#what would “commercial” even mean in this context?

[theabigailthorn]

my TV series pitch just got rejected by a production company who said it's too funny and not commercial enough, which, frankly, BEST FEEDBACK EVER??!!!

#no to be fair though some companies specialise in comedy and some don't and these guys don't so I get it #Love that my writing isn't commercial enough though lmao #what would “commercial” even mean in this context? #while the characters are running for their lives they stop and go “I'D LIKE TO THANK THIS EPISODE'S SPONSORS LOVEHONEY” #love that I'm funny apparently? I thought I was just blunt haha

[shocymer]

For Never to Forever

"What if the illustrator of your newest novel covers is actually your highschool enemy in the past?"

Pairing : Yunho × afab!reader

Word counts : 3.2k

Contents & warning : highly suggestive mdni! , fluff (maybe), college art students! Yunho, novelist! reader, short tempered Yunho (not in bad way), Hongjoong as reader manager, cursed words here and there, sloppy kisses, slightly dry humping, enemies to lovers.

× Happy Yunho Day! ×

Time is ticking like its always supposed to do, but Yunho couldn’t stop looking at it. The hour hand has only moved maybe a quarter of millimeter from its original position, made him annoyed even more. How could it not be, he just let his impulsive thoughts win over his professionalism few hours ago.

Well, It all happened this morning. He went to the nearest café where the appointment was made via email last night.

Sipping a cup of warm expresso that fulfilled his taste bud while waiting for his client. The café ambiance was so cozy, it plays as complementary role to his mood lifting. And the main reason of his happy self was, he got a commission for a commercial purpose the first time ever in his entire life. Plus, it’s not just an ordinary client, the request came from a well known novelist.

From : Eternal Sunshine

To : Me (Tyudongi99)

Subject : Commission Request For Novels Covers

Hello Tyudongi-nim.

I’m Eternal Sunshine, one of the novelist from Break The Wall Book Company Publisher. I really interested with your art. Would you like to work on my next novels cover? If you are interested, we can set up an appointment to discuss the further details.

I would be very grateful if you willing to accept my request.

Sincerely,

Eternal Sunshine

That’s the content of an email that Yunho received the night before. Kicking on his feet, he couldn’t believe his own eyes. He’s just a 3rd year college students that majoring in art. Never expected that opening commission on a whim would bring him to this. And then, he sent a quick replied as soon as possible that leading to today’s meeting.

“Oh hello, Tyudongi-nim.” A lady pulled her hand over to Yunho. She’s accompanied by a not so tall, with blonde lock man who’s standing next to her.

He shook your offering hand politely, “Hello, uhm perhaps Eternal Sunshine-nim?”

You nodded, throwing a simple smile before sitting right across to him. He’s staring at you closely while immersed in conversation. The way your hazel orb getting lighter when the sun beam hits them or the way your dainty lips curled when you smile occasionally. Somehow, all of it reminded him with the past. Wait wait, his past?!

He blinked his eyes rapidly, couldn’t believe what he just thought earlier. Your voice became a mere chant that drowning with the café hustle and bustle sounds at this very moment. He knew exactly who you are after the pile of his memories collided like it’s clicking on the switch inside of him.

“��so that’s the concept. I really-” a loud scrape noise coming from his chair was heard, interrupted your words. “-want you to..”

You turned your gaze out of the concept papers and found him staring intently towards you. Did I say something wrong? Am I offended him or something? Those questions played over and over on your mind nicely for solid three seconds, before his sarcastic laugh startled you.

“Well well, after all those great time. Now you’re asking this ‘going to be no where artist’ to work on your covers.” He crossed his arms while still looking down at you.

Your manager had the same reaction as you, dropping the jaw for a mere seconds. Then started to talk, craving for more contexts. “Ahem.. Tyudongi-nim, I’m sorry but what do you mean exactly?”

He snorted in annoyance, “She never appreciate my works on the first place to begin with.”

Oh great, It’s been a long time for your manager, Kim Hongjoong was facing a person like this. He took a deep breath, rolled the sleeve of his shirt to the elbow, before intended to give a long nice talk. “I deeply understand if her previous words probably hurt you, I’ll apologize on her be-”

“Ah right! Now I remember!” You spurted out, interrupting your manager just like adding gasoline to the fire in this situation. Both male gazes fixed on you. “Jeong Yunho right?” You got up from your seat, trying to match his height, and of course you can’t. He’s much taller than you, but at least you got those spirit to match him.

You snapped your fingers, before pointing at him. “Surprisingly, your attitude didn’t change at all.” Then, you poked on his chest with the same finger, “if you smart enough, you can figure it out by yourself why I said that to you.”

Furrowed the eyebrows while his face turning red as a boiled lobster, he slapped your hand away. How could he figured it out, if you’re the one who’s started to pick a fight with him in the high school. He thought to himself while his eyes still pierced into yours alternately left and right. The rationality went out of his head completely, and only anger was left behind. Hurting on his own ego, he grabbed the concept papers unwittingly then shoving it in his own bag before barging out of the café furiously.

Hongjoong and you exchanged glances after all of the ruckus. He ruffled his hair as if he still digested about what the actual fuck just happen, “you need to find another illustrator, like- how’d you find a weird artist with bad temper? Plus, he just left right away?!” You shrugged, giving him an expression like “I didn’t expect that either.” While tidying up less than a half of the papers left.

“But I think, you don’t need to worry about that.” You assured him that still yapping nonstop in the background. However, you knew Yunho so well despite his unreasonable hatred towards you.

Back to the square one in the young male artist’s flat who’s regretted it all. He just sent an apology email to your manager, after reading the concept papers thoroughly. Stopping the urge to bang his head on the wall surface, right after thinking carefully. He need some pocket money for the next months surviving here, how could he nearly miss this good opportunity due to his stupid action.

An hour has passed, all of the wait just paid off. A notification popped up from the email icon on his computer taskbar. His heart almost jumped out of the rib cage that your email address written on the screen instead of your manager. He clicked it with anticipation, perhaps all of the swearing and cursed words spilled in the email body because he deserved it. But it turns out a short sentence showed up instead, “Give me your contact information.”

He was silenced, typing the replied with a blank stare just like that. To be honest, he hated to admit about what you said in the café earlier. Only to realize that he didn’t change at all.

After he shared the chat ID to you, not too long your message coming through his chat lists.

(You) It’s much easier to discuss everything here rather than in email. And I think we need to meet again. Like you know, you just left half of the written concepts behind.

Even from the text, your unbothered manner radiating through it. He felt embarrassed due to how childish he was this morning.

(Yunho) Okay cool, when?

(You) Tomorrow afternoon?

(Yunho) Okay

On the next day, he pulled up to the same café after his morning class ended. First thing first to do was sketching the given concepts on a blank paper. He’s still remembered some details from yesterday and then he let you revised it when you arrived later.

Around 3 p.m. you almost there, to catch up the appointment with Yunho. Setting your feet on the sidewalk, you only need approximately ten steps to reach the café entrance. You saw your reflection on the glass window, before your focus shift to him. His prominent side profile and his soft cheek is a perfect combination. He’s still busy scribbling something with a serious expression drawn on his face, that made him hotter than his usual self. You can’t deny how attractive he is, even in the high school back then.

You came back to your sense, after Yunho knocking on the glass for few times, and read through the way his lips mouthing “are you okay?” from the opposite. You rushed in to the café in embarrassment that he caught up you’re gawking over him for quite some time.

“Ehm, y-you.” Still struggled to collecting yourself, your eyes darting to the table. His cup of coffee is nearly empty and some of his drawing tools scattered next to it. “How long you’ve been here?” You asked.

“11 or something. I don’t have anything else to do after class.” He explained it to you while busy on sorting some of his sketches. Then he handed it over, “I made several version of it, you can choose which one that suit on your taste.”

You took all of it, scanning thoroughly one by one. After thinking for quite some time, you drew out two papers of your choice to him. “I can’t decided between these two...” And yeah, the discussion continued until the evening of that day.

A week later, Yunho stomping on his way to your flat. Proceed to press your doorbell multiple times furiously. The reason behind it? He could counts on how many times you wanted revision. Not to mention he work fast and he wanted to report on every progress he made due to his own pretention, becoming a reliable artist for his clients. But for this one, he forgot to spell out his terms and condition especially about the revision limit.

Your sleepy face slowly appeared. You just opened your door after being annoyed with the doorbell rang over and over bombarding your eardrums. “What?” Out of all of the words that exist, why those one left from your mouth instead.

Yunho folded his lips into thin line for a split second and rolled his eyes after seeing you who’s completely clueless. He’ll fume at any seconds right after doing all of those ‘Jeong Yunho pre-angry habits’. You immediately stuffed your palm on his mouth as prevention, then pulled him into your flat.

He literally would protest but it didn’t happen, because you started to talk first. “Uhm, I know there must be something on your mind. But, we can sort it out together, right?” To be truth you don’t even know what’s wrong while you sat him down on the soft fur rug which placed in your TV room.

He removed your hand out of his face, “Is it fun for you?”

Ah, shit. He’s mad mad. You shushed him down, then you ran to the kitchen pantry on the pretext of making a cup of tea for him. Strangely, he complied. He just sat there quietly, while scrolling on his phone.

After you returned with two cups of the tea in your hands, you positioned yourself sitting to his opposite. “There’s like maybe.. you feel unsatisfied about something?” You asked him carefully.

Putting his phone to the side, he cleared his throat before answered you. “Listen, how many times did you asked for revisions?”

“A.. lot?” You’re not sure about the numbers and better not to mention it.

“Yeah right!” His veiny hand brushing through the strands of his hair, trying to pull back all of his sense. “You know what, it’s over than 25 times, it’s still only a week though!”

You’re confused as he did it all of it already, you meant to give it for a month task to do. “I didn’t expect that you do that so fast. I’ll pay you handsomely, okay?” You said that in your defense.

“Are you testing me? I bet there comes a lot more after I give you the last one.” Remembering all the sleepless nights he went through, plus he still kept up with the class schedule on the day time.

“Trust me, you’ll know why I did this. Or do you want to back off instead?”

He chuckled in anger, “Or do you mean to pick a fight on the first place?”

Your patience runs out as you literally fed up by those three words ‘pick a fight’ that feels like his only vocabulary since high school days, whenever he saw you. You pulled his collar, bringing his face closer to yours. “Now it’s my turn, listen to me. First, never in any slightest on my mind to mess with you.” You hardened the grip, “and second, please be matured Jeong Yunho, we are not a kid anymore!”

He pushed you down till you’re laying flat against the rug, he automatically join to fall as you still holding onto his collar for your dear life. Luckily, his steady hands kept himself from weighting on you. “If you’re not messing with me, why did you said all of that?”

“Said what?! Speak clearly! you always yapping that I picked a fight first, I said this, I said that. Just tell me what did I say before.” Your eyes getting redder as you worked up shouting at this stubborn young male, ruining your peaceful morning.

“You told me that I’m going to be nowhere with that kind of skills.” He took a deep breath, “You never know just a mere sentence, makes me think about it all the time.” The truth was he almost gave up on his dream when the insult coming especially from you, which he once had a feelings for.

