#it's currently 12/31/2022

[luimagines]

It’s The Little Things

Another commission!

It’s Dragon Warrior with an OC of theirs. I got permission to post it.

I also threw in a tiny hint of royal au as well. I promise Warrior has a backstory in this au, but it’s doesn’t come out.

Content under the cut!

The door burst open in what was now the usual flair. Their scent of baked goods and magical mischievousness filled his nose in an instant.

Looking up from the paperwork, the Captain gently sets his pen to the side, knowing that there’s very little going to get done while in their presence. He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “And the winds have once again changed direction, I see.”

“And when they change once more, I will leave again, Pretty Boy.” They hopped onto his desk with practiced ease, crossing one leg over the other. A smirk decorates their face easily and they lean backwards with their hand precariously too close to the edge.

The Captain makes a mental note of it just in case and raises an eyebrow- seemingly unperturbed by the disturbance in his work day. “Very Mary Poppins of you.”

“You didn’t even know who she was until you met me.”

“While true, I’d say that you’re more well begun is half done than a spoonful of sugar.” He smirks back. He reaches over and picks up a plate of cookies, putting them in front of his impromptu guest with a soft clink against the table. “Try these. Tell me what you think.”

The nonchalant attitude stays on their face as they reach for the least decorated cookie. They take a bite and make a face. “Too much baking powder.”

“Thought you’d figure it out.” Warrior smiles.

“It’s still not half bad though.” They continue to nibble on the treat. Granted, it wasn’t even remotely one of their favorites but they had forgotten to eat earlier. So the cookie will suffice as a small token to hold them over.

“Uh-huh.” Warrior pushes the plate close to them. “You can have as many as you want then.”

They pause before bringing the cookie plate even closer. “It’s not your job to feed me, you know.”

“Someone has to do it.” He smiles wider. “Heaven knows you don’t do it yourself.”

A quiet curse and a pout.

Chuckles are hidden beneath the breath.

“Ok and?” The challenge. “It’s not like you knew I was coming over today anyway.”

“But Saffron-” He grins. “It’s the third Wednesday. Of course you’d come today.”

“Link-!” They bite their tongue. Did they really have that pattern?

He smirks, seeing nothing wrong with the topic at hand. “And you really expect me to not have put it together by now? You come back every third Wednesday between noon and two o’clock.  And you tend to stay for at least four hours. That being said, I’m about to have lunch. Would you care to join me?”

They stare at him and squint. “You didn’t eat either, did you?”

“....I had a coffee…”

“You’re worse than me.” Saffron hops off of the desk and scoffs. “And you dare call me out on my bad habits?”

“I never said I was better.” He stands as well. “Is that a yes, then? Should I expect your company this fine afternoon?”

Saffron stalled mid bite, switching their gaze from the hero beside them to the cookies that still sat undisturbed on the plate. “Sure.” They tossed the cookie back onto the ceramic. “What’s on the menu?”

He grins with a wide to wide toothy smile. He holds his hand out with a slight bow. “Do you want me to answer that?”

Seeing right through him, Saffron takes his hand with a deadpan stare. “Don’t even think about it.”

His grin only proves that he’s definitely thinking about it. 

With a huff, Saffron begins to walk in time with the young captain. Granted, there’s no reason to be so flippant with him. Everyone knows that he’s the right hand man to the Ancient King of Kokiri. No one is sure how he came into his employment- only that he’s an invaluable asset and is second in the kingdom only to the king himself.

However, while others would owe him respect- Saffron takes it as a challenge to push him to the limits of his sanity. They have yet to find them. He’s a lot worse than most people would be willing to admit. Even he’s also stupidly charming.

“You’re overthinking again.” Warrior whispers into their ear, startling them out of their thoughts.

Saffron rolls their eyes, ready to retort before they feel something snake around their waist. They look down. A shining blue to green holographic tail wraps itself snugly around them, pulling them even closer to the captain. It’s a limb of pure muscle. There’s no escaping its hold.

“Um… Cap-”

“Yes?” The tail tightens it’s hold ever so slightly. “What’s the matter?”

“You’re holding me.” Saffron breathes out. Not because they’re struggling to breathe- or perhaps they are, but that’s hardly the fault of the tail.

“I am.” He agrees without a second thought. “I simply want to have you close… and it’s a fool proof plan to make sure you run off and create any more trouble for me to deal with afterwards.”

“Just for that I’m going to make your paperwork, twice as long as usual.” Saffron sends a small glare, refusing to look up at the would-be captor.

“You do this every time, so I can’t say that it's anything new, Sweetheart.” He chuckles, opening the door for the two of them to enter the dining hall.

The hall is grandiose and brightly lit. The King sits at the head of the table, apparently finished with most of his meal. He spots the two of them entering with his single eyes and shakes his head. He stands up at once.

“Oh hey!” Saffron calls out, ready to cause more mischief. “Good afternoon, your majesty. Didja miss me?”

“I’ll be in my study.” He sends a knowing look to the captain. “Please try to keep the stink bombs and sticky glue to a confined area, captain.”

Warrior nods with a subtle gulp. The king winks at him just before he closes the door and leaves entirely.

To his credit, Warrior meets the look head on but internally, the captain wants to groan and look away in embarrassment. He didn’t think he was being that obvious. But perhaps it was because he was also a dragon. It’s not like scent can be hidden from the perceptive noses of their species. Or perhaps it was because of his age that he simply knew things that didn’t need to be said.

“Jeeze, you’d think he doesn’t want to talk to me.” Saffron huffed, crossing their arms as the king left them to their own devices.

“We both know he’s a busy man.” 

“I can clear his schedule.”

“And be banned from the castle? Again?”

“Hey- he needs to up security, ok? Even if it comes to that, I'm pretty sure I can sneak in again.” they said confidently. Even going so far as to pat his shoulder in consolation. “So it’s not something you need to worry your pretty little head about.”

“You realize I’m the one in charge of security, right?” Warrior snorts, leading them further into the room. He pulls a chair away from the table and picks them up, using only his tail to place them into the seat before tucking them close.

“Wait- hold on-” Saffron tries to back track. They hadn’t anticipated his comment nor were they expecting him to simply pick them up, with his tail no less. 

“That was… first of all, impressive.” Warrior preens with pride as they continue speaking. “Secondly, have you been giving me the easy way into the palace this entire time?”

“You’re welcome.” He says without much thought. The food comes not a moment too soon and is placed without any comments from the servants of the palace. A plate seems to have already been prepared for their “unexpected” guest.

Saffron’s jaw falls a little- too slack to keep it close as the information begins to be processed. A beat passed and another and another and Saffron can only push aside the food that they’ve been given around on the plate. “I can’t believe you…”

“Why not?” Warrior says between bites. “I’m not trying to make your life harder. I hear of your exploits in neighboring kingdoms from time to time since I have to be updated with all current climates both politically and socially. You have quite the fanbase.”

“I- but- ok.” Saffron pushes their chair back and spins to look him in the eye. “So am I supposed to have been played for a fool here? Who do you take me for?”

“A hero.”

The rant they had been prepared to lay down on the poor man dies before it can even properly sit on their tongue.

Warrior tucks his tail and wings back into his more human form and sends them a tired smile. “The Kingdom of Kokiri is a safe haven. At least, that is what we strive for. We are far from perfect but you come here for a reason. Half the time, I think it’s just to annoy me and cause trouble you know you can get away with. But you’re not one to do that in other places. So that means you’re here to catch a break. You’re here to get away from the problems you deal with everywhere else.”

In that moment, he appears to show how the job has aged him- even if the dragonite blood in his veins keeps him from aging like the rest of the population. He looks exhausted and tired and worn down- but pleased. And proud to do what he does. If Saffron bothered to pay a little more attention, then they would have also noticed the respect he holds for them in his gaze… with a touch of adoration to boot.

“Not to mention…” Warrior leans in like he’s about to tell a secret and perhaps he is. “I like having you around. You keep me from running myself into an early grave and you break up the monotony of paperwork- so why would I try to kick you out? On purpose, of all things.” 

Saffron is stunned. Typically they would have something to say but this time their words fail them. 

This is off script. There’s supposed to be witty banter and sassy comments. If it was a lucky day, maybe it would have been enough to push each other buttons and actually annoy the other person. Then they’d share a cup of coffee, and maybe avoid personal obligations for a little while longer and go their separate ways. Rinse and repeat.

They can feel their cheeks flush with the unanticipated genuine emotion from the one that sits to their left.

Warrior doesn’t seem to notice, or care all that much for the vulnerability that blankets the air around them. He’s happy to eat in silence even if it’s out of character for the one that sits to his right. 

“Is it that hard to believe that I like your company?” He says when he’s close to finishing his meal.

“Well…” Saffron trails off. Suppose that it’s not. It would make the casual remarks from their friend, Prince Link from the Kingdom of Wolfvendom, a little easier to digest. Something about belonging to the heart of Kokiri.

Not that this Link is the heart of the kingdom… Even if he handles a lot of the nitty gritty work that the king cannot handle on his own.

Warrior chuckles, reaching out for their hand while they’re lost in thought. He brings his other hand close, running his palm over the back of their hand  “I have your favorite snacks back in the office. Just remind me to get them for you before you head out again, yeah?”

“...yeah…” Saffron smiles softly. They squeeze his hand for a moment, still trying to get their flame back after having been dosed with genuine compliments.

Warrior sees right through it. “I’ll even throw in my mother’s recipe for gingersnap cookies.”

“Thank you.”

[reasonsforhope]

For all the concern in recent years that U.S. democracy is on the brink, in danger or under threat, a report out Tuesday offers a glimmer of good news for American voters worried that casting a ballot will be difficult in 2024.

Put simply, the new data shows that voting in America has gotten easier over the past two decades. More voters have the ability to cast a ballot before Election Day, with the majority of U.S. states now offering some form of early in-person voting and mail voting to all voters.

"Although we often talk in a partisan context about voter fraud and voter suppression and whether voters have access to the ballot, the reality is, over the past 25 years, we've greatly increased the convenience of voting for almost all Americans," said David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which authored the new report...

The data shows that, despite real efforts by some Republican-led legislatures to restrict access at the margins, the trend in the U.S. since 2000 has been toward making it easier to vote: Nearly 97% of voting-age American citizens now live in states that offer the option to vote before Election Day.

"The lies about early voting, the lies about voting machines and efforts in some state legislatures to roll back some of the election integrity and convenience measures that have evolved over the last several decades, those efforts almost all failed," Becker said. "In almost every single state, voters can choose to vote when they want to."

Forty-six states and Washington, D.C., offer some form of early in-person voting, the report tallied, and 37 of those jurisdictions also offer mail voting to all voters without requiring an excuse...

In 2000

In 2024

Infographic via NPR. If you go to the article, you can watch an animation of this map that shows voting availability in every election since 2000.

There are some political trends that show up in the data. Of the 14 states that don't offer mail voting to all voters, for instance, 12 have Republican-led legislatures.

-via NPR, March 19, 2024. Article continues below.

But maybe the more striking trends are geographic. Every single state in the western U.S. has offered some form of early and mail voting to all voters since 2004, according to the data. And those states span the political spectrum, from conservative Idaho to liberal California.

"It's really hard to talk about partisanship around this issue because historically there just hasn't been much," Mann said. "We've seen voting by mail and early in-person voting supported by Republican legislatures, Democratic legislatures, Republican governors, Democratic governors. We see voters in both parties use both methods." ...

In 2020, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts all made changes to make voting more easily accessible, which have since partially or fully become permanent. Delaware is currently embroiled in a legal fight over whether it can implement early and mail voting changes this election cycle as well.

The South, with its history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, has long lagged behind when it comes to voting access. The CEIR data shows that, although some states have slowly started expanding options for voters, generally it is still the most difficult region for voters to cast a ballot.

As options nationwide have become more widely available, voters have also responded by taking advantage.

In the 2000 election, 86% of voters voted at a polling place on Election Day, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In 2020, during the pandemic, that number dropped to less than 31% of voters. It went back up in 2022, to roughly half of the electorate, but was still in line with the two-decade trend toward more ballots being cast early.

...in reality, Becker says, more voting options actually make elections more secure and less susceptible to malicious activity or even human error.

"If there were a problem, if there were a cyber event, if there were a malfunction, if there were bad weather, if there were traffic, if there were was a power outage, you could think of all kinds of circumstances. ... The more you spread voting out over a series of days and over multiple modes, the less likely it's going to impact voters," he said...

-via NPR, March 19, 2024

[toskarinarchive]

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[haknom]

bad news! 🎙️ — park sunghoon

— synopsis: mr. ling has been nagging sunghoon to join a club, something about meeting the needed credits to graduate—of course, he wasn’t close at all. since he didn’t have any club in mind, his teacher recommended that he’d join the broadcasting club, despite the low chance of being accepted. but sunghoon was accepted not long after he applied, surprisingly. the bad news is, he wasn’t expecting to see a certain someone. jeon y/n, decelis’ top grade student, and sunghoon’s next target.

— pairing: heartbreaker!sunghoon x gn!reader x second-lead!soobin (ft. enhypen, chaewon from le sserafim, jo yuri as yejun, vernon from svt, jaemin from nct, eric from tbz, chaehyun and bahiyyih from kep1er, and soobin from txt, mentions of minho from skz).

— warnings: swearing, random time stamps, a lot of friendly bullying, mentions of taking photos without consent, mentions of being psycho, soobin is very dense, yejun and minho are half siblings, more will be added!

