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mostlysignssomeportents · 14 days

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Too big to care

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Remember the first time you used Google search? It was like magic. After years of progressively worsening search quality from Altavista and Yahoo, Google was literally stunning, a gateway to the very best things on the internet.

Today, Google has a 90% search market-share. They got it the hard way: they cheated. Google spends tens of billions of dollars on payola in order to ensure that they are the default search engine behind every search box you encounter on every device, every service and every website:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Not coincidentally, Google's search is getting progressively, monotonically worse. It is a cesspool of botshit, spam, scams, and nonsense. Important resources that I never bothered to bookmark because I could find them with a quick Google search no longer show up in the first ten screens of results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Even after all that payola, Google is still absurdly profitable. They have so much money, they were able to do a $80 billion stock buyback. Just a few months later, Google fired 12,000 skilled technical workers. Essentially, Google is saying that they don't need to spend money on quality, because we're all locked into using Google search. It's cheaper to buy the default search box everywhere in the world than it is to make a product that is so good that even if we tried another search engine, we'd still prefer Google.

This is enshittification. Google is shifting value away from end users (searchers) and business customers (advertisers, publishers and merchants) to itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

And here's the thing: there are search engines out there that are so good that if you just try them, you'll get that same feeling you got the first time you tried Google.

When I was in Tucson last month on my book-tour for my new novel The Bezzle, I crashed with my pals Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I've know them since I was a teenager (Patrick is my editor).

We were sitting in his living room on our laptops – just like old times! – and Patrick asked me if I'd tried Kagi, a new search-engine.

Teresa chimed in, extolling the advanced search features, the "lenses" that surfaced specific kinds of resources on the web.

I hadn't even heard of Kagi, but the Nielsen Haydens are among the most effective researchers I know – both in their professional editorial lives and in their many obsessive hobbies. If it was good enough for them…

I tried it. It was magic.

No, seriously. All those things Google couldn't find anymore? Top of the search pile. Queries that generated pages of spam in Google results? Fucking pristine on Kagi – the right answers, over and over again.

That was before I started playing with Kagi's lenses and other bells and whistles, which elevated the search experience from "magic" to sorcerous.

The catch is that Kagi costs money – after 100 queries, they want you to cough up $10/month ($14 for a couple or $20 for a family with up to six accounts, and some kid-specific features):

https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan&plan=family

I immediately bought a family plan. I've been using it for a month. I've basically stopped using Google search altogether.

Kagi just let me get a lot more done, and I assumed that they were some kind of wildly capitalized startup that was running their own crawl and and their own data-centers. But this morning, I read Jason Koebler's 404 Media report on his own experiences using it:

https://www.404media.co/friendship-ended-with-google-now-kagi-is-my-best-friend/

Koebler's piece contained a key detail that I'd somehow missed:

When you search on Kagi, the service makes a series of “anonymized API calls to traditional search indexes like Google, Yandex, Mojeek, and Brave,” as well as a handful of other specialized search engines, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, etc. Kagi then combines this with its own web index and news index (for news searches) to build the results pages that you see. So, essentially, you are getting some mix of Google search results combined with results from other indexes.

In other words: Kagi is a heavily customized, anonymized front-end to Google.

The implications of this are stunning. It means that Google's enshittified search-results are a choice. Those ad-strewn, sub-Altavista, spam-drowned search pages are a feature, not a bug. Google prefers those results to Kagi, because Google makes more money out of shit than they would out of delivering a good product:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework

No wonder Google spends a whole-ass Twitter every year to make sure you never try a rival search engine. Bottom line: they ran the numbers and figured out their most profitable course of action is to enshittify their flagship product and bribe their "competitors" like Apple and Samsung so that you never try another search engine and have another one of those magic moments that sent all those Jeeves-askin' Yahooers to Google a quarter-century ago.

One of my favorite TV comedy bits is Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator; Tomlin would do these pitches for the Bell System and end every ad with "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company":

https://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76aphonecompany.phtml

Speaking of TV comedy: this week saw FTC chair Lina Khan appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It was amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

The coverage of Khan's appearance has focused on Stewart's revelation that when he was doing a show on Apple TV, the company prohibited him from interviewing her (presumably because of her hostility to tech monopolies):

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/apple-got-caught-censoring-its-own

But for me, the big moment came when Khan described tech monopolists as "too big to care."

What a phrase!

Since the subprime crisis, we're all familiar with businesses being "too big to fail" and "too big to jail." But "too big to care?" Oof, that got me right in the feels.