“Because your art sucks back then.” You snapped. Before he’s going feral, you circled his waist with both of your legs, then turning him over to the side. Now you’re on top of him, while holding his shoulder to keep him stay still. You told the side of your story how you heard him talking with the group of his friends, meanwhile he’s your crush at that time.

You remembered how they’re talked on your back when you’re going insane preparing for the first debut novel.

“You saw her this morning? She’s such a book freak. Like every single days, I can see the pile of books on her desk, or in the library. To the point I’m sick looking at my own books.” One of Yunho’s friends talking.

First of all, it doesn’t matter if somebody else bad mouthing on you but it also came from him that making it worse.

Those friend slightly tapped Yunho’s upper arm, “She’s weird, right?”

Without hesitation he said, “Yeah she is-”

Enough is enough, you got up from the chair. You sure it was his voice, right on the opposite of the class wall to the corridor. You storming out of the class, hating to see your crush face. Then, you came back at noon only to mock his wobbly drawing on his sketchbook. Honestly you just want to take a revenge, but after you saw his badly drawn art, you can’t hold back your laugh. So that seems like you genuinely mocking after him.

Those newly information made Yunho speechless, which he’s still pinned down right now, under you. He averted his eyes from you that looking straight at him. “I never hate you okay, I even liked you.” You remarked.

He's still processing his thought, “I- I still can’t believed it”

Running your finger tips to his soft bear like cheeks, you cupped it and turned his head over so he looked back at you who’s alternately staring on both of his eyes to his reddish thin lips. “I’ll prove it, until you believed me.”

You pressed your lips to his all of sudden, made him flinched in surprise. Slowly but surely he kissed you back. The innocent kiss turn into a chaotic one as he hold the back of your neck to deepen the kiss. His tongue forced its way in, clashing on each other with yours. To the point you could hear the sound of both his and your front teeth bumped sometimes.

He sat up while continuing the kiss. His other hand busy tracing on your back, touched it by following your spine from the top to bottom. You slightly moved your chest forward in response, as his fingers tickling you, till the distance between both of you completely disappear.

You could feel his hard member poking through beneath his black jeans, while you grinding on his lap. He groaned between the kiss as you moving your hips back and forth faster than before. His digits slipped underneath the thin clothes you’re wearing, caressing your bare skin gently. A string of saliva formed after he decided to pull out from the kiss slowly, trying to stop before both of you coming undone anytime while fully clothed.

He lean on your slender shoulder, catching on his breath. On the other hand, you played with the tip from his nape hair while doing the same. Yunho and you stayed still for a while like that, till you realized there’s another pair of eyes watching you. When you turned your head to the front door, you saw your manager hanging speechless and slowly back away.

That lead you to slap your own forehead. Just forgot that you sent him text before, begging to be companied cause you didn’t want to deal with angry Yunho by yourself.

“No, it’s not like that manager-nim.” You wanted to stop him but Yunho still hugging you tight. “Please stay! Manager-nim, Kim Hongjoong!” Your plead is useless as his figure already disappear behind those door.

⁠✧

Today is Sunday morning, both of you went to a picnic date. Spreading out the mat with beautiful pattern on the grass field, you breathing in the fresh air. It’s located on the side of the lake. This was Yunho’s idea to bring you here, he said that giving it as a reward after spending full month of hell ride.

His design immediately approved by the editorial team without any problems by the end of last month. All thanks to your crazy revisions, he managed to survive walking out of the editorial room alive while people around including you said that they’re super annoying to begin with.

Now, Yunho busy painting on his sketchbook as his back lean to yours. Both of you sit back to back, enjoying the morning atmosphere. Chatting about a lot of topics here and there, while you’re flipping the page of your favorite book.

“I’m curious, how did you find me?” His skilled hand stained the colors from the tip of brush onto the paper surface.

“Hmm.. I don’t really know if it’s you behind the tyudongi artist tho.” You said that without taking your eyes off those collection of printed words.

He mixed another colors on the palette and back to questioned you, “I mean, why choose me out of another artists? I don’t have any experience on the big project like this.”

You stopped your activity then change the sitting position to face him. “Huh? I saw your works hanging in the local art exhibition few months back. Isn’t it also a big project?”

“Ah that thing, the artists doing it voluntarily without being paid. So there’s no pressure behind.” He explained to you clearly.

You nodded, “I see.. Uhm yeah, basically I was interested in your painting which the title is Forever, as I remember it.”

Yunho’s gaze shift to you as he realized something, “with the n or without the n?”

“Do you mean for never or forever?” You were dumbfounded by him. But he remained silent looking straight at you even though you are waiting for his answer. You sighed, “there’s no n between it, I’m pretty sure.”

He chuckled softly that you took his bait. “Then..” Putting his drawing tools aside, he grab your waist, pulling you into his arms. “There’s also no end between us.” He kissed your blushing cheek.

“Be my forever okay?”

a/n I had so much fun writing on this. and annoyed yunho looking hella hot, proof 1, proof 2, proof 3 (© tiktok edits)

#jeong yunho #jeong yunho x reader #yunho x reader #yunho smut #ateez smut #ateez fics #ateez fic #ateez fanfic #ateez yunho #yunho ateez #ateez x reader #ateez hard hours #yunho hard hours #yunho hard thoughts #kpop fanfic #kpop smut #yunho birthday special #cy for ateez birthday #shocymer

[txttletale]

Your discussions on AI art have been really interesting and changed my mind on it quite a bit, so thank you for that! I don’t think I’m interested in using it, but I feel much less threatened by it in the same way. That being said, I was wondering, how you felt about AI generated creative writing: not, like AI writing in the context of garbage listicles or academic essays, but like, people who generate short stories and then submit them to contests. Do you think it’s the same sort of situation as AI art? Do you think there’s a difference in ChatGPT vs mid journey? Legitimate curiosity here! I don’t quite have an opinion on this in the same way, and I’ve seen v little from folks about creative writing in particular vs generated academic essays/articles

i think that ai generated writing is also indisputably writing but it is mostly really really fucking awful writing for the same reason that most ai art is not good art -- that the large training sets and low 'temperature' of commercially available/mass market models mean that anything produced will be the most generic version of itself. i also think that narrative writing is very very poorly suited to LLM generation because it generally requires very basic internal logic which LLMs are famously bad at (i imagine you'd have similar problems trying to create something visual like a comic that requires consistent character or location design rather than the singular images that AI art is mostly used for). i think it's going to be a very long time before we see anything good long-form from an LLM, especially because it's just not a priority for the people making them.

ultimately though i think you could absolutely do some really cool stuff with AI generated text if you had a tighter training set and let it get a bit wild with it. i've really enjoyed a lot of AI writing for being funny, especially when it was being done with tools like botnik that involve more human curation but still have the ability to completely blindside you with choices -- i unironically think the botnik collegehumour sketch is funnier than anything human-written on the channel. & i think that means it could reliably be used, with similar levels of curation, to make some stuff that feels alien, or unsettling, or etheral, or horrifying, because those are somewhat adjacent to the surreal humour i think it excels at. i could absolutely see it being used in workflows -- one of my friends told me recently, essentially, "if i'm stuck with writer's block, i ask chatgpt what should happen next, it gives me a horrible idea, and i immediately think 'that's shit, and i can do much better' and start writing again" -- which is both very funny but i think presents a great use case as a 'rubber duck'.

but yea i think that if there's anything good to be found in AI-written fiction or poetry it's not going to come from chatGPT specifically, it's going to come from some locally hosted GPT model trained on a curated set of influences -- and will have to either be kind of incoherent or heavily curated into coherence.

that said the submission of AI-written stories to short story mags & such fucking blows -- not because it's "not writing" but because it's just bad writing that's very very easy to produce (as in, 'just tell chatGPT 'write a short story'-easy) -- which ofc isn't bad in and of itself but means that the already existing phenomenon of people cynically submitting awful garbage to literary mags that doesn't even meet the submission guidelines has been magnified immensely and editors are finding it hard to keep up. i think part of believing that generative writing and art are legitimate mediums is also believing they are and should be treated as though they are separate mediums -- i don't think that there's no skill in these disciplines (like, if someone managed to make writing with chatGPT that wasnt unreadably bad, i would be very fucking impressed!) but they're deeply different skills to the traditional artforms and so imo should be in general judged, presented, published etc. separately.

#ask #ai art

[themilkcrate]

The Definition of "Woke" (Is anyone else confused?)

I's going to be real right now. I'm so confused about what "woke" is supposed to mean. It feels like an umbrella term for how many contexts it is used in which makes the phrase "woke culture" make a least a bit a sense.

However, I struggle to understand why people don't like it. I get how people don't like "cancel culture" because it begs for accountability when in the end, if accountability is not given, it never actually effects people that need the wake up call the most.

But I'm not posting to talk about "cancel culture." I want to know why every person talks about something that is "woke" or "woke ideology" or "woke culture" they are always talking about pretty normal things. Here's a brief list of what I understand to be "woke," as defined by the local weirdos of the internet.

People of color in media (video games, movies, tv shows, commercials, etc)

People of color in acting, writing, or science

Women in science

The patriarchy acknowledged in any way, shape, or form (barbie movie; commercials, specifically Gillette razors even though they participate in the Pink Tax, etc)

Religions other than Christianity acknowledged in any way shape or form in media (commercials, especially Christmas time/adjacent commercials, etc)

Women with body hair (celebrities not shaving or forgetting to shave, women having hair on their face, etc)

Teaching black history at all

Teaching LGBGQ+ history

Teaching about discrimination and accurate history

Science (Statistics, Vaccines, Climate Change, etc)

Trans people existing (on any material plane)

Feminism (As in the belief that men and women are equal: Equal worth, equal consequences, and deserve equal rights, etc)

Men paying for the bill

Women paying for the bill

Men and Women splitting the bill in any way

Body positivity (Weight, disabilities, etc)

Different body types (men or women, on any plane of existence)

People with disabilities existing in media (any type)

ANY political ideology other than capitalism (socialism, communism, etc)

After thinking it over and making this list, I think a better word for "woke" would be anti-bigotry. Every time I come across someone who is anti-woke, they are almost ALWAYS bigoted in some way or another.

#woke #wokeness #human rights #discrimination #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq+ #lgbtqia #queer #feminism #politics #us politics #media #tv shows #tv series #television #show #movies #capitalism #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #science #stem #women in stem #disability rights #disability #disabled #disabilties #poc #body diversity

[that-stone-butch]

Are you pro-guns?

that's such a nonsense question; you cannot meaningfully be pro or anti gun because regardless of what you believe, they still exist.

now, one may have a stance against citizens owning guns, that's an actual stance. but they'll still exist even within the framework of your stance and they'll still have to factor into the political ramifications of your stance. ex: if you are against citizens owning guns and think citizen ownership should be criminalized, they will still exist both as tools of the state, and within networks of illegality. guns will still be produced, illicitly or commercially, and will be obtained by those who want them so long as they want them enough to:

1. assimilate into roles of state violence (such as police forces),

2. illegally acquire guns that were originally created legally (steal from/bribe state munitions stockpiles), or

3. individually manufacture them, in whole or part, outside of sanctioned production. within an environment where guns are completely illegal, it is still possible to make them, from zip gun to 3D printed receiver.

as such it is impossible to be meaningfully anti-gun, and most who would consider themselves 'anti-gun' simply oppose the ownership of guns by citizens other than police/military. the prohibition of guns is difficult to enforce, and often just means that they are functionally impossible for working class people to acquire, but only marginally more difficult for the wealthy/connected/privileged to acquire. both aspects of this stance necessarily weaken the struggle of working class peoples. if you want to see what unarmed laborers look like versus state-sponsored/private militaries, google what the pinkertons have done to striking workers. what scant labor laws we do still have are the fruits of armed resistance.

tl;dr: i am absolutely 'pro-gun,' as many gun illiterate people would put it, in the fact that i think that disarming the working class in the sociopolitical context of capitalism and police states is a fucking terrible idea. as a great communist once said, "Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary."

there are circumstances under which i might entertain the idea of the wholesale abandonment of arms, but we are nowhere near that level of utopia yet. for now, they are a technological Pandora's box we can't shut back closed.