— note: ending the year with my first smau! not sure how to feel abt it but i’m still excited!! stream bad news by tempest that’s what gave me this idea + live on kdrama!! it’s so good :( here’s a playlist too!

— current status: completed! started: jan 8th 2023 — mar 9th 2023.

TAGLIST IS CLOSED! 📻

profiles: profiles 1 / profiles 2 / profiles 3

01 — felt #excluded 💔

02 — bleach my eyes out

03 — ty princessparkle9 🤭💗

04 — u hate jimin? 🙁🙁 (written + smau)

05 — feelings r mutual 👍

06 — good stutter (written + smau)

bonus — sun-sunghoon

07 — had one job 🤗

08 — funny 😕

09 — give up the bet. (written + smau)

10 — 66% IS CRAZY

11 — welcome to ditto! (written + smau)

12 — That’s quite harsh

13 — so i’m famous? 🤭

14 — Um Lol What!

15 — okay toxicity 😟

16 — #SPEAKUP (written + smau)

17 — get well soon minjeong!

18 — i like you (written)

19 — y’all what’s happening to me 😂😂😂

20 — 🤡🤡🤡🤡

21 — the principals office <3

22 — pinterest boy era (written + smau)

23 — are you dense? (written)

24 — friends? 😅

25 — my fave ship (written + smau)

26 — not dating Yet

27 — bet = failed (written + smau)

28 — WRONG ACC

bonus — you’re gross 🤢

29 — in my lovesick arc 😓💔 (written + smau)

epilogue — the talent show

special chapters

31 — chaeric When?

32 — jungwon and his ipad (OLD BAD NEWS)

© haknom 2022 - do not copy, translate, or plagiarize my work on other platforms!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Why are so many Californians homeless?

12% of Americans live in California — but 30% of homeless Americans, and 50% of unsheltered Americans, call California “home.” This is the source of endless schadenfreude from “red state” partisans, and is often waved as proof of the failure of liberal policies. But the real story is both more complicated — and simpler.

UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative’s “California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness” is the largest, best study of homelessness in California in some 30 years:

https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/our-studies/california-statewide-study-people-experiencing-homelessness

Between Oct 2021 and Nov 2022, researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,198 people, and conducted in-depth interviews with 365 more. They concluded that, contrary to popular folk-stories about “homeless migration” by out-of-staters seeking an easy life on California’s streets, “people experiencing homelessness in California are Californian.” Nine tenths of respondents were already living in California when they lost their housing.

It’s also not true that homeless people move to LA or San Francisco from out of town: three quarters of participants live in the same county they were living in when they lost their homes.

So California’s unsheltered and homeless people are Californians. They’re our neighbors. They are disproportionately racialized — 26% are Black, 12% are First Nations, and 35% are Latino. They are older: their median age is 47. They’ve been homeless for a long, long time: the median duration of homelessness is 22 months, and 36% of respondents were “chronically homeless.”

They are survivors of violence: 72% of them have experienced violent assaults in their lives; 24% have experienced sexual violence (that number goes up to 43% for cis women, and 74% for trans and nonbinary people).

They’re sick. 60% have a chronic illness. More than a third have some health condition that limits their daily living. 22% have a mobility limitation.

They’re also pregnant. A quarter of the participants who were assigned female at birth had been pregnant during their current episode of homelessness.

66% are experiencing mental illness. 48% have serious depression, 51% have anxiety, 37% have trouble concentrating, and 12% experience hallucinations.

Only 9% have received any mental health counseling.

They take drugs — but at fairly low levels. 31% take meth regularly. 11% take opioids. 16% binge drink.

They are in trouble with the law and also at risk of being victims of criminal violence. A third have been to jail at least once during their current homeless episode. 38% have been assaulted while homeless (10% of homeless people surveyed experienced sexual violence).

So how did they end up homeless? It’s depressingly easy.

It starts with getting evicted. For leaseholders in the survey, the median amount of notice they had that they would lose their homes is ten days. For non-leaseholders, the median amount of notice was less than one day.

Homeless people are poor before they become homeless. Many people’s last home was a “non-leaseholder” arrangement — they were people who lost their rented homes and moved in with family or friends. For these people, the median wage in the six months before they lost their homes was $950/month. While 43% of non-leaseholders weren’t paying any rent, the remainder were paying a median rent of $450/month. Non-leaseholders have no legal rights, and often lived in “substandard and overcrowded conditions.”

For leaseholders, the median monthly income before losing their homes was $1400/month — but their median rent was $700/month.

When a leaseholder loses their home, the cause is usually economic — they can’t afford the rent. When a non-leaseholder loses their home, the cause is usually social — a conflict within the home or “not wanting to impose.”

People about to lose their homes turn to family and friends for help, but not for-profit or government agencies devoted to helping people in their situation. 70% of survey respondents believed they could have avoided homeless with a one-time cash payment of $5,000-$10,000. 90% say a Housing Choice Voucher would have kept them from becoming homeless.

20% of people who become homeless say it was because they lost some or all of their income — often because their car broke down or got towed and they could no longer get to work. Once homeless, most survey respondents seek work — but are unable to find it, due to age, lack of transportation, disability and lack of housing.

What can we do about this? 90% of respondents say the biggest barrier to finding a home is housing costs. Half say their bad credit makes it even harder to find a rental, while a third say their criminal records also get in the way. Half also say that all the affordable housing is unsafe, or too far from their communities or care providers.

The authors have a suite of policy recommendations. For starters, we can increase homelessness prevention by giving financial support and legal aid to people facing eviction. These can be offered at “service settings�� like domestic violence services, and at “institutional exits” from jail and prison. We can also make it harder to evict people.

We can expand “low barrier” access to mental heath and addiction care. We can offer training and transportation support to people in precarious economic situations, as well as help in navigating the process to get benefits.

We can offer more services to people in unsheltered settings, and embrace a racial equity approach that recognizes the racialized nature of homelessness.

And finally: we can increase the availability of housing vouchers, and the stock of affordable housing.

This last one is long overdue. America treats housing as an asset rather than a human right, creating a world of haves and have-nots. The haves are dedicated to increasing the value of their assets by restricting the supply, and by reducing the protections offered to tenants (the more a landlord can extract from tenants, the more all houses are worth, because every time one goes up for sale the bidding includes landlords who are factoring in their ability to milk flush tenants and evict broke ones):

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

In California, the meager supply of low-income housing has been gobbled up by Airbnb, and also by unscrupulous landlords who illegally convert their low-income housing into boutique hotels, with no fear of punishment from toothless, gutless enforcers:

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-la-failed-stop-landlords-turning-low-cost-housing-hotels

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/12/because-its-too-expensive/#rents-too-damned-high

[Image ID: A homeless person's tent under a freeway underpass. From it emerges the bear from the California state flag.]

Image: Wonderlane (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/71401718@N00/34328251571

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[zedecksiew]

THE BLOGGIES 2023: FINALISTS

(If you just want to skip to the list of BLOGGIE finalists, scroll to the "Who Are The BLOGGIES?" section below.)

+++

WHAT ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Awards for some of the best tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) blog posts to come out in 2022. There will be five awards: Best Theory Blogpost, Best Gameable Blogpost, Best Advice Blogpost, Best Review Blogpost, and, the biggest one, Best Blogpost.

I won Best Blogpost, last year. So I am hosting the BLOGGIES, this year.

+++

WHY ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Blogs are worth celebrating. Barring the actual playing of actual games, they are our most fertile field, our most volatile laboratory. Longform, text-based, and informal---they are a place to jot down our most outre design ideas. Free and publicly available---they are a vector for open debate and serendipitous discourse. Perhaps most importantly: relatively free of algorithmic social-media pressures---they are the best chance we have at a cultural memory.

I got into TTRPGs because of blogs.

The BLOGGIES are, at best, an affirmation of the above. At least, they are a way to celebrate 64 excellent blog posts from the last year, and maybe get them in front of people who did not read them the first time.

+++

HOW ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Nominations: I put an open call for blog-post nominations on Christmas 2023; I also canvassed the TTRPG communities I am part of. Nominated posts had to be from between 1 December 2022 to 31 December 2023.

I closed the nomination period on 1 Jan 2024 with 149 blog posts for consideration. I read / re-read them all.

I chose a slate of 64 finalists, according to the following metrics, in order:

Enthusiasm---a post got multiple nominations;

Diversity---no one blog was allowed to be a finalist more than once in a category (except the Reviews category, where this rule was tied to individual writers, due to shared review blogs);

Notability---a post was extraordinary in presenting a novel idea, addressing an important subject, or reflecting a community current.

Obviously, that last metric is highly subjective, and limited to my knowledge and perspective in the scene. I did my best.

I will not have final final say. Finalists will go head to head, vying for to be anointed best of the best by ballot. The bracket was seeded in order of number of nominations received. The BLOGGIES await your vote, o TTRPG folx.

+++

WHEN ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Throughout January 2024! Voting is >>>NOW OPEN<<< on Google Forms according to the following schedule (I will link to the forms and result threads as I post them):

First Week January - THEORY

3 January: Round of 16

4 January: Round of 8

5 January: Round of 4

6 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Second Week January - GAMEABLE

10 January: Round of 16

11 January: Round of 8

12 January: Round of 4

13 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Third Week January - ADVICE

17 January: Round of 16

18 January: Round of 8

19 January: Round of 4

20 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Fourth Week January - REVIEW

24 January: Round of 16

25 January: Round of 8

26 January: Round of 4

27 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

31 January - FINALS

+++

WHO ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Your BLOGGIES 2023 FINALISTS are (presented in bracket order):

(High-res version here)

+++

THEORY

🥉 (1) being a problem - playable orcs at the limits of humanity, from Majestic Fly Whisk Some deep thinking about the racialisation of the orc in elfgames, why mainstream fixes fall short, and ways to move beyond.

vs

(16) #132: Axes of Game Design, from The Indie RPG Newsletter An exploration of the design axes / spectrums on which every TTRPG may fall.

(8) The Genres the OSR Can't Do, from A Knight At The Opera Sketching the limits of the OSR playstyle by looking at genres which are too differently-bound for it to emulate.

vs

(9) RPG Transcript Analysis: Critical Role, from Trilemma Adventures Examining a style of play through transcript analysis (looking at what is actually being said during a session), with Critical Role as case study.

🥈 (5) Critical GLOG: Base Resolution Mechanics, from Goblin Punch A deep dive into dice and resolution mechanics, and what they do in practice.

vs

(12) My favorite problems, from Failure Tolerated A list of design problems in TTRPGs, and a case for game design and theory to be driven by problem-solving.

(4) Roleplay Is Folk Art, from Wizard Thief Fighter An impassioned call to consider TTRPGs as folk art as opposed to corpocratic walled-garden IPs.

vs

(13) ART, PRODUCT, BOARD GAMES AND MAUSRITTER, from Fail Forward Critique of reviews that accuse TTRPGs for being too slick; interrogating the assumptions behind the label “commercial”.

(6) Toolbox Design, from The Dododecahedron Considering the principles of designing TTRPGs like toolboxes, through the lens of Cairn RPG and similar.

vs

(11) Mario vs ActRaiser vs Final Fantasy vs Zelda - Types of Advancement in RPGs, from Rise Up Comus Identifying some general types of advancement in TTRPGs, using videogames as a comparative lens.

(3) Posters, Posers and POSR(s), from Prismatic Wasteland Relitigating whether the OSR is dead, and defining its successor, the Post-OSR.

vs

(14) psychosis is badly written in tabletop games, from paper cult “Attempting to mechanize something so intensely personal, different, and mutable as mental illness is complicated. I think that makes these depictions bad!”

(7) “Rules Elide” and Its Consequences, from Jared Considering the implications of the maxim that "a game is about X when you have rules for everything but X".

vs

(10) Models of High-Level Play, from Benign Brown Beast Loose but useful classifications for types of high-level play: domains; god-like play; etc.

🥇 (2) OSR Rules Families, from Traverse Fantasy Sketching the landscape of the OSR, how various systems function, and how their attributes cluster and trend together.

vs

(15) Moralising and manipulation in tabletop roleplaying games, from Playful Void The importance of having design preferences without tying these preferences to moral judgments.

+++

GAMEABLE

🥉 (1) Flux Space, from Papers & Pencils A point-crawl procedure specifically designed for labyrinths / dungeons that are architecturally confusing / samey.

vs

(16) Generating Elevation in a Hexcrawl, from Traveler's Rest Procedures and advice on how to generate a mountain-crawl: hiking-focused adventure geography.

(8) The Autumn of Summers, from False Machine God-monsters born of summer, the hunting culture around such beasts, and random tables to generate their attributes.

vs

(9) MIMICS, from Vaults Of Vaarn A spread of novel pretender-creatures, with ecological and social implications.

(5) Another take on demihumans as social constructs, from Cavegirl's Game Stuff What if we consider fantasy races not as separate species, but as differing social roles?

vs

(12) The Apocalypse Archive, from Bearded Devil An unfinished by exemplary #dungeon23 attempt that includes wonderful maps and soundtrack notes.

🥈 (4) Pointcrawling Character Creation, from Rise Up Comus A framework for tying character generation to a geography, generating history and familiarity with campaign locales.

vs

(13) how to be erased, from Straits Of Anian Procedures for getting lost and getting led astray, and the kith and spirits one meets in those places.

(6) Dungeon Skirmishing, from All Dead Generations Feature-complete skirmish combat mechanics for OD&D, and the design rationales thereof.

vs

(11) Zelda-Style NPC Personalities, from To Distant Lands A system of generating quick and punchy NPCs, inspired by the way Zelda videogames present NPCs.