Because that's what it feels like to use enshittified Google. That's what it feels like to discover that Kagi – the good search engine – is mostly Google with the weights adjusted to serve users, not shareholders.

Google used to care. They cared because they were worried about competitors and regulators. They cared because their workers made them care:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/4/18295933/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board

Google doesn't care anymore. They don't have to. They're the search company.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

#pluralistic #john stewart #the daily show #apple #monopoly #lina khan #ftc #too big to fail #too big to jail #monopolism #trustbusting #antitrust #search #enshittification #kagi #google

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desertcrater · 5 months

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wilson is diabolical in s3 ep2, especially because a few episodes prior its established that he eats neediness. if someone becomes independent from him, he can't stand it. typically this means he divorces them; but since house isn't his husband, this time it means he instigates house's psychosomatic depression.

both cuddy and cameron are on Team Tell House He Didn't Fuck Up, because they know house is on a quiet downward spiral. they know his leg pain's severity is tied to his self-worth/mental state.

but wilson? Mr I-Pathologically-Need-To-Be-Needed Wilson? he frames his Don't Tell House position as "teaching House humility" when really his motive is to get house back on vicodin and reliant on him. he even tosses a full vicodin pill bottle at house, claiming that it's so house doesn't skip rehab due to the pain. but if that were the case, why not give house something non-addictive? something OTC or non-restricted?

and i think there is an additional aspect in s3 ep1, too. house says he doesn't remember wilson "being this bitchy", and wilson replies that "the vicodin dulled it. in the sober light of day, i'm a buzzkill."

which could just be a dry humor remark, sure, but i think it highlights that their dynamic's going to change now that house is sober. and if their dynamic changes, it could threaten their weird codependent ecosystem that they live in. one where they both tolerate/exacerbate each other's worst qualities (house's misery and wilson's bitchiness). who will love me like he loves me? who will love him like i love him?

this is exemplified in that same episode. wilson shoots house down multiple times when house says he's a changed man, by replying: "no, house, you aren't."

wilson does this manipulative thing where on one hand, he's encouraging house to get better; yet on the other hand, he undermines any true progress. there is something so deeply wrong with wilson. he's so fearful of losing the codependency in his relationship with house, that he'll do anything to keep their fragile Boy Best Friend Status Quo. and that includes outright lying to house & actively sabotaging his rehab.

that also includes manipulating cuddy and cameron into keeping quiet. ironically, he's only able to do so because of his Boy Best Friend relationship to house. after all, who knows house better than wilson? who would know how to make house feel better more than wilson? who would know how to make house feel worse more than wilson? nobody loves house like wilson

#this got sooooo long but my god wilson is A Liar Sometimes (most times)#house md #hilson #james wilson #gregory house #also i'm writing this 30 mins into s3 ep2 so if the ending of the episode changes anything alsxndjdnd sorry

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genderqueerpositivity · 9 months

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CW: testosterone therapy, periods, physical changes from HRT

Earlier this year, I'd reached a point where I was wondering if I'd already seen all of the benefits and changes from testosterone therapy that I could possibly receive. It really seemed like everything had come to a halt as far as changes from HRT go.

Worse, what started as random spotting and painful cramping (which I originally blamed on really high stress) eventually became full blown periods, and this went on for months. At one point, it really felt like I wasn't even on T anymore. I blamed myself, because I would occasionally be late or forget to apply my testosterone cream. I thought that the bleeding, the inconsistent T levels, and the lack of progress was my own fault.

And then, I had to switch compounding pharmacies. And every single one of my problems disappeared within two weeks of starting the first tube of cream from the new pharmacy.

Nothing else has changed. Not my dose, nor where I apply it. I still forget and apply a few hours late sometimes, other times I miss a day entirely.

But the periods and cramping haven't returned. And I'm beginning to see small changes here and there again. I have to trim my ear and nose hairs now; I have more chest hair than ever before. It's time to face the fact that testosterone has made me a bear lmao.

Point being, looking back I really think that the quality of the testosterone cream I was getting from that first compounding pharmacy was kind of suspect. Looking at reviews online from other people really confirmed my suspicion; many people claimed that the quality of the prescriptions they received was wildly inconsistent from month to month. Not to mention, more recent reviews seem to suggest that their business is going under entirely, and from my own experiences attempting (and failing) to get my prescriptions filled with them in a timely manner, I'm not surprised.

I don't often see a lot of posts from trans folks on testosterone who use compounded cream, so I want to put this out there for others to see. If you're struggling to maintain consistent T levels, don't rule out the quality of your prescription as a possible cause. Make sure that the compounding pharmacy you're getting your T from is reputable and has good reviews.

