reading a particularly angsty chapter of End My Lonliness by @historicfailure. So it grew a backstory (I have a bad habit of thinking about the psychology and influencing histories of characters that I create ^^”) for the character and so this fic is kind of a prequel to the oneshot?

8. How long have you been working on your WIP(s)?

Singularity has been in the works for almost 4yrs off and on now, though I have only been writing it for around 9mo. The rest of my fics are 6mo or less because I have no self control.

9. What was the first thing you came up with for your WIP(s)?

For Singularity, I think it was a scene in the build-up to the final climax? I think I was waffling over a character overcoming a problem. But I don’t think it was much, because I started working on the main character next and the plot started filling in as I created him (scenes that would alter him, problems he would encounter, why he deals with certain aspects of his personality and angst-related feelings, etc).

10. Have you considered Hogwarts houses for your characters? If so, what are they?

I’m probably going to get flak for this, but I’ve never read or watched the Harry Potter series. Since it’s still on my bucket list, not yet.

11. What do you find easiest to write? (Description, dialogue, etc.)

I find dialogues the easiest to write, though action sequences are the easiest to create in my mind.

I’m too tired to put a coherent thought together, let alone think about who has/hasn’t already been tagged or would have fun doing this, so anyone who wants to, please feel free to do this! And be sure to tag me so I can read your posts!

[lvminae]

SwSh Opinions

Actually fuck it I'll make an in depth post on swsh since I'm sick and it is 2:30 am and I can't sleep.

Keep in mind that these are my opinions and I’m not out here to argue with anyone, I just want to share what I think. And there is a lot. Since I wrote this in the middle of the night and edited the next day, I probably forgot some things, but it is long enough as is.

I don’t think I actually went into anything spoiler like.

Things I like

- Characters: I adore the variety in the characters and a lot of them are loveable. Some stick out as ones I don't particularly like, and some are silly, but that variety is good and it isn't so common that it becomes irritating.

And I have reasons to care about characters I initially disliked (like Bede; his development is JUST enough for me to not hate him). Some I still don't care about, and some characters deserve more development, but it isn't bad to the point where I am not happy with it (and I will address this more later).

- Pokemon (Variety): I'll talk about pokemon later on the neutral list, but I do really appreciate just how varied and even wild the pokemon are. Design wise, anyways - I don't know jack about competitive stats and don't care.

- Wild Area: The wild area has the silly mechanic of sudden weather changes depending on the areas, and the pokemon who pop up can be repetitive when you are dex filling. But other than that, I LOVE it. It is huge, and immersive, and I much prefer running around there than on routes.

And the pokemon popping up and approaching? Amazing. Can be annoying sometimes when pokemon you don't care about chase you (looking at Tyrouge and Electrike seriously Leave Me Alone), and hunting water types that hop around is frustrating (but makes sense), but it's still a wonderful addition.

- Exp. Share: I know a lot of people are pissed off it can't be turned off, but as someone who cannot get into old games because of not having it/how long it takes to get it, I appreciate it.

Some people think it makes it too easy, but now that you can box pokemon at p much anytime, you can (mostly) avoid the effect by boxing pokemon. I say mostly cause not all situations work with it, but I don't think it is common enough to say it is bad.

- Improvements of life: To add to my point above, I enjoy things that makes the games easier. I'm not a hardcore gamer. I want to have fun and actually be able to reasonably beat a game. Difficult games aren't bad, but these are for all ages. And it is easier to make things difficult than it is to make them easier if they were made difficult, yknow?

Things like showing the effectiveness of moves is one of those things- which I am glad they kept from SuMo- because I have memory problems. Lots of fans do, or are young, or just can't remember Every Single Type Matchup. I prefer having that than having to google type advantages constantly so I don't get a 1 hit ko on either my pokemon or a pokemon I want to catch.

It isn't quite as hand holdy as SuMo was (love ya rotomdex, but pls give me a break), but it is accessible to a range of players. That is how it feels to me, anyways.

- Side quests: Having little quests that give incentive to explore the region and just give a little spice of life to the region. And they aren't super confusing to do.

- General aesthetic: I love how the region looks. It hits so many aesthetic points for me. It is a pretty game with pretty locations, and the graphics are far better than anything I would have expected for pokemon.