(3) GULCH, from Mindstorm A starter town specifically designed for contemporary (horror, urban fantasy, non-fantasy) campaigns.

vs

(14) Down the Road: Local Situation Design, from Deeper In The Game A procedure for quickly generating a powderkeg situation in a local geography of play.

🥇 (7) Laws of the Land: meaningful terrain via in-fiction limits and conditions, from Was It Likely? A method to generate meaningful diegetic terrain and tone in an adventuring region.

vs

(10) False Equivalent Exchange, from The Graverobber's Guide A novel magic system, done in natural language, with discussion on how it could be used in play.

(2) Deeper Catacombs, from Benign Brown Beast Iteration notes and a presentation of a comprehensive dungeon tracking procedure.

vs

(15) Inadvisable Decisions (GLΔG), from The Nothic's Eye An evocative alienist character class, based on drawing the attention of alter-describable things from beyond.

+++

ADVICE

🥈 (1) How to Handle Parley as an OSR DM, from Goblin Punch Comprehensive notes on how to run non-combat encounters without resorting to boring rolls.

vs

(16) GM Pointers: Live-Text Games, from Shadow & Fae Good reminders on how to run live-text games better, so they are better coordinated and don't take forever.

(8) ONLY Roll Initiative, from Bastionland Considerations on how to adjudicate combats, if initiative were the only dice roll in a combat system.

vs

(9) Action Mysteries, from A Knight At The Opera Asserting that good TTRPGs mysteries involve action---not just figuring out the truth but opposing the antagonist's goals.

(5) Modular Ecology, from The Graverobber's Guide A practical approach to including gameable ecology in TTRPGs, by tying materials to specific locations and conditions of the world.

vs

(12) ULTIMATE ANIMIST MECHANIC: EVERYTHING IS A REACTION, from Alone In The Labyrinth How to run a game where all actions are resolved by reaction roll: everything in the world responds by how much they like you.

(4) Game Mastering Like A Park Ranger, from SILVERARM Advice about GM-ing, based on the real-world work experience of being a park ranger.

vs

(13) An OSR approach to Spotlight, from Permanent Cranial Damage The suggestion that intentionally spotlighting characters solves the real-life problem of spotlighting players nicely.

(6) #Dungeon23, from Win Conditions The idea that spawned a thousand notebook dungeons, plus salient advice on how to start / keep going.

vs

(11) The Storyteller Technique, from Possum Creek Games When writing TTRPGs, imagine your game text as a diegetic artefact in the world of the game.

🥉 (3) RANSACKING THE ROOM, from Mindstorm A simple and powerful three-step method to handle room-searching in games: inspect, search, and ransack.

vs

(14) Cairn Crash Course, from Widdershins Wanderings A masterclass example on how to write player guides to a game, for Cairn RPG.

(7) AN EXAMPLE OF FKR (NEAR-)DICELESS COMBAT (WITH COSMIC ORRERY!), from Underground Adventures Describing combat in a Free Kriegsspiel Roleplaying (FKR) game, useful in understanding that playstyle.

vs

🥇 (10) Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction, from sachagoat Figuring out problems with wilderness exploration, and applying a mental-map framework from urban-theory academia.

(2) Dungeon Design, Process and Keys, from All Dead Generations A detailed process to designing and keying a traditional dungeon adventure.

vs

(15) THE D&D IN MY HEAD: In Only 6 Load-Bearing Numbers, from I Cast Light! Identifying the essential and minimum rules you need to remember, to run D&D.

+++

REVIEW

🥇 (1) An Empty Africa - PF2E's The Mwangi Expanse and the strange career of Black Atlanticism, from Majestic Fly Whisk A review of Pathfinder’s "The Mwangi Expanse", and a discussion of Black Atlanticism's fraught relationship with its sourcelands.

vs

(16) What Hull Breach Teaches Us, from Mazirian's Garden An assessment of the Mothership RPG third-party "Hull Breach" anthology as a "new standard for anthology companions".

(8) Grave Trespass - Jim Henson's Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, from Bones Of Contention A review of the Labyrinth RPG. It’s got all these things which are "bad" in RPGs, so why does it work?

vs

(9) The First Rumor Tables, Part 2: Caverns of Thracia or Caverns of Quasqueton?, from Tom Van Winkle's Return To Gaming An investigation into the origins of rumour tables in TTRPGs. Did TSR plagiarise Jaquays?

(5) Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 1), from Mythlands Of Erce A full-throated defense of D&D2E, viewing it in the context of its time and as a refinement over 1E.

vs

(12) Systemcrawl: Break!! RPG, from Widdershins Wanderings A review and system analysis of Break!! RPG, which marries JRPG and OSR inspirations.

(4) Dungeon Crawls in Cinema, from Directsun Games Evaluating several films on the basis of how well they function as dungeon crawls.

vs

(13) Reasonable Reviews, from Rise Up Comus A general overview of TTRPG reviews, and what may or may not make them useful.

(6) Deep Dive: A|STATE, from The Indie Game Reading Club A review of a|state, and how it builds on and departs from the Blades In The Dark formula.

vs

(11) I Read Cloud Empress, from Playful Void A review of Cloud Empress, the first descendant of the Mothership RPG ruleset.

🥈 (3) Plagiarism in Unconquered (2022), from Traverse Fantasy A forensic analysis of how Unconquered plagiarised Ultraviolet Grasslands and Vaults Of Vaarn.

vs

(14) Rod, Reel, & Fist (Review), from Benign Brown Beast A substantial review of Rod, Reel, & Fist, a "system-forward fishing simulation RPG".

(7) Pedantic Wasteland - Vampire Cruise, from Bones Of Contention A review of Vampire Cruise, a largely system-neutral horror-comedy adventure set at sea.

vs

(10) Dragon Magazine: Player Advice Collection Overview, from Attronarch Athenaeum A comprehensive read-through and rating of 143 Dragon Magazine advice articles.

(2) Spire: The Monstrosity of Empire, the Necessity of Violence, from A A Voigt A comparative-literature analysis of Spire RPG through R F Kuang’s spec-fic novel "Babel, or the Necessity of Violence".

vs

🥉 (15) MICROBLOG: CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND TABLETOP GAMES, from Fail Forward Considering the influence of children’s books on TTRPG designers and works like "Barkeep on the Borderlands".

+++

It is difficult to describe how hard it was for me to whittle down the list of nominees to these finalists. I consider each of these 64 a landmark in 2023's TTRPG thinkings, and the folks from which they issue essential reading, going forward. They already deserve a prize.

So here it is, dear bloggers: a hand-carved linocut "finalist's pin" graphic you are free to use on your sites / posts, should you wish:

(High-res downloadable version HERE)

Thank you for writing! And good luck in the coming rounds of voting!

+++

CORRECTION: A blog post from 2021 (Not All Crunch Is the Same, from A Knight At The Opera), was included in the soft-launch posting of this list. An error on the part of its nominator, compounded by a data-entry error on my part. It has since been replaced by a post from the same blog with the actual most nominations (The Genres the OSR Can't Do). I have also double-checked my lists and all finalists. Apologies for my error!

[slavghoul]

Hello, I prepared some statistics to give you a short overview of Ghost's amazingly successful 2022. It is based on data I collected between 22/12/2021 and 22/12/2022.

-

The big Ghost event of 2022 was of course the release of the band's fifth album, IMPERA.

Since March 11, it has sold nearly 500,000 copies, won the American Music Award for Favorite Rock Album and received a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance ('Call Me Little Sunshine').

Within the first week of its release, the album reached #2 on the Billboard 200 (ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States) and ranked in the top 20 best-selling albums in 19 countries across the world:

#1 in Sweden, Austria, Germany, Finland, Spain

#2 in US, UK, Belgium, Norway, Netherlands

#3 in Australia, Canada

#5 in Switzerland, Ireland, France

#7 in Poland

#8 in Hungary

#12 in Denmark, Portugal

#20 in Italy

IMPERA is Ghost’s best charting album to date.

-

On YouTube, the band amassed a staggering 260 million views. 840,000 people subscribed to the channel this year, which makes up 42% of all current subscribers.

5 most watched videos on YouTube in 2022:

Mary On A Cross (Official Audio) – 32 million views

Call Me Little Sunshine (Official Music Video) – 15 million views

Square Hammer (Official Music Video) – 11 million views

Mary On A Cross (Live in Tampa 2022) – 8.2 million views

Spillways (Official Music Video) – 6.8 million views

-

On Spotify, the band amassed 1,285,625 new followers. That’s around 61% of all followers since the band appeared on the platform.

5 most streamed songs on Spotify in 2022:

Mary On A Cross -  193,709,473 streams

Call Me Little Sunshine – 41,108,589 streams

Square Hammer – 29,720,042 streams

Dance Macabre – 26,494,053 streams

Spillways – 24,910,870 streams

-

It goes without saying that the viral success of Mary On A Cross on TikTok brought in a lot of new fans this year, but the magnitude of it becomes even more astonishing if you look at numbers.

On this graph, I marked a few events that resulted in a noticeable spike in the number of monthly listeners on Spotify, including the approximate time when MOAC began to gain traction on TikTok. As you can see, nothing, not even the release of a new album, gave the band as much attention as the 3-year old song suddenly raising in popularity on one single platform.

Between end of July and beginning of October, the number of monthly listeners on Spotify skyrocketed from 2.5 million to 12 million. This is a 380% increase.

Although the numbers have been in decline since then, it appears that for the past month they have stayed at a steady 9 million. As of today (Dec 22, 2022) the exact number is 9,110,996. Exactly a year ago (Dec 22, 2021) the number was 1,999,951. A hefty 355% increase in only a year.

-

Some other milestones and fun facts:

On June 7, Cirice, Dance Macabre, and Square Hammer were all certified Gold by the RIAA for sales of 500,000 units in the USA. Following the viral success, Mary On A Cross was also certified Gold on November 20.

The band's most liked post on Instagram this year was a video of Papa throwing the first pitch at the White Sox game (273,241 likes).

The episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live where Ghost performed Call Me Little Sunshine was watched by around 1.3 million people.

In September, Ghost reached over 12 million monthly listeners on Spotify and was the 450th most streamed artist globally - that's 450 out of over 11 million!

As of today with over 1.6 billion accumulated streams Ghost is one of the 1,000 most successful artists on the platform of all time (currently #808).

On September 11, Mary On A Cross peaked at #1 in the Viral Hits chart on Spotify in 54 countries across the world.

It was also the highest charting Swedish song on the platform in 2022, peaking globally at #31.

-

At this point I think it’s safe to declare that Ghost’s global success reached unprecedent heights this year and even allowed them to officially join the ranks of mainstream artists. With all of the above, 70 completed shows this year and many more to come in 2023, and with media of the likes of The Wall Street Journal proclaiming Ghost “the next generation of arena stars,” it looks like that the band is well on the way to become one of the biggest rock acts of this century. Not bad for a side project started by one Swede in his bedroom somewhere in Linköping. 

Let us hope 2023 will be as devilishly good!

[zvaigzdelasas]

[Eurasianet receives funding from the NED, OSF, the FCDO, & others]

Delimitation discussions appear stuck at present over Azerbaijan’s demand that it gain control of eight villages in border areas currently under Armenian jurisdiction. Pashinyan in comments to journalists signaled a willingness to unilaterally hand over four of the disputed villages. In doing so, he also suggested a practical way of settling the boundary between the two states. His initiative appears intended to deprive Azerbaijan of a pretext to launch new military action to seize territory, including any assault that could cut Armenia’s direct access to Iran.

“The de jure border that existed at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union was reaffirmed by the [1991] Alma-Ata declaration and not only by that declaration, but also by the agreements held in Prague on October 6, 2022,” Pashinyan said at a March 12 news conference.

Four of the disputed villages – Baghanis Ayrim, Lower Askipara, Kheyrimli, and Gizilhajili – were on the Azerbaijani side of the border between the two former Soviet republics and were occupied by Armenian forces in the 1990s, during the first Karabakh war, which concluded in 1994 after the signing of the Alma-Ata declaration.

Citing the Alma-Ata and Prague agreements, Pashinyan acknowledged that “the former administrative border, which existed during the Soviet Union, is somewhat beyond that present administrative border.” He went on to call for both states to reaffirm the frontier defined by the Alma-Ata agreement. [...]

Earlier in 2024, Armeniamaintained that Azerbaijan currently controls 31 villages situated in roughly 200 square kilometers of land that are rightfully Armenian. There had been some talk in Yerevan of proposing a trade involving all the disputed settlements. But Pashinyan in his most recent comments made no mention of such a swap.[...]

Prior to Pashinyan’s March gambit, Azerbaijan had staked out an intransigent position about the return of the eight villages. “As for the four non-exclave Azerbaijani villages occupied by Armenia, their affiliation to Azerbaijan is beyond any doubt and they are subject to immediate liberation,” Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev said in the statement issued March 9, two days after the latest round of border delimitation talks. Mustafayev leads the Azerbaijani negotiating team.

“The issue of liberation of four of Azerbaijan’s exclave villages occupied by Armenia will also be resolved within the delimitation process,” he noted.[...]

The villages that Pashinyan seems willing to unilaterally hand back are important to Armenia from an infrastructure point of view. A highway to Georgia, as well as a pipeline carrying Russian gas to Armenia, pass through these villages. Pashinyan also addressed the issue in press comments, saying that he has instructed relevant state bodies to “reroute those lines so that they pass through Armenia’s de jure territory and so that we don’t have problems in that area.”

