#switch and play nyc

[moonlightsolo]

thunderbolts where you're exhausted to the brim and they're worried

lights out | thunderbolts* x reader ⋆｡°✩

pairing: thunderbolts* x fem!reader (with a slight hint of bucky x reader)

warnings: unhealthy coping mechanisms, insomnia, reader being kinda strung out lol

word count: 2.1k

note: okay wow. it’s been two years since i actually wrote anything and posted it on here so i’m glad to be back!! i hope u like it <3

It’s been four days since your last mission. Four days since you’ve felt the relieving bliss of a full night’s rest. 

96 hours. 5760 minutes. 345,600 seconds. 

But it’s not like you’re counting anyway. 

Usually you’re fine after an assignment, maybe a little sore or winded— but not this exhausted; mentally and physically. 

It’s almost like clockwork now as you lie in bed throughout the night. Your thoughts loud as you listen to your own breathing, and thrumming of your heartbeat beneath your ribs. How the air conditioning kicks on and blows cold air onto your face, causing you to bundle up under the covers. 

The only source of light in your dark room is coming from your phone as you scroll through numerous social media apps. Your eyes dancing over the screen, switching between tiktoks and instagram reels as you doom scroll. 

And then your eyes begin to flutter shut, hand going limp as your phone drops beside you on the bed. Your body allows you all but twenty minutes of sleep before your heart constricts with anxiety. 

You wake up gasping for air, sitting straight up in your king-sized bed. Your oversized pajama shirt is drenched in sweat and stuck to your body as if it’s clinging to the sleep you’ve been so rudely disturbed from.  

Your eyes dart around your dark room before following the beam of light coming from your phone. The same video has been playing on repeat, along with a song as someone dances to it on the screen. 

With a loud sigh and a deep breath, you reach over to check the time on your phone. In the top corner it reads, ‘2:18’ a.m. With your heart still beating heavily against your ribcage, there’s no way you can try to sleep now. You might as well go watch some tv instead of mindlessly scrolling on your tiny phone screen. 

You rub your eyes with your fists, eyes watering desperately as you stifle a yawn. Your feet kick the covers off as your legs swing over the side of your bed. Shuffling your feet into your slippers, you use your phone screen as a flashlight to direct yourself to your door. 

Your head peeks out as you slowly open it, looking down the dark hallway. You listen for any movement, any sign of life from your other comrades. 

Sometimes you wonder if they can tell you haven’t been getting enough sleep, maybe it’s the dark circles or how you space out more often. 

Or maybe it’s that you’ve skipped training five times in the last four days. It wasn’t a rare occurrence to have bouts of sleepless nights, they knew that too— but this has been the longest and most exhausting four days of your life. There’s no way that they haven’t caught on yet. 

As you make your way to the living room, your body viscerally shivers from the crispness of the air in the tower. The sweat on your skin cools, and the dampness of your shirt turns chilly. You need warmth, and you know exactly what will suffice. After snatching a blanket off the couch and wrapping it around your shoulders, you shuffle into the kitchen. 

Yawning as you pop a pod into your coffee maker and quietly pulling a mug from the cabinet. It reads, ‘I ♡ NYC’, which makes you smile and scoff at the irony of it. The coffee maker splutters and spits out coffee as it brews the liquid gold into your cup. 

The aroma almost does the job of energizing you itself. You wrap your hands around the hot mug, hissing from the heat, but you allow it to warm your cold hands as you make your way to the living room. 

Tucking yourself into the far corner of the plush couch, you pull your knees close to your body to drape another blanket over your legs. Your hand clicks buttons on the remote as you sip on the hot coffee, humming from the taste and how it warms you from the inside out. 

Some late-night sitcom is on, so you resort to watching that for now. Quietly giggling along with the laughter in the background of the show. You don’t even notice soft footsteps padding down the hallway towards you as you stare wide-eyed at the tv screen. 

A deep voice calls out your name, making your eyes snap towards the sound. It’s Bucky. 

“What are you doing up?” His voice is scratchy from sleep as his half-lidded eyes squint from the brightness of the tv. His hands are on his hips as he stares at you, almost like a disappointed dad. 

“Oh shit. I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” Your hand grips the remote as you hurriedly turn it down. 

His feet drag as he walks into the living room, still standing up as his eyes watch the screen. The light casts over his features as you stare at him from your position on the couch, “No, no, it’s okay. I heard the tv but I just wanted to make sure everything was okay…” He trails off and turns toward you with his eyebrows wrinkled in the middle, “Well, uh… Are you okay?” 

Your eyes nervously dart from your coffee in your lap to him, and then back to the tv. Your body shudders, urging you to word vomit about how you haven’t slept in four days and how your stupid mind won’t shut up. 

“Y—yeah, Buck. I’m good.” You send a quick, insincere smile his way before looking back down at your steaming mug. You can still feel his eyes on the side of your face, refusing to look up at him. He knows. 

The couch dips beside you, making your breath catch slightly as you side-eye him. 

“Well, I’m gonna sit out here with you and watch whatever the hell you’re watching.” He almost chuckles, his hand motioning toward the tv. 

He looks over at you as his metal arm folds behind his head, the other sprawling out on the back of the couch toward you. Almost like he’s inviting you to move closer to him. 

It’s not weird for you and Bucky to cuddle—especially during your low points, but you can’t give in.

“It’s called friends.” You mumble, still staring into the mug. 

“Hm?” He hums and adjusts himself so he’s a little closer to you, his head leaning forward so he can hear you clearer.��

“The show. It’s called friends.” You speak up, and turn towards him now before taking a sip of your coffee. 

Bucky watches you intently, how you bring the mug to your lips, how your bloodshot, purple-rimmed eyes flick to the screen and back to him. 

“Is that coffee?” He questions with a raised eyebrow, his hand reaching out for it, and you hand the mug over to him. He takes a sip out of your cup before handing it back to you, settling himself into the couch with a satisfying tsk and an, “Aah.” 

“So why haven’t you been sleeping?” He asks with his eyes trained on the tv. You start to fumble over your words, stuttering and wiggling in your spot. “I-uhhh.. wha-?” Your voice trembles. 

Why can’t you just admit it? 

“We’re all worried about you, ya know. Missing training, showing up to meetings late, stumbling into the kitchen for food… or coffee. You've been hiding in your room for days now.” He tilts his head toward your cup to prove a point. 

Tears begin to well up into your eyes, your bottom lip shuddering and your hands trembling. Bucky watches as your walls start to crumble, the exhausted, beaten, and bruised version of you seeping through. “Hey hey. It’s okay, doll.” He sits up now, taking the mug from your hands to set it on the coffee table. 

Once the coffee is safely put to the side, he wraps his arms around you and pulls you from your cocoon of blankets. Your face is smushed into his soft cotton tee shirt, tears soaking the fabric as you silently weep into his chest. 

“I-I jus-just can’t sl-sleep.” You stutter out, arms still by your side, his strong arms caging you in, “My-my mind, my th-thoughts… I just can’t anymore.” 

Bucky shushes you, one of his hands rubbing circles into your back. “I know, I know.” He hums. 

Bucky lets you cry into him until it turns into quickened breathing, and then your body starts to go slack. He’s been through this with you so many times, too many times. 

Your head moves from his chest, wiggling your way up to fit into the crook of his neck. Your soft breath fans across his warm skin, and your arms hesitantly wrap around his solid waist. 

Bucky pulls you closer, his lips pressing a kiss to your temple as you snuggle in close. The sound of footsteps breaks you from your little bubble with Bucky, your watery eyes lifting to see Yelena standing at the edge of the couch. 

“Everything okay?” Her usual strong, accented voice is soft as she stares at you with tender, yet tired, eyes. 

Bucky pulls back slightly to turn, his flesh arm still holding onto your waist as he looks at Yelena. A small smile plays on his lips before turning back to you, tapping your hip as his grip loosens. 

“Yeah, she’s good now. Can’t sleep.” Bucky yawns at the end of his sentence and covers his mouth with the back of his hand. You move back slightly, still pressed against his side but not in an embrace. 

“Good. We were worried about you.” Yelena comments, which makes you snort. Both of them turn towards you, looking confused. 

“Bucky said that earlier.” You poke at him jokingly, and he swats at your hand. Yelena lets out a raspy laugh and plops down on the chaise lounge, kicking her feet up as she looks at the tv. “Friends, really?” She rolls her eyes and motions for the remote with her hand. 

You toss the remote to her, and she catches with ease—not even looking as it flew toward her. She flips through the channels as Bucky pulls you closer, your head gravitating towards his lap. You keep telling yourself this is a normal thing for you and Bucky to do; he helps you. But this time, it just feels different. 

You lay on your side, head on his thigh as you curl up into yourself. His hand instantly goes into your long flowing hair to play with it before he pulls a blanket over your body. You can feel yourself relax, your chest warming up as your nervous system resets itself. 

You can feel yourself growing sleepier by the second as Bucky’s hand cards through your hair. Yelena and Bucky’s quiet conversation is slowly drowned out as your ears start to ring, blinking slowly as you try to fight the weight pulling down your eyelids. 

The tv in front of you blurs out of view as your eyes shut, finally succumbing to the sleep your body has been begging for. 

-

You wake up to a bright room around you, sunshine illuminating the walls shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows. You can feel wetness around your mouth, almost as if you’ve been drooling. 

Wait, where are you? And what is that delicious smell?

Your eyes fully open and you suck in a deep breath of fresh air. It smells of breakfast, like bacon and maple syrup. You’re surprisingly still in the living room, but the tv’s volume is lowered and Bucky isn’t under you anymore. Your coffee cup has been cleaned up, and you’re still covered in a blanket or two. 

As you sit up, you groan, muscles aching from sleeping in a weird position on the couch. You move your neck side to side, yawning as you stretch your arms above your head. 

“Ah! Sleeping beauty is awake!” Yelena’s voice shouts, making you jump as you spin around to face her. 

Bob is sitting at the kitchen island alongside Bucky, while John is at the stove cooking. Yelena is sitting on the counter, laughing at something Bob said as she bites into a piece of bacon she has in her hand. 

The sound of something sizzling catches your ears, and suddenly your stomach grumbles. Bucky swivels on his chair to turn toward you, his face beaming when he sees you’re awake. 

Your lips twitch upwards into a smile, sliding off the couch to shuffle over to him. His arm wraps around your waist from his seated position, “How ya feel?” He asks, looking up at you. 

“Pretty good, still tired but much better.” You sigh happily, smiling around at your teammates who return the same expression.  

John sneakily eyes Bucky’s hand sitting comfortably on your waist, winking at you which makes you blush. 

You know you’ll start to feel better, slowly but surely. Especially with everyone around you being so supportive. They’ll make you feel more like yourself again, and you know you’ll be back to a regular sleep schedule soon. Hopefully with Bucky’s help again. 

[cameronsbabydoll]

babe i need D E T A I L S of jewish!rafe and jewish!reader's wedding!!! my god im soooo obsessed with them

THE VIBE

Venue: Not just any NYC wedding. Think The Pierre ballroom, or a lush estate in the Hamptons. Full white florals, crystals, candlelight, and a live string quartet playing music.

Guests: 400+, everyone they’ve ever known, including family friends from the country club, a rabbi who knows your mom personally, and cousins from Boca.

Dress Code: Formal black tie. No one’s showing up without a designer label. Your aunt whispers “I think she’s wearing Carolina Herrera” like it’s gossip.

THE BRIDE

Custom Galia Lahav gown, fitted with delicate lace sleeves, a dramatic train, and hand-sewn pearls.

Veil longer than your ketubah.

White satin Manolos you insisted on getting even though you can’t walk in them.

Hair half up, soft glam, diamonds everywhere (including your mother's heirloom tennis bracelet “just for the ceremony”).

A bouquet of perfect white peonies that match the floral canopy above the chuppah.

You have a second dress for the party, obviously—a sparkly minidress with feathers or crystals, and a third dress you “weren’t planning on wearing but had in case.”