#ask #anonymous #guns

[betterbemeta]

As it is right now, machine learning image generation is classist. It depends strongly on the human audience's eye for pareidolia to smooth over its inconsistencies and find patterns in its noise where its procedural generation falls short.

This means that the less opportunity a person has to gain context for information, the more likely 'AI art' is to be convincing. As long as that person has been given a baseline to 'believe' the general arrangement of elements, AI art will 'make sense' even if that baseline is just exposure to more acontextual imagery. Which is what the machine learning's algorithms were trained on in the first place.

For example, 'AI' right now struggles to coherently depict plants. When it's not blurry, indistinct plant fur, leaves from different kinds of plants appear on the same stem, plants from the wrong biome are included in 'nature' images. Someone who has very little educational opportunity, but has seen movies where people walk through jungles or forests as set pieces or something, might not notice the difference. And why do you 'need' to know if the plants look right, poor person; you'll never leave your immediate area or take a biology class!

Someone without the opportunity or comfort to travel might not recognize that a cityscape has been artificially generated, depicts no actual real-world city. Is that supposed picture of Dubai or New York City or Cairo showing a real place that exists? Who cares, you're too poor to ever go there.

Searching for information about animal species, even, can get messed up by generated 'content.' Do servals have ear tufts? What kind of insect is that? What species of lizard or snake am I looking at? You don't deserve to know what kinds of animals are real. What time do you have to go to a zoo, if there's even one around you?

The less money you have, the more likely you are to be surrounded by advertising and "AI Art" is ideal for advertising because it only tells a very simple story at best. There's no complicated human emotions; its literally made of averages of what has been seen before. Marketing and advertising content often replaces actual art that might be a window into a greater world. It may even just be dropped in there to fill the awkward silence or blankness that would have otherwise surrounded marketing efforts-- commercials would be surreal without some say-nothing 'music' track behind them, and billboards would be creepy without the graphic noise that surrounds the product and its information. Someone who passes through more monetized public spaces per day will see more of it than someone who inhabits private property.

And like, at the end of the day if you are wealthy... you probably don't care about any of this. You have access to whatever you want, so why do you care what's real? You trust you can 'pay for' the real thing, right?

Plus, who knows the economic status of who generated imagery the machine learning algorithms train on? It's all stolen.

Photography has been critical in modern history for bringing 'the world' across social divisions of class, race, geographical divides. Photographers and filmmakers, along with other visual artists as well as musicians, writers, and journalists associated with all of these disciplines give us lenses, framing, voices, and perspectives to understand our greater world no matter where we are. Hell, identifying the human intentions BEHIND those lenses, framings, voices is key to our development. No matter your circumstances, with a strong grasp of media literacy anyone can sit down and say, wait a minute, is this real, would it be true for me too? Or is this someone's point of view?

To the point of view of wealth and capital, the working class and those without wealth who cannot work (disabled people, displaced people, homeless people shut out of employment, and more) do not deserve to know about reality. To that point of view, nonwealthy people don't deserve to even know who created the perspectives they're allowed to see. You can be born, get trained to work, go to work, come home to the minimum, repeat, and die having seen no images of reality for all they care. They'd like that! How can you dream of something outside the current exploitative structure if you can't even trust you know what plants and animals and cities look like, outside your tiny box?

#long post #AI art #machine learning #something something the matrix

[morganmnemonic]

I actually think hazbin hotel is doing really well with the time that they have. Obviously 8 episode isn't enough time to tell a 6 month story. I woul have loved to see more of the ups and downs on the way to redemption instead of just being told in episode six "idk. I mean angel is probably ready now. Like heaven is looking at him like he should be there. He's had such a character arc. Trust me bro."

Watching characters going through the ups and downs of struggling for redemption is what sold me on the premise to begin with.

I would rather have seen alastor slowly grow attached to the hotel and have positive interactions with its guests instead of having it imply around in episode 5?? I would prefer if the Vs were a constant force in the narrative instead of showing up to sing their songs and then disappearing into the background. It would be better if they could establish characters through small details over time instead of counting on songs to very quickly do most of the heavy lifting.

But. When I first heard about the 8 episode for 6 months time structure, I was afraid that they would try to cram too much into too little space, and have the redemption arcs at the hotel represented through a montage sequence or something. But instead, despite the breakneck pacing of the story, no episode in particular has had its neck broken by the pacing.

They are all really simple A plot/B plot stories. The entire fist episode is dedicated to nothing but Charlie talking to Adam, and the hotel crew trying to make a new commercial. Episode 2 establishes the Vs and gets sir pentious into the hotel. In both of these episodes, almost nothing happens. And in episodes with busier A plots the B plot is made very small. Major lore update vs. the hotel crew trying to figure out trust falls.

There should be more episodes. 8 isn't enough to tell the story. But if you wanted to rewrite the story to give it the time it needs, you wouldn't have to change anything about the episodes that currently exist, you would just have to put more episodes in between them.

And it's remarkable to me that with nothing but these very light episodic narratives that wouldn't be out of place in a longer running episodic narrative, they still manage to squeeze in all the details that are necessary to make the story coherent. It doesn't even feel like a squeeze, except for the part where you notice that there wasn't enough setup in prior episodes. If you take each episode out of context from the others, everything feels like they payoff to a story arc that was probably pretty well established.

The show has pacing problems that were inevitable given the amount of time the writers were given to tell the story, but they are doing a pretty great job of it anyway. Certainly a better job than I dared hope for when I watched episode 1.

#hazbin hotel #im tired. are you tired. #remember steven universe? the owl house? #im tired of watching cartoons and imaging the cooler story that they were clearly trying to tell if only they'd had more time #i hope that once the season is over fanfic authors take up the task of fleshing out the narrative #i hope that Vivienne's contract with amazon is written such that she might be able to go back and make those missing episodes someday #but for now im enjoying the show for what it is #and also for what it could have been

[doingproblematicmedia]

I touched real grass today* and am still annoyed about this, so here we go:

We cannot pretend Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t exist.

I have seen so many posts saying that “if you talk about this, you cannot be a real ally. Playing and talking about this game will do real harm to real people. Do not support Hogwarts Legacy.”

And why does this make me angry? Because it’s reductive and doesn’t acknowledge the real world we live in.

Let’s start with the basics: paying for the game financially supports WB and JKR. A boycott aims to harm someone financially, and I believe that not paying for this game is a good goal, with some real measurable results. 

But I’ve seen as many posts condemning someone who would pirate the game. Pirating, which WB Media will count as a loss, doesn’t put money in JKR’s pocket, and therefore accomplishes the goal of a boycott: to hurt someone financially.

What is the goal of convincing people not to pirate the game? To make sure that people don’t play it? To make sure that people don’t talk about it?

I cannot condone this. Because Hogwarts Legacy will not go away, and it is important to talk about it.

Hogwarts Legacy is going to be one of the biggest games of the year, if not the biggest. Presales are through the roof. Millions of people are going to be playing this thing. It is not a commercial failure. It is not going to go away.

By silencing talk about Hogwarts legacy, we are silencing ourselves.

It is important to have a voice in this conversation. By trying to silence all talk about this game, we are shutting down critical discourse. Can a person effectively criticize a piece of media without engaging with it? Because a person plays this game, does that mean they are disqualified from bringing meaningful critical dialogue to the table?

If meaningful critique about this game is not offered, how can we expect to reach people? How can someone expand their thinking if the tools to expand it are not there?

There is so much talk about how engaging with Hogwarts Legacy will bring harm to real people. It is important to think about how our actions can do harm.

But critical engagement is not harmful.

And right now, the gaming press is not providing it.

As I write this (Feb 7 2023), the major outlets (at least the ones willing to touch it) have dropped their reviews. They almost all add some sort of sidebar disclaimer: We do not support JKR’s views on trans people. We support human rights and support people speaking with their wallets. Etc. 

Cool, ok. Are they talking about the plot of the game? The thing that Jews are worried is going to be “Blood Libel Simulator 2023″? No they are not. How are we Jews going to push back on antisemitic content in this game if we don’t even know what’s in it? We need to be able to address what this game is going to be implying about us. Antisemitism is on the rise globally. I am scared for my Jewish family. I had to listen to a Gentile relative tell me over Christmas that Kanye was a ‘genius’. 

Again, millions of people are going to be playing this. Not talking about any antisemitic tropes in it is only going to help them go unchallenged.

Critical works on Harry Potter are valuable. 

Over the past few years, there has been an exceptional body of work put out that returns to Harry Potter. Takes a look at the books with a new eye, an eye that is more attuned to the casual cruelty JKR wields. Examines elements that we brushed over as children. Contextualizes Harry Potter in its British Neoliberal context, and points out the moral failings of JKR’s allegories. Realizes how Harry Potter does not call for true revolution, but merely a comfortable status quo.

Critical works like these have helped so many reevaluate Harry Potter with a more mature view. By looking at JKR’s output, we are better able to understand her current bigotry and call her on her views. Trans analyses of the books have highlighted transphobic material that went unremarked upon in the 2000s.

Why stop here?

Is it because talking about the game supports JKR? Or is it because people are condemning anyone who even thinks about talking about the game?

I know I’ve seen a million posts on my dash along these lines. “I don’t trust you if you play this game. I will block you if you talk about this game. You are not an ally if you talk about this game.”

And this, this makes me angry.

Because I know you’re trying to reach people who will pay for the game without thinking about who that money goes to. People who will not acknowledge the real terror JKR is inflicting on trans people. People who will say “let me enjoy the thing.”

But you’re not just reaching them. You’re also saying, in effect, “any talk about this game will get you shunned, blacklisted, harassed. Engaging with this game means that you are not a good person. Good people don’t talk about Harry Potter anymore.”

Aren’t we always banging on against online purity culture? Saying that media consumption is not activism, and that you don’t get to be a good person just by consuming the “right” media? Because right now, you’re saying the opposite. That media consumption is activism. That you are a good person because you don’t consume the bad media. That any talk about this does real harm to people.

And to be clear, I’m not talking about personal blocklists. Curating your online space and blocking stuff that you don’t want to see is not the problem here. The problem is the rather explicit statement that anyone who talks about Hogwarts Legacy is immoral. 

And as a media critic, and a Jewish queer, I cannot accept this.

