timberlakefan96

[timberlakefan96]

Yeah, this is horseshit.

Video games have this especially bad. There’s this huge push into Video game streaming, where the device that’s actually playing your game is in a server room three states over, instead of under your TV like god intended, and while everyone working in tech seems to think this is the wave of the future, I can’t help but think they should try living in Montana for a year, where internet tops out at a cool megabit down and incurs overage chargers at ten gigabytes. Where you have to use McDonald’s free Wi-Fi to download phone updates. See if it’s still super convenient to “Play Assassin’s Creed anywhere!” then

smartphone storage plateauing in favor of just storing everything in the cloud is such dogshit. i should be able to have like a fucking terabyte of data on my phone at this point. i hate the fucking cloud

[timberlakefan96]

This is why YouTube allows you to upload 10 hour videos

drew a constant mood on the mind

[timberlakefan96]

government is trying to ban tiktok meanwhile millions of poor and disabled americans are about to completely lose their internet access at the end of april because congress wont renew funding for the affordable connectivity program

hell fucking world

[timberlakefan96]

Apologies in advance for long rant

So I’ve been on a superhero comic kick for a little while now and I got curious about where comic books are in the Space Year 2024 and I gotta ask what the hell is going on over there? I might be preaching to the choir here. I don’t know. I haven’t been in this fandom for a very long time. I don’t know where the conversation is. I’m just airing my own personal grievances on the subject. But I don’t understand how the progenitors of the single biggest movement in media in the last 20 years have been failing so absolutely thoroughly on their core product. To a point where it’s legitimately incredible. A feat of its own.

I haven’t touched a comic book in about a decade and a half at this point. I read them a lot in my teens and early 20s and the last comic book that I picked up and read with intent to continue was during DC‘s new 52 lineup back in 2011. I did not continue reading there. So it’s been long enough, I am functionally a brand new reader, right. I asked a friend who would been reading comics this whole time what he thought and he pointed me to marvel’s new ultimate lineup, which, much like the original Ultimate comics that I loved, is supposed to be a fresh start for familiar characters, each one of them having a new twist. Which sounds perfect to me!

Ultimate Spider-Man, which has only been running for about three issues at this point for example, has the elevator pitch of “what if Spider-Man got bitten as a 35-year-old family man instead of a gangly teenager?” which sounds incredible, and I needed to read that right away.

So, okay, I know what I want, how do I obtain this comic? My first thought, as I imagine most anyone’s first thought in the year 2024 would be is: “there’s gonna be an app right?” And the answer to that question is yes but no. There is an app and it does have, for a monthly subscription, “a selection” of comics, but the new stuff doesn’t arrive until after a significant delay. Like, three months. Strikes me is wrongheaded, but not particularly surprising. So plan B was still in the mindset of reading these today: Find a local comic store. Luckily, I live in a part of the United States that is very dense with nerds. There’s half a dozen comic shops near enough that I can just pop in, so I do! None of them had the comics I wanted in stock. Turns out almost none of them order more comics than they absolutely have to, because comics floppies, in an ironic twist, are actually a terrible investment for comic shops. Unless the distributor is twisting their arm, they only order as many copies of a given comic as they have preorders for. They were all very excited and welcoming, and I will be going back, but they were entirely unequipped to handle some rando like me barging into their store for a specific comic. Okay so plan C is “Can I get them delivered?” and the answer to that is yes, but not directly. Which, Dear Marvel Comics; you’re a company that pumps out monthly publications, how do you not have a subscription service? How does that happen? So you can’t just read these comics online, you can’t order them straight from the source, and you can’t just buy them in stores. At least not without great effort and pain. Or piracy. Cannot overstate the pervasive force that was the temptation to hoist the flag through this entire process.

Eventually, I did find these comics and I buy them. Just found a place online and ordered them. Not my original plan, but hyperfixations are what they are.

After actually reading these things, I got three distinct and immediate impressions. First: The comic is good! For the most part! It’s well written and well drawn. They do make good on the promise of the conceit and I probably am going to keep reading it. In fact, I might dip in a little further and go for their ultimate X-Men line which is going in a wild new direction that intrigues me! But here’s the second thing. I bought three (3) comics. At five (!!) dollars apiece. So I ended up spending $15 before taxes and shipping. Basically a month subscription to whatever streaming service I want, and all for what, 50 pages of content? That’s insane, right? Like I can’t be the only one to think that? I just don’t understand what rationale they’re using to sell these things. I don’t understand where they think the value proposition is here, when, again, for the price of only a few issues, I could get access to hundreds of hours of content on virtually any platform I want. For the cost of these three comics, I could buy a month of Disney+ and watch every single Marvel movie. It’s just not a fair comparison, and I really don’t understand why they think this is okay.

