#thinkpieces

[degloved]

from katniss' perspective, the 75th hunger games & the 3rd quarter quell are all about her disobedience (and peeta's to some extent, but most of all that was her doing.) being that this was the only perspective we've had for years and years and years, that's the only assumption the rest of us could've made too. and sotr, against all odds, continues to ruthlessly add context to so many aspects of the series, whether we like it or not. the inclusion of so many known names and faces is something i've seen criticized and accused of being fanservice/nostalgia fuel, which... spectacularly misses the point.

beetee has, up until then, been a victor with known rebel tendencies. he's already being punished for that in sotr, let alone after. we don't know the details of mags' and wiress' involvement with the rebellion attempt in sotr, but we last see them tired, hurt, and visibly post-torture. johanna mason won her games by doing nothing offensive at all (...for all we know...) and yet her whole family has been wiped out—why? what did she do in the games, after the games? before the games? annie, who was herself reaped for the quarter quell, won when a huge wave drowned all the remaining tributes—think about it: is that what the capitol likes? so many "boring" deaths in one fell swoop, is that entertaining tv? of course not. what happened in that arena that caused this potential error in the system that ended up being played off as annie's great strategy?

point being, there are so many things we don't know but can possibly infer about the pre-quell lives of these specific tributes & how they may have rebelled, incited rebellion, or attempted to undermine snow/the capitol. yes, this quell was rigged. yes, snow did this largely to punish katniss in that moment in time specifically. no, the selection of her fellow tributes was not happenstance. (neither was, for that matter, the selection of the careers random: gloss and cashmere, siblings, beloved of the capitol and certainly the pre-determined winners.)

snow's fatal mistake here was not being able to let the sleeping dogs lie; he saw the chance to punish everyone who pissed him off, took it, and paid very dearly for the arrogant stupidity it takes to put panem's smartest and deadliest and angriest and rebelliest eggs in one tiny horrible basket.

[ruporas]

realizing it’s mutual (ID in alt)

[despazito]

the most culturally important theme park in the united states has an entire attraction dedicated to animatronic presidents including robot trump

[mizandria]

people make fun of the "oh you only hate her because she's a WOMAN" crazy feminist mentality but yeah actually you guys do only hate her because she's a woman a lot of times. for every hated female tv character there's ten male tv characters who are a million times worse and still given at least the "intriguing morally grey character" treatment if not straight up praise. for every hated female celebrity in real life there's one hundred famous men who have done worse and don't get half the hate she does. for every hated female politician, for every hated female historical figure, for the women you know in real life and on and on.

[prokopetz]

Look, I'm a big fan of genre emulation as a design goal in tabletop RPGs, and that's definitely an area where a lot of popular games could stand for some rigorous criticism, but we're not going to get anywhere if we keep pretending that the entire canon of Western fantasy fiction is functionally identical to The Lord of the Rings. If I see an analysis of Dungeons & Dragons through the lens of genre emulation that doesn't even mention fucking Conan the Barbarian – much less any more recent sword and sorcery media – I'm going to assume there's nothing of value here, and I've never been wrong yet.

[lavender-gayz]

'glinda, is it true you were her FRIEND?' loving the thought of there being staunch believers in glinda's straightness in oz who over-identify with her relationship with fiyero and feel they have to defend her from accusations of lesbian behaviour. is it an open secret that madame morrible made everyone at shiz sign NDAs? does some eagle-eyed citizen swear they saw elphaba caressing glinda's face at the top of the palace and produce a blurry sketch as proof? is glinda overheard softly singing 'i'm not her girl' to herself one day, thereby sparking hushed but lively discussions in small gaylinda circles?

[that-satireguy]

Im not even gonna lie, ik this I'm kind of an extreme case, but still.

I did not live through 14 years of brutal misogyny, having my voice and education stripped from me, being essentially taught that my life amounted to serving my future husband, carrying his babies and then i would likely still end up in hell because thats where most women end up.

I did not get almost sold off as a fucking child bride because I was too 'rebellious' (masc in mannerisms).

Did not get hit with plates, slapped, beaten and whipped on a weekly basis for some western assholes who's most extreme experience of misogyny was someone saying you hit like a girl to lecture me on my 'male privilege'.

SHUT UP you fucking dimwit. You absolute ignorant imbecile. Theres no way you can claim to understand cultural differences and the oppressive and coercive nature of AGAB and not understand the depths of misogyny that trans men will experience, and will *mostly* follow them into adulthood regardless of how well they pass.