THE GROOM

Rafe in a custom Tom Ford tux, freshly shaved, smelling like Santal 33 and pure devotion.

Cufflinks with your initials.

Kippah matches his tie.

Looks like he could walk a runway, but his eyes never leave you.

When he sees you walk down the aisle?

Fully tears up. The best man has to hand him a tissue. Your mother swoons. Your grandma dies and comes back to life.

THE CEREMONY

Under a giant white-flower chuppah. Elegant. Regal. Zero budget cuts.

You circle him seven times. He’s trembling. Hands you the ring like it’s a prayer.

The rabbi’s speech lowkey makes everyone cry.

When he breaks the glass, the entire room erupts in “Mazel tov!” like it’s the Super Bowl.

THE PARTY

Hora: Insane. Your heels are off in two seconds. You’re screaming, arms in the air, diamonds bouncing.

Rafe is spun in the chair like a king. The best man almost drops him.

He grabs your hand across the circle and grins at you like he’s never been happier in his entire life.

Dancing: Live band and DJ. You’re switching between Frank Sinatra, and Brittney Spears.

Dessert bar: At least three tables. Macarons, babka bites, mini sufganiyot.

Signature cocktails: Named after your dog and Rafe’s childhood nickname.

Photo booth: Gold backdrop, boas, and everyone’s mom gets in.

THE SPEECHES

Your dad: Trying not to cry, talks about how he always knew Rafe was “solid.”

Rafe’s dad: “Didn’t think he could land someone this perfect, but here we are.”

Your maid of honor: Mentions summer camp, your bat mitzvah, and says you were always a little dramatic.

Rafe’s best man: Lightly roasts him. Mentions how whipped he is. Rafe doesn’t even deny it.

THE AFTERMATH

You leave in a vintage white Rolls-Royce.

Rafe carries you into the penthouse, both still tipsy.

He peels off your second dress like it’s a gift.

You whisper “we’re really married” and he whispers “finally.”

[me10n-10rde]

since people hate american marauders, fuck you, they’re now all from various states and most of them are involved in greek life in some way shape or form

barty says he’s from nyc but he’s a fucking liar. he is from an even richer even more pretentious part of upstate new york but one person assumed the city when he said he was from new york and he decided that was cooler and rolled with it. in a frat mostly to piss off his dad, always drunk or on something, still has a 4.0

dorcas is ACTUALLY from nyc. she’s majoring in polisci but is minoring in fashion cause it’s fun and she’s good at it

marlene is from a tiny town in tennessee, very conservative, VERY christian, really comes into herself at college although there is a LOT of religious trauma to work through

mary is from south carolina, she’s very much like a southern belle, make sweet tea that will rot your teeth type, 1000% in a sorority. she’s studying english or education and minoring in art, probably painting focused but she won’t be an art teacher

james is THE frat bro, like his dad and his dad’s dad and his dad’s dad’s dad were in this frat. he will be president eventually but for his freshman/sophmore years frank was president (james has a bit of a crush on him and did not realize) he’s studying sports medicine or social work and plays soccer

the black brothers are from massachusetts they went to some disgustingly expensive private schools, different schools though, either because sirius became awful after going to boarding school or because of trans!reg, your choice.

sirius joined the same frat as james, it’s the rival frat to his father’s so there’s some shit there. he isn’t on the soccer team because soccer wasn’t “sophisticated enough” for the blacks (he can fence and ski like a motherfucker though) but he does play soccer recreationally

regulus is studying law or finance or business or something equally awful because his parents made him, it’s soul crushing and he hates it but he is really good at it (as he is everything) he wants to study philosophy and will eventually switch when he gets out from under his parents thumb

lily and snape are from new england, i can’t think of like a specific place but it’s smaller and poorer, lily would be in an academic sorority but snape has a vendetta against greek life (cause he didn’t get any bids) and has also made lily very against it (hence her hatred for the marauders) her issues with petunia stem from pet not getting into the college, asking lily to stay behind with her, and lily just needing to get out of that small town

everyone loves texas remus but may i offer you like farm kid montana remus, his family has enough land and he was always busy enough that he never really got to interact with kids his age, maybe an accident with an animal that gave him his scars. he goes to college and joins a frat because growing up almost completely alone, that idea of unwavering brotherhood really appeals to him. he’s studying classics (shocker) which causes some fights with his dad who wanted him to do something more agricultural

peter is from illinois, it was a big deal for him to move out out state for college and join a frat since no body really expected anything from his life. he’s studying math. i think his storyline would kind of be like california by chappell roan, he really wanted the city to work out but it’s just not and he wants to go home. the city brings out the worst in him and he ends up becoming the worst version of himself to try and be liked

evan and pandora are from florida but moved all over because of their dad’s business. pandora is studying art (duh) with a minor in philosophy which is how she meets reg. evan is studying engineering, i’m thinking mechanical but i’m not too sure

[coochiequeens]

Ladies if you know any pregnant women of color tell them about Irth

NEW YORK (WABC) -- One mother has used her own personal experience as motivation to help other expecting women find the best care possible.

"You're really not being treated as a person, it really felt like we were being treated like a number," said expectant mother Solaire Spellen.

Spellen got a little extra help switching providers after an unsettling experience early in her pregnancy.

"Now we're receiving care at a beautiful clinic, it's actually called Uah," she said. "They have great ratings on the app."

That app is called Irth. It's a free Yelp-like platform where you can find prenatal, birthing, postpartum and pediatric reviews of care from other Black and brown women.

"It's often referred to as the Green Book of hospitals," Spellen said. "It's a shame that we need it, but we do. We need to be able to tell one another where it's safe to deliver."

Journalist and maternal healthcare advocate Kimberly Seales Allers developed and launched the app in 2022 after her own birth trauma.

Black pregnant women in New York City are almost four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white pregnant women, according to the latest data from the health department.

"I wanted to create a place where we could let each other know that we were not alone," Allers said.

She also aims to teach hospitals how to treat pregnant women of color better.

The mom of two and NYC native says through her app, her team has collected data from women across the country.

She is currently working with eight healthcare systems in six states to improve care.

"Right now in our national database, the number one negative experience being reported in Irth is 'my request for help was refused,' number two is 'my pain levels were dismissed,'" Allers said.

Irth is available in the Apple and Google Play app store. It shows you which hospitals allow doulas, C-section rates, plus data on vaginal births after C-sections.

Spellen, who has a background in maternal healthcare research is due next month. She is also a member of the Irth team.

"Being able to work in the space of advancing maternal health has been incredibly rewarding," Spellen said.

[knoxoverstreetluvr]

random head canons about the poets:

- - -

if you want more of these lmk :)

- - -

Neil Perry:

- Is blind and refuses to wear his glasses, unless he’s in Mr. Keating’s class.

- Enjoys cuddling with every poet. If you are a member of the Dead Poets Society, you are not safe from Neil.

- HAS to see Broadway performances each time they go into NYC.

- Ring wearer, even has one with a “T” on it.

- Coffee addict.

- He hates tying his shoes so Todd usually ends up tying them.

- Claims to want to buy a Tiger when he gets rich and famous.

Todd Anderson:

- Knits and bakes so there are sweet treats at meetings, and he also is the main contributor to Knox’s sweater collection.

- Collects wristwatches.

- Stargazes and knows all the constellations.

- Can’t swim, like at all.

- Picks the skin around his nails as a nervous habit.

- Very prone to getting sick, due to his weak immune system.

- Hozier’s number 1 fan.

Charlie Dalton:

- Sings Queen in the mirror whilst getting ready.

- Snores LOUD, but Knox is a heavy sleeper so it doesn’t matter.

- Plays soccer, and is Number 17.

- Marvel fein, his favorite superhero is Iron Man.

- Pranks people with Neil.

- Draws VERY well, and does portraits of the poets.

- BAND KID.

- Frequents detention.

Knox Overstreet:

- Can’t handle his alcohol and is a clingy drunk.

- Plays the guitar, which is another reason he bought Charlie one.

- HUGE music guy and collects vinyls, but he cannot sing for the life of him.

- Get antsy at night so he makes his rounds with sleeping in the other boy’s dorms/rooms, but can usually be found in Charlie’s.

- Has an inhaler.

- Number one Anderperry shipper.

- Not the best poet.

- RED CASHMERE SWEATER. (idk why but i’ve read so many fics that headcanon him having a very fancy red sweater that Charlie steals so yes.)

Steven Meeks:

- Makes a mean Shirley Temple.

- Still sleeps with a stuffed animal, it’s a giraffe named Gordie.

- Star Wars fan.

- Knows a bunch of languages and switches to one of them when he gets overcome with emotions.

- Can read people almost creepily well.

- Has a collection of buttons in a huge binder.

- Has horrible handwriting.

- Breaks his glasses at least once every 6 months.

Gerard Pitts:

- Had a pet turtle named Leo.

- Met Meeks at some sort of child math camp.

- Loves teenage mutant ninja turtles

- Carries a glasses wipe in his jacket pocket for Meeks and occasionally Neil.

- Neatest handwriting of the entire bunch so he’s the scribe.

- Star Trek fan.

- He’s actually very serious despite the rep he gets for being a silly guy.

Richard Cameron:

- Cannot actually write any poetry.

- Secretly reads romance novels.

- Has a green thumb.

- Surprisingly good at gaming.

- His mother made him take dance lessons as a child.

- Goes to sleep very early

- Harry Potter fan.

- SEVERE Mama’s boy.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Why Millennials aren’t leaving Tiktok

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW NIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and more!

The news that Gen Z users have abandoned Tiktok in such numbers that the median Tiktoker is a Millennial (or someone even older) prompted commentators to dunk on Tiktok as uncool by dint of having lost its youthful sheen:

https://www.garbageday.email/p/tiktok-millennials-turns

But "why are Gen Z kids leaving Tiktok?" is the wrong question. The right question is, why aren't Millennials leaving Tiktok? After all, we are living through the enshittocene, the great enshittening, in which every platform gets monotonically, irreversibly worse over time, and Tiktok is no exception:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

To understand why older users are stuck to Tiktok, we need to start with why younger users relentlessly seek out new platforms. To some extent, it's just down to youth's appetite for novelty, but that's only part of the story. To really understand why people come to – and leave – platforms, you have to understand switching costs.

"Switching costs" is the economists' term for everything you have to give up when you change products or services. Switching from Ios to Android probably means giving up a bunch of your apps and purchased media. Switching from an airline where you're a high-status frequent flier to another carrier means giving up on free checked bags and early boarding.

In an open market, rivals have lots of ways to lower these switching costs (it's an open secret that you can call an airline and say, "Hi, I'm a 33rd Order Mason on American Airlines, will you make me a Triple Platinum Diamond Sky-Baron if I switch to Delta?"). Of course, big incumbents hate this, and do everything they can to increase their switching costs, finding ways to impose high switching costs that punish disloyal consumers who have the temerity to go elsewhere.

With social media, lock-in comes for free, thanks to the "collective action problem." Getting people to agree on a given course of action is hard, and as you add more people to the picture, the problem gets harder. It's hard enough to get half a dozen people in your group-chat to agree on where to go for dinner or what board-game to play. But once you're reliant on a social media service to stay in touch with friends, relatives around the world, customers, communities (say, rare disease support groups), and coordination (like organizing your kid's little league car-pool), the problem becomes nearly insoluble. Maybe you can convince your overseas relatives to switch to a Signal group, but can you do the same for your small business's customers, or your old high-school pals?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/

Taken together, switching costs and collective action problems make platforms "sticky," and sticky platforms inevitably enshittify.

Platforms, after all, generate value. They connect end-users with each other (say, little league parents) and they connect end-users to business customers (you and your small business's customers). That value needs to be parceled out among end users, business customers, and the platform's shareholders. A platform can make life better for business customers at its end users' expense by increasing the number of ads (hello, Youtube!), and it can make life better for its shareholders at its business customers' expense by decreasing the share of ad revenue given to publishers or performers (oh, hello again, Youtube!).