We must talk about the things that hurt us. We must continue pushing back against the bigotry of the Wizarding World. We must have a voice at the table, because no one is going to do it for us. Not the gaming press, not the suits at WB, and certainly not the world that produced millions of preorders for this game.

Once again, we cannot pretend Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t exist. The real question is: how will we talk about it? 

Because if we’re not talking about it, someone else will be. 

*A feat in a New England winter. Said grass was in a greenhouse.

#hogwarts legacy #jk rowling #harry potter #media criticism #doing hogwarts legacy #antisemitism #transphobia

[raquellemonsta]

Hi!! Just saw ur post announcing that you’ll be taking requests so I’d love to send one in! I would love love LOVE a timeskip! Tobio x supermodel/influencer/celebrity gf who is like the IT girl of Tokyo and is super gorgeous Bcs I’ve just forever had this thought that timeskip tobio just SUITS so well w like specifically a famous celebrity that compliments him yk?? And not to mention he’s also canonically attractive like YESS. It just makes so much sense bcs I def think Kageyama fits into the unpopular/quiet guy trope with the ultimate sunshine/popular gf yk?? So so excited to read it!! <33

i LOVEEE this idea. i think his personality perfectly contrasts a popular/famous cosmo girl. i kind of went crazy with this one, and it has it's own little twist on it so the two aren't initially dating (also enjoy the lev cameo <3). hope you like it!!

timeskip! kageyama x celebrity/model! reader

4.0k words

----

you live a pretty normal life. you have lots of friends, lots of clothes, and your very own makeup brand. plus, you have millions of followers on all of your social medias, enough brand deals and fan mail to fill up an entire house, and weekly photoshoots for fashion magazines. and not to mention a beautiful penthouse in the most expensive part of tokyo. okay, maybe your life isn't that normal.

at only 23, you've been on the cover of famous magazines (both in your home country and abroad), developed your own million-dollar beauty brand, and even starred in a few popular movies. the spotlight has always seemed to find you.

when you were younger, you participated in pageants, first locally and eventually moving up to larger-scale competitions. you would start to get spots in commercials for random products. you had become locally well-known, however it would be at the end of your teens that you would be catapulted into real stardom.

when you were 19, you were crowned miss universe japan and were the runner-up for the miss universe competition. ever since, you had become a national celebrity and were known internationally as well. you now lived a lavish lifestyle and surrounded yourself with glamorous possessions and people (though not to say you didn't appreciate and even miss your life before fame). as tokyo's beloved 'it' girl, your life is exciting and lots of business at the same time.

which brings you to now, you were sitting in the backseat of your car after just leaving your manager's office. you kept replaying the conversation you just had with mr. gushiken.

"i don't understand what you're trying to say" you admitted.

"you're going on 24 (y/n), and you've never publicly dated anyone! you're going to become less relatable if you keep it up" he warned. your manager has been on your case about getting into a relationship to boost people's view of you. personally, you didn't care how relatable you are, but the more you thought the more you realized people might find it weird that their favorite megastar hasn't shown any sign of a love life. that didn't mean you wanted a 'pr' relationship though. you want love to find you, you don't want to force it or fake it. if that means waiting for the right person then so be it.

when you finally come back to reality, your driver informs you that you're almost to your destination. your manager booked you a shoot for some designer handbag brand that's going to pay you a large sum for the photos. you're even getting a free purse from their new line, so you're not going to complain.

entering the studio, you're greeted by an intern and shown to the set area. you're caught off guard when you see lev haiba at the set with you. you are aware of him, though you've never collaborated with him before. you most often see him in perfume/cologne advertisements, while you usually appear for fashion brands.

with the context that your manager wants you in a relationship, though, you start thinking that maybe you're being set up. a sinking feeling in your chest causes you to consider what dating lev would be like, and then onto lev himself. what is he like?

"hey (l/n), it's nice to work with you!" lev excitedly greets you. he has a wide grin on his face and talks faster than you can even keep up with.

"i'm happy to work with you too lev" you smile back. you make your decision then and there.

lev is very handsome, he's a model for crying out loud! but he isn't your type. superficially, you've always been into tall guys with dark hair. but honestly, appearance didn't matter to you as long as he had certain other traits. personality-wise, you liked when guys aren't like yourself. you find yourself clashing with lev simply because the two of you are very similar in your dispositions. it's nice as a friend and colleague relationship, but you don't see it working out romantically.

"alright ms. (l/n), please follow me" a younger man calls for your attention and lead you to a dressing/makeup room. your makeup took a little over half an hour, and then you were helped into the elegant red dress you were given for the shoot.

following the same man back out, you see lev already waiting for you so the shoot can begin. you shake hands with the photographer before getting some individual shots with the bags. then, they decide to have the two of you do some photos together. at first, it's innocent enough, but then they start asking you to get into some slightly more intimate poses. for example, the photographer has their intern move you two into a pose where your back is to lev's chest. they have him place his arms around you while you hold a handbag (and he has one over his shoulder). it's a very couple-y pose and you can just picture your manager scheming with the shoot photographer.

the thing that finally puts you over the edge is when they expect you and lev to kiss. that basically confirms your suspicion that this was some sort of plot to make the public see you and lev as a couple and spark a pr relationship between two models. your heart picks up its pace, but not in a positive way. you start to breathe heavier and feel on the bring of an anxiety attack. the only thing really stopping you is knowing how it could affect your reputation.

it's too much. i need to get out of here.

you settle for a kiss on the cheek, before announcing that you're not feeling very well and rushing off the set and back to your dressing room. you chug from your water bottle and breathe deeply, knuckles white as you clutch the edge of the table. you give yourself a few minutes to breathe before quickly getting out of the red dress and slipping into a slightly more casual black one. you grab your purse and walk back down the hallway, saying thank yous and byes to people as you go.

you give a more personal goodbye to lev, and give him a kind smile to show that it's not his fault that you ran out. he smiles back at you in understanding as you leave the building, your driver waiting out front for you. the sun is getting lower in the sky, and the streets are still bustling.

after that interesting shoot, you really need to unwind. you have your driver bring you to an upscale club in the heart of tokyo. you aren't an alcoholic by any means, but you really wanted a distraction and didn't think you would find it in your quiet apartment.

finally reaching your destination, your bodyguard opens the door for you. you thank your driver before walking up to the entrance of the club. several of the people in line excitedly point at you, whisper-shouting that you're even prettier in person and various other compliments. you grin at them before happily greeting the bouncer. this is a club you frequent, and the bouncer is used to seeing you.

you walk inside and immediately feel the speakers vibrating the floor. this dark front hallway merely conceals the colorful dance floor and lit-up bar. one of your favorite things about this club is the lighting perfect for insta pictures. you say hi to some of the people you recognize before feeling the need for a drink.

you head to the vip section and take a seat. your bodyguard is hidden away in the back, giving you some semblance of privacy while still ensuring that he'll be ready at a moment's notice, though you doubt you'll need his assistance here. while waiting for the server, you look down from the indoor balcony that gives a view of the dance floor. there are actually a lot more people here than usual, now that you think about it. there's a lot of really tall, really hot guys here tonight on top of that. a server comes by and you order a drink before asking about all of the extra people here tonight. he tells you that japan's national volleyball team are here

you wait for your drink by doing some more people-watching. you look around the vip area from the chair you're on when your gaze falls on a man across the room. he seems vaguely familiar, but you can't put a name to the face you're currently openly staring at. he's insanely attractive and fits the tall, dark, and handsome archetype to a t. even from where you're sitting you can tell he's particularly muscular, and his features are sharply defined.

is it cheesy and cliché to say this is love at first sight? you can't think of another way to describe it. you feel your heart start to thump faster in your chest, and unlike earlier it's a positive feeling. you look back at him and to your surprise, find that you're making eye contact with him before he quickly averts his eyes.

did you just catch him staring at you?

now you have to find out about him. by going over to him and asking? well no, he had three other guys currently sitting at his booth with him, which runs the risk of him blowing you off even if he is interested. so you do what makes the most sense and ask random clubgoers about him instead of approaching him. like any drunk person down there would ignore a pretty girl anyway.

you head down to the dance floor, where the music is nearly deafening, and try to ask around to find out who this guy is. it takes only one person to find out the identity of the handsome 'stranger'.

a girl around your age is able to tell you that it's kageyama tobio, a professional volleyball player. that explains his excellent physique. you look his name up on your phone and sure enough find the man and numerous pictures of him throughout his career. damn is he hot, especially in his action shots. you also realize you've definitely seen him online before, probably in a headline as part of his impressive volleyball team without even realizing it. apparently, he's a very talented setter and a key part of his team, despite being one of the younger ones on the team (when you see he's 24 you want to yell out loud that finally an attractive guy is actually your age and not a questionable amount older).

you're told by others that he's 'emotionally unavailable' and that he is already in a committed relationship (with volleyball) though. you aren't going to let that stop you, plus he was actually staring back at you earlier. that has to count for something! besides, even if it doesn't work out, the chase itself is fun.

you make your way back up to your seat. you feel eyes on you and find him at the other side of the vip intently staring at you again. one of his teammates (you assume) is sat across from him, though his attention is clearly on you. you wave at him and give him a flirtatious wink, which causes him to furrow his brows. he looks behind and then around himself while you continue to stare at him. is he really so surprised you're interested in him? does he not know how attractive he is?

when he's finally alone, you decide to make your move. pushing your chair back, you make your way over.

"hi. mind if i sit?" you ask. you're not going to beat around the bush or worse- make him feel like he's wasting his time.

he looks at you, likely recognizing you as the beautiful woman across the room that seemed interested in him. he then takes in the rest of you, and you're happy you had decided to wear a short but flattering black dress that highlights your favorite features.

"hey. no" he shortly responds. he shifts over in the booth despite the entire rest of it being empty. you take the opportunity to be close to him and sit in the area he made space for. you bump his shoulder accidentally before placing your drink down.

you sit down and get a good look at him up close for the first time. you have to say, he's even more attractive in person compared to your phone screen. his eye contact with you is inconsistent, as you'll catch his gaze for a few seconds before he looks away with pink cheeks.

"i haven't seen you here before" you say, "what are you doing here tonight?" you question, taking a sip of your drink. you want to hear from him, even though you kind of already know the answer. you look up at him to find him already looking at you, for some reason surprised that a pretty girl is actually this interested in speaking with him. after several moments of his incredulous look, he finally answers you.

"i'm on japan's national volleyball team" he explained, "we're here for 'team bonding' or something". he doesn't say much but you find yourself hanging on every word he speaks. he has an alluringly deep voice that you noticed more with his longer sentence. "i know who you are" he says.

you're shocked by his sudden assertion. honestly, you shouldn't be because you're literally one of the most famous people in tokyo, but still. you honestly feel kind of bad that you hadn't really known who he was when he caught your eye from across the room earlier.

"really?" you ask.

"who doesn't?" he responds.

kageyama does know you. he knows a lot about you, truthfully. you've been his 'celebrity crush' for several years, ever since he happened to see you on the miss universe competition representing his country.

he had been visiting home, watching tv with his sister. miwa has always been a big fan of reality tv and beauty competitions. he hadn't really been paying much attention to what she was watching, opting to play some random game on his phone while waiting for dinner. that was until his sister started freaking out and squealing at the tv. who was the older sibling again?