Seriously, I've seen people comparing it to BotW and.... That is not the style Pokemon i or ever has been going for. It's an unfair comparison. Also BotW graphics are :/ in my opinion. Beautiful locations, but I don't like how people look. Pokemon? It looks nice, all fit together well. Feels like POKEMON. Not like other games that people compare it to.

There are some graphics that need fixing, like the berry trees and the whole mess they are when you shake them. But it isn't nearly as bad as people pre release were saying. And the battle locations are fine too. Seriously pre release thoughts were a mess.

- Performance: It runs well. I haven't had issues. Frame rate is fine, very rare drops, graphics work fine. I've only had a crash once, and that's because I was chaining max raids and the vibration was too intense for my machine. I took a break, turned vibration off, and everything was fine.

Note: I know that there have been some issues with glitches and stuff, and those are an issue. I haven't experienced any myself so I can't complain. And I'm not any sort of expert.

- Regional variants: I love regional variants in general. It is just So Good. And there are more than just gen 1 variants in these games! Thank god! Obviously many are still gen 1 but they aren't Exclusively gen 1.

I'll talk about that pandering later.

- Gyms: I love how the gyms works. I love the entry trials. I love the feel of the gyms and the competition, and the cheering and the music!!! It is just a great time!

- Character customization: Not quite as extensive as I was anticipating, but still super expansive and I love it.

Things I am neutral on

- Post game: It isn't that bad, but it isn't super interesting either. And I hate the sword based dude. His hair looks like a dick. Yes this is a genuine complaint. Both his and his brother's designs are... silly, and kinda uncreative, and I don't like it.

But they do pose a challenge, and it gives an interesting look at lore and the concept of people believing their assumed ancestry gives them certain rights and just how far these people will go.

- Pokemon: I think we have a good amount of new pokemon, but overall I am... eh on the designs of some. In my experience, regions have either a good amount of good looking pokemon, or a good amount of bad looking/boring pokemon. Obviously this is purely subjective, but this region has me drawn down the middle. I have pokemon I adore and are new favorites, but also quite a few where I just.... Don't like them at all. I've never been this split on them, so while I appreciate their variety like I noted above, I don't necessarily like all of them (especially the fossils. Their story makes sense, yes, but I can't fucking stand them.)

- Dynamax/Gigantamax: I get it's ties into the story, and I love that tie. And it is the gimmick of this region, which I absolutely am ok with. But in use... yeah, having a large pokemon is fun! But I don't really... Care about it? And I only use it in gym battles where I know the leader is gonna Gigantamax (even though generally I didn't need to), or max raids.

I like it more than Z moves, but it does make me miss Mega Evolution. At least it gives people something fun to design. And some of the gifantamax designs are great (and some are.... Basically dynamax. Pikachu and Eevee especially.) The raid make for good leveling though so I do like that.

- Story: I like pokemon for the stories. I actually don't like the style of the games gameplay wise. Pokemon I can handle and enjoy because it is simple compared to other games in the genre, at least enough so where I can be pretty clueless but still have fun and drive to play/grind somewhat. Bur ultimately for me, I enjoy pokemon for the story and characters.

Story... is lacking in this game. I love what we get! It is super interesting! But it is so much on the back burner compared to other games in order to focus on the gyms that it feels... I dunno. I miss a larger, more involved story. The focus on specific characters like Hop do still give me something to focus on, at least.

But the story could have been improved overall had it not been shoved to the side so much. A different, less involved story could have worked better, or something that involved the league and gym leaders more since the gyms were the focus.

Or find a way to involve the player more! It really comes down to the goal of the game, which was the improvements for competitive play. As a non competitive player, this isn't anything I care about or want. But some do, and with that being the focus, I understand the story being a bit lackluster compared to previous games.

Doesn't mean I have to like it, though :P

- Dexit: I don't... care about dexit. Having to play only with the pokemon from the gen isn't bad, and you can still use some. Yeah, a lot of pokemon I like are missing, but that gave me incentive to use pokemon from this gen. I think people making a huge fit over it also made me just Not Care. I'll miss my old pokemon, but maybe I cam actually complete the dex for this gen.