The prime minister’s remarks triggered an immediate outcry from long-standing government critics, who accuse Pashinyan of treachery and a failure to defend state interests.

“By unilaterally giving in, not only do you not create a guarantee that Azerbaijan will not attack, but on the contrary, you give them better conditions to attack you from those positions,” Anna Grigorian of the Hayastan alliance said in comments broadcast by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

18 Mar 24

[revenantghost]

Kenji Muto's Twitter Posts: Part 1

Before and while Tristamp was airing, Kenji Muto made some amazing Twitter posts giving us lore and production tidbits along the way. And while I don't speak Japanese (so I'm going to have to use Google Translate for this, so take everything you read here with a grain of salt because it may be skewed by mistranslation), there was some fantastic art and really cool concepts shared, and I want to archive anything Trigun-related. If I miss anything, let me know!) It starts a little slow with stuff we already know, but there are some interesting tidbits! If anyone who knows Japanese wants to correct anything, please feel free! Now, without further ado...

Part 1 [here]

Part 2

?

12:23 AM · Jul 4, 2022

Twitter始めました。 TRIGUN STAMPEDE監督の武藤です。

I started Twitter. This is Muto, director of TRIGUN STAMPEDE.

1:41 AM · Jul 7, 2022

シリーズ長編初監督です。田島光二さんによる美しいコンセプトアートとキャラクター原案をベースに、壮大な世界観を作っています。順次、新しい情報が解禁されるはず。お楽しみに。 #TRIGUN

This is my first time directing a feature-length series. We have created a magnificent worldview based on the beautiful concept art and character designs by Koji Tajima. New information should be released one after another. looking forward to. #TRIGUN

7:27 AM · Aug 3, 2022

公式HPにある花守さんの「依存と執着」という表現は的確だと思った。最も行動原理を組み立てるのに時間のかかったキャラクター、少年ナイ。服に浮かぶ不思議な模様も田島光二氏によるデザイン。果たして、どんな意味が込められているのか。 写真は、追加で届いたロサンゼルス土産。 #TRIGUN

I thought that Mr. Hanamori's expression of ``dependence and attachment'' on the official website was accurate. Shonen Nai is the character that took the most time to formulate his behavioral principles. The mysterious patterns that appear on the clothes are also designed by Koji Tajima. What kind of meaning does it really contain? The photo shows an additional souvenir from Los Angeles. #TRIGUN

12:15 AM · Aug 23, 2022

公式のコンセプトアート公開、なぜか少年時代編が多いなぁ。原作漫画で、ナイが奏でている、オルガンのような、ピアノのような楽器。どうゆう感情で弾いているのか、誰を想って弾いているのか。 そういえばあのコンセプトアートはいつ公開なのだろう。 いつ解禁になるのだろう。 #TRIGUN

For some reason, most of the official concept art released is from the boyhood version. In the original manga, Nai plays an organ-like or piano-like instrument. How do you feel when you play, and who do you have in mind when you play? Come to think of it, when will that concept art be released? When will it be lifted? #TRIGUN

3:42 AM · Aug 31, 2022

出社したら壁にTRIGUN STAMPEDEのポスターが貼られていた。ちなみにお隣のポスターは、初演出デビュー時代からお世話になっている松見真一監督のTVアニメBEASTARS。 第二弾ポスターも鋭意製作中。 #TRIGUN

When I arrived at work, there was a TRIGUN STAMPEDE poster on the wall. By the way, the poster next to me is of the TV anime BEASTARS, directed by Shinichi Matsumi, which I have been supporting since its debut. The second poster is also in the works. #TRIGUN

5:43 AM · Sep 4, 2022

演出用に作ってもらったマザーシップの立体造形。絶妙に捻れていて、左右対称でデザインされてるわけではないので、３面図起こしがとにかく難しい。 レム・セイブレムは五番艦。 大墜落を免れたのは三番艦。 日曜出社の私は現在、音響ブース。 #TRIGUN

A three-dimensional model of the mothership made for the performance. It's exquisitely twisted and not designed with left and right symmetry, so it's difficult to draw it from three sides. Rem Saverem is the fifth ship. The third ship survived the crash. I come to work on Sunday and am currently working in the sound booth. #TRIGUN

11:10 PM · Sep 13, 2022

相手に説明することで、アタマの中が整理されてゆく。 感覚を理屈に落とし込む、言語化って大切。 雑誌の対談取材、刺激になるので今後も積極的に行いたい。 でも、想定外の質問やアドリブ対応は苦手だったりする。 #TRIGUN

By explaining things to the other person, your mind will be organized. It is important to translate feelings into logic and verbalize them. I would like to continue doing interview interviews for magazines, as they are very stimulating. However, I am not good at handling unexpected questions and improvisation. #TRIGUN

12:25 AM · Oct 17, 2022

ようやくお披露目です。 セルルックのCGで作ったポスター第二弾、見た目以上に手間かかってます。まだ名前を公表できない敏腕スタッフたちが、陰ながら活躍してくれました。よく見ると本編内容のヒントが隠されているので、宝探しのように楽しんでほしい。 予告編第２弾も解禁です。 #TRIGUN

It's finally unveiled. The second poster made with cell-look CG takes more time than it looks. The talented staff, whose names cannot yet be made public, have been working behind the scenes. If you look closely, there are hidden hints about the main story, so please enjoy it like a treasure hunt. The second trailer has also been released. #TRIGUN

11:01 PM · Nov 8, 2022

ダビングも鋭意進行中。 この臨場感、音響効果、ミキシング、そして素晴らしい劇伴音楽。映画館の音響環境で聴いてほしいと思っていたら、なんと先行上映会が開催決定。 勝俣さん的に言うと「グルーヴ感がたまらない！」って事なんだと思う。音の力、恐るべし。 #TRIGUN

Dubbing is also in progress. The sense of realism, the sound effects, the mixing, and the wonderful accompaniment music. I wanted to listen to it in the acoustic environment of a movie theater, but it was decided that an advance screening would be held. In Katsumata-san's words, I think it means "the feeling of groove is irresistible!" The power of sound is terrifying. #TRIGUN

4:35 AM · Nov 28, 2022

同じ内容を繰り返し話すことが苦手で、できるだけテーマや内容を掲載誌ごとに変えるようにしている。多角度から見つめると、作品が立体的に見えてくる。 今後も順次、裏情報満載の対談記事が発表されるはず。 ポスター第三弾も、そろそろ完成予定。 #TRIGUN

I'm not good at repeating the same content over and over again, so I try to vary the themes and content from magazine to magazine as much as possible. When viewed from multiple angles, the work appears three-dimensional. We are sure to continue to publish interview articles full of behind-the-scenes information in the future. The third poster will be completed soon. #TRIGUN

12:02 AM · Dec 5, 2022

不慣れなトークを辛抱強く聴いてくれた、優しいお客様に感謝。優しくも暖かい拍手に救われました。役者さんのように笑いを取りつつ、上手く会話を回せないものか。スタンピードチーム陣からは「場数ですよ」とアドバイスを貰う。 場数とやらを踏むためにも、ネクストステージ頑張らねば。 #TRIGUN

Thank you to the kind customers who patiently listened to the unfamiliar talk. I was saved by the gentle and warm applause. Are you unable to carry a conversation while making people laugh like an actor? The Stampede team members advised us, ``It depends on the number of places.'' We have to work hard on the next stage in order to make it to the number of places. #TRIGUN

10:54 PM · Dec 5, 2022

最近、宣伝チームの熱量に圧倒される。 現場スタッフとは違う、これまで接点のなかった役職の人々。こうゆう縁の下の力持ちがいるから作品が広まるんだなぁ。 彼らと飲みに行ったりすると、その人柄にも触れる事ができる。集団戦、集団作業、集団芸術。つくづく学びの多いプロジェクトだ。 #TRIGUN

Lately, I've been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the advertising team. People in positions that are different from the field staff and with whom I had no previous contact. It's because of these unsung heroes that my work spreads. When you go out for drinks with them, you can get a feel for their personalities. Group warfare, group work, group art. It's a project with a lot to learn. #TRIGUN

12:30 AM · Dec 22, 2022

新宿アドストリートなどにTRIGUN STAMPEDE看板が多数あるらしい。今後も何やら宣伝チームが面白い事を計画中らしいが、なんだろう、とても楽しみ。何気ない風景の裏にも、陰ながら頑張っている人たちがいる。そうやって作品は更に広がってゆくのだ。ブラボー。 https://youtu.be/oolZJKslJcU #TRIGUN

There seem to be many TRIGUN STAMPEDE signboards on Shinjuku Ad Street and elsewhere. It seems like the advertising team is planning some interesting things in the future, but I'm really looking forward to it. Behind the scenes, there are people working hard behind the scenes. In this way, the work will continue to expand. Bravo. https://youtu.be/oolZJKslJcU #TRIGUN

[Boo, dead Youtube link ):< If anyone knows what it was, let me know and I'll insert that info here]

3:21 AM · Dec 28, 2022

いつの間に、誰かが作ってくれたTRIGUN STAMPEDE年賀状を受け取る。カメラ目線で素朴に座るスタンピード。真摯に作品と向き合っている、そんな現場スタッフの姿勢を感じる一枚。 物語終盤のダビング（ファイナルミックス）に追われている、ラストスパートの2022。 #TRIGUN

Before I knew it, I received a TRIGUN STAMPEDE New Year's card that someone had made for me. Stampede simply sits looking at the camera. This photo shows the attitude of the on-site staff as they approach the work with sincerity. 2022 is the last spurt of dubbing (final mix) at the end of the story. #TRIGUN

6:37 AM · Jan 4, 2023

喫茶店で水出しコーヒーを眺めているとTRIGUN STAMPEDEを連想する。見た目は変化すれど、ちゃんと豆の成分と香りが活きている。内藤先生という豆を炒って、挽いて、一滴一滴丁寧に抽出する。 とびきり今風のコーヒーカップに注いで、さあ召し上がれ。 2023年もどうぞ宜しくお願いします。 #TRIGUN

When I look at cold brew coffee at a coffee shop, I think of TRIGUN STAMPEDE. Although the appearance may change, the ingredients and aroma of the beans are still present. The beans called Naito Sensei are roasted, ground, and carefully extracted drop by drop. Pour into a super modern coffee cup and enjoy. We look forward to your continued support in 2023. #TRIGUN

9:13 AM · Jan 7, 2023

本日からTRIGUN STAMPEDE放映スタートです。 第1話「NOMAN'S LAND」 いろんな思いを、ガツンと込めました。 どうぞ、よろしくお願いします！ #TRIGUN

TRIGUN STAMPEDE will start airing from today. Episode 1 "NOMAN'S LAND" I put all my thoughts into it. Nice to meet you! #TRIGUN

12:37 AM · Jan 9, 2023

シリーズ脚本の第一話、第二話、 第三話は、 ホップ・ステップ・ジャンプだと思う。 まるで、週刊誌の連載ネーム。 #TRIGUN

The first, second and third episodes of the series script are I think it's hop step jump. It's like the name of a weekly magazine serial. #TRIGUN

12:49 AM · Jan 9, 2023

ただのモブからサブキャラへ異例の昇格を果たした愛すべき悪役、チャック・リー隊長。 コンテ描いてると、キャラが勝手に動き出す。 シナリオに無い台詞を話し始めたり、暴れたり。 杉田智和さんの怪演が光る。 #TRIGUN

Captain Chuck Lee is a lovable villain who has achieved an unusual promotion from just a mob to a side character. As I draw the storyboards, the characters start moving on their own. He starts speaking lines that aren't in the scenario, or gets violent. Tomokazu Sugita's mysterious performance shines. #TRIGUN

10:56 PM · Jan 10, 2023

最初期の頃、内藤先生と飲みながら、 「手触り感を大切にしたい」 「実存感を大切にしたい」 ひたすらそんな事を話していた。 惑星の空気感と生活感を見事に再現。 宝石の国の頃からのタッグ、 金子雄司の美術世界。 #TRIGUN

In the early days, while drinking with Mr. Naito, “I want to value the feel of touch.” “I want to value a sense of existence.” That's what I was talking about all the time. The atmosphere and lifestyle of the planet are beautifully reproduced. A tag team from the days of Land of the Lustrous, Yuji Kaneko's art world. #TRIGUN

7:06 AM · Jan 11, 2023

生まれも育ちも第三都市ジュライ。 親の七光りで憲兵隊士官学校に裏口入学。 金ピカの銃は両親からの入学祝い。 画面の外にも彼らの世界は広がり、本編では描かれない彼らの物語もある。 チャック・リー再登場に乞うご期待。 #TRIGUN #杉田智和

Born and raised in the third city of July. With the help of his parents, he entered the military police academy through the back door. The golden gun was a gift from his parents for entering school. Their world expands beyond the screen, and there are also stories about them that are not depicted in the main story. Look forward to Chuck Lee's reappearance. #TRIGUN #杉田智和

9:12 PM · Jan 13, 2023

親子の絆に、善も悪もないんだよね。 どストレート、どシンプルなテーマで挑む、第二話。 ポップ（？）キュート（？）な悪役たちにも注目。 本日23:00〜、よろしくお願いします！ #TRIGUN #トライガン

There is no good or bad in the bond between parent and child. The second episode takes on the challenge of a straight, simple theme. Also pay attention to the pop (?) cute (?) villains. Thank you for your support today from 23:00! #TRIGUN #トライガン