[degloved]

we all love to yell at gale about the exploding parachutes that killed prim and all those children. i've never seen beetee brought up, at least not prior to sotr, despite him masterminding that particular invention.

his boy was as good as dead when his name got drawn from the pool. it was not a tribute, not in the way all the other children are, it was an execution. a slow, tormentous one. here, ampert lost—had to lose—his personhood in the eyes of his father. he was a dead boy walking, but one that could be fashioned into a weapon / tool. a means to an end. so, beetee had to compartmentalize. he was no longer a parent, he was a rebel.

one has to wonder, when he prototyped those parachutes, when he finalized them, when he let them fly—were those children also weapons / tools? were they also a means to an end? children, panem's persistent collateral for the greater good, no matter the cause.

did beetee see ampert in all those dead kids?

was that what finally sealed their fate?

[pseudophan]

them acknowledging that people perceive them as a couple <3

we've come so far, i'm so emotional about it... even if it is objectively hilarious the way we're reacting to this, because like yeah obviously the builders who are working on the house of two gay men in their thirties know they're a couple. even if they actually weren't they would assume that, because i don't think the average london builder is out here writing think pieces on the internet about how actually friends can live together and share a life together and that doesn't mean they have to be fucking and you guys should stop putting labels on their relationship :/

[ilynpilled]

no amount of anti nuke evil war and death machine lizard propaganda will ever get me to turn on dragons bc im a cat person

[knxfesck]

for some reason I can never take those heartwarming diaspora industry speeches seriously. Like that star navigation metaphor was cool and all but I'm not getting how your mother escaping being killed by US bombs in vietnam and you working for nasa uh. reconcile with eachother.

[lady-raziel]

and alright, here's my last (let's hope) and boldest take yet. lots of people have been talking about the level of staff (around 25-ish people) at watcher, and whether downsizing that number could have been a potential avenue of reducing costs before just jumping to a subscription model. at first i was like yeah, i'm not sure that there needs to be 18 people involved in making a lets play. i was in the fucking trenches in the unus annus days and i'm still amazed how markiplier and ethan nestor managed to put out pretty well edited videos every day for a whole year with only a handful of editors and a couple people filming. what unus annus was trying to do and what watcher is trying to do are obviously pretty different, but the point is that you really don't need a whole crew of people to make lots of different types of content and do it well.

i still think there probably doesn't need to be a whole production crew involved with the creation of some of the simpler types of content watcher puts out. however, i don't think the size of the staff is the real problem. in fact, i think the staff of watcher probably should have been larger.

let me explain. if i begrudgingly go to one of my most detested websites (linkedin. *bleeegh*) and look up watcher, i can see that pretty much every person on staff is in a creative role of some sort by their own admission. at first glance, its like, oh, that makes sense. they're making creative products, it's natural that they should all be in creative roles. however, once you think about it for a little longer from a business perspective, that fact is really concerning.

after all, by watcher's own definition, this is a production studio. this is a company. So in this sea of creative roles, who's doing corporate planning? Who's managing finance? Who's doing payroll? Or brand outreach? Or human-freaking-resources??? you can hire outside groups for all this. i'm aware. but those services cost a lot of money to contract too. i'm just finding it concerning that there is pretty much no one on full time staff that is there to at least do some of this stuff. if watcher wants to be a big-boy company, that's fine, but that means you have to pay some people to be part of your company to do the not-fun business stuff like accounting. or resource management.

if they want to be a real company, they should actually have a lot more people on staff to deal with all the non-creative parts of running a company. even if they contract out most of it, you want at least a few people that are your people and don't actually work for someone else. that's how you don't get screwed over or end up in a contract you can't get out of.

which leads me to my last train of thought. like, as i go through the staff of watcher and look at what they do, it really seems like one of the ONLY people who's job it was to look at the business side of things WAS steven lim in his role as CEO. and thinking about that, i'm like god, can you imagine?? here's a guy who just wants to create cool stuff too but as one of the few people who has to think about the realities of Brand and the Business, HE has to be the one to burst the bubble. He as CEO has to say no to people and make decisions to make sure the company survives. In a group of creative people who just want to make things they're interested in, no expense spared, he was probably the guy who had to stay at least a little tethered to reality.

