on a certain level. for me. being a fan of an nhl team is not about being a fan of good hockey. it's about, fundamentally, being deeply obsessed with a specific group of coworkers in a hockey themed work environment
Publishing has always been a fucking nightmare, but now it’s a layer of hell. It’s not enough that writers be good at what they do. Writers have to maintain an active social media presence and cultivate a following. Be available.
They have to be conventionally attractive enough to look good enough to see on a screen, aesthetically pleasing, kind, funny, up-to-date on trends, socially aware but not so controversial that they turn off a brand from California from slapping their discount code on a video promoting a book.
They have to do all of this with no media training, with little help from the companies that are supposed to be doing this for them.
Of course, a lot of this isn't possible for say, the 40-something mother of two who teaches English at a school and writes on the side. She’s boxed out of an already complex industry that already has enough walls.
On some level, I think authors have always marketed themselves a little, but we’ve reached such a crazy point where we’re demanding the author become the influencer. Accessibility in publishing has narrowed from an inch to a sliver. And that inch was hard enough to get in as is.
Dream is amazing. He’s working 15 hours on coding, helping Sapnap with his thumbnails, helping George during his situation, going Detective Dream mode, calling out fake bitches on twitter. I don’t even think he sleeps anymore
he’s transcended the need for sleep 😌 (no he hasn’t please someone make sure that boy is getting his rest)
okay so i was thinking of a joke earlier about how in DPDC Amity Park's slogan "a great place to live" is not only city propaganda but also the city lording it over the rest of America for being normal. But then I remembered that, despite how many DCU Cities with heroes in it there are, the amount of cities in America without heroes still far outnumber the amount of cities in America WITH heroes.
So I did a little digging so the joke would still land. Something most heroes have in common is that they operate in major cities. What makes a major city? I found that the general consensus is that the population is roughly over or around a million. THEN I looked up the populations of cities in the DCU that I thought of off the top of my head. So Gotham, Metropolis, Starling City, Central City, Jump City. All of them ranked up to millions in population (most of them were in the tens of millions).
Amity Park's wikipedia describes it as being similar to specifically Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Philadelphia's Population: 1.576 million as of 2021
Chicago's Population: 2.697 million as of 2021
San Francisco: 815,201 as of 2021
Whiiich means that Amity Park if we take that from canon, is probably a major city. There are approximately 19,000 cities in America with probably less than a hundred that are major cities. Adding the DCU major cities wouldn't skew the data too much.
Which MEANS that I can make the joke that Amity Park's "great place to live" is not only just typical city propaganda, but also its Amity Park lording it over the other major cities for being one of the only major cities that doesn't have problems bad enough to warrant a superhero or a vigilante. Cue stage left the Fentons and Phantom :)
Amity Parkers were probably SO proud that they didn't need a superhero. They didn't have to worry about things like 'world ending threats' and 'super-powered individuals' and 'staggering property damage'. And then enter Fentons.
It also could be used as an excuse for why nobody took notice to Amity Park getting ghosts if folks like me aren't huge fans of the notion of a media blackout via Tucker, Technus, or the US Government. Or if you want to keep Amity Park as its urban city self. Amity Park's news on ghosts gets drowned out in a week because there's news on more popular, well-known cities going on every other day. The shit going on in Amity Park is every other major city's regular Tuesday and it gets filtered as such.
red bull: daniel’s bad habits from mclaren are fixed, he did well in the sim, and his tire test was so good that we immediately knew he was ready to be in a car.
alpha tauri & yuki: daniel’s feedback on the car has been instrumental, and he performed so well in difficult race conditions even though he didn’t have any upgrades and had some bad luck.
rando twitter user who doesn’t have the data, didn’t know liam lawson’s name three weeks ago, and constantly insults the way red bull quickly drops drivers who don’t perform: they’re only letting him drive for pr even though he’s a washed up failure.