9:12 PM · Jan 14, 2023

二話の絵コンテの修正していたら、 ふと声が聞こえた… 『ゴフセフ』 「え？いま喋った？」 『ゴフセフ…(頷き)』 「そうか、ゴフセフって言いたいんだね？」 『ゴフセフ。(ニッコリと)』 「ゴフセフ！(ニッコリ)」 キャラと対話しながらコンテを描いてゆく。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

When I was revising the storyboard for episode 2, Suddenly I heard a voice... "Gofsef" "Huh? Did you just talk?" “Gofsef…(nods)” “I see, you want to call me Gofsef, right?” “Gofsef. (smiling)” "Gofsef! (smiling)" Draw the storyboard while interacting with the characters. #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:51 AM · Jan 17, 2023

数年ぶりにオキシタケヒコさんに会った。 毎回、東京まで呼びつけていた事に気づく。 次は僕が大阪へ行きたい、行くべき。 大阪でもSTAMPEDEイベントやりたい。 大阪で食い倒れしたい。 #TRIGUN

I met Mr. Oxytakehiko for the first time in several years. Every time, I realized that he had called me all the way to Tokyo. Next I want to go to Osaka, I should go. I want to hold a STAMPEDE event in Osaka too. I want to eat all I can in Osaka. #TRIGUN

7:36 AM · Jan 17, 2023

無口で気弱な青年は、やがて過酷な環境に適応し、 サイボーグとしての「力」を得る。 凶悪犯の仲間入りを果たした青年の名は、ゴフセフ。 語られないバックグラウンドを想像すると、 世界は更に広がる。 #TRIGUN

The taciturn and timid young man eventually adapts to the harsh environment, Obtain "power" as a cyborg. The name of the young man who has joined the ranks of violent criminals is Gofsef. When you imagine the untold background, The world will expand further. #TRIGUN

8:47 PM · Jan 20, 2023

親子の絆？ そんな常識をぶち壊す。 血は水よりも濃い、第三話。 本日、23:00-テレビ東京他にて放送。 是非ご覧ください！ #TRIGUN #トライガン

Parent-child bond? Breaking down that common sense. Blood is thicker than water, episode 3. Broadcast today at 23:00 on TV Tokyo and other channels. Please take a look! #TRIGUN #トライガン

10:53 PM · Jan 23, 2023

ナイというキャラクター性は、 一枚のラフスケッチが語ってくれた。 渋谷で開催された「内藤泰弘の世界」展。 常に優しく微笑む彼。 自身に憑依させて、描きだす。 #TRIGUN

The character of Nai is A rough sketch tells the story. "The World of Yasuhiro Naito" exhibition held in Shibuya. He always smiles kindly. Let yourself be possessed and start drawing. #TRIGUN

11:19 PM · Jan 24, 2023

「人間」という種族を一括りに捉える。 物事を巨視的にみる。 俯瞰した視野で考え、躊躇なく行動する。 コンテを描いていると、僕の中に彼が宿る。 一度宿ると、抜けるまでに時間がかかるところが難点。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

The race of "humans" is lumped together. See things macroscopically. Think from a bird's-eye view and act without hesitation. When I draw storyboards, he lives inside me. The problem is that once you get into it, it takes a while to get out. #TRIGUN #トライガン

9:49 PM · Jan 26, 2023

でも、大丈夫。 きっと逞しく彼も生き抜いていくのだろう。 過酷な環境で、現実を受け入れ、 歪な義手を手に入れ、 青年に成長した彼を想像してみてほしい。 もしかしたらワムズ使いになっているかも。 物語世界は、作り手を離れ、更に広がってゆく。 #TRIGUN

But it's okay. I'm sure he will be strong enough to survive. Accepting reality in a harsh environment, Obtaining a distorted prosthetic arm, Imagine him growing into a young man. Maybe he's using Wams. The story world leaves the creator and expands further. #TRIGUN

[Note that this was shared around episode three and the freckles this guy has--a lot of people theorize this is about Tonis]

8:52 PM · Jan 27, 2023

数年ぶりに田島光二さんと食事。 シャコやカニやエビを注文。 「これは何？」 『シャコワムズ！』 「これは？」 『カニワムズ！』 「これ…」 『エビワムズ！！』 まるで中学生のようなノリ、 同窓会のような時間。 本日23:00-は4話放映ですね。 #TRIGUN

I had dinner with Koji Tajima for the first time in several years. Ordered mantis shrimp, crab, and shrimp. "what is this?" “Shakowams! ” "this is?" “Caniwams! ” "this…" “Ebiwams! ! ” Feeling like a junior high school student, A time like a class reunion. Episode 4 will be aired today from 23:00. #TRIGUN

12:17 AM · Jan 29, 2023

見覚えのあるシルエット。 モーションキャプチャーには重くて使えなかったが、ポージング参考で大活躍した模造品。実際はもっと重いんだろうなぁ、と想像しながら演出する。 外装はロストテクノロジィ、内部は機関銃という合成兵器。 ”パニッシュメント”とは”処罰”の意味。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

A familiar silhouette. Although it was too heavy to use for motion capture, this imitation was very useful as a pose reference. I imagine it's probably heavier in reality when I direct it. The exterior is lost technology, and the interior is a synthetic weapon called a machine gun. "Punishment" means "punishment". #TRIGUN #トライガン

[gumjrop]

The Weather

This week we see a sharp increase of COVID in all regions, likely due to increased travel around the recent holiday long weekend and dropping temperatures that bring a lot of gatherings indoors. As the holiday season continues, we remind our readers to use layers of protection — such as ventilation, air purification, masking with a KN95/N95 or better, and testing via PCR or NAAT or testing serially with rapid antigen tests — to protect themselves and their loved ones both during travel and at your holiday gatherings.  Repeat COVID infection has serious implications for everyone, not just the elderly or those with preexisting conditions. Even if you experience a mild case, COVID is a vascular disease that causes multiple organ damage, autoimmune conditions, inflammation and immune system dysregulation that you might not necessarily experience at the time of your infection. It’s important to note that if you or your loved ones have experienced previous COVID infections, you may have entered a high risk group for severe effects and hospitalization without realizing it.  Some people may feel worn down by the current state of the virus, by fatigue of lack of resources, or from the energy spent protecting one’s self from an infection; with increasing wastewater levels and the onset of a new dominant variant this week, now is really the crunch time to stay strong and endure. For those who have stopped precautions, we invite you to return to masking and other levels to minimize transmission. This is the most important time to return to masking to protect yourself and others.

The Current Wastewater Viral Activity Map shows viral activity by state. As of 12/02/23, many states are reporting “very high” to “high” COVID levels with 5 states reporting low levels. Seven states reported no data. The CDC currently rates our nationally reported COVID wastewater viral activity levels as “high”.

Levels are at an incline in all regions, but the Midwest takes a strong lead with a viral activity level of 10.94. This is a wastewater value that surpasses all readings for the Midwest in the past 2 years, and is the third highest of any reading since the onset of the Omicron variant in January of 2022 where we saw the highest levels of spread we have experienced in the entirety of the pandemic. Current Midwestern wastewater levels were surpassed only by a viral activity level of 13.02 in the South on 12/31/2022 and of 11.79 in the West on 07/02/2023. As with Biobot data, the most recent two weeks (indicated by gray shading on the graph) are subject to change due to reporting delays. As we enter the cold and flu season when many in-person gatherings are held, we encourage you to continue monitoring local reports for a more accurate measure of levels. Also, please continue to use and support others in using layers of protection. And as we continue to report on advocacy successes, remember that our actions and voices can enact change — this level of unchecked spread is unacceptable and we must demand better resources and protections from our policy makers!

Deaths

Percentage of total deaths in the US caused by COVID has risen 25% in the past week. Remember that these numbers are an undercount related to reporting delays in place since the Biden Administration ended the Public Health Emergency. Alarmingly, the current increase in deaths is large enough to show despite these changes.

COVID remains the third leading cause of death according to the CDC in the US. COVID is the highest single cause of death, only second to Heart Disease and Cancer which are both umbrella headings for more specific diseases. We mourn all those who have died due to COVID, and in that mourning, call you to take measures to prevent death and disablement for yourself, your loved ones, and your communities.

Ventilation and Air Filtration

Moving activities outdoors or ensuring your indoor setting has consistent fresh airflow is key to ensuring high quality ventilation. We recommend monitoring carbon dioxide levels and making adjustments as needed. Air filtration is important as well. If you’re looking for a HEPA air purifier or Corsi-Rosenthal Box for your family, it is important to get a filtration device that is powerful enough to change out the air for your particular room size. Clean Air Stars has created a free tool to calculate which filter could be right for you depending on the size of the rooms that you wish to clean and how many people will be attending your gathering.

Testing

Whether you are making the trip home or staying in one place this holiday season, with the current level of spread it is important to know your COVID status before engaging in social activity. Rapid antigen tests are designed to be “the most rapid” at telling those who are symptomatic whether the symptoms they are experiencing are or are not caused by COVID. If you are asymptomatic, presymptomatic, or less than 5 days out from your COVID exposure, using one single rapid test is not an effective way of determining whether or not a person is currently infected with and contagious with COVID. Persons using rapid antigen tests should take at least 2 rapid antigen tests 48 hours apart from one another and isolate in between, in order to avoid spreading their unconfirmed case as well as avoid exposure to COVID during this waiting period, which could produce a false test negative result. Persons who are experiencing COVID symptoms but test negative on an initial rapid antigen test also need to isolate themselves from others, assume they have COVID, and test again in 48 hours. Persons who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic who experience 2 negative serial tests must mask or isolate and wait a final 48 hours to test a third time in order to confirm a negative COVID case. For this reason, rapid antigen tests are only ideal to use in preparation for events where the user has a week prior available to test multiple times and isolate. FDA approved home Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests or NAATs are a more sensitive home test option, some brands of which have been found to, with only one test, verify both positive and negative results at 92.9% and 98.7% respective accuracy. NAATs can be a more sensitive, quicker option to use in preparation for events. Another more recent clinical trial found that performing a combined throat and nose sample increased sensitivity for healthcare worker and self-collected specimens. When testing at home with a rapid antigen test, it is worth it to take a combination sample like this one. To ensure the most sensitive results for both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, get a PCR test. No-cost PCR testing sites that are available via the federal ICATT program can be found via this search tool. Remember to also check for regional offerings such as NYC’s COVID express test centers that test for COVID, RSV, FLU A and FLU B free of cost with results typically returned by end of day, that could be a more convenient option for you. PCR testing is the gold standard if you are making plans to be in a social setting.  If you do not have fast free PCR testing in your area, demand that it be made publicly available by the government at all levels!

Wins

Grassroots organizing group and “Mask Blocs” continue to take to social media encouraging Pro-Palestine protesters to continue to wear masks in their organizing spaces and during protests highlighting historic use of unrestricted and eugenic viral spread as a weapon of occupation and colonization. The National Institutes of Health’s Home Test to Treat program has upgraded its free test offerings and now instead of rapid antigen tests, will provide LUCIRA by Pfizer home NAAT tests can that effectively detect asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic COVID infections as well as Flu A and Flu B. Those who are uninsured or underinsured can sign up for this program to access free NAAT testing, telehealth services, and treatment medications for COVID and the Flu. If your household has not placed a new order for more rapid tests from the federal government through covidtests.gov, you can still place an order for 4 free rapid antigen tests here.    

Take Action

If you are out protesting this weekend or planning your trip home to visit family for the holidays, connect with your local COVID advocacy group to pick up high quality masks for yourself and to pass on to those around you. This Tuesday, December 12th, the director of the CDC and the American Medical Association are hosting a virtual fireside chat to discuss Fall & Winter Respiratory Virus Season (prior registration required). We encourage you to attend. You might ask the CDC why they aren’t ensuring precautions in healthcare settings? Or you could ask why they’re relying on a reactive, vaccine-only approach instead of layers of protection to proactively prevent COVID?

[felassan]

I was sent a link to an ‘interview with Mark Darrah about BioWare and games’ video that I hadn’t seen before. it’s called “INTERVIEW | Former BioWare Dev Mark Darrah On Crunch, Electronic Arts, Unionization, & More" and [here is the source] link. the interview took place in 2022, so bear that in mind when listening, but it still has interesting insights and things in there. the video description reads as follows:

"Former BioWare developer Mark Darrah joins us for a talk about crunch, workplace culture, accessibility, Elden Ring, and much more." Timestamps: 1:31- Why did you get into game development? 4:12- Crunch 14:05- On Activision-Blizzard & corporate culture overtaking studio culture 15:50- Crunch continued 21:06- Toxic workplace cultures at game studios & why they’re tough to fix 29:13- Unionization in the games industry 36:36- Rising game budgets and why they’re getting bigger 48:00- Elden Ring and game budgets 52:59- Accessibility in games 1:10:38- Relationship between the creative and business sides of game development & corporate directives 1:14:43- Anthem 1:22:16- EA doesn’t understand what BioWare is 1:28:20- Indie development & being bought out by larger companies [source]

the rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

this post is just some notes and transcribed quotes of interest from the video, in case that’s of any use to anyone, for example for accessibility.

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf / 'current or recent general BioWare’

“The culture around crunch has been changing dramatically at BioWare for the last 7 or 8 years, but I would actually think that it’s maybe not the, I don’t believe that it’s the reporting [increasing reporting on crunch in the industry in recent years] that’s causing the changing culture at the studios. And the change in reporting is caused by something, there’s another cause for both of them. And I think it might be that we just have a development, people are getting more experienced, older, and I think that might be what it is. But I don’t believe that we were trying to improve crunch culture because Kotaku was talking about it or Jason Schreier wrote an article about what happened on Anthem. I don’t believe that’s the cause. I think that those are both symptoms of another cause, which is causing the change. And maybe it’s older people in game development, but actually, now that I say it out loud, maybe it’s actually the opposite. Maybe it’s Gen Z coming into the workforce with very different expectations of what work looks like that are causing the change.”