Things I dislike

- The trading system/y link: The fact you have to have nintendo online for this is awful. It is alienating to all those players who can't afford the subscription. All you should need is an internet connection just like the other games. It's a cash grab and I hate it.

The trading system is also irritating to use in general. I know the gts was not the best, but being able to search was nice. And one on one trading was so much easier. Using these codes is problematic because people you don't know can use the same code and you might not know! It fucks up trades! It sucks. It just sucks.

- Gen 1 pandering: Leon's key pokemon is a Charizard. Charizard got a gigantamax pokemon. Most gigantamax not from Galar are gen 1. Most regional variants are gen 1. I Do Not Fucking Care About Gen 1. Meowth has both an alolan AND galarian form AND gigantamax! It's annoying! Give the other regions some light. Please. I am so, so fucking tired of pandering to gen 1. The pandering makes me hate the gen, not want to go back to it.

- Version exclusive gym leaders: This one doesn't irritate me like the other things, I just think it is dumb. Especially since they didn't change the towns to make sense for the exclusive leaders.

- Cost: I am not made of money and I really do believe it should have been the normal $40. But it is a main series game with a lot and switch games seem to generally run at that $60 mark - main ones anyways - so I'm not surprised. Just disappointed.

[arthurhwalker]

2019, Buying Guidance

Buying a computer, a smartphone, or tablet in 2019 is different than it has been in years past. Usually, I'm lurking in anticipation of my "next", and have a lot of ready recommendations for friends and family. That isn't to say there aren't a lot of great options, they just seem to be more arcane.

My current technology arc consists of incrementally shedding Apple, Google, Microsoft, and any hardware, or digital service, that doesn't provide me with a great deal of value. Also, I'm looking for those services and products that have a community around them, and with whom one can have some kind of relationship.

I look at everyone; Apple, Asus, Dell, Google, HP, Huawei, LG, Microsoft, MSI, Samsung, Vaio, before I make a purchase. I look at their products, support documentation, warranty, social media presence, how transparent they are with consumers, and whether or not they understand how to engage in basic marketing and commerce.

So, what's good? The plucky upstarts and potential market disruptors first.

Pine64

From the FAQ on their site:

"What is Pine A64? The Pine A64 is an index card sized 64-bit single board computer. It can perform like your desktop or portable PC with browsing the Internet, playing games, watching video, and execute programs like spreadsheets and word-processing. The Pine A64 board can also play ultra high definition 4Kx2K video."

I waited in the queue for almost a year to be able to buy this $99 laptop. They sell them at zero or little profit so people can tinker with them, learn, and make stuff. They're working on a tablet, more powerful "Pro" version of their laptop, and a phone. It can run 64 bit Ubuntu, Debian based Linux things, and Android 5.1.

I cannot wait to get my PineBook next month and start monkey'ing around with it. Also, it comes in completely unadorned white, AKA Stickertown! I need to start gathering my adhesive sartorial accoutrements now. 

Pop!_OS, and System76

I've been using their Pop!_OS with my Lenovo Thinkpads for a couple of months, and really like it. With Canonical focusing Ubuntu away somewhat from the desktop user, going to a curated version, like Pop!_OS, tends to deliver a better experience. System76 has a live Pop!_OS Chat where I've gotten help and guidance along the way.

I resisted installing Pop!_OS for a while, because it looked kind of cool. I know, right? Linux isn't supposed to be "cool". So I was wary, haha.

Pop!_OS is, basically, set up the way I would set up vanilla Ubuntu after some tinkering. It has AMD or Nvidia Drivers and GPU switching baked in, power management options, and the only thing I had to install with the terminal was GIMP. Everything else I know and love was in the Pop!_Shop. Pop!_OS 18.10 get regular updates, and they're always adding keen new things to their offerings.

Where vanilla Ubuntu is kind of squeaky, garish, and clunky, Pop! is quiet, nocturnal, and polished. It encrypts your install by default, full disk, out of the box with minimal effort. "Out of the box, with minimal effort" is something I say a lot with Pop!. It's just really (really) nice. I'm a fan, bought the t-shirt, put the stickers on my laptop, all the things.

I haven't tried their hardware, and while I'll be sticking with a Thinkpad for mobile computing, their mini "Meerkat" and Thelio Desktops are very compelling options. System76 isn't very transparent about the types of displays offered with their desktops, or their laptops, but have responded swiftly to my queries by email, and via social media.