"tobio it's her! miss universe japan!" she excitedly shouted. "she's so beautiful" she had quieted down a little, but still had her eyes glued to the screen. kageyama looked up from his phone and at the screen and was surprised to see a breathtakingly beautiful girl wearing the 'miss japan' sash. she was smiling brightly and he felt a thump in his chest even though the smile wasn't directly aimed at him.

words on the bottom of the screen came up: 'miss universe japan: (l/n) (y/n)'. he immediately went to look up your name online, and found plenty of pictures of you, along with your instagram with hundreds of thousands of followers. he only scrolled for a few seconds before following you and looking back up at the screen, entranced.

it was a whole new thing to see you in front of him now. slightly older from the first time he had laid eyes on you, but still just as alluring. your smile still makes his heart skip.

"well, i'm honored that the kageyama tobio knows me" you say. he merely stares back at you in awe at finally meeting you in person as he tries to think of something to say.

one of your favorite poppy songs comes on and you excitedly jump up. he gets slightly nervous at your quick action.

"dance with me?" you ask. you have a wide smile on your face and hold your hand out to him.

"i don't dance" he tells you. which is true. whenever he comes to clubs or bars, he feels out of place. while his friends and teammates are able to unwind and attract the attention of women, he finds it much harder to do either. he's much too quiet and emotionally reserved to hold the attention of most women, while others are put off by his 'unsettling' smile.

"it'll be fun! there's so many people here no one will be looking at you anyway, you have nothing to be worried about" you reason. you can clearly see the inner turmoil written on his face.

little do you know, kageyama is so nervous he's going to embarrass himself in front of you. he's never gotten this much personal attention from such a gorgeous girl, let alone a famous one he'd been crushing on for several years. he's almost always had fangirls, but people have always said he's unapproachable and too volleyball-minded for girls to ever have any attraction beyond physical. you've been talking to him for this long though, so he can't help but think this is different and you might actually be genuinely interested in him.

he mutters a small 'ok' and you take your chance before he can change his mind. you grab his hand and pull him from the booth and down the stairs all the way to the dance floor. turning around to face him, you have to look up to meet his eyes again. definitely over 6 foot, but he doesn't tower over you as much as lev does. it's a good, happy medium. he's standing very stiff and looking around at everyone before he looks back down to you. you give him a warm smile, encouraging him to loosen up a little.

you decide it seems like he needs you to help him. you grab his hands and sway back and forth in a goofy way. he only follows your actions, letting himself be wildly flailed around by you. he can't help the smile that breaks out onto his face, one he hasn't let himself show to anyone in a very long time (due to the many comments people had made about it). when you give him a strange look, he quickly tries to go back to his straight face and pulls his hands out of yours, turning around so you can't see his expression. he's already managed to mess up.

that's not how you see it. you're surprised at how his smile makes you feel. you finally understand what people are talking about when they say they have butterflies in their stomach. you feel light and airy, while also being tied down to this world next to him. your entire body heats up and you swear you're about to catch on fire. you haven't felt this way for a guy in a very long time, especially not this quickly. everything about him demands your attention and makes you wish you didn't need to blink so you never have to miss a glimpse of him.

"your smile is cute" you tell him honestly. it's a little unconventional, but you mean what you say. you can tell it's genuine and true, and that in itself is what makes it so beautiful. he gives you a strange look with something you can't really grasp. the best way to describe it is like he's really seeing you for the first time. not just your face, your body, your looks. he sees into you.

"you're gorgeous" he tells you. it's something you've heard thousands of times but it holds an entirely different meaning when you hear it from his mouth. you glance up at him and find him giving you an intense look of admiration and maybe even more.

"kiss me" you whisper. he doesn't respond verbally, and instead grants you your request. the butterflies in your stomach explode and go all over your body. it's an amazing sensation that leads you wanting more. his lips are slightly chapped, and you have to admit he seems slightly inexperienced, but you don't care. if anything, it's endearing. you hear some of the people (they sound like guys so you guess they're probably his teammates) whistle and holler in your general direction, but neither of you pay any mind to it. his arms fold around your back and pull you in closer, causing you to reach up and place your arms over his shoulders and around his neck. after what feels like forever, you pull away though he follows you. you hide your face and just embrace him. he's so warm and the feeling calms you. you feel safe with him, and wish the two of you could just be alone with each other.

you tell him as much, and he offers up his place for the two of you to go. you smile at him before texting your driver and your bodyguard (who was watching you now), telling them the address you would be heading to.

honestly, the rest of the night is history.

a package turned up at your apartment, something which at first makes you a little nervous. being as famous as you are, it's unsettling to think a 'fan' might show up at your door or have bad intentions with you. fortunately, the package is addressed to you from your manager. why not just text me, we're in the 21st century? you think, but pass it off as him being an 'old man' (he's about 50, so you decide).

you sit down with the package on the couch in your patio. opening it up, you find one of the most popular celeb news magazines and immediately recognize the two people on the cover. it's a picture of you and tobio walking down the sidewalk after one of your recent coffee dates. he had been walking you to one of your friends apartment buildings to visit her (and more importantly her dog). the photographer had caught you animatedly talking about god knows what, but you were more interested in tobio. he was looking at you intently with the faintest smile that most people probably wouldn't notice. if they didn't notice that, though, they definitely would notice the look in his eyes: lovestruck. if it was a cartoon you were sure he would have literal hearts in his eyes. you held your frappuccino in the hand not intertwined with tobio's. though you could find paparazzi annoying and even creepy at times, you have to admit you love everything about this picture.

the picture of course has a caption. in big letters it reads:

'tokyo's hottest new couple!: (l/n) (y/n) & kageyama tobio are official!'

you can't help the smile on your face. flipping through the pages, you finally come to the one about you and kageyama. a small slip of paper falls out when you do so, and you find it's a note from your manager:

congratulations on front cover again. he's a keeper - gushiken-san

"what's that?" a familiar voice behind you questions. you feel arms wrap around you and you smile. it seems someone's finally gotten out of bed.

"us" you show him the cover, to which he makes a low hum in response.

"i'm putting this on the fridge" you joke. you turn around to face him in all of his bedhead glory, wrapping your arms up around his shoulders.

"seriously? i look weird in that picture" he scoffs. you playfully swat him for making such an objectively wrong claim. you always help him with his self-esteem. he never doubts his abilities in volleyball, but in nearly ever other part of his life he needs some assistance. even now that the two of you are actually dating he doesn't feel worthy enough, friendly enough, attractive enough for someone like you. you do everything you can to convince him otherwise. he is worthy, sweet to you, and definitely attractive enough.

"you look handsome in it! but you always do so i'm not sure why you're surprised" you teasingly flirt. his cheeks darken and you reach up to pinch one. he moves his head away but moves back to gaze sweetly into your eyes. you look back just as sweet, and can't help but be lost in his beautiful blue eyes.

"if you say so" he responds with a kiss to your cheek. you respond with a kiss to his lips, followed by many more.

#request #haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #kageyama x reader #kageyama #lev haiba #model!reader #celebrity!reader

[communistkenobi]

Only tangentially related to the post you made but I think the reason I find the dual attitudes of fanfic being the same as classic literature but also impossible to critique in good faith so funny is because they really seem to think that classical authors were never, like, challenged or censored or edited. It would be one thing if they were discussing fanfic which had gone through critics or editors, or had been in the works for years and undergone significant changes, but fanfic writers will knock out 200,000 words of the worst first draft I've ever read and then act like THAT'S of equal artistic merit to Dante's Inferno. It's very good

I think the most productive definition of fanfiction for this discussion is that it is a particular type of relationship a fan can have to art that is enclosed by intellectual property law. fanfic is “knock off” “unofficial” artistic articulations of a fan author’s interpretation of a text, which only makes sense in the context of privately owned and enclosed art. It’s not that amateur hobby writing has never existed, it’s not that people have never written derivatives of an original text before - those things have always existed. fanfiction is only historically noteworthy in the sense that it is constructed by a particular relationship an audience has to media IPs.

So like, yea fanfic is real art! that is a given. It is also not the same as professionally produced and edited work, which is good to remember when both criticising it and praising it. the only response fic tends to get is reactive - that is, there is no standard feedback mechanism that happens until after fic is written and published (betas/editors do exist but they are not universal or even common). and because of general hostility to critical or constructive feedback of any kind in the comment sections of AO3/FF.net (framed commonly as “well it’s too late to bitch now I already wrote it! What are you complaining about, you got free art!”), fic authors enjoy a very tight bubble of overwhelmingly happy, positive responses to their writing. Which is FINE, I don’t post fanfiction with the intent to get an essay back from people about what needs to be edited or changed, I wrote it for fun like everyone else, but that also means it exists in a very different social environment from commercially/professionally produced art, and as a consequence I’m not going out and proclaiming that I’ve written the next great western epic in the form a star wars fanfic, and if I were to do so I would be asking for a much larger public audience, an audience who is not going to consume my work as fun hobby writing but instead as serious literature, and respond accordingly

#asks #fandom discussion #< tagging stuff with that if you want to blacklist lol

[olderthannetfic]

A recent anon made me want to read a bit more about queerbaiting and I ended up on James Woodall’s video Dr. Who Was Queerbaiting (https://youtu.be/Olpn9YsyMeM), have you seen it?

I found it interesting, especially for his sources and the reasoning for why the definition of queerbaiting should be expanded from the original marketing technique one. My first reaction is that it’s better to make up a new words, like queercatching, than to endlessly expand the meaning of an old one, potentially into uselessness. And well, once you expand the meaning into “not good enough to satisfy expectations” or say “it’s not queerbaiting because it feels more authentic to queer communities” the questions “Whose expectations? All communities? What about conflicting needs? Should we decide by hand raising?” come to mind. Obviously the answer is always that we need more and more varied representation but it does seem like a definition that would leave space for a lot of infighting (and leave us in need of a different word to convey the original meaning). I’d like to hear a few different thoughts on this from you and other readers though!

--

I haven't watched it.

Broadly, the rallying cry I want to see is: Media by people like us, for people like us.

Define "us" as you see fit. What you want to get behind is going to be very personal, and it won't be the same for all of "The Queer Community".

For me, it's people who like BL—as opposed to other m/m media—and who are willing to admit that what they like is BL and welcome other fans of BL.

I have a visceral horror of being asked to identify too closely with a female body or female role despite being reasonably comfortable as a woman. I dislike being told which character to identify with, regardless of their body or identity. I lack the self insert gene, like to a claw my skin off, get it away from me level.

I dislike things that are trying to be too tightly #ownvoices. "Queer Media" in a broad sense is irrelevant to me as a fan, though I care about it for broader political reasons. I want a media that actively promotes and pursues a disconnect between viewer's body and character's body, between viewer's identity and character's identity. Drag queens are interesting even if not aimed at me. Drag kings are great. BL is great. Cringey, unrealistic f/f by dudes is sometimes great for me too. The closest I'll go to #ownvoices is bisexual media for bisexual people.

The biggest mainstream media is not by people like me or for people like me if it's from the US or UK, and that includes mainstream-ish queer media.