From a platform's perspective, the ideal state is one in which end users and business customers get no value from the platform, because it's all being captured by the platform's shareholders. But if Youtube interrupted every 30 seconds of video for ten minutes of ads and paid the video creators nothing, both users and creators would ditch the platform – and advertisers would follow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dab8sKg8Ko8

So platforms seek an equilibrium: "what is the least value we apportion to end-users and business customers without triggering their departure?" Maybe that means giving more value to end-users (for example, keeping Uber fares low by suppressing wages), or to business-customers (crowding more ads into your social media feed).

Every business – including brick-and-mortar, non-digitized ones – wants to find some kind of equilibrium between the value going to its suppliers, its customers and its owners, but digital businesses have an advantage here: digital systems are flexible in ways that analog, hard-goods businesses are not. Digital businesses can alter pricing, payouts and other dynamics from moment to moment – second to second – and make a different offer to every supplier and customer. They have a bunch of knobs, and they can twiddle them at will:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Well, not quite at will. Businesses face constraints on their twiddling. If they get too greedy, users or business customers might weigh the cost of staying against the switching costs and decide it's not worth it. But the more expensive – the more painful – a platform can make leaving, the more pain they can inflict on the people who stay.

In other words, there's two ways to keep a customer or supplier's business: you can make a better service so they won't want to leave, or you can make leaving the service so painful that they stay even if you mistreat them.

There's three ways a digital company can make things worse for their customers and users without losing their business.

First, they can eliminate competition (think of Mark Zuckerberg buying Instagram to recapture the users who'd fled Facebook to escape his poor management):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Second, they can capture their regulators and avoid punishment for trampling their suppliers' or users' legal rights (think of how Amazon has raised the price of everything we buy, both on- and off Amazon, through its "most favored nation" deals):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Third, they can use IP law to prevent competitors from modifying their services to claw back some of that value (think of how Apple used legal threats to block an Android version of Imessage, blocking Apple customers from having private conversations that included non-Apple customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Companies can't just use this tricks at will, of course. Antitrust laws can block companies from making anticompetitve acquisitions or mergers. Regulators can punish companies for cheating their customers, workers and users. Technologists can come up with clever ways of modding or reconfiguring existing services with "interoperable" add-ons that let users bargain for better treatment by refusing to accept worse:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Day in, day out, the decision-makers at tech companies test these constraints, twisting the knobs that shift value away from users to shareholders. Their bosses and boards motivate them with "KPIs" that dangle the promise of huge bonuses and promotions for any manager who successfully enshittifies part of the company's products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Decades of pro-corporate, pro-monopoly policy has loosened those knobs. 40 years of lax antitrust meant that companies had a lot of leeway to buy or merge with rivals – that's changing today, but it's tough sledding:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

As sectors grew more concentrated, they found it easier to capture their regulators, so that they no longer fear punishment for price-gouging, spying, or wage-theft, so applying the same amount of torque to the "break the law" knob cranks it a lot further:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Once you've captured your regulators, you can aim them at your competitors. A monopoly-friendly policy environment has transformed IP law into a bully's charter, allowing powerful companies to strangle would-be competitors who dare to offer their customers tools to shield themselves from enshittification, like scrapers, ad-blockers and alternative clients. Big companies can crank the enshittification knob all the way over and know that smaller rivals knobs won't turn at all:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

At one point, bosses faced one more constraint on knob-twiddling: their workforce. Many tech workers genuinely cared about their users' welfare, something bosses encouraged as a sneaky trick to get techies to put in long hours without exercising their leverage by quitting rather than destroying their lives to meet arbitrary deadlines. These workers would fearlessly slap their bosses' hands when they reached for the enshittification knob, threatening to quit rather than allowing the products they'd given so much for to be enshittified. Today, after hundreds of thousands of tech layoffs, tech workers are far less like to challenge their bosses' right to twiddle, and far more likely to get fired if they try:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

All this means that tech bosses don't have to change their approach at all, and yet, their services will grow steadily worse. The boss who twiddles the enshittification knob in exactly the same way as he did a year or a decade ago will find it turning much further, because his customers are locked into his platform, his regulators won't protect them, the same regulators will stop his competitors' attempts at countertwiddling, and his workers fear losing their jobs too much to speak up for their users.

That's the contagion that produced the enshittocene: the forces that constrained companies (competition, regulation, self-help and labor – all melted away, allowing every company's MBA-poisoned knob-twiddling leaders to shamelessly caress their knobs with every hour that God sends:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

Which is why people want to leave platforms. When a platform loses its users, those users have weighed the switching costs against the pain of staying and decided that it's better to bear those costs than to stay.

So why have Tiktok's younger users found the costs too high to bear, and why have their elders remained stuck to the platform?

For that, we have to look at the unique characteristics of young people – characteristics that transcend the lazy cliche that kids are easily bored, fickle novelty-seekers who hop from one service to another with unquenchable restlessness.

Whether or not kids are novelty-seekers, they are, fundamentally, a disfavored minority. They want to do things that the platforms don't want them to do – like converse without being overheard by authority figures, including their parents and their schools (also: cops and future employers, though kids may not be thinking about them as much).

In other words, kids pay intrinsically lower switching costs than adults, because a platform will always do less for them than it will for grownups. This is a characteristic kids share with other supposedly technophilic, novelty-seeking "early adopters," from sex-workers to terrorists, from sexual minorities to trolls, from political dissidents to fascists. For those groups, the cost of mastering a new technology and assembling a community around it is always more likely to be worth bearing than it would be for people who are well-served by existing tools:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/21/early-adopters/#sex-tech

Pornographers didn't jump on home video because of its superiority as a medium for capturing flesh-tones. Home video was a good porn medium because it was easier to discreetly get into the hands of porn consumers, who could, in turn, discreetly view it. The audience for porn in the privacy of your living room is larger than the audience for porn that you can only watch if you're willing to be seen marching into a dirty movie theater.

Every new technology is popularized by a mix of disfavored groups and neophiles, who normalize and refine it – and yes, infuse it with their countercultural coolth – until it becomes easy enough to use to become mainstream. As more normies drift into the new system, the switching costs associated with leaving the old system declines. It gets easier and easier to find the people and services you want in the new realm, and harder and harder to find them in the old one.

This is why tech platforms have historically experienced sudden collapse: the platform that gets more valuable and harder to leave as it accumulates users gets less valuable and easier to leave as users depart:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/12/05/what-if-failure-is-the-plan.html

If you're a Gen Z kid on Tiktok, you experience the same enshittification as your Millennial elders. But you also experience an additional cost to staying: as late-arriving adult authority figures become more fluent in the platform, they are more able to observe your use of it, and punish you for conduct that you used to get away with.

And if you're a Millennial who isn't leaving Tiktok, it's not just that you experience the same enshittification as those departing Gen Z kids – you also face higher switching costs if you go. The older you get, the more complex your social connections grow. A Gen Z kid in middle school doesn't have to worry about losing touch with their high-school buddies if they switch platforms (they haven't gone to high school yet – and they see their middle school friends in person all the time, giving them a side-channel to share information about who's leaving Tiktok and where they're headed to next). Middle-schoolers don't have to worry about coordinating little league car-pools or losing access to a rare disease support group.

In other words: younger people leave old platforms earlier because they have more to gain by leaving; and older people leave old platforms later because they have more to lose by leaving.

This is why Facebook is filled with Boomers. Yes, their kids bolted for the exits to avoid having their parents (or grandparents) wading into their sexual, social and professional lives. But the reason the Boomers were late joining younger users' Facebook exodus – or the reason they never joined it – is that they stand to lose more by going. Facebook deliberately cultivated this dynamic, for example, by creating a photo hosting service designed to entice users into uploading their family photos while disguising how hard it would be to take those photos with them if they left:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

The irony here is that tech has intrinsically low switching costs. All other things being equal, a new platform can always build a bridge to ease the passage of users from the old one. There's no (technical) reason that moving to Mastodon, or Bluesky, or any other platform should mean cutting ties with the people who stayed behind.

A combination of voluntary interoperability (where old platforms offer APIs to allow new services to connect with them), mandatory interop (where governments force tech companies to offer APIs) and adversarial interop (where new companies hack together their own API with reverse-engineering, scraping, bots, and other guerrilla tactics) would hypothetically allow users to hop between networks as easily as you change phone carriers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Tech platforms tend to offer APIs when they're getting started (to ease the inward passage of new users) then shut them down after they attain dominance (locking the door behind those users). The EU is tinkering with mandatory APIs through the Digital Markets Act (though bafflingly, they're starting with encrypted messaging rather than social media). Restoring adversarial interoperability will require extensive legal reform, which is getting started through Right to Repair laws:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/13/oregon-passes-right-to-repair-law-apple-lobbied-to-kill/

The people who are stranded on social media platforms shouldn't be mistaken for uncool, aging technophobes. They're not stubborn, they're stranded. Like the elders who can't afford to leave a dying town after the factory shuts down and the young people move away, these people are locked in. They need help evacuating – a place to go and a path to get there.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

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/2024/03/21/involuntary-die-hards/#evacuate-the-platformsr

[sabrinajenre96]

Field Trips & Foot Chases

Pairing: OA Zidan x Wife!FBI!Reader

Word Count: ~6,000

Genre: Action, Romance, Domestic, Humor

Setting: FBI HQ & NYC Historical Museum

---

The elevator doors slid open with a familiar ding as Y/N Zidan stepped out onto the floor of the FBI New York office, her steps confident and brisk. It was barely 7:15 in the morning, and most of the city was still stirring awake, but inside these walls, the machine was already running. She clutched a file folder in one hand—yesterday’s case summary, neatly printed and signed—and her travel mug in the other, steam rising from the dark roast she desperately needed to survive the next twelve hours.

Dressed in slim black trousers and a camel-toned coat that still smelled faintly of OA’s cologne from where it had brushed against his earlier, Y/N’s look was a balance of business-formal and “mom-on-a-mission.” She didn’t plan to be here long. Just long enough to hand off the file to Isobel and print the necessary attachments. Then it was off to chaperone Talia and Harlow’s first-grade field trip to the New York Historical Museum.

Her twin daughters had been buzzing about it all week—especially Harlow, who’d told everyone in their household (including the dog) that she was going to “see real colonial shoes” and “eat a sandwich like George Washington.” Y/N smiled to herself at the thought.

She turned the corner into the bullpen, where the usual early birds were already around. Tiffany was poring over some digital forensics with a very large cup of coffee, while Scola looked like he was mid-rant about parking tickets to anyone who’d listen.

“Zidan!” Maggie Bell called from across the room. She stood, her coat half-off her shoulders, and crossed the floor with a grin. “What are you doing here? Thought you were playing hooky today.”

Y/N returned the smile and held up her folder like a trophy. “Just dropping off paperwork for Isobel and printing a few things. School trip starts at eight-thirty. I’m still on the clock for ‘Mom Duty.’”

“Right—the big museum day.” Maggie leaned on the edge of her desk. “Please, I need pictures. You know I live for updates on my goddaughters.”

“I’ll flood your phone with them,” Y/N promised with a laugh. “You’ll be sick of them by lunchtime.”

“Impossible.”

Just then, footsteps approached, and OA appeared from the direction of the elevator, hair still damp from the shower and shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows. He had the distinct look of a man who had tried to leave early and been waylaid by something critical—his tie hung loosely around his neck.

“Hey,” he said, smile softening the edge of his focused gaze when he saw her. “I thought you’d be at the school already.”

“I wanted to make sure the case was buttoned up,” Y/N said, handing over the rest of the folder to Isobel who had just joined them. “And someone has to keep the system running while the rest of you run off chasing bad guys.”

OA leaned down and kissed her quickly—chaste but warm. “You’re amazing. Have fun with the girls.”

“You know I will. Just don’t get tackled or shot while I’m gone.”