Parents of a totally really real couple meeting for the first time on national primetime television is totally normal. As is announcing it ahead of time, as with every game she’s gone to.
au where being in the prison realm makes gojo hallucinate different made up scenarios that makes him happy (being with geto, his students, etc) but they always end abruptly, leaving gojo to realize that he's still back in the pr and it was all an illusion.. and so when he actually gets out, he has moments where he struggles in believing what’s happening is actually real
bnf! crowley possible jobs i have in mind: accounting (drag queen), accounting (publisher of indie books), accounting (actual accounting), possible interior design???? just for the queer option, maybe some type of stylist....... 👀 no clue you dont have to aswer but my curiosity has been peaked and your fic is rlly nice!!!
ok but i LOVE the idea of him having worked a thousand different jobs and being a bizarrely talented jack of all trades! it goes so well with the way he’s always changing his style in the show :)
Totally nothing weird about that hug being photographed from every side, while agents are waiting, and with even fucking Mastercard promoting it, while Michael/David who are just besties can’t take a pic together. Totally normal ;)
We went from “still just getting to know each other” to full on fanfic courtesy people mag in exactly 14 days. Do you think this could mean it will be short lived? Seems to be moving fast.
I don’t know what is going to happen because I don’t know what her goal is beyond simple publicity for the movie and 1989 tv (and just in general being seen dating a man which is important for her image and for selling music) and we’ll have to wait to see how it goes. I still stand by it likely to be short lived but whether that means November or March, your guess is good as mine. I think I’m currently leaning more in the March direction as being most likely, but it could be tomorrow or it could be forever or whatever she said in Blank Space.
In case anyone’s keeping count, I also have pretty much settled on all of this being well planned out in advance, including his appearance at the July KC tour in the first place. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been planned for a very long time, just like Matty was.
1) have them linked publicly (for Travis it was the concert and friendship bracelet digits story). Sit back and watch the reaction, and give it a bit of a push in the right direction. With joe this was all done retroactively, after their relationship was “accidentally” leaked we found out they hung out in Oct. With Matty this was done over the course of late 2022-early 2023.
2) soft launch it by announcing an appearance ahead of time to get all eyes on it, while planting stories that they’ve hung out a few times, to establish a timeline back into the summer (august 1ish). Have her publicly meet his mom and get her approval. Again, with joe this was done retroactively, where we found out she had pined over him all summer and their anniversary was sept 28, and we’ve even now got a hook up on Aril 29. For Matty, she met his mom in stage 1), then this stage was her announcing the break up on Matty’s bday, and then planting stories that they were dating, that he’d go to Nash and there’d be PDA, and then stories that she thought maybe he was the one who got away, and had quietly been in love with him for almost a decade.
3) launch, but keep it casual. There’s still time to back out if things go poorly. People have time to get used to it and talk about “are they or aren’t they” serious, and you can control the narrative via media outlets and inside sources to set people up the way you want them to lean, all without even having them seen together more than once or twice. Set up a casual photo of them that seems to taken without their knowledge in a private moment. (Balcony with joe, private club with Matty, after party in KC with Travis.) This is far as she got with Matty then she cut her losses. Or I guess you could argue they had spilled into step 4). It’s a spectrum. With joe, again this was done retroactively but also the summer of 2017, no one knew how serious they were until secret sessions/rep came out.
4) hard launch during movie opening weekend. WE ARE HERE. For Matty this was probably supposed to happen during speak now release. But who knows. For joe it was reputation’s release.
5) Optional: push things hard until enough people seem to be generally getting tired of it. I assume this is next with Travlor. No idea how long this will last. Days or weeks I think. With joe this wasn’t a big deal because of the privacy narrative. No one could get tired of something they never saw (though they could get bored of it which was ok at that stage but boredom is the opposite of what she wants now.) With Travis I think this stage will be more of an important thing. If you go back to Calvin, this stage was most of their relationship.
6) cool things down so then people talk about “are they or aren’t they still together?” This was a constant with joe. I think this was just at the end for Calvin and the answer was they weren’t still together.
7) relaunch so everyone is excited to see them again. Steps 6-7 happened a lot with Joe naturally because of the privacy narrative. Will travlor get to this stage? I think so but it will be much accelerated. Like nothing for a week and people will wonder. Then, bang, she’s there again. Something like that.
8) ongoing: periodically lightly escalate the seriousness of the relationship. We’re already in this stage and it will continue. There is current chatter about her house shopping in KC. The usual (she actually BOUGHT a house one time for a man. And remember her Scottish castle, and how she and joe were constantly buying a London house for 6 years including furniture shopping right before they broke up?) And there will be constant talk of settling down and getting engaged.