The closest we get is cis gay dudes making art about cis gay dudes who live in their same city and work a similar job, yadda yadda. Or slightly mainstream stuff by poisonous trolls who cry about how much they need to gatekeep and how their BL is not BL. There's a constant assumption, even for the BLy shit by AFABs, that a narrow definition of #ownvoices is the objective and a 1:1 correspondence between everything about the character on screen and the viewer is desirable and most moral and politically best. No amount of nitpicking over terminology is going to change that.

I can consume indie books or head over to Asia where commercial BL industries exist. Those are my options right now.

The entire concept of queerbaiting is stupid as fuck because it imagines that other people are paying attention to us in contexts where they just aren't.

I don't think we should expand the meaning. I think we should approach media differently.

Nothing will change until:

1. People like you/me/whomever the desired queer voice is control media.

I don't mean "are in the writer's room": I mean are the showrunner. I don't mean "are the director" of a big movie that answers to a thousand producers: I mean are the studio head.

Power is what's needed, not begging for scraps!

Or 2.

We as consumers stop going "Sempai will notice me any day now!" about big shit and start spending 100% of our leisure entertainment time on indie things. Not as an also-ran that we fit in around HP and SPN and DW or whatever: as the entirety of the media empires we care about.

And no, that won't solve the problem of horrible people who turn out to abuse their partners still being good at art or whatever. Consuming indie media doesn't make it less problematic. It does offer the opportunity for me to consume media that is aimed at me.

--

I really don't care whether James picks yes or no in that video. The entire question is pointless.

[streets-in-paradise]

Horror Characters Preference - How they celebrate Christmas with you

Happy Holydays! This is a little gift i wrote for you all :)

 I wished I could have added more characters and some escenarios ended up a bit short, but this is the best i got in the few writing time i had in between holyday preparations. 

Fandoms incluided: Chucky, The Walking Dead and Stranger Things.

tags: @losersclubisms @helie-brain ( i added Daryl for you) @richiethedigidestine ( i remember how much you like Carl)

Chucky

Andy Barclay

-Only after growing tired of hearing you sing ' You are a mean one, Mr Grinch' he ends up confessing why he hates Christmas. 

- Andy is the sort of person who would give speeches about consumerism and children being brainwashed by commercials. It is a very important topic for him because it ruined his life, over the years he blamed himself a lot about wanting a Good Guy for his birthday when he was 6 and manipulative advertisement played a big role on that. 

- He is the least materialistic person you have ever met. Although he has a hard time expressing what he wants or needs you have clear that he prefers people over things. 

- If it would depend on him, he would spend Christmas like a regular day, but he has you and Kyle getting him out to get things and do holiday stuff. 

- Decorating the tree was easier to convince him about, you made the cabin look like a home and he couldn't complain of that. 

- It made him feel a bit fuzzy inside. His place would not be a prison or an Isolation spot anymore. You wanted to stay with him and turn it into a home, your home. 

Junior Wheeler

- Christmas is Bree's favorite holiday and she is your favorite of your boyfriend's parents, so you are there to celebrate. 

- You also want to support Junior because you know Logan has a way of always ruining his mood somehow. He would never let him be happy, not at least in his own way. 

- For so, you were there to do it. Perfectly aware of his musical inclinations, you encouraged him to sing Christmas songs with you for the little kids in the party. Junior knows that you like that and only you could have convinced him of joining.

 - People are shocked, Logan receives tons of compliments and advice coming even from some of his friends regarding the unexpectedly discovered talent of his son. 

- You casually mention that you play piano, a subtle act of support in that context. 

- Junior is so happy that, if there weren't formal appearances to keep, he would have kissed you ríght there.

Jake Wheeler

-Christmas is a hard time for him. He used to love it as a kid but since his mom died nothing is the same. The season reminds him so much of her and his father is not a good source of support. Lucas gets even worse around the holydays and Jake has to either avoid him or babysit his drunk ass.

 - One of his saddest memories involves him having to decorate the tree alone, feeling the loose even harder' because the season makes him feel like he is alone in the world. 

- That's precisely why it meant so much to see you at his doorstep visiting to help him with the decorations. You even brought some yourself along with some other Christmas plans. 

- He almost cried while eating your gingerbread cookies, that's how strongly emotional you got him with such simple acts. 

- Lucas gave you the side eye as he was passing by. He knows who you are and he is not supportive of your relationship, but that time you didn't mind in the slightest. 

- In fact, you previously fought the urge of bringing a mistletoe just to not get Jake in trouble. 

- You love your boyfriend and wouldn't let the assholeness of his father get in between your chances to give him happiness.

Bonus

Chucky

- He is the gift for one of the kids on your family gathering.

-Switched the original gift for a box containing him, actually. 

- Good luck surviving his holyday fun.

The Walking Dead

Daryl Dixon

- Celebrating anything is complicated in the world you live in, almost impossible for most people. When you were freshly arrived the Alexandria people were trying to push parties down your throats and Daryl had the worse reactions to that. 

- He hates to be pushed into anything, even more when it is about a celebration he wasn't a fan of before the apocalypse. 

- One thing was for sure, his reactions of discomfort were quite adorable to you. At some point of the party he got tired of giving deathly stares so he wouldn't be bothered and he stayed outside. He was out in the front not only refusing to participate, but to even be present.

- Of course, you followed to make him company and make sure he wouldn't freeze. After all, If both of you wanted, that party could be just the two of you.

Carl Grimes

- If he gets the chance to celebrate, he wants to make it nice for his little sister. Carl feels he was fortunate because he got to experience a real Christmas and she will never have that. 

- Even if she is too little to remember, he wants to make it special for her and you help with whatever you can. Sacavange for things, arts and crafts, whatever necessary to get some nice decorations and presents.  

- Your determination on the topic ends up convincing Rick of accepting the idea. As soon as he heard your reasons, even Daryl was up to participate. He has a soft spot for the little girl and Carl is doing so much for her. 

- When the time comes, all the people you consider family are there. It's your first truly felt Christmas since the end of the world.

Stranger Things

Steve Harrington

- He doesn't get much comfort and family at home, but since he has you and his little friends he found a family where he belongs and that manifests on his attitude around the holidays. 

- His gifts are super thoughtful. Everyone knows he is gonna surprise and that makes you nervous. You fear he would give you the most perfect gift and yours for him wouldn't be as good enough in comparison. 

- Meanwhile, Steve stresses more about what to get for Dustin, considering how far he is from his peculiar likes and interests, than what he planned for you. 

- For Christmas Eve he gets invited to dinner by the Hendersons and that means you also got invited. Dustin loves you both and wants you to be there with him and his mom. 

- When you arrive the boy is watching ' Silent Night, Deathly Night'. 

- " No horror movies tonight." You commented to him. " It's our first Christmas together. We have to make it nice. " 

" But it counts as a Christmas movie!" He playfully complained. " It's an open film subgenre." 

- Steve laughed and messed with his hair, loving to hear him being himself and you trying to make things the normal way. 

- You both in your different ways make him insanely happy.

Eddie Munson

-I get the feeling that his celebrations are the closest to how It's used to celebrate where i live. 

- Loudest Christmas ever, it's 6 pm of Christmas Eve and Eddie is already blasting music. He is a happy and unapologetical dude and that's how cheer hits him.

- You are neighbors, so you are constantly crossing over trailers to see how each other is going as you await for the night. You have to get reminded to get back whenever someone needs any of you for something on your preparations. 

- Eddie and Wayne end up joining you. Your family is on good terms with them and getting all together is better than having to stand how you and Eddie leave out of sudden to see each other. 

- At some point of the night, once you have enough time to dedicate to your families, you follow him into the next step of your celebrations. 

- Surprisingly crashing late at Dustin's and pumping up the party. 

- Steve mocked you for showing up late, he and Eddie have a secret war going on over who amazes Dustin the most.

Bonus

Billy Hargrove

- You have been dating for a while and your mom suggested you could invite him to your Christmas party. 

- Everything goes fine when you are introducing him to your parents but, as soon as he saw him, your little brother reacted as if he would have seen the reaper. He clumsily tried to dissimulate, but you know him well enough to notice he is terrified. 

- That’s how you find out that the dude you were seeing was also your brother’s bully, the nameless guy he would always complain about everytime he came back home made a scared mess. 

- You dump his ass without hesitation. He may be charming and super hot, but he showed his true colours messing with a little boy, with your family.

- Nothing can excuse that. 

#horror preferences #chucky #child's play #the walking dead #stranger things #andy barclay #junior wheeler #jake wheeler #daryl dixon #carl grimes #steve harrington #eddie munson #andy barclay x reader #junior wheeler x reader #jake wheeler x reader #daryl dixon x reader #carl grimes x reader #steve harrington x reader #eddie munson x reader

[hala-macaron]

I know it is not that deep, but every single time I see or hear someone say “translation is a betrayal of the original source” or “translation means I can never truly grasp what was meant” and mean it, I die a little inside. Do you know how much time, effort, countless nights spent agonising over context, meaning, intention, historical context, research etc. goes into a translation? Do you know about the concept of translation loyalty, how we are taught that it is one of the golden rules? Our loyalty to readers and author alike? How much understanding of a topic does not only go into translation but into interpreting as well? How much determination, frustration and love it all takes? How informed you have to be about hot words, cultural peculiarities, language-specific concepts and the like?

Do you know how much adoration goes into providing another human’s words - one whom you may have never met but by all that is holy and damned, their voice exists and it is worth being heard by all, no matter if they have access to the original language or not -, their thoughts and dreams and hopes and whatever else there is, for all eyes and ears and fingers?

It is demanding work. It makes you doubt and doubt and want to pull your own teeth out sometimes. I have spent minutes analysing a sentence simply to find the correct translation for the word “as”. I have checked sources, researched novels and plays long forgotten, hours before I would actually get to translate. I have spent nights researching, swallowing tears and cries of anger older than me, for interpreting jobs. I have felt unbridled joy upon delivering a valuable translation, could have jumped in exhilaration when elderly people came to me, smiling and thanking me profusely because they are interested in working for a good cause but they would not have been able to understand this conference without my friend and I because the conference was held in English, not German.

My state exams are coming up. I am this close to being a state certified and court-sworn translator and interpreter. Something I’ve been training for for 3 years. I would have never discovered Neil Gaiman as an author without the translation of “Norse Gods”, which I needed as reference material back in school. I would not be able to teach my mum English if not for my Scottish teacher during my time becoming a commercial correspondent and then starting to train as a translator. Without translation, nobody would ever be able to learn another language, or even get to know a different culture.

Translation is an act of love.

It’s in the smile of the Ukrainian kid whom I’ve interpreted for at a gaming conference, who did not speak a lick of German. It’s in the eyes of the Canadian Paralympics delegation stopping in Munich, whom we’re interpreting a sports event, a state dinner and a welcome speech for. It’s in the laughter of refugees who have been here for months to years, shunned by the government and left to be unheard until the multiple conferences, projects, organisation meetings held to help them, to make sure they are not forgotten. Who joke around with us in bits of English and Farsi - through another interpreter -, forge connections with others attending the meeting, quipping and teasing in broken German and my mother tongue rings as sweet as bells. It’s in the hands of elderly people attending a talk about the banning of uranium weapons, shaking but full of strength, as they thank us for our help. It’s my mother’s smile as I translate medical articles for her, as she never learned English, growing up in the GDR.