“I could say the same to you,” he teased, stepping back just as Isobel raised her voice.

“Team, let’s go—conference room, now,” Isobel called. She was already walking fast, the others grabbing tablets and folders in response.

Y/N glanced at the wave of motion like a tide rising behind her, then gave Maggie a wink. “And that’s my cue to leave.”

“Send me those pictures!”

“You’ll get a whole album,” she promised, waving goodbye to the team as they moved into their briefing.

---

The school courtyard was buzzing with six-year-olds and coffee-wielding parents when Y/N arrived, switching gears from “Agent” to “Mom” without missing a beat. She spotted Talia and Harlow immediately—Talia in a navy-blue peacoat and matching headband, Harlow in her trademark rainbow beanie and pink boots, a stark contrast of order and chaos that defined them perfectly.

“Mommy!” they cried in unison, bolting toward her. Y/N crouched down just in time to catch them both in her arms.

“Hey, my sweet girls,” she said, kissing each of their cheeks. “Are you ready to learn all about history and revolution and maybe meet a statue of Ben Franklin?”

“Only if he has the kite!” Harlow declared.

“I want to see the old-fashioned classroom!” Talia added.

Their teacher, Miss Reyes, smiled warmly as Y/N joined the parent volunteers. “Glad to have you with us today, Mrs. Zidan. The girls have been so excited.”

“Thanks for letting me come. I wouldn’t miss it.”

The bus ride was a whirlwind of snack-sharing, knock-knock jokes, and a surprisingly intense game of “I Spy.” Y/N sat with the girls, pointing out landmarks and helping explain the difference between colonial homes and “olden castles.”

By midmorning, they were inside the museum, walking through exhibits of Revolutionary War uniforms, artifacts, and models of early New York life. The twins held onto her hands tightly, wide-eyed and full of questions. Y/N took photos throughout, even getting a perfect candid of Talia peering into a replica hearth and Harlow dramatically posing with a tri-corner hat.

She sent a few to Maggie, who replied instantly:

Maggie: LOOK AT MY BABIES. That hat!! Why does Harlow look like she’s about to lead a rebellion?!

Y/N: Because she probably is.

The group finished the final stretch of the tour—crossing a grand marble hallway with columns and a huge exit foyer where the buses waited outside in the sun. The kids were energized, talking about muskets and old coins.

And that’s when Talia froze.

“Mommy… is that Daddy?”

Y/N’s head snapped up.

Outside the tall glass doors, two figures in dark suits were sprinting across the plaza, weaving between pedestrians. One of them was OA—her husband—his badge out, gun holstered, eyes locked on two suspects making a break for it.

Next to him? Maggie, determined as ever.

“Oh no,” Y/N whispered, eyes narrowing.

One suspect veered toward a side alley. OA followed without hesitation and tackled him hard to the ground, knee to his back, cuffs already in hand.

The second suspect bolted toward the museum steps.

Y/N’s protective instincts kicked in. “Miss Reyes, get the kids on the bus. Now.”

The teacher didn’t ask questions. Y/N was already moving.

She sprinted across the marble floor and out into the courtyard, intercepting the second suspect as he reached the sidewalk. Timing it just right, she shifted her weight, stuck her foot out, and caught him mid-stride.

He stumbled—hard—crashing to the pavement. Before he could recover, she was on him, knee pressing down, one hand on her spare cuffs clipped inside her purse.

“Federal agent,” she said calmly. “Stay down.”

Behind her, the tour bus erupted into cheers.

When OA came jogging up, dragging his suspect with him, he burst out laughing at the sight of his wife expertly cuffing the guy in front of a group of cheering first graders.

Maggie leaned over, catching her breath. “Okay, remind me never to underestimate you in ballet flats.”

“Noted,” Y/N said dryly.

They both looked toward the bus. Talia and Harlow were standing in the window, saluting with both hands, beaming.

Maggie nearly doubled over laughing. “You two have the coolest kids.”

“I’ll take that as a win.”

---

The suspects were booked within the hour. Y/N filed a witness statement while Maggie handled the rest. OA offered her a ride, but she waved him off.

“I’ve still got sandwiches to eat and juice boxes to open,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “We’ll meet you later.”

By the time the girls were home from school, OA pulled into the driveway with a soft smile and two bags of cookies from the café down the street. The twins ran into his arms, talking over each other.

“Daddy, we saw you run so fast!”

“You tackled a real bad guy!”

“And Mommy kicked one!”

They all laughed as they went inside, collapsing onto the couch in a tangle of limbs and warmth.

Over dinner, the girls retold the museum adventure five times, dramatically acting out the takedown. OA and Y/N exchanged loving, amused glances. Their lives were never normal, but they were perfect in their chaos.

Later, after bath time, the family curled up in the twins’ bedroom for storytime. OA read from a picture book while Y/N braided Talia’s hair.

“And then the agent said, ‘Not today, criminal!’ and kicked him right in the shin—”

“That’s what Mommy did!” Harlow squealed.

Eventually, the girls drifted off to sleep, their hands still tucked in their parents’. OA carried Harlow to her bed while Y/N kissed Talia’s forehead, brushing a curl from her eyes.

They met in the hallway outside, quiet finally descending.

“She’s right, you know,” OA whispered, arms slipping around Y/N’s waist. “You did look kind of cool out there.”

“I don’t need to impress a bunch of six-year-olds,” she teased, kissing his jaw. “Just you.”

“Well,” he said, leaning in, “consider me impressed.”

They smiled, wrapped in the comfort of the night, hearts full.

Together, they walked into their bedroom, knowing tomorrow would bring more cases, more chaos—but for tonight, they had peace.

And maybe, just maybe, their daughters would dream of saving the world—just like their parents.

---

The End.

[arimiadev]

why does aniplex want mahoyo to fail

I love visual novels. being a long time fate/stay night fan and only having heard of mahoyo from hushed whispers about its cinematography, I was super invested when it was announced to be coming to the west and I could finally play an official version of it.

however, a lot of people interested in type-moon works had never heard of mahoyo, let alone it getting an official english translation. but how? aniplex is publishing the game and they're one of the largest anime distributors in the world.

with the console release of mahoyo being almost exactly a year ago and the steam release being just 10 days away, I want to look over some of aniplex USA's bizarre and nonexistent marketing for one of my favorite visual novels.

let's clear up a few things, first.

mahoyo is the shortened form of mahoutsukai no yoru (not to be confused with mahoutsukai no yome, i.e. the ancient magus bride), which has been localized as witch on the holy night. mahoyo was a linear non-eroge visual novel released by type-moon in 2012, being one of the first scripts kinoko nasu (co-founder of type-moon) wrote back in 1996 and adapted into a VN many, many years later.

in April of 2022, a console remaster (switch, playstation 4) was announced with HD assets and voice acting, to be published by aniplex. notably, this console release would contain an english translation and was later confirmed in June to be sold in the west via online retailers. this was huge news, as this meant mahoyo would be the first type-moon visual novel (not including gameplay-oriented titles like fate/extella or fate/grand order) to be officially released in the west, as despite numerous fan translations, their more recognizable visual novels tsukihime and fate/stay night still had not received a localization.

type-moon is the developer behind mahoyo and aniplex is the publisher, meaning that type-moon made the game and aniplex is in charge of distributing (and marketing) the game worldwide.

timeline:

April 11 2022: Mahoyo rerelease announced for consoles (Switch & PlayStation 4), including English translation

July 4 2022: Aniplex confirms Mahoyo will be available to the West, localized under the name Witch on the Holy Night

October 14 2022: 2nd trailer released, more voice actor info announced

November 3 2022: physical pre-orders launched, demo version available

November 18 2022: Aniplex attends Anime NYC with Mahoyo

December 7 2022: Mahoyo released digitally on Switch / PlayStation 4 (Dec 8th in Japan, Dec 7th in America)

December 12 2022: Mahoyo reaches 110k units sold worldwide

January 27 2023: Mahoyo physicals release

July 5 2023: Mahoyo reaches 150k units sold worldwide

September 10 2023: Mahoyo announced for Steam via a now unlisted Aniplex livestream

December 13 2023: Mahoyo will be released on Steam (Dec 14th in Japan, Dec 13th in America)

some of the dates might be a little fuzzy, especially the release dates, as some sources go by japanese time and some go by american timezones, so just be aware of that.

now, let's talk a bit about mahoyo itself.

mahoyo is a masterpiece. it's a niche game not meant for everyone. its cinematography is top notch among visual novels. its writing style can be off-putting to people who want faster-paced stories. it's one of my most beloved visual novels I've ever played, and I've been in this field for almost a decade and have played well over 100 VNs.

mahoyo is a completely linear visual novel—meaning it has no choices or gameplay—that follows aoko, a high schooler mage trying to balance her perfect school president facade with her secret life as a mage, something she has to keep secret at the risk of death. this is one of the lesser known type-moon works but it's well beloved because of the care put into it.

if you've ever heard someone talk about it, it's almost impossible for them to not mention the visuals. mahoyo is one of the most visually impressive visual novels I've ever seen, with its inspired use of artwork and in-game animations. I cannot recommend this VN enough if you like modern fantasy and don't mind linear VNs.

before we dive into aniplex USA's marketing, I want to clarify a few marketing terms for people who don't market visual novels as a job. marketing is not just advertising—it's everything related to how a product communicates with potential users, including its branding, its packaging, its everything. when marketing a game, you have several different avenues: social media, press & influencers, trailers, store pages, and more.

today I want to show you how, based off what I have researched after a long, manic day, aniplex USA has failed mahoyo on all of these accounts.

so let's go back to its western release.

mahoyo has a few official english channels:

website

twitter

facebook

aniplex also has an official english twitter with almost 500k followers where they shared mahoyo very rarely—only 9 tweets about the game ever.

well, surely their other pages are more maintained right—

both accounts stopped posting July 10th/11th, with their last post being about mahoyo going on sale on consoles. let's look at their posts prior to this, though, starting with the twitter.

we can see that the twitter account was made in december of 2022. if we scroll down far enough (it's not hard, given they only have 33 tweets), we can see that their first tweet was on december 6th 2022:

let's go back to our timeline. can you tell me when mahoyo's remaster released digitally?

yes they made both of the english mahoyo social media accounts the day before the game launched

we can very easily add up the entire social media posts for the game thus far:

mahoyo english twitter - 30 tweets and 3 retweets

mahoyo english facebook - 27 posts

aniplex english twitter - 9 tweets

aniplex english facebook - 2 posts

no other english social media accounts were tied to the website, so these are the only ones I looked at. this means in total, there were only 68 social media posts for the console release of mahoyo by the publisher for english audiences.

but what about the steam release? after the game sold over 150k+ units on consoles, surely aniplex was ready to market it a bit more for pc users—

neither account has made a post about the upcoming steam release.

if we look at the twitter, they have 3 tweets since July that do talk about the upcoming steam release- however, these are retweets from the japanese mahoyo account.

we know that this twitter and this facebook account are the official social media for mahoyo as they're linked on the website, so they're definitely meant to be followed for game updates in the west. well, maybe the english aniplex twitter has posted about it—

none of the english aniplex or mahoyo accounts have made a single post about the steam release

that's right, the social media posts I counted above are the only posts for mahoyo on their english accounts, all dating back before the steam release was announced. since then, they have not made a single original post even mentioning the steam release.

meanwhile, the japanese mahoyo twitter has been hustling hard to promote the upcoming steam release—reposting trailers, character bios, and more almost every day with pretty good numbers.

in fact, the japanese mahoyo twitter did such a good job at marketing it that the aniplex USA twitter never mentioned the english mahoyo twiter, instead only @ ing the japanese one in tweets (despite the english one being linked on the website).

why they even bothered making social media accounts and then not running them despite being one of the largest anime distributors in the world I have no clue.

well, maybe they didn't need to rely on social media presence. maybe they were going for the in-person approach and marketing it at conventions.