#op #ftm hrt #testosterone therapy #gender affirming hormone therapy #gaht #transmasculine #genderqueer #genderqueerpositivity #personal #hrt journal #periods tw #menstruation tw

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ziracona · 2 years

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Amanda Young gets the exact same complete stan overwrite of canon character that Billy Hargrove gets, for largely the same reasons and same number or lack thereof of canon basis, but that’s apparently not a conversation people are ready to have

#the thing is. taking a character like Michael or Jason who’s canonically mentally ill or disabled & interpreting them through a more #realistic lens instead of the ‘crazy = evil’ they were given - to offset the ableism tropes that cause harm #is actually the opposite of assigning bpd or similar issues to a character that canonically has not got it in an attempt to use that as a #blanket combo excuse and explanation for every horrible thing they’ve done. unreal to me how hard such a basic concept seems to be for some #folks to get #and it’s not a coincidence that the charcaters who get woobiefied 97% of the time are white people that other white people find sexually #attractive. like just be into a horrible villain & accet that weirdo don’t try to pretend they didn’t commit 18 murders because your libido #people do the same nasty thing to sexuality. taking a canonically gay charcater whose otherness is part of their scary was in OG (IE #Sleepaway camp) and making them more humanized to offset the regressive ness of how they were created. is the opposite of taking a shitty #person who is not canonically gay (or worse is canonically or implied to explicitly be straight) and trying to insist they’re gay as some #weird excuse for them doing evil shit. like this isn’t a hard concept to grasp #like one is meant to utterly separate the othered quality from the concept it causes evil. & the other is exploiting that otherness as #explicitly tied to evilness as a scapegoat to try and blame or associate something other than the character’s actual personality & choices #so they can try and use faux progressiveness buzzword arguments to try and make people like their fave the exact same way they do #like you’re actively using a minority identity for your own ends and it’s not in a chill way; stop #ableism #homophobia

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olderthannetfic · 1 year

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Something that frustrates me about the Harry Potter conversation is a lot of people missing the point behind the motivation to boycott it. They seem weirdly focused on the content of HP when it's actually... not that bad? It's not perfect, in fact a lot of aspects are pretty fucking problematic and worthy of discussion, but not uniquely so by the standards of the fantasy genre. Yes, I know the goblins are clearly drawing on anti-semitic tropes. Yes, the house elf situation is fucked. Yes, lots of not-like-other-girls-style misogyny. Yes, Cho Chang was a fucking disaster of racism. I KNOW THIS ALREADY! I'm not an idiot and Harry Potter fans were talking about this for far longer than JKR has been a TERF. But I'm also a fan of the Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age and the Witcher and a shitton of isekai anime and tons of other fantasy medias which are so much worse. Harry Potter is only moderately problematic by the standards of most popular fantasy media, especially for the mainstream standards of the time period it was written. Worthy of criticism, but not dropping it entirely. And actually reading HP and looking back at JKR's behaviour at the time, much of it seems largely unintentional, just that JKR drew on a lot of fantasy tropes that she didn't properly examine as well as her own unexamined biases and she had some flawed understandings of progressivism that were fair for its day but don't fly now, but doesn't seem malicious. The actual authorial intent at least seems to be pretty progressive at least, even if the execution wasn't the best. And sure, it's not a masterwork but there's a reason it connected to so many people, even if a lot of it was luck and timing. We don't have to ignore that and doing so feels dishonest.

I'm just so annoyed when people try to shit on the contents because they're missing the point and confuse the actual problem in a way that weakens their argument. I don't give Harry Potter money anymore because JKR crossed some lines for me in real life, totally separate from Harry Potter as a piece of media, and I don't want to fund her bullshit because she is so influential it is hurting people. The content of her books is utterly irrelevant to this decision. She could have penned a goddamn magnum opus and it wouldn't have mattered. So I'm sick of people bringing up books that are "better" or ragging on the contents of Harry Potter because none of that is the point and never was the point and it comes across as just taking advantage of a shitty situations to dunk on a popular thing or those who enjoyed it. Yeah, it was a mediocre fantasy series. But it hit the right emotional escapist buttons in a lot of kids even if it had the moral nuance and depth of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles anti-drug PSA. Having to drop it sucked for a lot of people because it can't be replaced and yelling about how bad the writing was doesn't change that because it never was about quality. JKR's TERF transformation was in many ways a betrayal of JKR's intended audience considering how the text preached acceptance and love and starred an abused, unwanted child getting to go to magic school where he's special. Pretending Harry Potter should be dropped because its content has issues obscures the actual problem of a raging transphobic having money and influence and that not everything created by bad people is poor quality so boycotts might require giving up access to things you actually like or are valuable and that's not always an easy decision to make.