Translation is an act of loyalty and love. Of adoration for those who were, who are and who will be, and all the echoes of ourselves.

#translation #languages #pls I am so serious when I say all of this #stop saying translation is an act of betrayal #If all I needed was to betray the author and the meaning to be good at my job #I would not stay up and spend a fortune on dictionaries of all kinds to check my translation time and time again #interpreting #writing #me #I know it’s not that deep #I just felt desperate for some reason #writers of tumblr #books #literature #authors #neil gaiman #love

[nights-flying-fox]

Leo Blues

Leon (Future Leo) realizes that his younger self is feeling a bit blue and decides to help him feel better.

I wrote half of this months ago and the other half today. Shoutout to my friend @little-banjo-frog for giving some ideas and helping with the fic!!! :D

This is part of an AU but you don't really need to know context. Just that Future Leo is back to past, and maybe some other family members, and he is hanging out in the lair with others.

Oh also this is inspired by @tmnt-event-blog 's prompt (basically what motivated me to finish it haha)

Word Count: 2530 ☆ Fandom: rottmnt ☆ Warnings: a very brief implication of death/losing someone close ☆ AO3 Link: Here!! ☆

Leon knew himself well. Not himself himself, but his younger self. Leo was a younger version of Leon after all, and Leon knew what it did mean when he sulked away from everyone. 

Today Leo was less chatty, he didn’t leave his room other than to get breakfast and join his brothers to help them with some things. These two things were more than enough to tell Leon his younger self was in a bad mood. 

That is exactly why right now Leon was on his way to Leo’s room. He didn’t tell anyone else, since he knew how he used to be around on such days. Always hiding his negative emotions and keeping it to himself. Not wanting to share the hurt and make anyone else sad. Leon was worried that he wouldn’t talk to him either, but he had to try his chance. What were your future selves if not to help you when needed, right? Ignoring the 'annoying them till they start throwing stuff at you' part, of course.

He knocked the wall before opening the curtain and entering Leo’s room. As he expected, he found the boy sitting on his bed with legs crossed, his phone in his hand but his eyes blankly staring at the ground. Leon wasn’t even sure if he heard him coming. He most probably didn’t, considering how he flinched when Leon put his hand on his shoulder and sat next to him. 

 “Hey, pequeñin ,” He said as he kept his voice low and smiled softly. 

 Leo gave him a confused look before smirking. “Hey, anciano .”

 The older turtle rolled his eyes, but said nothing. He wasn’t here to jokingly bicker with his younger self. “Haven’t seen you around a lot today.”

 “Eh, got stuff to watch and catch up.” Leo shrugged.

  Lies. “Ah, so feeling blue , huh?” Leon stated the fact, but not without smirking at his word choice.

 “Blue suits me well after all.” Leo replied casually, with a wink and matching smirk. 

 Leon felt himself relax a bit, at least his younger self felt comfortable enough to open up with how he was feeling to him, even if it was in the form of joking. “Has no one ever told you being this blue is too much?” Leon asked.

 “I thought you’d know the answer already, considering we share the same sixteen years of the past.” Leo answered.

 “Heh, you’re right. How did I miss that?” 

 The two sat on the bed for some seconds, enough for Leo to slowly lean towards his bed frame and for Leon to come up with a quick plan to repaint Leo’s mood. 

 As he got up he said “I’ll be right back, and don’t worry I’m not bringing anyone.” to Leo. The other was quiet, only watching him leave. 

 Leon’s first destination was the living room. The last place he had seen Leo’s tablet (which he probably had forgotten to pick it up yesterday). Entering in, he saw it was still on the same spot as before. The room was empty, nobody other than Splinter who was enjoying his usual commercials. Leon smiled at the nostalgic scenery. No matter how long passed since he returned to the past, he still couldn’t get used to the fact he once again was back at home. Back to the casual chaotic life he had before the apocalypse. The little simple things would forever make him feel warm. 

 After picking up the tablet, he walked towards his next destination: His room. Or rather his, Future Mystic Hands’ (they really needed a shorter ‘official’ nickname that both Mikeys would accept) and Case’s room. He took the extra blankets (Mikey Two wouldn’t need them anytime soon) and left. 

 Next up was the kitchen, which was the final room to visit before returning to Leo’s room. As he came close to the entrance he heard the chatter. Casey, Donnie and April’s laughter filled the kitchen. The three were sitting on the chairs, mugs of three different kinds of drinks on the table. Casey was the first one to notice him: “Hi Sensei!”

 "Hey Case," Leon ruffled the boy's hair as he walked by him. Casey grumbled in protest, but Leon could see his grin. What a hypocrite. 

 "Will you join us Big Blue?" April asked with a smile, "Mikey's made hot cocoa."

 "Sorry guys, got other plans." 

 "What other plans?" Casey questioned, raising a bow. 

 "Finally catching up on some TV series." He answered.

 "All by yourself?" April asked.

 Leon got two mugs. "Yeah, myself and I." 

 "I see, you mean you and Leo ." Donnie pointed out. "And here Future Boy was telling us some future stories." 

 Leon turned to squint at Casey. "What kind of future stories?"

 "Ummmmm…" Casey looked away. Bad sign. A very bad sign.

 "Nothing you should worry about." April said and sipped from her cocoa.

 "Somehow this makes me worry even more." Leon deadpanned. Then he turned back to what he was doing.

 Donnie smirked, "You'll most likely find out soon anyways." 

 That could only mean an embarrassing story. But hey, two could play that game. "Well, maybe you'll find out more future stories too." 

 "Oh ho ho, tell us all of them man." April sounded excited to learn more embarrassing stories. Leon couldn't blame her, there were a lot of crazy silly things going on even in the doomed future.

 "Maybe not all of them." Casey chipped in, looking with somewhat pleading eyes to his sensei. 

 "Perhaps." Leon replied, meanwhile finishing with preparing the tray with the snacks, leftover pizza and hot cocoa mugs. "But not yet."

 "Leaving us at cliffhanger?" April huffed.

 "I didn't even start saying anything."

 "The trailer was enough." 

 Leon grinned, "Soon in the lair… stories from the future." He said dramatically.

 "Three V.I.P. tickets, please." Donnie said after sipping his probably way too sweet coffee. "For the premiere."

 "We accept payment with story sharing." Leon smirked.

 "Deal. Junior shared plenty." 

 "Sweet."

 Leon turned to look at his protégé. Casey watched with confusion. Then Leon realized that the boy didn't know– or rather didn’t remember. "Do you remember cinemas, Case?" 

 "Yes?" His eyes shined brightly the moment he connected the dots, "Oh!" 

 "...Future didn't have cinemas." Donnie announced his own findings as he thought out loud. "I hadn't considered that."

 "I believe you guys can fill him with some culture of the present?" Leon asked.

 "Of course, there's so much for the Future Boy to discover!" April got her arm around Casey's neck and pulled him closer. Casey smiled, putting down his mug of tea to side hug her. 

 It was good to see the boy had gotten better at being relaxed. Being always on alarm was a hard habit to break from after everything he went through. 

 As the three began talking about all the places and things his future lacked, Leon left the kitchen and headed back to Leo's room.

 The boy was now under the blanket. Leon could tell that he still was on his phone from the subtle light. 

 "Hot cocoa delivery," Leon announced. 

 "Mikey's?" Leo asked from the spot he was in.

 "Yep."

 He peeked and then reached to him, "Gimme!"

 Leon gladly gave him one of the mugs. "If you come out we can share the snacks."

 This perked Leo's interest a bit more. He squirmed out of the blanket, no more laying on the bed. He noticed the rest of what Leon collected on his short trip in the lair. 

 Leon took his place next to him and wrapped the blankets he brought around them. He placed the snacks and pineapple pizza between them, and the tablet in front of them. "What do you wanna watch?"

 Leo shrugged, "Dunno." 

 Good thing Leon was still a Leo. He knew what his comfort movies were and he could use this to his advantage. “Kung Fu Panda?”

“Sure. Are we doing a marathon?” Leo asked.

“You bet. After all, it has been a while since I last saw them.” Leon grinned. He barely could remember the movies, or the days he would watch them with his family thanks to Donnie, in the middle of the apocalypse. He really hoped they could do that again, just not in an apocalyptic situation.

Leo looked at him, with a glint of sadness. He quickly looked away towards the screen. “You better plan watching Secrets of the Scroll too, then.” He said. Voice completely normal, as if it wasn’t him who was hiding under blankets a short while ago.

“You know I will.” Leon hummed. He hadn’t missed that look, and he would help himself. “Before that… is there something you want to talk about? You seemed like you wanted to say something a second ago.”

He seemed uncertain for a moment, “Ah, no. Nope.”

“Are you sure?” Leon knew that this was a lie. “Because whatever you say, stays between us.”

“Yeah, yeah… just…” Ah, there it was. “Remember last night’s patrol?” He said a bit quietly.

Leon nodded, “Yeah. Didn’t you guys end up kicking Stockboy’s butt?”

“Yes… but…” Leo pulled his legs towards himself. “I almost failed.” He whispered.

“But you didn’t.” Leon pointed out, urging his younger self to talk.

“But I almost did!” Leo repeated. His hold on the mug tightened.

“And why is it a problem?” Leon questioned, genuinely. He wanted to know why Leo found it such a big problem.

“Because the last time I failed, everyone I loved almost died .” 

Leo sounded so tired, and equally panicked. And Leon couldn’t even blame him. Not when he did the same thing. Not when he did lose them. Not when he froze once he heard the words.

Leo took a breath, “Sorry, I… I didn’t mean to. I…”

Leon looked at him. The boy he once was. So young, sad, broken… Unfairly punished by a cruel fate. And never ever let himself relax, to be seen weak. Especially after the apocalypse. After losing so much. After becoming a leader, responsible for whatever is left. This boy had almost experienced it. He almost had the same life as him. And even though he managed to escape the hell, he still was suffering from it. Even though he literally had sacrificed himself, he had given his everything to save everyone, he was still hurting thinking of what could’ve been. Of what happened.

And, oh, how unfair that was.

  He put his mug aside, then gently took the mug Leo was holding from his hands (who looked at him confusedly) and put it next to his. Then he pulled the boy into a tight hug. “It is okay, Leo.” He said, voice small but powerful. “It has passed, everything will be alright.”

“But what if I make another mistake? What if everything goes bad again, because of me ?” Leo responded, his voice trying to stay strong but clearly close to breaking.

“You will make mistakes.” Leon said. “You will make so many of them. Just like I did. Even after everything that happened. Even when I was a leader.” He pushed away the memories full of pain, regret, and shame that creeped from the back of his mind. He had learned to accept them, once he had time to recover and focus on himself. Or rather he was learning to, it was a hard process to return to what you had locked to survive. He didn’t want Leo to do something similar, or let his fear destroy him. “And you know what? It is amazing that you make mistakes. It means you are trying something new. You are trying to be better. To learn. That you realize them means you are trying to learn from them.”

“And what if I don’t have time to learn from them the next time I make a mistake?” Leon knew Leo had shut his eyes and was doing his best to not let everything out, to not break in front of him. He was holding Leon tightly too.