mahoyo had basically no anime convention presence

the only reference I can find to aniplex notably promoting mahoyo at any western convention is this tweet of them at anime NYC. from someone who was at anime NYC, I've been told that they pushed the game heavily at their booth with TV screens promoting the game.

however, anime NYC is only one anime convention. you cannot hope to sell a game by just attending one anime convention. mahoyo might have had a presence at other american conventions, but I'm unable to find any images or news about this.

maybe they don't understand type-moon

aniplex is the publisher for fate/grand order, one of the most successful mobile games ever created. they're also the distributor for a majority of type-moon related anime, ranging from fate to garden of sinners to side series. aniplex's marketing team should have lots of experience with type-moon properties.

maybe it was promoted in other aniplex titles

I was also unable to find a news post in fate/grand order related to mahoyo's release, despite news posts for other type-moon series (namely fate but also things like melty blood) getting news posts in fate/grand order. I might've missed the news posts when looking back through FGO but I don't believe there was one.

maybe it sold well in other regions but not western ones

(I'm going to be referring only to the console release for these stats, keep in mind)

mahoyo released December 7th/8th 2022 with an english, japanese, simplified chinese, and traditional chinese translations. at the end of the release week, mahoyo's japanese twitter announced the game had sold 110k copies worldwide and famitsu reported that 66,344 of these units were sold in japan. this means we have around 43k units unaccounted for.

we know the game was available in english, japanese, and chinese languages but we don't know what regions. mainland china has a very large visual novel playerbase (I say this as someone who sells visual novels), which means if it were sold there then it's easy to say that a big chunk of that 43k units could be attributed to them—this also means it would be easy to believe that aniplex saw mahoyo selling worse in western countries and took this as a sign to not promote the game any more there.

but was it ever sold in mainland china? from what I could tell—no.

looking at pricing charts for the nintendo eshop and the playstation store, china is not listed on either. furthermore, searching the game's chinese title on the chinese playstation store does not bring back any results. it looks like the only predominantly chinese-speaking regions that were able to buy it are hong kong, taiwan and possibly singapore (the playstation store page for it doesn't look like it's available for purchase anymore).

so what does this tell us?

without any other numbers it's hard to tell how many of the 43k launch week sales came from english-speaking players, but even if we conservatively say that only around 20k of the 110k launch week units were from western countries, that's still almost a million in revenue (and remember, the physical limited edition of the game was available in english for $60, which is $20 more than the digital base version).

maybe the store page is so good they don't need to market it

here's a little secret: store pages matter a lot more than you'd think. there are entire job positions dedicated to tailoring store pages (like a steam game page) to make it perfect for the game's target audience. there's a science to it that includes the artwork, descriptions, tags, screenshots, and more.

let's see what aniplex did for the steam page of mahoyo.

A tale told with vivid colors and rich sound in a classic TYPE-MOON visual novel.

I don't know how to describe this short description charitably other than to say it sounds like a person who's never heard of a visual novel has been tasked with describing a visual novel.

this tells me nothing about the game other than it's a visual novel. I hope you know what type-moon is, because if you don't then you've learned nothing else from this. alright, well, let's look at the screenshots—

there's only 1.

currently as of writing this, there's 10 images uploaded as screenshots (no trailers, they keep adding and removing the trailers for some reason). 9 of these images are just the full artworks from the game while 1 is an actual screenshot.

I really hate this, as you're not actually shown what the game looks like unless you look at the very last screenshot. this will absolutely lead to some people not understanding what they're getting into. what's worse is that some of these CGs are spoilers, especially one in particular featuring my wife touko.

why are we spoiling people instead of showing them screenshots? why not show people what mahoyo actually looks like??

there's also absolutely no use of the announcements section on steam. each game on steam can post announcements related to the game, including upcoming releases, new updates, and more. it's customary to post a steam announcement when a game has a release date announcement. mahoyo's steam page has none.

well they probably released the trailers in english for hype

I wish I had that much hope.

on mahoyo's english website, all of the videos listed are from the official type-moon youtube, which is their japanese channel. type-moon went through the effort to translate these videos. aniplex didn't upload these to their own youtube, where they already upload everything related to the fateverse and nasuverse.

searching up witch on the holy night brings up no results for the trailer—aniplex never uploaded the trailer to their channel.

maybe they got influencers to play it

according to steamdb, the max amount of viewers mahoyo streams have had on twitch was 71 viewers.

furthermore, if we check twitch and look for vods attached to mahoyo, we only find 4 videos total, all of which were posted in the past week. it looks like they didn't even reach out to streamers to play the console release, much less pay them.

over on the press side, it does look like they reached out to at least a few reviewers. for example, on the review by noisy pixel, they clarify that a review copy was provided by the publisher for review purposes. we can add that to the bare minimum of marketing—reaching out to press.

however, they did get for some other influencers to share the game! ...twitter game sale influencers, that is.

there's actually a lot more of these types of tweets for mahoyo than I was expecting when I searched it on twitter. as a friend pointed out, just because it says "#ad" doesn't necessarily mean these were paid for by aniplex—a lot of these links look to be referrals, which means they're getting a cut of any purchases.

let's recap

mahoyo released over 110k copies in the launch week for it's worldwide console release despite very, very limited marketing efforts from its publisher aniplex. now that the game has proven it can sell very well despite being a lesser known linear visual novel, aniplex has done no marketing for the steam release- no tweets, no influencer outreach, no localization of trailers, no announcements via steam, nothing.

so why?

why does aniplex want mahoyo to fail?

even after all of this, I still do not know why. to me, it's clear that the marketing team at aniplex were (most likely) given no budget for this game and just couldn't do anything with it, deciding to spend what little money they had on press outreach and an anime NYC booth.

but why? why didn't aniplex give them a budget, even a small one? why was their budget so tiny they couldn't even afford to tweet? to RT more posts from the japanese twitter? to share the already translated trailers to their own accounts?

I've heard a few excuses like "type-moon hates western fans and probably caused it" but this doesn't make any sense either. why would you authorize a translation of your game and allow your publisher to sell the game overseas but specifically make them not market the game (and what publisher would agree to that)? I've even heard excuses like "they just forgot it was coming out", to which I ask "how does an entire marketing team (a company the size of aniplex absolutely has a team(s) for marketing and not a singular person) forget a release for a game that's already sold over 150k copies?". the only excuse I've seen that I somewhat buy is that they did not have much faith in the game and relied almost entirely on fans doing word of mouth marketing for the game.

I don't think we'll ever get an answer. while I do believe the marketing team at aniplex was most likely given no budget for mahoyo, it still begs the question of why. why did someone at aniplex not want to give mahoyo a marketing budget? why are the japanese accounts for mahoyo and type-moon the only ones doing the marketing?

I hope the information I've provided here is accurate—if it's not, I'll try to update with corrections. I don't want this piece to cast hate towards the staff at aniplex or anyone involved with this projects, I'm just trying to assemble the pieces on what feels like a game being left to word of mouth. I've tried to include as many links to my sources as I could so you could come to your own judgements about what has happened regarding mahoyo's worldwide release.

mahoyo is a visual novel that's dear to me and will absolutely sell well on steam—with an estimated 50-80k wishlists, it's going to have a solid launch despite the zero marketing for its steam release. if you love other type-moon works or want to see an absolutely visually stunning visual novel, please check it out.

— arimia

[neighbourscat]

𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐇 𝐌𝐄 , nicholas alexander chavez

MY BOOGIE SHOES, JUST TO BOOGIE WITH YOU.

𓈒  ˙ ꪆৎ   ꣹  ۫  𖨂 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 . .. . screen actor!nicholas c. X stage actress!black!fem!reader.

+ synopsis. dancing around your new york apartment with your boyfriend, nicholas chavez, after a tiring final show.

+ cw. mature language & suggestive stage dancing … but none, really (: just smiles, dancing, and good music!

+ nali’s notes; i love 70s-80s music soooo much. dreaming of a cold autumn / christmas fic in this tiny nyc apartment. all the short stories that’ll probably come from this nyc apartment, like a little tv show. the neighbours would have their own backstories & cute interactions. omg should i do that???? a nyc apartment series, kind of like friends or martin??? wordcount :: 2.1k+

+ to be played: dancing in the dark, bruce springsteen. || alternative: slow dancing in the dark, joji. + everybody wants to rule the world, tears for fears.

MY BOOGIE SHOES, JUST TO BOOGIE WITH YOU.

he moved his left foot backward in a smooth motion, sliding across the slick, slightly scoffed, pine theatre stage. two blue overhead spotlights had shone down onto him, highlighting and allowing the golden sequins along his black-costume pants to sparkle and glimmer. the sharp, metal heels of his four-taps no longer producing sound . .. . the active trumpet-players, acoustic guitarists, and drummers eased and eased their instruments into a low twinkle —

— the audience knew what time it was. another character was about to be introduced. in the orchestra pit, the conductor quickly switched her attention to the violinists and flute-players, baton up in the air and readied for the new entrance. the elder english woman gave the group a small cue, flicking her wrist in beat: 1, 2, 3, 4. and as the violins, violas and cellos came in quiet and steady . .. . the male dancer at the far end of the stage reached up and slowly removed the costume fedora from his neatly styled hair, staring over to his stage left.

your beautiful, brilliant and glittery gold mary-jane style tap shoes clicked as you gracefully entered from stage left — the gold fringes of your body-con mini dress flapped and swung every which way as you rolled your costume glove over your right hand, the music coming from the violins and flute-players transforming into something hot and seductive.

your glove snug — the trumpets have returned, this time with the trombones and horns, easy and gentle — with what looked to be absolutely effortless, your body control impeccable, you swayed toward your dance partner. and once as close as rehearsed, you slid your left foot backward; lining yourself up with your partner, you raised your arms neatly, fingers almost wiggling.

your partner snaked an arm around your waist, his opposite hand sensually caressing the under side of your arm — his fingers tightened on your ribs. you felt his plump lips brush against the soft skin of your neck, you don’t hold back a mini smile. and after a thirty-second sleek, clean sequence of sneaky smirks, lustful eyes, gyrating hips, and chasing each other’s feet with mirroring steps on beat — you and your partner stand center stage; he had just spun you out and away and reeled you back in, unable to give you up. you’re overlooking the hungry crowd, toe to toe, hips pressed into each other’s . .. .

the conductor slowly lifted her baton, the orchestra picking up their pace just a bit . .. . more dancers began to take the stage, ten men on one end and ten women on the other, all styled to absolute perfection — you ripped away from your partner, his hand lingering in the air as you hurry toward the women. you strike a pose and the women behind you follow suite, just as clean and precise. the men chuckle amongst themselves, lips moving but nothing being said. your partner took his place in front of the men, eyeing you down.

the blue spotlights went out and back in on beat; this time colored red. the percussion picking up intensity . .. . the atmosphere no longer showcasing love and attraction, but lust and obsession — the red spotlights darkened and blinked in and out powerfully, percussion played fast and with high energy, the string and horn instruments carried out in unison, background voices sounding . .. .

nicholas chavez, anxiously chewing at the skin of his fingers, watched as the other casted dancers performed with everything they had — his eyes working even harder to follow you around. he stopped chewing at his skin then, trying to focus his eyes on you; he couldn’t do the two at the same time. different variations of gold leotards and ruffled dresses and flown pantsuits, the maracas, xylophone — so much was happening at once. portraying chaos perfectly.

every time he found you, he had lost you just as quick. nicholas shifted in the cushioned chair a bit, mindful of the young woman sitting behind him — the saxophones and trumpets intensified, the gold-clad dancers continued shuffling and leaping up and down and around the large pine stage, metal heels touching down with the beats.

the entire stage was bathed in deep, sultry red light, casting long, dramatic shadows over each dancer — the red hue seemed to pulse with the rhythm of the music, bodies moved with precision and purpose, every step choreographed to build toward the crescendo of the performance. the audience watched in awe — nicholas’ eyes never leaving your amazing form — the dancers' figures sharp and striking against the glowing backdrop.

each dancer’s silhouette was satiny, their limbs cutting through the air like blades as they glided to their spots. and as the music swelled, the dancers reached their final positions, holding their forms in an intense, powerful tableau. their bodies arched and poised, chins tilted upwards with defiance, hands spread in graceful curves or clutched at their hips in dominance. the red light drenching them, casting their figures into stark, dramatic silhouettes — elegant and imposing, yet full of tension.

their shadows stretched behind them, larger-than-life, as if their presence demanded more than the stage could contain. the audience held its breath, the stillness of the final pose amplifying the raw energy. it was a picture of controlled power, desire, and neat mess.

the world beyond the stage faded, and all that was left were the figures frozen in that moment — red and black, light and shadow — a vision of drama and allure, like something out of a fevered dream. then, as the final note lingered in the air, the curtain slowly began to close up.

you were curled up on the couch, still basking in the soft afterglow of the evening. your legs draped over nicholas’ lap, the warmth from his hand gently tracing heart-shape patterns on your ankle. the exhaustion from your final show was settling in, but being home with him — no more hotels, no more cast gatherings, no more living through an intense schedule; eight shows a week — felt like the perfect ending to an overwhelming night.

nicholas shifted beneath you, the faintest grin pulling at his lips. “you know .. .” he hummed casually, “.. . i’ve been thinking.” that was never good. you respond with a low groan, rubbing your tired eyes, “no. i’m not doin’ it.”

