holy shit. this guy on the bus talking to a girl about how he trades stocks. and she goes “have you seen american psycho” and he said no i dont watch movies. im too busy trading

Get registered, and vote blue!

Watching Home Alone is so funny it’s like

Kevin’s mom: *hyperventilating into a paper bag* I can’t believe I left my son home alone, he has to be so terrified, my poor baby boy all alone I need to go get him-

Kevin: *actively planning to commit war crimes*

John Carpenter's The Thing offers many lessons in filmmaking. For example:

• Have an actor wear a giant cowboy hat
• Put a Fucking Thing in there

does anyone wanna send me like $300 just bc im hot

someone really commented "this is illegal" on a post about blocking weapons shipments to israel...and there was another person saying "finally someone pointed out you could go to jail for this". i'm losing my fucking mind. there is no legal avenue to stop what the US government is doing and you need to accept that at this point.

Why the media CEOs will always learn the wrong lessons

Originally posted by margoterobbies

Yesterday a friend and I talked about how the entire (AAA) game industrie looked at BG3 being as popular as it is and going: "Oh, we need to produce 100+ hour games, I guess! Those sell!" Which... obviously is not why it is popular. The game is not popular because it has 100+ hours of gameplay, but because it has engaging characters, that are well-acted and that work as good hooks for the players. Like, let's face it: The reason why I so far have sunken 160 hours into this game is, because I wanna spend time with these characters - and because I wanna give them their happy endings.

But the same has happened too, just a bit earlier this year, right? When Barbie broke the 1 billion and every Hollywood CEO went: "Oh, so the people want movies based on toy franchises! Got it!" To which the internet at large replied: "... How is that the lesson you learned from this?"

Well, let me explain to you, why this is the lesson they learn: It is because the CEOs and the boards of directors at large are not artists or even engaged with the medium they produce. They mostly are economists. And their dry little hearts do not understand stuff more complex than numbers and spread sheets.

That sounds evil, I know, but... It is sadly the truth. When they look at a successful movie/series/game/book/comic, they look at it as a product, not a piece of art or narrative. It is just a product that has very clear metrics.

To them Barbie is not a movie with interesting stylistic choices that stand out from the majority of high budget action blockbusters. It is a toy movie with mildly feminist themes.

Or Oppenheimer is not a movie to them with a strong visual language and good acting direction. No, it is a historical blockbuster.

And this is true for basically every form of media. I mean, books are actually a fairly good example. In my life I do remember the big book fads that happened. When Harry Potter was a success, there was at least a dozen other "magical school" book series being released. When Twilight was a big success there was suddenly an endless number of "teen girl falls in love with bad boy, who is [magical creature]" YA. When the Hunger Games was a success, there were hundreds of "YA dystopia" books. Meanwhile in adult reading, we had the big "next Game of Throne" fad.

Of course, the irony is, that within each of those fads there might have been one or two somewhat successful series - but never even one that came even close to whatever started the fad.

Or with movies, we have seen it, too. When Avengers broke the 1 billion (which up to this point only few movies did) the studios went: "Ooooooh, so we need shared universe film series" - and then all went to try and fail to create their own cinematic universe.

Because the people, who call the shots, are just immensely desinterested in the thing they are selling. They do not really care about the content. All they care about is having a supposedly easy avenue of selling it. Just as they do not care about the consumer. All they care about is that the consumer buys it. Why he buys it... Well, they do not care. They could not care less, in fact.

So, yeah, get ready for a 20 overproduced games with a bloated 100+ hours of empty gameplay, but without the engaging characters. And for like at least 15 more moves based on some toy franchise, that nobody actually cares about.

And then get ready for all the CEOs to do the surprised Pikachu face, when all of that ends up not financially successful.

Really, I read some interviews yesterday from some AAA-studio CEOs and their blatant shock and missing understanding on why BG3 works for so many people.

Because, yeah... capitalism does not appreciate art. Capitalism does not understand art. It only understands spread sheets.

I don’t go to cons to “have fun” or “attend panels”. I go to cons to wader the artist alley in a daze and emerge hours later missing $200. I go to cons to think “hmm I should get some food. But the line is too long right now” every five minutes into perpetuity. I go to cons to say “you look so cool” at people in cosplay and have them not to hear me even a little bit.

i’ve started to think about ao3 audience interaction as kinda comparable to doing a live reading in an intimate little bookstore, like kudos are everybody who stayed til the end and applauded, comments are everybody who waited to come up to talk to you afterwards, and bookmark comments are the little snatches of conversation you overhear outside.

this helps me feel better/less anxious about responding to comments with some form of thanks, because if someone walked up to me in person and said they liked my work right after reading it, i would compulsively say thanks. it also helps contextualize audience size in a healthy way i think, bc most of us naturally crave more attention on our fic, but if we were actually in the room with even like 20 people applauding and five people waiting after to tell us how awesome we are we’d be fuckin elated.  

Giant squids and sperm whales existing are just crazy to me. You mean to tell me there's colossal beasts several times my size that battle each other in the darkest abysses leaving whales with scars marking them and that the giant squids are so rare we barely see them alive? And there are even bigger collosal squids and they live in some of the most frigid parts of the world deep in the water? And these just live on the same earth that I make my pasta and drink my lemonade on?

please watch this im losing it