9) and on and on until it ends. We could zoom through these stage over the next 2 weeks, or in seemingly endless loop of stages 6-9 for two years. No way to know until it ends or they get married, have 10 kids and teach them how to dream.
10) optional: black swan event. All bets are off.
I think it’s likely she’ll go to a couple of more games, and be seen spending as much time with him as reasonably possible before her next tour date. They need to “get to know each other” and “enjoy this fun honeymoon stage while they’re both smitten” while she can. Keep in mind her SA tour section is only 3 weeks long, and he could even potentially go to Argentina on his off week, so that’s not really enough time for the “their busy schedules were too much” excuse. Possible but you know not as likely. Then she’s off for for a couple of months again. Imagine the fun they can have over Christmas. We’ll skip the island vacation around new years or star-studded New Year’s party this time because he’ll still be playing football, so imagine her at playoff games. She’s getting literal millions of dollars in almost free publicity from this, and no matter how many people want to say she’s getting negative attention or being over-exposed or whatever, I don’t see it that way at all. It’s going very very well. All for the price of a few hours of her time and some jet fuel. So, like I didn’t see any reason for her to end it with joe because he was serving his purpose, I see no reason for this to end. Until she has reached her unknown-to-us goal.
There is a lot I can’t see or know, so these are just my best guesses based on what we’ve seen so far and what I see on their schedule for the next few months, and of course, my belief that this relationship not real.
Here's my opinion. Actually, we can start with facts:
I don't wanna see this movie. I'm tired of hearing about this movie. Everything I've learned about this movie has been against my will. It's been 2 years of pre-release fatigue. I'm tired of the PR stunts, I'm tired of the obvious photo ops, I'm tired of the press leaks, I'm tired of the on set leaks, I'm tired of the "anonymous sources", I'm tired of all of it. Any interest I might've had in this movie doesn't exist anymore.
This film went into production in 2020 during a time when every single studio was panicked and desperate to figure out how they were gonna survive the pandemic. With theaters being closed, everything shut down, them losing money to streaming services. And the PR campaign for this film, which started during casting, is a direct reflection of that [studios being panicked].
Again, the budget is small, it's a $20 million dollar budget, it's not a ton of money in movie-money, and they're obviously supplementing that small budget with a never-ending PR campaign to make up for it. (edit: it went over budget to 30-40M! All the more reason for the excessive PR).
On to my opinion:
1 - Harry and Olivia are obviously in a PR relationship.
2 - The movie is not gonna do well. It's gonna tank.
3 - Florence comes off looking great. I don't know her that well, I've seen her in a few movies, she's not my generation, but whenever I see her mentioned, whether she's being slighted or supported in the PR campaign, I think she comes off looking fine. Love that she's also pretty silent in terms of press. This film wrapped a year ago (edit: it was 2 years ago) and she's probably moved on to better things at this point, and will probably just do her minimal press, which is fine. She, despite being the lead actress of this film, does not have as much at stake as the stunt queens, Harry and Olivia do.
4 - General opinion on Olivia Wilde: I'm more the same age. I remember back when she was just a rich girl socialite in NY. I love that she's into acting and into directing. But, I know she directed this film....I dated a director one time, and when his film went into post-production I didn't see that man for months because he was locked in an editing bay and would not come out for air. This chick [Olivia] was on tour with Harry Styles 2 months after production wrapped, I don't know how that worked. (edit: it was 6 months but she still fucked off to England the day after production wrapped, and the film needed extensive edits and was delayed so yeah...she was not "directing" anything really). Also, as a director she is behind the camera role, but her PR team are dead set on over-saturating her in media as the face of this title. Even putting her out more so than the actual actors in the film. Which is weird. There's a word for it, I can't figure it out (edit: I can, it's narcissism. You're welcome.). She's all up in the video, all up in the studio, all up in the radio...it's like...just say this is your vanity project and move on.
5 - Harry Styles: there is no way in god's green earth that a role that Shia Labeouf was cast in could be back-filled by Harry Styles. Harry Styles is youth marketing - that is simply it.
6 - Shia Labeouf is right. I'm sure that when Shia quit this film the studio was desperate and panicked, and went into a tailspin and said 'figure out a way to save it or we're pulling the plug'. And just like Shia has a video of Olivia begging him to stay, I'm sure Harry has a video of Olivia begging him to join this film.