“can i-i’ve gotta get it out first before you tell me ‘no’,” he said, nudging your arm. “i don’t want a lot or anything .. y’know, crazy. i just want your help.”

you stopped rubbing your eyes, dropping your hand down into your lap. you gave a look that said: ‘go on’ and he did, giving your ankle a loving squeeze: “i want you to teach me how to dance.” he sounded serious, but you couldn’t exactly tell. you blinked, face and gaze blank and revealing nothing. you turned back to the television, an early episode of glee rolling.

nicholas stood up then, gently moving your legs off of his lap. he reached out his hand toward you. you had performed so beautifully with your dance partner, nicholas wanted to move with you the same. “nicholas .. .” you stared at his outstretched hand, then back up at him, “sit back down. seriously.”

“come’on.” his brown eyes soft but determined. “just a little bit. five minutes, hmm?” he was hopeful, still waiting for you. “i’ll take anything. anythin’ i can get, okay? i’ll be grateful for whatever.” you shook your head as an answer and laid back into the plush cushion, arms crossing over your chest. “nic . .. . you can’t dance,” you said in a simple, matter-of-fact voice — not trying to be harsh or mean, and nicholas didn’t take it as such.

he knew he couldn’t. “well, baby, that’s why i’m asking you to teach me.” you looked to his big hand; he made a gentle grabby motion twice, urging you — and back up your eyes went. “i can’t teach rhythm.” nicholas dropped his hand with a hoarse grumble. you sighed, feeling your body protesting the idea of getting up, but the way nicholas was still looking down at you, with that mix of earnestness and affection, made you give in. with a groan, you held out your hand — nicholas smiled wide and pulled you to your feet.

“five minutes.”

“all i need,” nicholas confirmed with a silly smile, dragging you over to the other side of the couch. your shared apartment wasn’t spacious, for no apartment was this side of queens, new york. your deep-grey tabby cat, ruby; the world’s most mischievous kitty, climbed back in through the open window and landed on her feet, gracefully. after an afternoon of racing up and down the fire-escape and most of the block ( ruby, though mischievous, was a friendly animal ), she was ready to be in her bed.

her bed; nicholas’ pillow.

“okay, so what’s first?” nicholas clapped his hands together, anticipating the next five minutes. “music,” you said, reaching down for your phone in between the couch cushions. “oh, how about from your show? i really love the gold one, what’s that song’s name?” he went over and picked up the musical’s playbill, flipping through the first couple of pages, “that song .. when you come out for the first time and look hot?” you almost laugh, unlocking your phone and scrolling through your music. “i’m not teachin’ you that, nic.”

“look, baby, if you’re worried about there not being enough room, let’s not worry, we can move this couch around some .. . throw the cat back outside-“ you stopped him right there, “or you can get out?” nicholas laughed at that, apologizing softly, coming up behind you. his hands found your waist and his chin dug into the skin of your shoulder, watching as your finger scrolled and scrolled. your finger touched down then, the bluetooth speaker in the corner coming to life immediately.

it started off as slow, lazy dancing in the living room to random musical theatre soundtracks . .. . the moonlight streaming through the large open windows, casting cool white rays over the hardwood floors — but quickly turned into a party.

you slid in from the hall opening, wearing oversized socks, loose basketball shorts, and a baggy football jersey; from nicholas’ side of the closet, your body rocking to the rhythm. you’re holding a wooden spoon, it’s your imaginary microphone, dramatically lip-syncing to bruce springsteen’s dancing in the dark, your expression playful and exaggerated.

nicholas was in the kitchen, a spatula in his hands and dragging his fingers along the handle as if it were an electric guitar, wearing a goofy grin. he’s wearing fuzzy socks, slipping across the floor, attempting to match your moves, his brown hair messy, his shirt half-tucked — this impromptu dance-off felt as though it had been going on for hours. nicholas moved to you, your energy completely in sync, lost in the fun of the moment.

you twirled away, laughing as you swung around the kitchen island, your socks giving you just the right amount of glide across the floor. you threw a hand up, pointing at nicholas like a pop star mid-performance, mouthing bruce springsteen’s lyrics. nicholas laughed, feigning a swoon, then slid back toward you, pulling you into a silly two-step.

and now you’re in the hallway again, where you’re at his side, arm wrapped around him, shuffling in time with the beat. you and nicholas sing together now, the music barely audible over your screaming voices, off-key but full of love.

you pushed nicholas away with a playful shove — he stumbled dramatically and recovered in seconds, lip-syncing passionately. as passionate as before. maybe even more so.

you end up in the living room, this time nicholas was spinning you around — as you twirl and spin with your boyfriend, the music grew louder. your body moved with his perfectly, not with precision or control, but with the kind of ease that comes from knowing each other so well. nicholas pulled you in close, your face just inches from his . .. . he’s grinning down at you like a kid, heart racing and thrashing cutely.

bruce springsteen faded smoothly into tears for fears — nicholas started his air guitar again and you bounced toward the kitchen, grabbing your wooden spoon again. braids flipped over one shoulder, you lifted yourself up onto the island in time for the first verse of everybody wants to rule the world. swinging your dangling feet and rocking your head side to side to the drums, you sang into the spoon.

and by the instrumental break, you and nicholas are skating through the hall, singing and dancing with reckless abandon, whirling and dipping, in your own little world. you’re breathless, your face flushed with laughter — watching nicholas overdo the solo guitar outro from where you sat on the couch’s armrest. he dropped onto his knees and rolled onto his back, his feet kicking into the air.

and as the strumming died, you collapsed back onto the couch in a heap, panting and drinking from nicholas’ cold bottle of pepsi. you and nicholas both jumped up startled hearing the grating pound of fists at the front door — ruby sprung from where she laid and ran around hysterically, you and nicholas scrambled to get up; you rushed behind the couch to quickly turn the blasting speaker down and he went to the front door. nicholas was squinting through the peephole, “fuck-it’s minnie .. .” ms. minnie from two doors down hated loud noises.

but she hated the young people scattered along the fourth floor even more.

[tizeline]

I'm guessing that after season finale, Leo sneaking out to see Donnie is in secret. Is there a moment where Leo's other brothers find out? Do they feel betrayed, or do they assume it's part of Leo's master plan to have Donnie switch over?

Is there moments Leo stays the night at the lair cuz of tensions at home, or just because he wants to hang out with Donnie more?

Love your AU!!

Okay so here's the thing. Before the season one finale, Leo would always worry so much about living up to expectations, about what his family would think of him. This led to him keeping many secrets, his interest in Lou Jitsu plus human media and pop-culture in general, his frequenting NYC and Run Of The Mill, all of that he would spend years keeping closely hidden from his father and brothers. Then later he'd also have to hide his tense but slowly improving relationship with Donnie and his doubts about Draxum's world domination plan. When the season one finale happens and Leo teams up with Donnie, the cover is blown and essentially all of those closely guarded secrets are exposed.

So after that, Leo is done with secrets, he's tired of putting on an act all the time. His family already knows that he's befriended Donnie at this point, and not in the way they wanted. They know that he interacts with human society, and so what? Instead of hiding this part of himself, Leo does the opposite and brags about it, shoving in their face. Basically any time Leo leaves to go hang out with Donnie he will let everyone know and then teleport away in front of their faces lol. (Jokes on Leo, he is still very much putting on an act, this time it's just an act of indifference. He is very much bothered by the tension between him and his family, especially between him and his dad, but he doesn't want to admit to anyone else or himself that that's the case)

But Leo does absolutely sometimes stay overnight at Donnie's place, both as an act of rebellion but also because Draxum's displeasure with Leo really gets to him and he just doesn't wanna deal with that sometimes.

Both Draxum and Mikey are, uh, a bit salty over the whole Dark Armor fiasco, including Leo's kinda-sorta-not-really-but-also-technically-betrayal. So they have a pretty pissy attitude during this part of the story XD and Leo running yelling about HOW MUCH FUN he's having with HIS TWIN BROTHER and also how Leo was TOTALLY RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING just makes them more annoyed (and they're not even twins??? where did leo get that idea from, what is he on about???).

Meanwhile, Raph does agree with Leo when it comes the fact that destroying humanity is not a very cool thing to do, but he still doesn't exactly vibe with humans. Needless to say, he's a bit conflicted about everything which causes him to usually get caught in the middle of Leo's and Draxum + Mikey's beef where he's stuck trying to play mediator. He's not super happy with Leo running off on his own all the time to hang out with Donnie considering it means interacting with April and Splinter, which he still doesn't trust. It's not until Raph starts tagging along (partly to make sure Splinter isn't gonna kidnap Leo too haha) that he starts agreeing more with Leo's stance on things and realizes that April and Splinter are pretty cool actually.

[malk1ns]

march 27 @ sabres, 7-3 loss

sidney crosby is officially the most consistent player in the history of the sport. boy oh boy are we a lucky, lucky fanbase. don't ever take watching him play for granted!!!!

and that's all that happened in this game i'm pretty sure.

@beggingwolf talked me into doing a little mini-AU of my influencer!geno story that i'm hoping to work on this offseason, and that + this picture reappearing in my life where he really DOES look like an influencer got the wheels turning. and here we are!

Normally Zhenya vets his brand trips pretty thoroughly. There are some people out there who jump at every sponsored vacation that’s thrown at them regardless of who’s picking up the bill, and while Zhenya’s not about to pretend he’s some scrupulously ethical guy who only shills products he supports with every fiber of his being, he’s also not interested in flaunting a lavish trip for some brand his followers have never heard him talk about before.

Some of his vetting is selfish, of course. He wants to be flown out to fun places with people he can actually tolerate, not the ever-growing mass of early-20s fitfluencers who all talk in the same cadence and over-filter their videos so their followers can’t clock the injection sites and surgery scars while they’re talking up some new weight-loss fad product as if it’s the secret to their looks.

Zhenya’s not like that. He’s still filming on the same camera he bought back when he first started recording himself, well before the pandemic and when the concept of being an influencer as a full-time career didn’t really exist yet. He doesn’t even think he knew the word ‘influencer’ when he posted his first video to YouTube all those years ago; he just wanted to make workout videos for people who can’t get to the gym and maybe raise his own personal trainer brand a little at the same time. Rent isn’t cheap in NYC after all, even on Zhenya’s Equinox salary, and new clients, especially ones above a certain income bracket, are never a bad thing.

When the pandemic hit, Zhenya seriously thought he’d have to somehow move back home, slink back to his parents’ house in backwoods Russia and admit that his dreams had been a little too big after all. Five years ago, he never could have guessed where he’d be now.