I'm not about to say that steven lim isn't to blame here. everyone involved in making the decisions that have led up to this point is part of this. but shit, it absolutely sucks to have to be the person at the end of the brainstorm session when everyone is coming up with their best ideas and to have to say "guys, i don't think any of these things are possible unless we make some big decisions."

is that what happened at watcher HQ? i don't know. at this point, with radio silence from everyone, speculation is all we've got. but if you follow the thread of a bunch of creatives striking out on their own to make their own business after being burned by their former employer, despite not knowing really how to run a business, and then only hiring fellow creative people and not other people who actually run business things... well, all of this starts to make slightly more sense in WHY none of watcher's actions make sense. everybody wants to stick it to the man and be their own boss with their own business, until it actually comes to the hard parts of doing that. at that point people start to realize, "oh, maybe some of the things that existed at my old job were there for a reason, actually."

all this is why lots of creatives striking out and starting their own businesses don't work in the end. they're thinking about in terms of creative products still, when they really need to be focusing more on the "business" part of the "creative business." it's sad. it sucks. it destroys a lot of good ideas and good people, because one person in every company like that has to be the one who thinks practically. could this have been avoided if watcher had been hiring people all along to manage this business and not just adding people to add to the creative output? maybe. even then it might not have been enough to curb other predictable impulses that led us down this path.

i feel bad for watcher, and i feel bad for the fandom. but i can't help but wonder if this was always the kind of situation we were going to end up in, and we just missed some of the warning signs because ALL of us were thinking, "well, that could never happen to us. we're different. not the Ghoul Boys."

[alishasboe]

everybody wants to post about how hot and cool sayid is....... but nobody wants to post about how interesting he is or his arc or his tragedies or his flaws or how the writers let him down or how nonsensical his arc becomes or how he deserved better or how he's the victim of racist writing

[oddlittlestories]

Thinking about Cuddy.

House is a genius. I’ve written about how Wilson is equally talented.

But Cuddy is, too.

One of three(?) female deans of medicine in the country. One of the youngest. And every time the spotlight turns onto her, she does things no one else can do.

She has a kid by herself. Wilson points out that a man in her position would have a wife, two nannies AND two assistants. (She tries to hire an assistant and the job is so demanding they quit regularly.)

She consistently gets things for the hospital no one else can get and is the trump card only she can play. In 5 to 9, she gets (I think) 7%, which is far and away better than her opponent, her board, or anyone else but her thought she could get.

In season 1, iirc it’s implied SHE brings in Vogler, and she’s the only person who can stop him when he starts tearing the entire hospital apart to get at House.

In season 3, she ends the nonsense with Tritter.

She’s also the only person who can and will keep House on her team (no one will hire House or Foreman, other than her). And she’s the only person who can wrangle him, canonically (I disagree with canon, but Cameron does hand the reigns back to Cuddy with this exact statement). Moreover, she makes House an ASSET. In 5 to 9, she explains that PPTH is on the cutting edge, which includes their world famous ddx department.

And! Despite the fact that House routinely accuses her of being an administrator and not a doctor anymore, she still successfully treats patients from time to time. She helps ddx the babies in Maternity. She saves her patient’s baby in Fetal Position. In s5 Joy, she clocks that something is wrong with the mom when no one else does, and pushes until the diagnosis is made and saves both their lives. She figures out the diagnosis in Joy to the World at the same time as House, and is so kind and respectful to the folks caring for the baby, yet still makes sure she gives the baby what she needs.

I have to admit that I don’t remember s7-8 well enough to go through those, but it’s clear to everyone that Cuddy is a great doctor. Much like Wilson, she gets dismissed in part bc she gets too emotionally involved. And it’s also clear that no one really understands her work or how good she is at it. Everyone only sees their part, and she has to see all of it and make it all fit together, making sure everyone gets what they need. Her ability to flip between caring and hardass undermines her ability to seem tough, but it’s also necessary. If she couldn’t care, she wouldn’t take such good care of her people or patients. If she couldn’t toughen up, she’d let people walk all over her. It’s a unique style, and not without its pitfalls, but it’s all hers.

And like Wilson, she doesn’t get seen as a genius. In fact, she barely gets acknowledged as smart at all. A lot of her successes come from charisma and social intelligence. And those things often get dismissed in women, especially women who care as deeply and obviously as Cuddy does. The ability to juggle so many things gets dismissed as “basically being well-organized,” and also, no one really SEES what she does. It sometimes takes her a minute, but she reads people like THAT. She figures out and outwits that sociopathic drug dealer. She sees through most of House’s lies. She often settles with plaintiffs because of guilt, but she also often talks them out of suing the hospital in the first place.

Cuddy is just as good, and just as brilliant, at her job as House and Wilson. But she doesn’t get seen as a genius anymore than Wilson does.

[st-just]

It is kind of funny that 'boost military spending up to the levels the Americans are demanding' is now a universally accepted priority among the Canadian political class (and even the populace ime) but this has occurred entirely in tandem with the vibe shifting from 'we need to pull our weight as lackeys strategic partners' to 'we need to prepare for a potential war of national defense'.

[presidentkamala]

Can we AT LEAST get some real down dirty muckraking journalism out of this. If this is what we're doing. Journos dont go undercover into meatpacking factories like they used to smh