CITY OF BLANK - IT DESERVES BETTER.
So it was implied recently by 66 (creator of City of Blank on Webtoons) on reddit that Webtoons had screwed over their recent return from a brief hiatus (one that they had arranged as they were moving and needed the time to focus on IRL stuff without deadlines looming over them, very valid). But it was confirmed in the episode description of their newest FP release:
So Webtoons has screwed over another creator in the advertising department. I don't want to point fingers, but we all know which series are constantly being prioritized in the banner reels while others are left buried to fend for themselves cough cough
Anyways, City of Blank is a webtoon that's been around for a loooong time. As in, Webtoons isn't even the first platform it's been hosted on, but this is the furthest it's come thanks to the Originals deal it got to be hosted exclusively on Webtoons. It's currently on its final season and while it got some brief amount of ad space at the premiere of its season, it since hasn't been given much ad space and even worst of all, not a single spot in the banner reel rotation since returning from its hiatus despite Webtoons promising 66 they would.
So now, unsurprisingly, City of Blank is struggling to be seen and read. It's a genuinely wonderful series with amazing thought-out writing (again this is a series that's been around for a while so you can tell the creator has put a lot of effort into refining the plot, which is a rarity on the platform these days) and the art is gorgeous and consistent, quite literally anime-quality.
Please, consider checking out City of Blank if you're looking for something new to read. It's a sci-fi series with loads of action, comedy, and character-driven subplots that delve into deeper topics like discrimination and social justice movements through a fantasy lens. If there's any series on the platform that's long overdue for recognition, attention, and opportunities for cool shit like printed books and TV adaptions, it's City of Blank.
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New article with more details (from Jason Schreier who first broke the story). If you can't see it, I'll copy the whole text under read more.
About 100 employees were laid off in total (8%) and one of the main reasons listed is "underperformance," "sharp drop in popularity" and "poor reception of Lightfall."
So you know when for the last year and a half content creators have been shitting and pissing on the game as a full-time job and the amount of negativity and ragebait content became the only thing to make content about for them? Well they certainly won't take the blame, but I will let it be known. These people either don't understand the influence they have or they do and they're doing it on purpose, and I don't know which of these two options is worse, but I am 100% confident that their campaign of rage and hate contributed to this.
You don't base your entire community around constantly hating everything about the only game you play (despite clearly not enjoying it anymore) and somehow avoid galvanising thousands and thousands of people into perceiving the game negatively. Imagine being employees who have barely worked there for 2 years and the only community reception they've seen is 24/7 hate train for their work and then they get fired because of "poor reception" and "drop in popularity." How can they not take that personally? I am absolutely devastated for these people who delievered a banger product and who were met with an unrelenting barrage of toxic gamer children which ended up having more sway over their boss than them.
Which brings me to the next bit and that's FUCK THE CEO. He is now my mortal enemy #1. I am projecting psychic blasts directly into his brain. What an absolute spineless coward who is more willing to bow down to fucking gamers than to protect his own employees. This is absolutely rage inducing because this has happened before. From the article from 2021 about the toxic culture at Bungie:
Reading this shit from the new article absolutely fucking sent me into blind rage because I immediately remembered this. Another instance of employees suffering because of comments on reddit. And because of toxic players. And proof that leadership is not protecting employees and is instead siding with players.
Match made in heaven. Asshole gamer content creators and asshole CEOs, all of whom sit at home on piles of money made from someone else's labour. I hope they all explode. None of the people that worked on this game deserve this.
Another article with an infuriating comment from the CEO:
In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept “the right people” to continue work on Destiny 2.
"Kept the right people." Really. Veteran composers weren't the right people? Die!
Bloomberg article in full:
Bungie’s decision to cut an estimated 100 jobs from its staff of about 1,200 followed dire management warnings earlier this month of a sharp drop in the popularity of its flagship video game Destiny 2.
Just two weeks ago, executives at the Sony-owned game developer told employees that revenue was running 45% below projections for the year, according to people who attended the meeting.
Chief Executive Officer Pete Parsons pinned the big miss on weak player retention for Destiny 2, which has faced a poor reception since the release of its latest expansion, Lightfall.
The next expansion, The Final Shape, was getting good — not great feedback — and management told those present that they planned to push back the release to June 2024 from February, according the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The additional time would give developers a chance to improve the product.
In the meantime, Parsons told staff Bungie would be cutting costs, such as for travel, as well as implementing salary and hiring freezes, the people said. Everyone would have to work together to weather the storm, he said, leaving employees feeling determined to do whatever was needed to get revenue back up.
But on Monday morning the news got worse: Dozens of staffers woke up to mysterious 15-minute meetings that had been placed on their calendars, which they soon learned were part of a mass layoff. Bungie laid off around 8% of its employees, according to documentation reviewed by Bloomberg. Bungie didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Employees who were let go will receive at least three months of severance and three months of Bungie-paid COBRA health insurance, although other benefits, such as expense reimbursements, ended Monday, sending some staff racing to submit their receipts.
Laid-off staffers will also receive prorated bonuses, although those who were on a vesting schedule following Sony Group Corp.’s acquisition of Bungie in January 2022 will lose any shares that weren’t vested as of next month.
The layoffs are part of a larger money-saving initiative at Sony’s PlayStation unit, which has also cut employees at studios such as Naughty Dog, Media Molecule and its San Mateo office.
TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a report Monday that “events over the last few days lead us to believe that PlayStation is undergoing a restructuring.”