Quitting his day job had been risky, a decision he agonized over for weeks. But the partnership offers were piling up, and his manager was fielding high-profile celebrity requests by the dozen to have him come and design custom workout plans for them. The money piling up in his accounts was staggering, an unfathomable total to a boy who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in an industrial post-Soviet town.

Even if it all comes crashing down tomorrow, it was worth every minute. Zhenya’s trying to be smart with his money, squirreling most of it away into investments he can live off and buying property instead of yet another shitty Amazon ‘must-have’, but he’s enjoying the fruits of his labor, too—the nice cars, the nice house, the nice vacations in five-star hotels.

He would not classify Buffalo in March as one of the nicer places he’s been to, but the reason he’s going makes this trip the most exciting one yet. The chance to watch his favorite hockey player break a Wayne Gretzky record as the Penguins’ guest isn’t something Zhenya would pass up in a million years.

«I don’t know what to wear,» he whines, stabbing at his phone until it switches to speaker and tossing it on the floor at his feet as he continues to paw through his closet. «Is it tacky to wear a jersey? Do I look good in jerseys?»

Artemy sighs so loudly Zhenya’s phone crackles. «You sound like a teenage girl,» he informs Zhenya, who rolls his eyes and holds up his plum puffer vest in consideration. Maybe this with a long-sleeve shirt…? «Of course jerseys are tacky. But everyone in the damn arena will have one on. Bring something else for after if you think they’ll let you take pictures you’ll want to post, but if you want to wear a jersey, wear one. You’ll look fine.»

«But which one?» Zhenya muses, turning to look at the long row of Penguins jerseys taking up nearly a quarter of his closet.

Artemy hangs up on him. Zhenya doesn’t bother calling back.

He does pack a jersey though—a game-worn one that Zhenya saved for months to afford and really had no business buying at the time. It’s not autographed, but Crosby scored 23 goals while wearing it, and Zhenya’s nostalgic for the Vegas gold color scheme.

He brings a hat from his collaboration with Goorin Bros too, one of the gray beanies. The black sold better, but Zhenya prefers the gray, and it’ll look better with his purple vest.

The Penguins offer to put him in a suite—apparently the demand isn’t high for premium seating in Buffalo this year, go figure—but Zhenya manages to wheedle a seat on the glass, right next to the visitor’s penalty box. He wants to be close to the action, where he can hear and see everything and hopefully get some good pictures.

The flight to Buffalo is short, but Zhenya upgrades himself to business class and spends the entire 90 minutes slouched in his seat scrolling through Sidney Crosby highlights on YouTube. He’s watched all these videos hundreds of times by now, but he could use a refresher—what if he meets Sid? He wants to sound like he knows what he’s talking about, like he’s a real fan, not just a clout-chaser or a puckbunny.

Stupid, really. The PR person hadn’t been sure Zhenya would be able to meet any players—they’re going straight from the game to the airport, everyone eager to get home after the road trip—but he’ll get a tour of the locker room anyway, and the team wants to take some pictures of their own to post.

They put him up in the same hotel where the team is staying, and Zhenya spends the afternoon fantasizing about walking down into the lobby, running into Sid, and charming him with some line that gets them talking.

The very thought of it terrifies him, so Zhenya orders room service and goes to bed as early as possible.

Zhenya’s been a Penguins fan for what feels like his entire life. When he was younger he was obsessed with Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr—his parents couldn’t afford to put him into the hockey program in Magnitogorsk, but he used to play out on the pond with his friends, and he always had dibs on taping a 66 onto the back of his coat. Most of the kids in Russia cheered for Detroit, and Zhenya had a Red Wings hat too, but it was the Penguins he followed as best he could.

When they drafted Sidney Crosby and Zhenya got a look at him on TV for the first time, that just sealed it. He’s followed Sid’s whole career, digging through the bowels of the internet for game footage in the middle of the night until he moved to America and could watch games at a reasonable hour, and the first vacation he took in the US was to Pittsburgh, to watch the Penguins play up in the rafters of the Igloo.

Now that Zhenya makes real money he’s been to a lot more games, in much better seats. He’s talked about the Penguins on his platforms as long as he’s been on social media, sometimes dedicating entire videos to rant about poorly-officiated games or gush over a play Sid made that didn’t get enough attention. He supposes it was only a matter of time until someone on the team stumbled onto his account, but he still can’t believe they reached out to invite him to potentially watch history be made.

The hotel gym is deserted the next morning, and Zhenya runs off as much of his nervous energy on the treadmill as he can tolerate. He spends too long primping in the mirror after his shower, pushing his hair back and forth until he remembers he brought his hat and rolls his eyes at himself before cramming it onto his head.

The Penguins send a car for him late afternoon, and Zhenya spends the hour before warmups wandering KeyBank center with a pretty brunette from the comms team. She giggles and blushes when he casually flirts with her—Zhenya might be gay but he has eyes, he can appreciate a beautiful woman, and everyone likes to be flirted with.

He has time to grab a canned cocktail before heading down for warmups, settling into his seat and sipping on his drink as he films a quick video to post to his feeds. When the players come out Zhenya practically plasters himself to the glass, staring raptly as the Penguins skate past him and getting as much footage as he can to sort through and post later.

He’s never had seats this good. This fucking rules.

It gets even better a few minutes into the game when Sid takes a penalty and spends two minutes barely two feet from Zhenya’s seat. Normally Zhenya would be watching the penalty kill through his fingers and holding his breath, but this time he spends the entire penalty half-turned in his chair so it’s not quite so obvious that he’s staring at Sid.

Sid sprays water down the back of his jersey and then in his mouth, and Zhenya learns what it looks like when he has drops of water on those big red lips up close. He spends most of the two minutes chatting with the penalty box attendant, but when there’s about half a minute left and he’s standing up in preparation to skate back out, he glances to the side, right at Zhenya.

Zhenya watches Sid’s eyes widen, then glance up at his hat, and then the penalty is over and Sid skates back out to rejoin the game.

“Holy shit,” Zhenya mutters, placing his phone in his lap so his shaking hands don’t drop it. “No way, holy shit?”

He’s so flustered by the direct eye contact that he almost misses when Sid officially passes the record, a beauty of a goal that sends Zhenya and what feels like the entire arena to their feet. The applause is long, even from the home fans, and Zhenya practically wears out his thumb taking pictures of the scoreboard, the bench, the crowd, and himself. He didn’t get a video of the goal, but there will be enough footage posted all over—Zhenya got to see it with his own eyes, practically in front of him.

Unfortunately, that’s the high point of the game. Zhenya winces through most of the second period, and even a pair of goals in the third to make the final score a little less mortifying doesn’t quite match the emotional high of Sid’s goal.

Zhenya loves seeing his team in person, though, even when they lose, and he’s shaken off his disappointment by the time the brunette comes to take him to the players’ area.

Zhenya wrinkles his nose at the workout facilities—he’s still an Equinox snob at heart, sue him—and badly wants to poke through the refrigerator in the player’s lounge, but when they approach what can only be the locker room he clams up.

The girl—Emma—pauses with her hand on the door, looking up at him. “They’re all going to be in the change room by now,” she says reassuringly, adjusting the camera around her neck. “And they know we have a guest, so you’re not intruding. I know this is a little weird, I hated coming down here when I first started, but they’re totally used to it. If anyone pops in it’s because they watch your stuff and want to say hi—some of the younger guys were really excited when we told them you were coming tonight, and I’m pretty sure Tanger follows you. Anyway, don’t worry about it. We’ll be in and out.”

Tanger does follow Zhenya. That happened about three years ago, and Zhenya spent most of the afternoon having a quiet panic attack in his apartment when he got the notification. He didn’t think that meant Tanger actually looked at his posts. How embarrassing.

The Penguins are expecting content out of this, so Zhenya squares his shoulders and flashes his brightest smile at Emma, who turns pink and lifts up the camera, pushing the door open and clicking record.

Zhenya hams it up in the room, putting on the slightly-exaggerated public personality he’s been cultivating for years. It’s not entirely fake, Zhenya wouldn’t be able to sustain it for this long if it was, but it’s a little bit more than he is in real life. It plays well on social media, so whatever.

Once Emma’s happy with what she got, she takes a few pictures of Zhenya on his phone. He flips through them before they leave, pausing on the one of him sitting in Sid’s locker and looking to the side—that’s the one, he thinks. He’s glad he took his jersey off for these pictures.

“Oh,” Emma says, and Zhenya looks up guiltily—she’s been so nice, but he’s sure he’s keeping her from getting home. She’s staring down at her phone. “So, Sid wants to meet you? Is that cool? He’s still with the trainers, but can you wait a few minutes?”

Zhenya’s brain shuts down.

He must reply with some form of affirmative, though, because Emma taps something on her phone before guiding Zhenya out of the locker room and back to the player’s lounge.

“I’m so sorry, but I have some stuff I need to take care of before we head to the airport,” she says apologetically. Zhenya can hear her phone vibrating in her hand. “Are you okay waiting here alone? Sid knows where you are, he should come find you soon.”

“Sure,” Zhenya says faintly, and Emma smiles at him before rushing off.

Zhenya looks around the room, then shakes his head and sits on the couch, taking a deep breath. He’s going to meet Sidney Crosby—he needs to get it together.

He distracts himself by making a few color adjustments to that picture and typing out a few different captions before settling on one. He debates over the hashtags, but it’s not like the Penguins could possibly be surprised—Zhenya’s very, very out, and he’s never shied away from praising Sid’s looks as well as his hockey on his platforms. If they don’t know, that’s their own fault.

He’s just hit post when someone clears their throat.

Zhenya’s head whips up so fast he almost pulls something in his neck.

“Hey there,” says Sidney Crosby, standing a few feet away from Zhenya and dressed in the tightest, most threadbare pair of lululemon leggings Zhenya’s ever seen. “Geno, right? Thanks for sticking around, sorry to make you wait.”

“Um,” Zhenya says intelligently, fumbling his phone into his vest pocket as he gets to his feet. “No problem, like, fun to see the locker room and stuff.”

Sid steps closer and sticks his hand out. Zhenya takes it, praying his palm isn’t as sweaty as the rest of his body feels. Sid’s hair is still damp, but he smells like cologne, and Zhenya wonders if he’s going to faint. “Great to meet you, man,” Sid says, smiling at Zhenya. His teeth are so white. “We’re all big fans, the boys were pretty excited when Jen told us you were coming. Tanger’s gonna be pissed at me forever, he really wanted to meet you but he’s still stuck with the docs.”

“Oh wow,” Zhenya says, holding Sid’s hand for a hair too long before dropping it. Up close, Sid’s mouth is so red and his eyes are enormous. He’s a little shorter than Zhenya thought, but he’s broad, and his biceps are straining the sleeves of the t-shirt he’s got on. “Um, I’m not know you watch. Well, I know Tanger follows, but I don’t think he actually watches, you know.”

Sid bites his lip. “I follow you too,” he says, voice low like he’s sharing a secret. “I’ve got a…I think they call it a finsta? It doesn’t have a profile picture or anything, you wouldn’t know it’s me. But I started following you during the lockdown, your videos were great. I was getting so bored with the stuff the trainers sent out, and everything else I found was like…it just wasn’t good, you know, but then Tanger found your account and—” Sid pauses, and Zhenya watches in amazement as his face turns red. “Sorry. Jesus, I’m babbling, I get like this after games. Anyway. Sorry we couldn’t get a win for you, but I hope you had fun anyway.”

“Best,” Zhenya rushes to reassure him. “Your goal, like, it’s so good, classic Crosby goal. So cool to see you break the record, I can’t believe. I’m a fan for so long, I never think I get to see something so close like that.”

Sid’s smile returns in full force. “Oh, you’ve been a fan for a while, eh?” he says, tilting his head coyly. Abruptly, Zhenya realizes he’s being flirted with. “Well, it’s a shame it took so long for us to get you down here—I would have loved to have met you sooner.” 