And then putting value propositions to the side for the moment, thing three is: This comic, which again I want to emphasize is good, was pitched to me as a completely fresh start free of any baggage that might turn away a prospective reader, much like the original Ultimates line. In issue one we learn that’s not the case. I’ll keep this as free from spoilers as possible, but we learn that the entire universe, and reason for this Peter Parker’s existence is because of a decision a character made in another universe from a decade ago. And if you wanna know all about that, you have to read a separate comic series. Which feels like exactly the wrong creative decision to make here. And, like, I get it, This is Marvel things are gonna tie back together, that’s just what these stories do, but you can’t sell me a fresh start with a new version of a new character and then, in issue one, tell me that pretense is false. If you want to tie it in later, as a big stakes-raising twist, be my guest, but to bring in this whole Multiverse thing in issue one just smacks of no confidence in your product. Like you don’t trust the basic conceit of your story to sell itself. Which you should be able to do! Hell, it sold me! I guarantee if I told someone this story was about a character who died in a big multi-comic event a decade ago but came back and made his own universe, most people’s eyes are going to gloss over. But if I said “Spider-Man but he’s 35 and happily married *before* he becomes Spider-man”, that’s gonna turn some heads! But I digress.

In the end, I’m not an active member of this community, I’m just an outside observer who poked my head into comic books for the first time in a very long time, and I’m just baffled. Almost everything wrong here has been solved a decade ago or more. Again, I’m sure I’m saying nothing new, and if you’re reading comics and find no relation to my plight, then go with god. I just needed to vent frustration. I don’t understand how comic books are even still a thing, when they’re this hard to get, and this hard to parse. Get your shit together, guys.

#comics #marvel #spiderman #ultimate spider man #marvel comics #what the fuck

[timberlakefan96]

Growth capitalism is a deranged fantasy for lunatics.

Year 1, your business makes a million dollars in profit. Great start!

Year 2, you make another million. Oh no! Your business is failing because you didn't make more than last year!

Okay, say year 2 you make $2 mil. Now you're profitable!

Then year 3 you make $3 mil. Oh no! Your business is failing! But wait, you made more money than last year right? Sure, but you didn't make ENOUGH more than last year so actually your business is actively tanking! Time to sell off shares and dismantle it for parts! You should have made $4 mil in profit to be profitable, you fool!

If you're not making more money every year by an ever-increasing exponent, the business is failing!

Absolute degenerate LUNACY

[timberlakefan96]

I usually just condense it to one “that” when that happens. “the candy that that boy ate” works just as well as “the candy that boy ate”

i hate that "that that" is grammatically correct. why is english the joke language

[timberlakefan96]

I hold at your neck the Gom Jabbar. Poison needle. Instant death.

Now, which looks better, one or two? One…or two?

And three, and four? Three…four? Read the second line down, please.

#Dune #this can’t be the first time this joke has been made #I will not fear #fear is the mind killer

[timberlakefan96]

Frogs are hilarious I mean they’re mostly just a mouth but with just enough leg to throw the mouth at food

[timberlakefan96]

As someone who grew up with "I'm not going to praise you for doing what's expected of you; that's not being good, that's doing the bare minimum" I want to encourage you to celebrate every little thing you can. Everything that takes energy and effort should be appreciated and you're allowed to be happy about trying.

[timberlakefan96]

[timberlakefan96]

please fucking vote

[timberlakefan96]

[timberlakefan96]

#finally

[timberlakefan96]

Today, I painted that Guilmon I sketched ages ago.

Felt good to be arting again

#digimon #digimon tamers #guilmon #my art #I love how square his head is

[timberlakefan96]

tiktok porn is so so funny.

why even try at this point

[timberlakefan96]

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth completely understands how to *feel* like a Final Fantasy game:

To be a Final Fantasy game is to be a musical that has big fight scenes instead of choreographed numbers.

It needs to be about a rolling Katamari of weirdos and drama kids who go on a seasons’ worth of anime adventures before it turns dark in the final third and they kill a guy whose ego could destroy the world.

And it needs —NEEDS— at least one Minigame that you fucking hate, and one minigame that’s weirdly elaborate and could be its own game. Ideally both. Occasionally they’re the same minigame.

FF7R2 understands this on a level that I don’t think any mainline game has truly understood since 10.

#final fantasy vii #final fantasy vii rebirth #ff7 rebirth #I love this game so much #haven’t beaten it yet and I almost don’t want to

[timberlakefan96]

I see it a lot in my notes too, the "until the hostages are released Israel will not stop" and I just want you all to finish the damn sentence you genocidal freaks. Israel won't stop what? Say it so that we're all clear.