“You will have time. Trust me.” Leon affirmed. “After all, what is important is the fact that you are trying. You aren’t giving up. You are trying to be better. And I am so proud of you.” He broke the hug and looked at his eyes. “I know you think otherwise, but you are actually a much cooler dude than me. You are even teaching me new stuff every day.”

Leo smiled a bit, a shaky one. “How so?”

“You were the one to remind me what I always fought for, you are the one to remind me who I was– or rather, I am .” Leon smiled at him. “You are beating yourself up for something impossible, and while I know it is hard to not to do so, I also know you are strong, Leo. And you are never alone.”

And with those words, Leo finally let himself relax and smile. Then Leon saw as tears fell, right before Leo hugged him tightly. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t really have to. Leon knew how much it meant to be reminded of having someone by your side even at the worst times. For someone to confirm even when the world felt like it was ending (which was not an unfamiliar concept for both of them, sadly) things would turn out well. So he held the boy, until he stopped crying and shaking, letting everything out after who knows how long.

When Leo broke the hug and sat, leaning to Leon instead of his bed, Leon patted his head. “How blue are you feeling?” He asked, handing back now luke warm hot cocoa. Somehow, they hadn’t gone cold, which to be honest was weird.

“Less than before.” Leo smiled. “I never had thought I’d end up getting hugs from my older self, but here you are.”

“Isn’t it insane?” Leon replied with a smirk.

“It is.” Leo grinned. Then he added. “Thank you.”

“Don’t even mention it.” Leon replied. “Now drink your cocoa and get ready, because I want to watch Kung Fu Panda.”

Leo grinned. “Sure thing, old man.”

“No, even after those hugs? You are cruel.” Leon teased.

“Those are just facts.” Leo smirked. Then he sipped the hot cocoa, “Mmm, this is good.”

“I bet it is.” Leon said as he sipped his. Oh, it was even better than he remembered it to be. “It really is…” He nodded. He had missed this so much.

“So are we watching the movies or..?” Leo asked, a fake hastiness in his tone.

Leon laughed, “Yeah, let’s start.” He grinned as he opened the movie.

He didn’t think much of it, but he was grateful for Leo. He wouldn’t ever talk about it, but those words he told his younger self? He needed to hear them too. He had forgotten them. He may have had his family back, but still sometimes it was hard to remember things weren’t always bad. That things would be okay in the end, and that he wouldn’t ever be alone.

So in the end of the day, both blue masked turtles had ended up feeling better– or as they would call it, less blue.

#if there any typos well. its 2 am so lol #rottmnt #nighty writey #rottmnt fanfic #rottmnt leo #rottmnt future leo #rottmnt au #rottmnt leonardo #tmnt #save rottmnt #unpause rottmnt #i also dont know spanish so if those words are wrong please correct me/tell me #ok now i shall sleep love you guys bye #let's grab a slice together #lgast au

[lastweeksshirttonight]

I've listened to this almost four times at this point, so I better write some thoughts on it. (Did you need them? Probably not but humor me.)

This whole podcast talks deeply about the emotional toll of COVID and the pandemic, so be advised.

Interview starts at 16:10.

To start, I think a thread that runs through this entire episode is Marc being more cynical or bitter than John about a point, and John pausing to realign himself with what his actual level of cynicism is. You can tell that Marc and John like each other a lot, but there is also a tension to some of their discussions that I find really interesting. Like a mental chess match where Marc has a clear POV and John is trying to subtly spin the response to be closer to his own ideals.

The interview opens with the two of them talking about microphone levels and people not being closer to the mic and how irritating it is when people don't know how to use microphones. I am weak to John talking

I haven't watched Rachel Maddow in a while, is she really doing radio shows about Spiro Agnew? What? Why?

John speaking about context and contextualizing our current dark reality. The way he viewed the pandemic and the extent of society's flaws, and how nothing was fixed was really interesting. For as much as he's said that he's allergic to sincerity, that's just plainly untrue. He really does want to believe in the best of everything around him - he later talks about how he loves his children so much it's painful, and I had the same thought. Marc's darkness is something else though, I would laugh helplessly too at being reminded that 30% of the country wants to kill me specifically (help)

"It will eat your messages and shit them back into your face." I truly enjoy when John goes this blue, it always surprises and delights me.

John wants everything to have a system. He really likes the John Wick coin-based hotel system. I don't quite know how the two of them got from the comfort conspiracy theories can provide in dark times to John Wick but hey.

Marc being mad about having no awards and John being like "you really didn't need to say your bitterness out loud bro" killed me.

John has no idea why LWT was moved into another category. He doesn't even know who he's competing against. The Emmys basically afford him the right to be left alone with his show. I think he values that more than anything in regards to LWT - this topic comes up multiple times in this podcast and John stresses that having no sponsors to be beholden to, no commercials, and seemingly little to no oversight makes them able to do things that just can't be done on commercial television. There are more details to mine about this later, but it seems like, for all the absolute chaos of HBO and Warner and Discovery (something John likens to continually having new fathers around and wondering if he even has to bother learning their names), he's still relatively free to plug away at LWT the way he and his team envision it. Which is a relief to hear, honestly, the delayed announcement of LWT being renewed really made me concerned that Discovery in particular was done dealing with him.

I like how John, when given questions, will often ask clarifying follow-ups in this. He's not one for vagueness as it seems - the one that particularly stuck out to me was Marc relaying how he struggles with pulling his thoughts together on current events, using the Gaza crisis as an example for him before asking how John settles on topics. John's response is to ask if Marc means in general, or om Gaza specifically. The conversation moves into the general and how LWT is made now that it's ten years in (John calls the research department a machine and I can tell Marc is hoping that John literally invented a research machine from his tone of voice), but those are two very different conversations that could be pulled from that one question.

I also love John and Marc taking the piss out of John's show. Truly, if John leaves his desk, you obviously just sat through 30 minutes of the worst human misery possible.

-

Marc: "Because of your innate Britishness and your sense of humor, that... you do irritate -"

John, sounding like something just activated in his brain and as darkly as I've ever heard him: "I love to."

Marc: " - the right - ???"

-

My new favorite running theme in John's interviews is his apparently very tense relationship with his lawyers. The nitty gritty of the legal needs of the show, and how John views his lawyers and the frustrations that come with trying to do hard-hitting topics while having lawyers drop out from conflicts of interest, always fascinates me.

John also delves into the security he requires because of the breadth of people he's pissed off. He doesn't seem to care at all and enjoys pissing these people off, despite his wife's concerns. (I'm so sorry Kate you married a deeply weird man) John derives such pleasure from irritating people that it outweighs, say, never being able to go to Thailand without being arrested.

I cannot believe the Sacklers tried to come to the LWT office. Jesus Christ the entitled gall of these people.

Marc offends John with his assessment of England having many destroyed buildings, which leads into him saying, in a way reminiscent of the long-lost American from the Bugle, that he "enjoys the castles". God I miss the American. "How old's this wall? Holy fuck!"

-

Marc: "What are we gonna do about the futility..."

John: -cracks the fuck up-

Marc, finding his point: "...of..."

John: "Let it hang. Feel free to let that hang in the air. Let's just all enjoy the fact that we're all filling it in and coming up with different, equally valid, depressing ends to that sentence."

-

John is so severely offended and killed by Marc's suggestion that he did a Q&A tour. The absolute lowest form of entertainment in both of their minds. John mentions that he emphatically told people they could leave before the Q&A they hosted at the John and Seth stand up show I was at because he feels so strongly about this. I wrongly assumed this was because John hates himself and can't imagine people sticking around for him, but in my defense, that's usually the reason he tells people not to do something/shits on his bangs/etc.

(We still have like 30 min of this podcast, why am I like this)

The question of "what's gonna happen" is a pretty dark one, as John notes. He fears the worst but hopes people will work hard to stop the path we're on. Marc wanting to illustrate where we are is pretty ridiculous, as John points out - just look around.

I think Marc talking about what "all right" means to people gets to something that deeply concerns me about what the future of this country will be for me. I don't want to be that cynical but there is a deep well of selfishness in the US (rightfully identified) that does keep the country from uniting and fighting for survival in times like this. We're definitely at that turning point and I really want to hope we don't drive off the cliff.

I am not really emotionally prepared for jokes about John being in prison, I was genuinely a bit concerned about that The Last Time. That's my own problem though.

I didn't expect to get more information about John leaving The Daily Show on this podcast, but that's one of the most interesting things discussed. Marc asks if John left TDS because he felt the freedom he has with HBO wasn't there, and John says that wasn't the case - his contract expired at the end of 2013, after his summer hosting gig. Ideally, and Jon and John had discussed this (!!), the goal was to have John do TDS in the summers so John could, you know, rest. Sleep. Not be beholden to the horrors all the time. But Comedy Central, in John's blunt words, "didn't really care", so he went to HBO. The way that John mentions that "they would have probably kept [Jon] longer" if they'd actually tried to keep John around sounds just a tinge bitter and honestly, yeah. I'm annoyed hearing that we could have had this magical 2-host version of TDS and CC just... sucks. God I hate them. They gave me most of my worldview as a teenager because of TDS, but fucking A man.

Also interesting to hear, however vaguely, that John had some other offers. Wonder what those were. My best guess, based on what else was going on at that time, is TBS (who later made Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and were building around Conan) might have made a play.

I'm not a parent, but I do appreciate the discussion of parenthood, particularly how anxiety-inducing it can be. Hearing John talk about his worries regarding his prematurely-born son definitely resonated, and I'm glad his son is doing well now. ❤️

The brick joke in the middle of the parenting discussion is the hardest I've ever laughed at Marc Maron. Truly. Masterful brick joke.

I don't have an elegant tag for this - there's much more than what I touched on here in the podcast, and I appreciate how deep the conversation gets. It was really nice to listen to this multiple times during my hell day, and to hear John talk deeper about things that he's rarely asked about.

Also I'm sorry I wrote like fucking too many k words on this, I clearly had thoughts

#john oliver #marc maron #wtf with marc maron #last week tonight with john oliver #last week tonight #the daily show with jon stewart #the daily show #lee's tl;dr

[racefortheironthrone]

Can Georgism actually work? In the context of the 1890s it makes sense, but in modern America (at least), or the parts that are considering land value taxes like NYC, there are so many restrictions on development that it seems like a patently unfair manner of taxation. If I'm a developer who wants to build housing on my vacant lot, but the City won't let me, is it just that they can continue to tax my land?

I suppose it depends what you mean by "work." Can a Land Value Tax function? Yes, and we know this because about a half-dozen countries have implemented one. Does it have salutary effects? Yes. (Talk to me sometime about the need for a tax on vacant commercial properties in NYC to deal with rent blight.) Does it solve everything forever? No. Turns out there's more than one problem in society, and each requires a different approach.

So if you're going to have a LVT, you also need to reform zoning, planning, and land-use litigation to prevent NIMBYism. And so forth.

However, I don't think a LVT is unjust even in the scenario you outlined. For one thing, your vacant lot is still a valuable form of wealth that can appreciate in value, be borrowed against, and so forth - and you should pay taxes on that wealth just as you would for a developed property. And if that tax encourages you to either develop or sell the property to someone who will, so much the better for society (and for you).

#public policy #nimbyism #georgism #land value tax