“I think BioWare may have abandoned it, but something that I was working on in sort’ve, the last couple of years at BioWare was Pile of Sand. And the idea of Pile of Sand is to focus the team on a single point or at least as small of a point as you can, and then use that focus to kind’ve cause things to come into being around that. And I know that there are people at BioWare who hate Pile of Sand, but it definitely causes Completion Urgency. In a way that nothing short of crunch or E3 has done very successfully.”

“I’d like to think that.. well. For sure BioWare’s culture today is way better than BioWare’s culture was in 1997 when I started. Or even see it like, you can even see it in the games. But, I mean, it’s not perfect, and there are people in more senior roles, or there have been people in more senior roles that are problematic, and as someone who worked to remove people who were problematic, it could be incredibly difficult to do, because usually there’s no smoking gun. Usually it’s reports or innuendo, or you know it’s, everyone kinda knows, but to actually have something actionable is really hard. And that sounds so terrible because it is terrible, because it is really hard – I’ve burned massive amounts of political capital in some cases to get rid of people who were toxic, but who were in very senior positions.” “I think what’s happened is [in the industry generally] the level of what’s being treated as acceptable has become way lower. Way less is acceptable, and that, I think, is a net good. Does that, is that how you want improvement to happen? No, this is not, you don’t want it to work this way, you want it to be a constant steady state towards better and better culture. And I think, you know, BioWare’s been trying to do that, but I think when other studios don’t do that and then a giant light gets shone on them it actually helps with other studios to say, you know, we also have to take a look at ourselves and think about what’s going on and look at our processes and our culture and our hiring practices and all of these things.”

The host asked how you go about setting that culture where you say, ‘these kinds of things aren’t okay’. “Are there techniques, rules, seminars?” Mark: “I mean, all of those things exist and, don’t get me wrong, I do think that BioWare, I do think that EA has done a better job of this than some of the other publishers and studios have done. So all of those things I do think help, but I do think that honestly the single thing that you can do that helps the most is to get someone of the group that is under-represented at a high enough position to have a voice be heard.”

The host asked about Keywords attempting to unionize recently. Mark: “I’m curious as to some of the details with the Keywords union, because back in 2020, when I was still at BioWare, which, where they’re saying like, they were forced into the office. I wonder if that was a BioWare, I don’t believe that that was actually a BioWare interaction, that it was a BioWare contract. Because at the time, at that time, early Covid days, I was trying to get into the office and it was like locked down, we couldn’t get in to the office, I couldn’t get into the office, I was the Vice President, I couldn’t get into the office. So I’m curious as to the details of that. They are contractors so it’s possible that they were working on something else and they were being forced into an office, I don’t know, it’s possible that something was happening that I’m not aware of. But that specific thing that they were talking about is, just caught me by surprise because we were actually, I was trying to violate the rules and I couldn’t even do it for myself, so.”

On the relationship between the creative and business sides of game development and corporate directives: “[direct orders from corporate], actually, it does happen. There are directive things. I mean, Joplin, the thing that was Dragon Age 4, was cancelled because it was perceived that the next Dragon Age needed to have an online component, it needed to have live service, it needed to have an online component, it needed to be live service, live service. That was, so it was like, there was essentially a decision made at a corporate level about what the game needed to be. And whether that was real or not, I don’t know, but I have my own thoughts on that front, but that’s what was said. And, but sometimes it’s even stupider stuff, like there were people that were like, ‘in DA:I, you NEED to be able to fly a dragon!’ and it was like, this was a dictate, and I judo’d that out of, into us not actually doing it. But that was a dictate that came down. So there are reviews, so with EA there are gates, so you have like numbered gates up to actually, I think there are more gates now. But basically you have a concept gate, a vision gate, a pre-production gate, a production gate, a post-production gate, and like alpha, and things like that. Some of those gates are formal gates, you have executives gather in a room and a presentation is made to them and then they say ‘I don’t like that, do something different’ and that could be anything from ‘I don’t like that your character has a frog for a head’, to ‘this entire-’, especially in the early days, ‘this entire concept is flawed, we shouldn’t make this game at all’. At EA, once things cross a certain threshold they tend to continue, but in the early days games do get cancelled because they don’t get through those gates. So they do have influence because there is, they are seeing the game during development and they are very important people who are expressing their opinions and it’s not entirely clear. I mean, I report to someone who reports to someone who is providing this feedback. So the presumption is they get to say what goes. And I guess they probably do. It’s not actually clear that they do, but the presumption is the reporting line is literally, person reports to person reports to this person who is saying this thing, I suspect they probably get to decide, if they say this needs to be a certain way, it’s gonna be a certain way. Maybe I’m wrong on that but that’s certainly what seems to be the case.”

On Anthem and why it got made: “I wasn’t on Anthem in the early days, but there was a, with some of the executive, EA’s never really understood what the heck BioWare is, but in the early days of Anthem, or let’s say, the days after ME3, there was a sentiment with some of the executives at EA that storytelling games were over. They were done. That we needed something different. So there was a lot of language that was being pushed at Casey, and at Aaryn, that was essentially to that effect, of, ‘don’t you think that the days of storytelling games are over? Maybe it’s time to do something different. And I don’t know, because I wasn’t in the room, I don’t know if that just fed into exactly the kind of game Casey wanted to make anyway, or if they just sort’ve lined up, so yeah. They weren’t, no one at EA was saying ‘Make Anthem’ or ‘Make Dylan’, which is what it was at the time, but there was pressure around, like, ‘probably if you’re making another thing and it’s not another Mass Effect, you shouldn’t just make another story-driven RPG. We don’t want another one of those, we don’t think’. So there was a push towards something different. Some of the early things that Casey was pitching were still, you know, they were multiplayer story-driven things, they were different, but yeah, there was definitely a push from corporate to do something that wasn’t ME, that wasn’t DA, it was something else.”

“It’s definitely frustrating, I did a ‘dear executive, you’re being managed’ video. As an Executive Producer, a big part of your job is managing executives so they feel like you’re listening to them even when what they’re saying is stupid, so it can be incredibly frustrating. I feel like BioWare’s left a lot of money on the table because of the purse strings that are held at the corporate level, like I feel like, porting SW:TOR to the consoles would make a ton of money for not very much investment, and it’s not been, it could’ve been done 3, 4, 5 years ago. The remasters, it’s a frankly, a miracle that they ever got made for ME. The thing that most studios within EA seem to do is they seem to do one thing at a time. Dice makes a Battlefield, then they fix it, then they make a new Battlefield. That makes corporate interaction, I think, a lot more clear [for them]. When Battlefield 4 comes out and it doesn’t do well, they’re given not just the ability, they’re given the mandate to fix it. BioWare’s always had a lot more plates spinning. But I think the consequence of that is, when something goes wrong, it means that there are a lot of potentials that could be spinning, and it means when something goes wrong, it’s less obvious what to do. When ME:A launches and has problems, unlike with Battlefield 4, EA doesn’t say, ‘fix it, I don’t care what you were gonna be doing next, fix it’, what instead happens is the resources get taken away and put onto other things. Anthem fought to have resources to fix itself, but ultimately was always fighting with Dragon Age, to be frank, for those resources, for some of them at least. I mean maybe that’s just an indication that BioWare has stubbornly held on to a structure that is incompatible with EA’s corporate culture, but I do think that having so many plates spinning means that BioWare’s always short of resources. And I think that’s given EA a lot more ability to influence what BioWare’s doing at any moment, because, like, ‘well why don’t you just put those people, we don’t want to keep trying to fix ME:A, why don’t you just put those people onto Dragon Age? Or we’ll take them away and put them onto EA Montreal.’ Whereas if you’re just one studio in Sweden or you’re Sims 4, same thing, is, they got nothing else do, I mean, they do, they absolutely have things to do, but it’s not obvious, there’s not an equal priority, there’s the next thing, which is a lower priority. Whereas at BioWare, there’s always something else they could be doing. And I think it’s been, it’s allowed EA, I think, more control over what BioWare does, maybe, than they’ve had in other studios possibly. I dunno. Probably someone from Dice is gonna angrily tell me I’m an idiot in your comments.”

Other BioWare things

“At least at EA, the executives, the corporate-level executives, the C-suite people, don’t really set culture at the individual studios. But they do control the purse-strings. And because they control the purse-strings they ultimately kind’ve do control everything. So I do think that public companies, or at least, all the public companies that I have worked for, are obsessed with short-term results. You know, ‘your game is supposed to come out in this quarter, and it should’ve come out in this quarter, and if it doesn’t come out in this quarter, it better come out in this fiscal year’. And moving across, so BioWare has a history of sliding games, but the reality is that EA, you can slide from quarter to quarter, but sliding outside of a fiscal year – it’s happened, but it’s really hard, and there are usually really terrible consequences involved in doing so. And I think what is happened to some degree is, corporate culture will eventually infect and take over the cultures of the studios, I believe. So if you look at BioWare in 2008, 2009 and 2010, it was BioWare’s culture with [inaudible] culture kind’ve on top, dictating things at a very macro level. But then if you fast forward ten more years, that EA culture, that sort’ve fiscal, that fiscal culture has sort’ve bled into BioWare’s culture to some degree. So I think actually, to some degree actually I think what EA really wants is they want studios like BioWare to be like, ‘it’s all about the art, man! We don’t care when it ships, we don’t care how many copies it’s gonna sell, we don’t care, we don’t care!’, and they provide the rigor to force that. But instead I think what’s happened, what naturally happens is, you realize ‘that this is a corporation, we need to care about profitability and release dates and all of these things’, but by doing that, that resistance has gone away. And while before, in like DA:O and ME1 [inaudible] the balance was over here, it starts to shift more towards a corporate-focused way, so I think that the thing that probably, the central, the C-suites need to do is, figure out how to give back the studios back that resistance, that willingness to say, ‘you know, the game’s not ready, it’s not gonna hit the fiscal year’. And they say they do, but they really don’t, because it’s, the culture’s just eroded away over time. It’ll be interesting to watch Respawn because it’s EA’s newest acquisition, and right now, just culturally, that resistance just there, just like BioWare in 2008, 2009, but let’s see what’s happened with Respawn in 5 or 6 years. I hope they can keep that up, but I don’t even think it’s, it’s not like ‘Evil EA’ infecting on purpose, I just think, naturally being within a bigger organization, it just happened through osmosis over time.”

“DA:O is about 7000 staff months to make, so it was a huge game at the time. Most of that was done before BioWare was owned by EA. Salaries went up dramatically, way higher than inflation after BioWare was acquired by EA, so that made a big difference. But DA:I was more staff months than DA:O by a fair amount and, so, a couple of things. The entire code base for DA:O was, I think, about two million lines of code. Frostbite is like 20 million lines of code. So that is, there is development cost of just holding that together, but things are just more complicated. As games get bigger, they get expensive.”

“When KOTOR put in voice-acting for all the conversations apart from the player. That changed the industry. At that moment it became no longer acceptable to not have voiced conversations in AAA games.” “DA:I has a horse because at the time it was seen that you had to have a horse in a fantasy RPG. I don’t think that’s true anymore, you’d get away with not having a horse today.”

“I would argue that a consistent problem of a lot of BioWare games is we try so hard to explain to you in the first three hours what’s going on, how everything works, all the mechanics, everything, we’re just dumping so much on the player that they’re overwhelmed and bored, probably bored. But also overwhelmed, if you throw too much at me you’ve actually reduced my ability to learn it, so you’ve actually made the game, in your effort to make me understand, you’ve actually made me understand less, potentially.”

“I think we made the wrong decision on DA:I. I think the crafting system in DA:I is completely inaccessible. It’s a very complicated system, there are no recipes, it’s all based on, like, combinations of different things giving you different materials and then there’s an appearance system layered on top of that which adds an additional layer of complexity. I think as a result, we have a system that is basically not engaged with by most players, by the vast majority of players, do not engage in crafting because it is inaccessible.” “Something that’s come up a couple of times in BioWare’s history is the idea of story-mode difficulty, so the ability to play through the game on essentially, you can’t lose combat. ME3 has such a difficulty, but we didn’t do that in DA:I. And the reason is not because I don’t think, given what BioWare games are, which is a lot about the interaction of different characters and engaging in the story and that, I don’t think that a story-mode difficulty is inappropriate for a BioWare game. But the problem is if you play ME3 on that difficulty, combat’s kind of awful, like it actually kind’ve makes the game, it damages the game in the process because combat is easy but fast, so it’s kind’ve just this weird morass you have to dig through. So I think when you’re thinking about accessibility, something like that, you have to think about, how does the more accessible version still allow the game to be good.” “A common example in a lot of BioWare games is puzzles. So you’d put a puzzle in, and then the game is broken and you’re going along and then the level comes together and it’s weeks or months later and then QA start playing it saying, ‘I can’t figure this puzzle out’. And you’re like, but it’s obvious in my head! Says the puzzle designer. And then you have to decide what you’re gonna do. You can pull the puzzle out completely, which has happened a lot in BioWare games, you just end up pulling it out. Or you put the answer on the wall, which you can see in tons of BioWare games, where it’s like, figure out this puzzle! Oh really? ‘Cause the answer is literally written on a giant poster right beside the puzzle, which I think just undermines the whole puzzle, what’s the point? Or you just say, forget it, we’re just gonna leave it. And the way that we’ve typically made the decision at BioWare for things like that is, if it’s on the critical path, the expectation is it should be accessible to every player, so you should be able to get through the main line of the story even if you can’t figure out any of the puzzles. So we might put a puzzle on the critical path to introduce the concept of puzzles to you, but the answer is on a poster board right beside it. If you’re off the critical path, if you’re on the optional content, then, all bets are off. If you can’t figure it out, then you can’t figure it out. But that comes from a belief that we want most people to finish the story, which I think might actually be a mis-placed belief. Maybe 2008, 2009, I had this feeling that, you know, Bethesda’s got a big problem. People don’t finish their games. You play their games and your last experience of a Bethesda game is always ‘ehh I guess I’m done’. But what I realized more recently is, actually, in a lot of ways, that’s maybe the best experience you can get from a player. Because if you think about how you experience a ME or a DA, your last experience is one of two things. Either it’s, what the fuck was that, I hate that ending, I am angry. Or, it was, that was the greatest ending I ever experienced! Now I’m disappointed that it’s over. And in both cases the actual last emotion is actually negative. It’s either a positive followed by disappointment, or it’s a negative right off the bat. I’m guilty of the obsession of, we want people to finish our games, but actually, maybe we don’t? Maybe we just want people to have their last experience not be negative and lots of positive experiences in the middle. I dunno.”