“Yes,” Zhenya says dumbly, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck. Is this really happening?

Sid’s eyes follow his hand, widening when he looks up at Zhenya’s beanie. “Oh, your hat! I saw that when I was in the box, that’s really cool. Goorin, right? Kris has a ton of stuff from them, I remember when your collection came out. You got any extras of those lying around?”

Zhenya takes a deep breath and decides to be brave. “Yes, I have at home, lots of colors,” he says, reaching into his pocket for his phone. “I can send to you, maybe? But you’re have to tell me what kind you want, like, hat or beanie, what style—maybe you give me your number, I can send you pictures?” He unlocks his iPhone and holds it out, hand shaking only a little.

Sid stares at it for a minute, and just when Zhenya thinks he’s made a horrible mistake snatches it out of his palm. “Maybe instead you should come to Pittsburgh and bring some with you,” he says, pulling up the messenger app and starting a new thread. “I mean, probably it would be better for me to see how they look, right? And it’ll save you shipping. If you’ve got time you could stay a while, come to a few games—we have another roadie coming up, but our last couple of games are at home. What do you think?” When he hands Zhenya his phone back, his smile is sly and his eyes are sharp.

Zhenya heads back to his hotel with Sidney Crosby’s phone number burning a hole in his pocket. It’s a good thing his flight isn’t until later tomorrow—there’s no way he’s sleeping any time soon tonight.

thanks to @beggingwolf for photoshopping sid's nameplate into this picture to complete my geno influencer dreams. you Will see this picture used again, god willing. i'm responsible for the caption which is why it looks terrible <3

[worms-blood]

my thoughts on the dmc netflix show below (contains spoilers)

bad.

i didn't like it, i think the most egregious issue was the blatant butchering of lady's character specifically by making her a cop. it felt like it bordered the line of police brutality at times, and along with the characters who were in the usa government just felt like tone deaf i.e. the radical left mention was just weird imo especially knowing the show runner's politics. american imperialism as a plot is just sorta........ when green day american idiot started playing i simply had to laugh it was so bad... ALSO lady cursing so much totally took me out of it, it was like she just learned the words lol

ALSO... the ending was sooooo bad vergil would never like what and it felt like such a bad rep of his motives/action

while i didn't really care for the designs in this adaptation, i liked the characterization of dante at least in terms of silliness. storywise this felt boring and an appeal to the mainstream. i also didn't like how it was set in nyc.

the animation switch up was cute but just felt out of place. i thought the show was animated pretty nicely tho! altho i didn't like the 3d animation for the demons

overall its so bad

[msfbgraves]

God bless KK Legends for styling Ralph so very nicely. His hair is thick and fluffy instead of that severe and flat CK hairstyle. HIS CLOTHES ARE NOT FUCK*NG BLUE!!!! He is wearing flattering colors that compliment his skin tone. He looks younger than ever! He is absolutely cute and charming and sweet and THIS IS THE DANIEL THAT WE KNOW AND LOVE. Our totally loveable, pretty, kind-hearted boy!

FUCK the CK writers for treating this angel so poorly for so long. AND FOR PUTTING HIM IN SUCH UGLY BLUES!! Give this olive-skinned, good-looking guy jewel tones and earthy colors!

Never forget, never forgive!

Can't speak for the film, of course, but at least the trailer feels like: "this one's for Daniel." Because Cobra Kai never was even though they literally would not have had a fourth and fifth season without him, or a sixth, because no Sekai Taikai without Terry. I'm being overly dramatic now, but I feel like that trailer alone pulled Daniel out of some toxic relationship we've had to watch him suffer through. Three seconds with Jackie Chan and Ben Wong showing the character genuine respect and some positive styling and everything about Cobra Kai feels extra enraging. Like some asshole boyfriend saying: "You'll never do better than me, so be thankful for what you get, bitch." And that numbness that comes with it. "Maybe they're right. Maybe this is all I'm worth. I try, but I must not be good enough." And here is Jackie Chan with one simple line: "I came here for you", and Ben with one deeply respectful bow - not even Robby's weird tantrum or Demetri's "Can we skip this", no, a simple "Thank you for taking time for me", and it feels like the world saying: "No, you're beautiful and worth it and always were."

Look I'm glad Ralph doesn't seem to mind however poorly his character was treated, as he's fine with working with these three bullies again, but I feel like, for the briefest of moments, the character was done justice, and maybe I can choose to view the three films and this one without ever having to reference Cobra Kai. I mean, YES!!! still for Silverusso, but this constant focus on Daniel's darkest impulses it came with, even that can be tiring. Sure, OK, boy has a Murder Switch, but how he lives is kind and warm and respectful and I love, too, that maybe they offer him a way back into all the depth and warmth of what Miyagi gave him inside himself, without having Miyagi present. Because it seems hinted that even NYC will play a role, so Daniel's American roots will be an asset, something Miyagi didn't have. He can finally make it his, the way Miyagi also said he would: "One day, you teach karate your way", without that meaning the value of the tradition he pulls from is in any way diminished. Shimpo Miyagi took what he learnt from China and made it Okinawan, Nariyoshi Miyagi brought it to America and Daniel-san took it and made that his, another branch on the tree. Finally letting him evolve it, and himself, past his dependence on his sensei.

It's possible the film can't deliver all that but the roots are all there in the trailer and I'd love for Daniel to create and teach his own style because I simply feel it's richer where Johnny's style lacks depth. It's not tang soo do, and when left to be the sole sensei in S6 part 2, he had remarkably little insight to offer other than: "don't hold back." And I also love the potential of Mr Han telling Daniel, "Sensei, you have something our tradition doesn't, please teach us."

[meylovesmusic]

Thoughts on The Firstfruit by MARK of NCT 💚

Toronto's Window - chill, moving, and very explanatory of just Mark as a person imo. he's a storyteller through and through.

1999 - such a vibe omg, really showcases Mark's versatility as an artist, a different take on the more nostalgic sound we've been getting from kpop recently

Flight to NYC - really helps create the storytelling element Mark and his group mates have all been saying he'd do for years, sick production

Righteous - so fucking cool holy shit, love the heavier more electronic influence in the production, very neo but still very mark's brand of neo

Fraktsiya - still such a banger I'll never get over this track omg, "I'm NCT", love the variety in the production it adds great texture without being overstimulating, Lee Young Ji is a queen love her, Mark really does carry so much of modern sm on his back atp and props to him honestly for putting out such a good album

Raincouver - very chill very light but still very much a vibe I can understand Mark going for, play on words omg I love it, every person just has that one sing that reminds them of home and I think mark really made his own to express that feeling better

Loser - ooh acoustic?? fun, another play on words ok ok, oh no it's sad longing, but it still sounds so pretty and chill if you ignore the lyrics 😭, love hearing all the different tones and textures in his voice it's so satisfying to the ear, definitely very well executes the feeling of not wanting to let go of someone or something

Watching TV - a fun and chill bop with lots of variety in sound, crush and mark sound great together, the use of auto tune really helps emphasize the kinda vibe mark was going for, oh shit it's still sad boy but party boy but chill this is confusing but I love it

+82 Pressin' - eyyyy haechan feat. mark (line distribution goes wilddd), honestly this was such a good pre release, the lore and storytelling in the mv too??, hyuk sounds great as always, loved the choreo for this, Mark just has a way with writing lyrics like just randomly being able to fit in "dolphin" of all things is such a testament to his writing honestly, Mark sounded great too obv

200 - glad to see it on the full album honestly 💚, I don't think I've listened to this song enough considering how much I love everything about it, Mark really worked hard on this album for so long I'm glad he's getting his moment (I also know exactly what playlist of mine this fits on have to go add it now why didn't I do that earlier??)

Journey Mercies - all the little details in the track production holy shit, this is so dynamic??, ok vocals I see u mark, oh shit this hits you right on the heart, Mark bro I'll be your everything ok, sounds like a good hanging out in the park on a spring night at the beginning of summer when the sky is just clear enough and there's a slight breeze but it's still warm out song, but yeah loved the production on this!

Mom's Interlude - I honestly really liked that Mark added in so many bits like this that drew you back to reality with production that suited the mood of each break, I don't speak Korean but I bet Mark's mom is speaking facts

Too Much - starting off stripped back is such a statement in contrast to the title, also tying it all back to 1999? mark truly is a storyteller, what a great way to end the album, the production switch ok???!!?!?, this is probably the most someone could hear all the different sides of Mark in one song holy shit, this is a masterpiece omg

°•:.*°•

honestly this album is a whole experience, so props to Mark for working so hard on it! I definitely get the vibe that it wasn't just creative expression for him but also his chance to show nctzens all the sides of him (that's really putting yourself in a vulnerable position and as an artist I can relate a LOT)

°•:.*°•

albums I'd recommend to people who liked The Firstfruit: Indigo and RPWP by RM of BTS (immediately these were the kind of vibes and impact I personally felt), 19.99 by BOYNEXTDOOR (there's a similar pattern so far of albums with songs that just feel like entering a new chapter of life idk why)

°•:.*°•

congrats on the release, Mark! it turned out really well and I'm sure everyone will say their praises, but know that putting out music like this reaches your fans in a way that makes a difference 💚

[turtle-titan]

For the Mikey Ask Game!

8, 9, & 2, please!

-- from @deadlyflan

(signed because I can't ask from my tmnt sideblog and that's so cruel, truly.)

first off, mood. wish i could send asks from this blog.

secondly thank you for the ask!!

2. (mikey merch)

i have merch, it’s just not centered around mikey. like, i have a ninja turtles backpack and blanket, but it’s got all four turtles on it (both are for rise!). i did have a shirt with 2012 mikey on it that said “yeah im into fitness… fittin’ this pizza in my mouth!” but they made the base color lime green for some reason(???) and it was so ugly so i got rid of it :/

i also have toys! but again, it’s all four of the boys.

8. (favorite dynamics (non-family))

oooooooooh ok ok ok im such a fan of mikey and sydney in the underground episodes. mikey’s usually the panicky type but sydney getting jittery (especially with the low pitched voice) is so funny to me. mikey gets to play hero and be the brave one next to this intimidating monster.

ALSO @/love-killed-the-superstar WROTE A PIECE ON MIKEY AND ANGEL AND THEY’RE BESTIES IN MY HEAD NOW SORRY NOT SORRY

i’m also a big fan of mikey and leatherhead, especially in 2003 because leatherhead is a nerd. i will always love silly + nerd dynamics <3

for rise, i adore the first ep mikey meets foot recruit <3 the parallels of both of them trying to prove their independence and abilities will never not be funny. “yeah! she gets it!” lives in my head rent free forever

9. (my design)

YESSSS OK I GET TO TALK ABOUT MY MIKEY:

the iteration i have is called New York Cryptids and i made a blog about it (@new-york-cryptids)

it’s in order starting with the oldest art i made. you can probably see when i switched the style but also that it’s very rise-inspired lol

anyway!! he’s my little goober, im very excited to write him in NYC <3 i have big plans tehehe

[carbuckety]

I also think if they took the 'fraud' angle of dylan's early days a lot further then a complete unknown would have really lived up to its name even more. Please show me bob getting called out in the folk newspapers for hardcore copying his backstory from woody guthrie. Bob stealing dave van ronk's arrangement of house of the rising sun and only 'asking' him afterwards and dave no longer being able to play it because people accused him of copying bob. phil ochs and paul simon and their opposition/rivalries with him. Him taking a title that might have been ramblin' jacks and making it his.

Moreover they could focus on the culture of greenwich village at the time- simon and garfunkel were flops at first because they were from middle class nyc families. bob literally took woody's backstory because his own wasn't gritty enough. It would show very quickly how a lot of people perceived where folk music should come from and it wasnt people of bob's background. That would make the switch to electric even more meaningful, i think, because it could be so fragile to be a folk musician even if you didnt have the right look or aesthetic of it, no matter what pete was saying lol