PlayStation president Jim Ryan announced last month that he plans to resign.
Many of the layoffs at Bungie affected the company’s support departments, such as community management and publishing. Remaining Bungie staff were informed that some of those areas will be outsourced moving forward.
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I have a doctor's appointment coming up that's going to cost $339 out of pocket after insurance.
I have crochet scarves and a shawl/scarf I'm selling to try to put a dent in the price. They're comfortable and made with love.
Each one costs $50.00 + shipping (tb calculated).
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**I charge based on material costs and my time. My time is valuable most of all cause I'm disabled.
**Please message me if you'd like to purchase one
Thanks for looking 💙
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I'm not going to say we should take every single thing official Netflix accounts post as gospel, because obviously they are not run by the Duffer Brothers themselves.
But to be clear, these people are hired by Netflix and there's more to it than just random interns scheduling posts. The people running these accounts are not the same people designing the posts made there, just like the people designing those posts have higher ups telling them what to do/not do in terms of the content they are creating. And there are plenty more levels that go beyond that, which eventually does lead to the Duffers and producers of the show, who do have a stake in how the show is promoted on a basic level to best align with their intentions and all the revelations still to come.
It is common knowledge that the Duffers work with Netflix marketing directly on a consistent basis to get their vision across, and that carries out in promotion with posters, merchandise, social media, etc., because it's really important in ST case (with it being a show made by nerds that love easter eggs), that they foreshadow what is still to come outside of the show itself.
When it comes to social media, the core purpose of those accounts is to encourage engagement for Netflix's user base, ideally ensuring they tune in to whatever is being promoted (and more), but it’s also more than that, in that it’s even more based on data and other factors.
What this leads to is the people in those less major decision-making roles, like graphic designers, simply being advised what to create, based on the information and content they are given to work with.
And so these accounts going from promoting byler subtly for years, to blatantly posting about it post-s5, is actually very, very intentional, going beyond a simple Netflix intern. It’s orchestrated by those in management positions, being advised by those in the ST production to do things a certain way, so that when all is said and done, we are able to look back and find tiny little things that point to it.
Byler can't be something they NEVER talked about even once on social media, only to have them end up being endgame with them posting about it forever afterwards when it's all said and done. It doesn't work like that, at least not in ST case. We're talking about a production that costs hundreds of millions to make, as well as being the most talked about mainstream series of our generation.
They have an obligation to make their story feel not only satisfying on its own, but to also promote the show in a way that makes the viewer feel this whole well-rounded experience, outside of the show itself as well.
And so when ST came out in summer 2022 and Netflix Geeked was making posts about it non-stop, that wasn't a rogue, low-paid Netflix intern doing whatever they wanted. That was multiple people with a job given a task and following through with it at their advisers discretion. Regardless of where it ended up, it started at the top with the Duffers informing higher ups in marketing that Byler is something that will happen, along with other revelations that they want to inform marketing about, so they can take the steps to plan ahead and create content that matches the Duffer's vision, most often to act as a foreshadowing device for the story still unraveling.
Remember when Netflix Geeked made a post acknowledging that Will the Wise drawing in El's room back in s3?? A very well known byler easter egg that only we know about??? That wasn't some ga intern watching the show once and them spontaneously coming up with content to create related to that drawing and posting about it themselves. That was very likely someone associated with the show giving suggestions to marketing, with a few of them being very incriminating in relation to byler, but with most being casual in relation to the show overall.
Just like I said in this post about how Noah didn't tweet about byler or mention it multiple times at cons unprompted bc he was feeling quirky. He was being advised to...
And look what Netflix did to that tweet Noah posted that was clearly a stunt in an of itself.? They broadcasted it and made a cheesy ass edit out of it... And it's bc several people behind the scenes were advised to make content like that specifically.
I mean, if you actually look at how social media promotes byler (if and when it does), it's arguably in the exact way that the Duffers want it to be promoted?. Just enough. Not too little. Not too much. I would argue if the Duffers had no say whatsoever in how the show was promoted, then we'd either be seeing byler constantly or we wouldn't see them at all, instead we see social media sort of dance around it, which tells me they are following the exact approach the Duffers themselves follow... because they were obviously given the instruction to.
And so seeing an account like UK Netflix, an account that as of recent has really went all out with posting Queer content since Heartstopper released, has also notably made really incriminating posts about byler over the years, but especially as of recent. And that's in large part because of what I've stated, but also based on data.
If higher ups in marketing at Netflix know about byler, then they are very likely pushing people lower on the payroll, doing more simple tasks like graphic design and social media management, to make connections to ST with other shows like Heartstopper, Sex Education, Young Royals, etc. And this is because if byler IS going to end up being this huge Queer love story, data is telling them to make these connections sooner than later, so that the eventual revelation will be a smooth transition amongst other content just like it. This works in Netflix's favor at the end of the day, which is the whole point of all of this.
Not saying you should take the most casual of Netflix posts as byler endgame proof if that's what you're asking. But to say that these accounts have NO association with the Duffer's and ST directly, therefore we shouldn’t even appreciate anything they post if it points to byler, is sort of over-simplifying things.
It's not like s5 is gonna drop and all of these interns are going to be like OHHH okay now i'm a byler so i'll post about it... Going into s5 they're going to be making some very side eye posts and it isn't going to have anything to do with them being an intern without any say in things, its gonna be about them getting a task list and following through with it bc it's their job.
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