They are very transparent about their internal components, and have an array of options, including AMD on their Thelio line, for folks looking to distance themselves from Intel. The Thelio desktops look very nice, with the only flaw being no IO up front. Everything else is custom, with open source daughter boards, and other keen aesthetic features.

I worry more about which configuration of Thelio I would get, than what I'd actually use it for. I just want one.

Recently, Pop!_OS got featured on the Linus Tech Tips YouTube Channel, as a gaming platform. A. Linux. Gaming. Platform. Yes, you heard that correctly. 

ReMarkable

This continues to be a good value, for a product that receives frequent quality of life updates. For minimalists looking to replace all the paper in their lives, this device delivers. I really like that they don't stop making it better, simply because the makers believe in the form factor and use case.

ReMarkable has a lot of competition in the hardware space, but I haven't seen much in the software space that is half as good. The ability to nest notes and documents in folders and organize your work is an incredibly attractive feature. The Linux-based operating system is incredibly stable, and reliable.

The ReMarkable tablet isn't fast, or cutting edge, but it feels really nice to use. It's easy on my eyes, and the hand taking notes and reading documents. It really is just like paper, only better, and taking up way less space in my bag.

Light Phone 2

I love E Ink devices, particularly when they aren't being used simply to read ebooks. Marketed as "a simple 4G phone with e-ink, messaging & other essential tools—a phone that actually respects you," the Light Phone 2's marketing is compelling. The promotional video hits all the right notes and feels for anyone that is in a love/hate relationship with their smartphone.

This is definitely me, and I ordered the couples package for my wife and I. From the two surveys I've received, and the updates they've posted, this is something I've only grown more excited for. The very simple and elegant aesthetics of the device are interesting to me, and I can't wait to have one in hand. It's gotten bad enough that I lurk on Ebay, looking for a deal or steal on their first Light Phone. Ugh, haha.

On to my favorite services.

Discord

I pay the monthly for their upgraded service. I'm not entirely sure what I get for my subscription, but I don't care, the service is that good, and I want to support it. For chatting with my friends, playing games, communicating, community curation, and similar, Discord is doing it right. Their user experience is good, even if the user interface is a little confusing at first.

The confusion comes with being used to Skype, or Face Time, and a distinctly limited feature set. With Discord I keep figuring things out, and saying "oh, it can do this? And, also, this? Cool". Discord also works pretty much everywhere, on everything, with no service interruptions (that I've been aware of). I can use with a Linux machine with a dedicated app, in a browser tab, or on my smartphone, whatever I want.

I can use it to communicate text, images, video, audio, broadcast my desktop, all the things. Keen. 

ProtonMail

End-to-end, client side encrypted, with servers located in Switzerland outside of US and EU jurisdictions, and available in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian. I am getting a paid account soon, and their Linux bridge is in beta.

Obvious privacy advantages aside, I really like the service, the options they provide, and their pricing structure. They have a really nice web client, and dedicated iOS and Android apps. It feels like email done right, as a product that you pay for, as opposed to you being the product, or part of some other service you're passively subsidizing.

Feels good. Definitely considering a paid version.

Lutris and Steam For Linux

Linux Gaming used to be an oxymoron. It just wasn't that great, but with Steam Play + Proton I can play Skyrim, with a controller, on my Linux machine. I click a box, hit play, it downloads some things, and boom, I'm good to go. I haven't explored all the different games compatible with this new service, but it looks to be expanding every day.

Lutris is a newer service, and was recently added to the Pop Shop on Pop!_OS. From Wikipedia:

"Lutris is a FOSS game manager for Linux-based operating systems. Lutris has one-click installation available for hundreds of games on its website, and also integrates with the Steam website. Installer scripts are available for some difficult to install WINE games including League of Legends."

The day when I can play Fallout 76 without maintaining a Windows partition is on the horizon. *Cherubs blow heavenly horns of glory* I'd really like this to take off, and take a small, but painful bite out of Microsoft's market share. I don't hate Microsoft, but I'd like them to hurt bad enough they work a little harder to make Windows not suck so hard.

Among the big manufacturers, there are a few that are doing it right, in my humble opinion.