“Ray Muzyka was always certain that one of BioWare’s competitive advantages was replayability. But actually I would argue – there are people that have played DA:I thirty times, but most people, they don’t do that. Most people go through, you experience the story through a particular viewpoint, and then that’s the viewpoint. You might go and you know, make a Qunari just to see what it’s like, but what you see in the data is, if a person finishes the game, usually they finish the game once and then maybe they might have a few little ‘I played for 45 mins or an hour just to goof around’. But very rarely do you get people that are like, I played through the entire game like 10 times. It happens but it’s not common. I think replayability in these story-driven games is actually kind’ve an illusion.”

On EA not understanding what BioWare is: “I think there’s a lot of things, but I think fundamentally EA is a company that understands sports games. They understand how to make sports games which come out every year at a very high quality, monetize very well, they understand, they know how to market those, they know what production for those looks like, they know how to keep that team moving forward and proving their quality, they know how to do lots of things there. They know how to put processes in place to make the risk go down. I think when you apply those processes to shooters I think they actually work pretty well, though maybe they don’t work anymore. But I think they did work pretty well. You can kind’ve market a shooter like a sports game and it basically works. I think that one of the huge advantages that sports games have is, you already know if you like soccer or not, so I’ve already, so now I’m selling you the product, not the concept of the product. Shooters you can kinda do the same thing. You kinda know if you want a shooter or not, now I’m just selling you on this specific shooter, not the concept of shooters in general. RPGs aren’t like that, you can’t, because RPGs are so different from each other that you can’t sell me on the concept. Like, I don’t know if I just like RPGs, I need more than that to know if I can make a decision, which makes marketing them different. Also, for whatever, for a variety of reasons, RPGs are the most expensive genre you can make because they have, in theory, all the complexities of a shooter plus you have to tell an engaging, interactive story that branches on top of that, plus you need progression systems that are more complicated than your shooter on top of that. And that all needs to work together into some sort’ve combinatorial mass, to be frank. So I think that what EA wants from all their studios is they want things that can sell 10 million copies or 20 million copies, I mean that number changes. And the truth of the matter is, is, that maybe is just never BioWare. I mean, I say that, DA:I sold more than 10 million copies, but I mean, I think that what you have with BioWare is, maybe, you have the Oscar studio. Do the Oscar movies make three billion dollars? No, but they win you the awards. If you want that, do you want the studio that wins you the awards? But maybe, it makes money. I’m not saying that EA should just let BioWare lose money, that’s stupid, but do you want something that’s less profitable, but earns you acclaim? And if you do, then you need to measure in a different way. Do you want something that can build new IP? BioWare can build new IPs, and then maybe you take those IPs and you do other things with them. Not that EA has done that, and maybe EA doesn’t need to because they own like 40, 50 IPs that they’re currently not doing anything with, so. But, I mean, like building an IP is incredibly expensive, and incredibly difficult. Does EA want new IPs? Maybe, but again I don’t know that they, so what they have with BioWare is they have a company that gets into the conversation at award season, that can push culture, that can build new IPs. But, you know, be in the conversation at award season, push culture, and build new IPs, are those characteristics that EA wants or do they want ‘can sell 25 million copies and make a billion dollars’? And probably you can’t have those first three things and get that fourth thing. You can be profitable, but you’re probably not selling 25 million copies and making a billion dollars. I mean Skyrim did, but that’s. But I think honestly Skyrim just proves how hard it is. It’s the one in the RPG space that you talk about, and that’s from 2011. It’s the exception that proves the rule. That’s the RPG that was culturally relevant, relevant at awards season, but also made a ton of money.”

At the end of the interview, they had tech difficulties, so they transcribed the last segments of the audio to post for folks to read. This can be found pinned in the comments of the YouTube video.

[source and watch link]

[texasobserver]

From “Millions of Texans are About to Lose Their Health Insurance” by TXO Winter/Spring Editorial Fellow Sara Hutchinson:

Last November, Tiayana Hardy gave birth to her first child, a baby girl named Laylani. 

“She came a week before her due date, but I can’t complain about that,” said Hardy. “She was born healthy, she’s an easy baby, and motherhood is amazing.”

But Hardy has concerns about her future. She is still experiencing bleeding related to the delivery as well as continuing postpartum anxiety. And now the Garland resident is about to lose the Medicaid coverage that got her through her pregnancy.

Hardy is far from alone. An estimated 2.7 million Texans—mostly children and new moms— are expected to lose their Medicaid insurance in the next few months, some as early as June. That’s almost half of all Texans now on the Medicaid rolls. Most of those affected had had their earlier coverage extended by the public health declaration that came during the COVID-19 pandemic. The declaration expires at the end of March. 

Now the state must begin a federally mandated review of its entire 5.9 million-member Medicaid caseload. Texans who no longer qualify will lose their coverage, but so could current eligible recipients who fail to complete required paperwork for recertification.

“Advocates are very, very concerned right now,” said Jana Eubank, CEO of the Texas Association of Community Health Centers. “Families aren’t even going to know what’s going on, and they’re just going to lose coverage and show up at a doctor or a health center, and they’re going to be told, ‘Oh, you’re not on Medicaid anymore.’”

For over a year, public health advocates have raised concerns about Texas Health and Human Services’ (HHSC) ability to handle this recertification process, which begins April 1 and is expected to be finished within 12 months. State officials are apparently worried, too: HHSC recently requested an additional $143 million to cover more staff to process the approaching onslaught.  

“It’s probably the largest enrollment event, if not the largest enrollment event since the ACA [federal Affordable Care Act],” Eubank said. 

Parents Tiayana Hardy and Desmond Gentle pose with their baby, Laylani, born Nov. 30, 2022. Hardy has relied on Medicaid to cover her health care needs since she became pregnant last year, but she’ll lose that coverage once the public health emergency expires.  

Medicaid, a federal entitlement program administered by states, provides health insurance for low-income residents who cannot afford private insurance. Nearly half of Texas children depend on the program, as do 51 percent of moms, whose prenatal care and hospital bills are covered.

In this, the most underinsured state in the country, millions of people fall outside of Medicaid coverage due to Texas’ strict eligibility criteria and Republican leaders’ refusal to accept billions of federal dollars to expand the program. The state’s requirements around income eligibility mean the vast majority of working poor Texans make too much to qualify for coverage. 

A single mother of two would need to earn less than $4,000 per year to be eligible for Texas Medicaid insurance, while childless adults are ineligible no matter how poor they are. Eligibility requirements ease for single pregnant women, who may make up to $2,243 a month, but that coverage cuts off two months after birth regardless of their care needs. 

Despite Republican leaders’ past opposition to any expansion of Medicaid, Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan and Governor Greg Abbott both have named postpartum Medicaid expansion as a top priority for this session. But even if it passes, it won’t come soon enough to prevent confusion and distress for low-income families. 

Under the national public health emergency initiated by the federal government in March 2020, no Texan who qualified and was enrolled in Medicaid could be dropped from the program. That meant Texas moms like Hardy who would have ordinarily lost their insurance two-months postpartum have been able to maintain their coverage for the duration of the pandemic. The same is true for Texas children who would have aged out of the program.

As a result, the state’s Medicaid rolls grew from 3.5 million before the pandemic to 5.9 million today. Federal dollars provided the financing for this temporary expansion.

But with the public health emergency set to expire, advocates say, families are now scrambling to find new coverage options and navigate a complicated and bureaucratic reenrollment process. 

Of particular concern are the millions of Texas children currently enrolled in Medicaid who could miss prescription refills or have to forgo doctor’s visits if their parents are unable to complete the upcoming recertification process. According to state data, 4.2 million Texas children currently rely on Medicaid to access healthcare, up from 2.8 million prior to the pandemic. 

“You’re going to go to your pharmacy to get your prescription renewed and they’re going to say, ‘Oh, you don’t have coverage anymore.’ Or you’re going to take your kids for their scheduled well-child visit to get vaccinations for school. And they’re going to say, ‘Oh, you don’t have coverage.’ That’s when they’re going to find out,” said Diana Forester, who oversees health policy at the children’s advocacy nonprofit Texans Care for Children. The organization recently launched a website to help Texans navigate the end of continuous coverage.

[hezekiahwakely]

As anticipated, here are my extensive red string notes from the pilot:

God knows how relevant any of this will turn out to be, but I'm nothing if not a collector of trivial information

Very long text beneath the cut:

Page 1

The Magnus Protocol Pilot 10/25/23

Characters (in order of appearance)

Alice Dyer -O.I.A.R. employee -Dated Sam in uni -Jokester -Training Sam -Gets along with Colin

Teddy Vaughn -Retiring from the O.I.A.R. after 4 (?) years -Going into insurance field

Colin Becher -O.I.A.R. IT Manager -Vegetarian 🥬 -On the hook of "his nibs" (boss, male) -Sensitive about FR3-d1 app development, communicates w/politicians, trying for 2 years -Only gets along w/Alice -Knows computers are listening -Jokes about being killed

Lena Kelley -O.I.A.R. Team/Department Manager -Authoritative, follows protocol -Doesn't think Gwen is qualified for management

Gwendolyn Bouchard -O.I.A.R. employee -Backlog of casework -Dislikes Lena, wants her job -Dedicated to detail -Accused of nepotism by Alice -Thinks current job is beneath her -"Not like most people." *static*

Samama Khalid (Sam) -New O.I.A.R. employee -Dated Alice in uni -Wanting to 'get back on his feet' -Familiar with TMI -Didn't know what the Incidents were before hire!!

Page 2

Pilot notes con. 10/25/23

Listening Tech - Turns on by itself 💡

Dated computers (O.I.A.R.)

"Manager's speakerphone" (Lena's)

CCTV (O.I.A.R. breakroom?)

Cell phone (Alice's)

*O.I.A.R. formed in 70s? Accor. to Alice*

*Response Department no longer exists*

Still in onboarding paperwork, "Response 121"

Sam ticked this box

Tech Specs

O.S. = Windows NT 4.0 (modified) -Extended support for this O.S. was ended Dec. 31, 2004 IRL -Runs on workstations connected by LAN -Similar GUI to 95; comes w/Internet Explorer

FR3-d1 -Custom research software circa mid-90s -Flags Incidents and creates a database -Can search private/protected sources (email) -Alice claims no one has understood its workings for 15 years -Written in German source code

*1 Year = Average Employee Stay*

Page 3

Pilot notes con. 10/25/23

Classification System

Used in FR3-d1's database

Structure: CATXRXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX

CATXRX -> From reference table (CAT = Category?) First four digits -> Main subject of Incident DPHW (?) Next eight digits -> Date of Incident Last eight digits -> Current date

Example: CAT2RC1157-12052022-13012024* -First one we hear they file. "1157" is the "DPHW" for "dolls, watching."

*Jan. 13, 2024 is the date of Sam's onboarding/training (after Teddy's going-away party)

*as listed in transcript; in-show, it's quoted as 22102023, or Oct. 22, 2023

Page 4

Pilot notes (con.) 10/25/23

FR3-d1's Voice to Text/Text to Speech

Voices (named by Alice, which Gwen dislikes):

Neil = Alex

Chester = Jonny

(those two most common)

Augustus = ?

Neil's Incident

Occurs in "Cyberspace" via the transcript

"I'm so sorry. I should have listened. I just couldn't face the thought of the rest of my life never hearing him again, I had to try." First lines 😢

Email from Harriet Winstead to Darla Winstead, May 12, 2022

Recitations *can* be paused by pressing "space"!

Chester's Incident

Also occurs in "Cyberspace"

Topic: Magnus Institute Ruins.

On forum, user RedCanary, begins April 10, 2022. Explored 4/19-20/22.

Third floor gone. No old papers.

Suspicious, occult (?) graffiti, stains (!)

Took box with strange symbols (same as ones on walls/floors)

4/30/22 Posted image of gore/eyes, possibly of themself. Banned + did not return.

Page 5

Pilot notes con. 10/25/23

Early release video Case #: CAT1RA1353-03102023-22102024(listed as 202"3" on Patreon)

Video was posted 10/22/23.

Listed as "Incident" on Patreon.

According to transcript, the O.I.A.R. offices are located in Royal Mint Court.