Lenovo

I recommend them, particularly if you need a machine for getting work done, and running Linux. I've been part of their INsiders Customer Advocacy Program since late 2015, and have gotten a candid look at their company culture. Previous to that, I had been using their products since late 2011, mostly for game and web development, digital art, and publishing my novels.

A Thinkpad running Linux is my weapon of choice. The Yoga Book, more recently the C930, continues to be a singular companion device, with little else competing with it in the marketplace. Lenovo warranty, support, and customer service is still five stars. No one, absolutely no one, is more transparent about the hardware you're buying, down to the tiniest detail, I can look it up easily.

In the consumer range, they make a pretty good gaming rig, that I wouldn't be embarrassed to carry around. In fact, the look, IO, and cooling system on the new Legion series gaming laptops is better than many Thinkpads, excluding the P-Series of course. I want to try a new Legion with Linux, now that Lutris, Gamehub, and Steam are making gaming on Linux easier than ever.

On the horizon, Lenovo has some additions to their Yoga line that fall into a totally new zone. In my "lurking" browser tab are the Yoga S940 Laptop, and Yoga A940 Desktop. These devices are in the "Smart" category, packed with features. For the professional that wants style, as opposed to the tuxedo and dress shoes Thinkpad, these are just nice looking machines. I could see people in sales, design, marketing, and other fields that deal heavily in aesthetics, wanting devices like these.

Lenovo A940 Yoga Review

Why do I have a lurking tab in my browser full of Lenovo things? Because they regularly run sales. For the consummate lurker, one can get a new device from Lenovo for 30-45% off retail with patience, and a keen eye for clickable coupons. Lenovo understands how to commerce.

LG

If someone told me they were going to get an LG Gram (any model) I'd understand the desire, even though I haven't owned one myself. The reviews are all pretty positive, some are MIL-STD 810G, good value for the money, and they have a keen aesthetic about them. Also, you can get a couple of the models in white, AKA Stickertown!

Because LG is trying to break into the laptop market, they seem to making a pretty good product, or trying very hard. I'd look at the warranty and support options, warily, just because they're a little new to the game.

Their Gram 2-in-1 comes with a full size Wacom AES 2.0 Stylus Pen, with tilt, and 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity. There's no screwing around with bundles or paying an extra Benjamin for the pen, they just include it with the product, like everyone ought to. Also, they're very transparent about their displays, internals, and specs, so you know what you're buying.

I've read in a couple of places that they are supposed to get better Linux support by the next Kernel, but that there are some issues at the moment. If you're looking for something to run Windows, give them a look, but for Linux maybe hold off, or just get a Thinkpad.

Motorola

A lot of how Lenovo does business has bled over into Motorola. I've owned a couple Motorola Phones, both from before they joined Lenovo. I have friends and family that own the more current models, and are very satisfied. I'll probably own a Motorola in the future, as I'm probably on my last Apple iPhone.

They make a keen, and modular product. Smartphones have always struck me as an opportunity to stack accessories and components to produce value for different use cases. Motorola Mods let one do exactly that, swapping a battery pack, for a game controller, for example.

Samsung

For core computing, and the aspiring digital artist, Samsung makes a nice thing. I've owned their Notebook 9 Pro, Windows Phone, and a Galaxy Book 12. Where Samsung does really well is in aesthetics, making a device that is both nice to look at, and nice to use. They are very transparent about what you get, market their devices well, and offer pretty good value for the money.

When I bought my Notebook 9 Pro, the only thing extra I had to buy was the Staedtler Pen Stylus, because, hey, it was cool. With the Galaxy Book 12, it came with everything, keyboard accessory, S Pen, a nice charger, and even a 128GB microSD card to expand the storage. There was none of the Apple/Microsoft nonsense where you're paying hundreds of dollars extra for things that should just be included.

Even Samsung's new el-cheapo laptop, the Samsung Notebook Flash, is pretty great. Aesthetically, it's compelling. It looks to have a decent 1920x1080 display, lots of ports, a microSD slot for expandability, and you can get it in white, AKA Stickertown! It has eMMc Memory, that is slower for read and write speed, but tends to be very reliable. 

Conclusion

What are you using? Have a keen service or computing product that has served you well? Drop me a line, I’d like to know all the things.