Johson (sic) Smirke Building

Main building.

5 storeys, Grade 2 listed.

Designed by James Johnson, but constructed between 1807-1812 by Robert Smirke after Johnson died. To be used for mint.

Entrance lodge also built by Smirke, in front of building.

Page 6

Pilot - Public Release -TMAGP#001

Changes:

Sam's first incident number - today's date

CAT2RC1157-12052022-13012024 -> CAT2RC1157-12052022-09012024

Voice (first incident)

Neil -> *Norris*

Minor word/date changes in incidents.

Minor line read differences.

Descriptions of Incidents in new transcript:

Norris': CAT1RBC5257-12052022-09012024 Reanimation (Partial) -/- Regret [Email]

Chester's: CAT23RAB2155-10042022-09012024 Transformation (Eyes) -/- Trespass [chat log]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity plunderers want to buy Simon & Schuster

Going to Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

Last November, publishing got some excellent news: the planned merger of Penguin Random House (the largest publisher in the history of human civilization) with its immediate competitor Simon & Schuster would not be permitted, thanks to the DOJ's deftly argued case against the deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here

When I was a baby writer, there were dozens of large NY publishers. Today, there are five - and it was almost four. A publishing sector with five giant companies is bad news for writers (as Stephen King said at the trial, the idea that PRH and S&S would bid against each other for books was as absurd as the idea that he and his wife would bid against each other for their next family home).

But it's also bad news for publishing workers, a historically exploited and undervalued workforce whose labor conditions have only declined as the number of employers in the sector dwindled, leading to mass resignations:

https://lithub.com/unlivable-and-untenable-molly-mcghee-on-the-punishing-life-of-junior-publishing-employees/

It should go without saying that workers in sectors with few employers get worse deals from their bosses (see, e.g., the writers' strike and actors' strike). And yup, right on time, PRH, a wildly profitable publisher, fired a bunch of its most senior (and therefore hardest to push around) workers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/books/penguin-random-house-layoffs-buyouts.html

But publishing's contraction into a five-company cartel didn't occur in a vacuum. It was a normal response to monopolization elsewhere in its supply chain. First it was bookselling collapsing into two major chains. Then it was distribution going from 300 companies to three. Today, it's Amazon, a monopolist with unlimited access to the capital markets and a track record of treating publishers "the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con

Monopolies are like Pringles (owned by the consumer packaged goods monopolist Procter & Gamble): you can't have just one. As soon as you get a monopoly in one part of the supply chain, every other part of that chain has to monopolize in self-defense.

Think of healthcare. Consolidation in pharma lead to price-gouging, where hospitals were suddenly paying 1,000% more for routine drugs. Hospitals formed regional monopolies and boycotted pharma companies unless they lowered their prices - and then turned around and screwed insurers, jacking up the price of care. Health insurers gobbled each other up in an orgy of mergers and fought the hospitals.

Now the health care system is composed of a series of gigantic, abusive monopolists - pharma, hospitals, medical equipment, pharmacy benefit managers, insurers - and they all conspire to wreck the lives of only two parts of the system who can't fight back: patients and health care workers. Patients pay more for worse care, and medical workers get paid less for worse working conditions.

So while there was no question that a PRH takeover of Simon & Schuster would be bad for writers and readers, it was also clear that S&S - and indeed, all of the Big Five publishers - would be under pressure from the monopolies in their own supply chain. What's more, it was clear that S&S couldn't remain tethered to Paramount, its current owner.

Last week, Paramount announced that it was going to flip S&S to KKR, one of the world's most notorious private equity companies. KKR has a long, long track record of ghastly behavior, and its portfolio currently includes other publishing industry firms, including one rotten monopolist, raising similar concerns to the ones that scuttled the PRH takeover last year:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/books/booksupdate/paramount-simon-and-schuster-kkr-sale.html

Let's review a little of KKR's track record, shall we? Most spectacularly, they are known for buying and destroying Toys R Us in a deal that saw them extract $200m from the company, leaving it bankrupt, with lifetime employees getting $0 in severance even as its executives paid themselves tens of millions in "performance bonuses":

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/03/private-equity-bosses-took-200m-out-of-toys-r-us-and-crashed-the-company-lifetime-employees-got-0-in-severance/

The pillaging of Toys R Us isn't the worst thing KKR did, but it was the most brazen. KKR lit a beloved national chain on fire and then walked away, hands in pockets, whistling. They didn't even bother to clear their former employees' sensitive personnel records out of the unlocked filing cabinets before they scarpered:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/23/exploring-the-ruins-of-a-toys-r-us-discovering-a-trove-of-sensitive-employee-data/

But as flashy as the Toys R Us caper was, it wasn't the worst. Private equity funds specialize in buying up businesses, loading them with debts, paying themselves, and then leaving them to collapse. They're sometimes called vulture capitalists, but they're really vampire capitalists:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/private-equity-buyout-kkr-houdaille/

Given a choice, PE companies don't want to prey on sick businesses - they preferentially drain off value from thriving ones, preferably ones that we must use, which is why PE - and KKR in particular - loves to buy health care companies.

Heard of the "surprise billing epidemic"? That's where you go to a hospital that's covered by your insurer, only to discover - after the fact - that the emergency room is operated by a separate, PE-backed company that charges you thousands for junk fees. KKR and Blackstone invented this scam, then funneled millions into fighting the No Surprises Act, which more-or-less killed it:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

KKR took one of the nation's largest healthcare providers, Envision, hostage to surprise billing, making it dependent on these fraudulent payments. When Congress finally acted to end this scam, KKR was able to take to the nation's editorial pages and damn Congress for recklessly endangering all the patients who relied on it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

Like any smart vampire, KKR doesn't drain its victim in one go. They find all kinds of ways to stretch out the blood supply. During the pandemic, KKR was front of the line to get massive bailouts for its health-care holdings, even as it fired health-care workers, increasing the workload and decreasing the pay of the survivors of its indiscriminate cuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#socialized-losses

It's not just emergency rooms. KKR bought and looted homes for people with disabilities, slashed wages, cut staff, and then feigned surprise at the deaths, abuse and misery that followed:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/kkr-brightspring-disability-private-equity-abuse

Workers' wages went down to $8/hour, and they were given 36 hour shifts, and then KKR threatened to have any worker who walked off the job criminally charged with patient abandonment:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

For KKR, people with disabilities and patients make great victims - disempowered and atomized, unable to fight back. No surprise, then, that so many of KKR's scams target poor people - another group that struggles to get justice when wronged. KKR took over Dollar General in 2007 and embarked on a nationwide expansion campaign, using abusive preferential distributor contracts and targeting community-owned grocers to trap poor people into buying the most heavily processed, least nutritious, most profitable food available:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

94.5% of the Paycheck Protection Program - designed to help small businesses keep their workers payrolled during lockdown - went to giant businesses, fraudulently siphoned off by companies like Longview Power, 40% owned by KKR:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/20/great-danes/#ppp

KKR also helped engineer a loophole in the Trump tax cuts, convincing Justin Muzinich to carve out taxes for C-Corporations, which let KKR save billions in taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/02/broken-windows/#Justin-Muzinich

KKR sinks its fangs in every part of the economy, thanks to the vast fortunes it amassed from its investors, ripped off from its customers, and fraudulently obtained from the public purse. After the pandemic, KKR scooped up hundreds of companies at firesale prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/30/medtronic-stole-your-ventilator/#blackstone-kkr

Ironically, the investors in KKR funds are also its victims - especially giant public pension funds, whom KKR has systematically defrauded for years:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/22/stimpank/#kentucky

And now KKR has come for Simon & Schuster. The buyout was trumpeted to the press as a done deal, but it's far from a fait accompli. Before the deal can close, the FTC will have to bless it. That blessing is far from a foregone conclusion. KKR also owns Overdrive, the monopoly supplier of e-lending software to libraries.

Overdrive has a host of predatory practices, loathed by both libraries and publishers (indeed, much of the publishing sector's outrage at library e-lending is really displaced anger at Overdrive). There's a plausible case that the merger of one of the Big Five publishers with the e-lending monopoly will present competition issues every bit as deal-breaking as the PRH/S&S merger posed.

(Image: Sefa Tekin/Pexels, modified)

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/08/vampire-capitalism/#kkr

[freetheshit-outofyou]

The 1994 FAWB was actually extremely effective (the single exception being Columbine, the worst mass shooting ever at the time, which has been outdone every 3-5 years since the 1994 FAWB expired).

Anon, first, you are a cunt.

Second, are you fucking retarded?

Honestly, comparing your moronic statement to those with mental disabilities is a slam against them that is not fair. You, little buddy, are in an entire class of stupid that is all your own.

The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994 failed at every point we were told it was going to make a positive difference.  From 1994-2004 violent crime involving firearms went down marginally. But that was not because of the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act. Crime was already trending down starting in 1981. Yes, the numbers speak for themselves. From 1994-2004, 114,968 people were killed with a firearm by a criminal. From 2005 through to the most current year of 2022, 178,782 people were killed by a criminal offender using a firearm. I know, right now you're all like "see SEE, right there, crime is worse now than during the BAN.", you're wrong.

From 1994-2004 about 11,496.8 people were killed per year by a criminal with a firearm. From 2005-2022 that 18 year window number is about 9,932.333333... But I'll go an extra step and keep the window at 10 years. from 2012-2022 that number is about 11,208.6 people killed by a criminal using a firearm. Again, I know you're nutting up on yourself screaming "LOOK the numbers between the Ban window and the numbers from 2012-2022 are almost identical", for once you are right. The problem is the ban had been expired for 7 years to that point having no bearing on the numbers. (Just as a silly little side note, from 2005-2015 the number of people killed on average by a criminal with a firearm was 10,150.2. Once again, lower than all of your BAN window.)

A much more important metric here is from 1994-2004, 2,194 (219.4 per year.) private citizens were forced to use a firearm in their defense or the defense of others against a criminal committing a felony. Where from 2005-2019, (249.4666667 per year.) From 2005-2015 that number is 2,395 or 239.5 per year. That means coming out of the Ban more citizens were forced to protect themselves with a firearm than before the ban. Your ban did that. You gilded ban made people LESS SAFE.

I'd like to add the above numbers are just firearms, all the other methodologies of murders are not included in these numbers.

But, since you asked so kindly here are the numbers based on all methodologies of murders.

1994-2004, 172,447 people killed by criminals, or about 17,244.7 per year.

2005-2022, 257,465 people killed by criminals, or about 14,303.61111111111 per year.

2012-2022, 158,693 people killed by criminals, or about 15,869.3 per year.

2005-2015, 150,030 people killed by criminals, or about 15,003 per year.

Based on facts, more people died by criminals, more private citizens were forced to kill a criminal offenders during the Ban window than during the following 18 fucking year. That little one, is what we call a failure. It saved less people, caused more people to have to fight violent criminals for their lives or the lives of others. How in the world is that a success?

Now, let's go to your back handed exception of the tragedy that was Columbine. From 11:19 A.M. to 12:08 P.M. two psychotic shit stains killed 13 people wounding another 24. Of the 4 firearms used 2 of them, the Intratec TEC-9 mini and the Hi-Point 995 Carbine were both under the ban. I'd like to point out the 99 explosive devices were illegal to possess, the killings were illegal to do, bringing guns and explosives to a school was also a violation of the laws of the time. What exactly did the ban do to help those people in that school?

From 1994-2004 the U.S. population grew from 262,273,589 to 293,947,885 and not one new modern self-defense weapon was available. So roughly 31 million people, could not have access to the most effective means of personal defense in the world and murder by firearms was higher. From 2005 to 2022, just to keep the numbers in the same ranges, in 2005 the population was 296,842,670+/- and in 2022 it ballooned up to 338,289,857+/-, that is a jump of 41 million people. All of those people, who were or are law abiding adults, have had access to all of the most relevant modern self-defense firearms the Nation has to offer and CRIME HAS WENT DOWN.

If the Ban was such a resounding success how can the numbers be telling a different story?

I have a small theory, you king cunt of anon, have no fucking clue what you are talking about. You have chosen the wrong fight and are on the wrong side of history.

With that, all I can say is bless your heart.

Source 1, FBI UCR

Source 2, Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer

[green-arrxws]

📁| KHALID NASSOUR/DOCTOR FATE READING GUIDE

Who's Khalid Nassour/Doctor Fate?

Khalid Nassour is an Egyptian-American college student who was chosen by the Egyptian Gods to act as the latest incarnation of Doctor Fate. Currently, he is a member of the Justice Society of America and Justice League Dark.

» READING GUIDE

ESSENTIAL READING

DC Sneek Peek: Doctor Fate

Doctor Fate (2015): #1-18

Justice League Dark (2018): #2, #8-29

The Flash (2016): #775-779

Justice League (2018): #63-64, #68-69

Justice League Dark (2018): 2021 Annual

Justice League (2018): #70-71, 2022 Annual, #72-74

Dark Crisis: The Deadly Green

Lazarus Planet: Assault on Krypton ("Gone Dark")

The New Golden Age

Justice Society of America (2022): #1-2

additional reading ↷

Martian Manhunter (2015): #11

Superman (2018): #23-24

» ALTERNATE VERSIONS

ELSEWORLDS

Earth 2: #9-12, #14-17, #19-26, #31-32

Earth 2: World's End: #1-3, #5-9, #12, #25

Earth 2: Society: #8-10, #13-14, #16

POSSIBLE FUTURES

Future State: Justice League: #1-2

» OTHER MEDIA

ANIMATED

Young Justice: S4: EP9-EP13