JKR was a probably decent person with fairly liberal politics when she wrote Harry Potter. The books, while imperfect, are not more horrible or full of problems a dozen other popular fantasy properties. JKR become a TERF later in life and while she may have had ingrained transphobia prior to this when she wrote Harry Potter, that is not the same as the virulent hate-movement she's part of now and we should recognize how easy it is for people to get drawn into hate-movements. Any argument to boycott should be about how she's using her money and influence to affect real life laws and attitudes unless you want to try and get people to also drop half the fantasy genre.

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haithamuse · 10 months

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SYNOPSIS. five times you were prepared when jing yuan summoned you. yet one time, he managed to catch you off guard.

TAGS. sfw, reader is a cloud knight, can be read as either platonic or romantic, jy is a menace

A/N. i'm back !! this is based on prompt #857 from @creativepromptsforwriting and their weekend game! helped me a lot to write smth for our favourite cat dad and get back into the groove. i love him a normal amount <3 may or may not write a part 2 to this

You are meticulous—always on top of things and reliable. It is hard to catch you off-guard, which is a core quality you need to stand your ground within the Cloud Knights. You stand out amongst your peers for your perseverance, therefore it is hardly a surprise that you caught the General's attention.

Even then, it does little to rattle your resolve. You have worked hard to get to this point—and it seems like it has paid off.

Your relationship with Jing Yuan started like any other between a superior and those working under him. Though you had hoped—expected—to be acknowledged by him one day, it doesn't make you any less ecstatic to have reached your achievement. You have received orders and interacted with him before, but to receive his commendation is something else.

For the General, it isn't much different. He thinks your outstanding achievement shouldn't go unacknowledged, but Jing Yuan isn't that shallow. To have such a dedicated soldier among his ranks—he ought to get to know you better.

And so it begins.

In hindsight, you can recount all the meetings you had with Jing Yuan to the finest detail—for better or for worse.

The first time he summons you, you straight up refuse. He may be the Luofu's General, but that does not give him the right to put a dent in your routine. Many have called you out on your audacity to deny the summons, but you simply shrugged in reply. If it isn't an emergency, Jing Yuan has to wait.

And he does wait.

He doesn't mind because, on that day, he gains another piece to the puzzle that is you. The General learns that you are not someone who likes being told what to do. It is quite a contradiction for your occupation, but it intrigues him all the more.

The second time he summons you, Jing Yuan has learned from his mistake. He makes sure to ask for your time in advance, allowing you to carve out some time in your schedule to join him for a game of chess.

At this point, you start questioning why he insists on spending so much time with you in private. It isn't like you are bothered because, truthfully, you enjoy his company. Yet still, the cynical part of your brain can't help but wonder what his motives may be.

The third time he summons you, you are prepared. There is no prior notice, but you don't need one—you have already cleared a time window for him in advance.

The fourth and fifth times, he asks you for a time and date. By now, he has long learned that you like to be in charge of your time—and he allows you that freedom.

But for the sixth time, he finally manages to catch you off guard. He does so without prior notice, and you think that all the progress you have made with him was all for naught. However, your thoughts are quickly dismissed when Yanqing is sent to fetch you, claiming it is an emergency. Surprised by the suddenness of the request, you feel a mixture of curiosity and slight apprehension as you make your way to his study.

When you arrive, you find Jing Yuan pacing back and forth, deep in thought. He looks up as you enter, a faint smile playing on his lips. Without exchanging any pleasantries, he gets straight to the point. "There's been an impromptu development proposed by Miss Tingyun. Our Astral friends are bound to depart soon, and she'd like to organize a small event to show our gratitude."

The anxiety you felt for another disaster looming over the Luofu is replaced by utter confusion, and you waste no time in voicing your feelings. "But surely that can wait, right? You had summoned me for an emergency, so that should take precedence."

He does not grace you with a response. Instead, his faint smile only grows wider, and you notice his eyes twinkle with mischievousness. Suddenly, you become painfully aware of the situation you find yourself in. There is no emergency, and Jing Yuan has you right where he wants you to be.

As he continued, he disregarded your exclamation, his eyes fixated on your face, your sudden realization mirrored in your expression. "I'd like you to accompany me to the event. As my plus one, so to speak."

"W-What?" you immediately splutter. You swear you see him grin even wider, but you can't be sure as the heat rising to your face is too distracting. You know the General can be bold, but you didn't think you'd be at the mercy of his wit like this. Before you can help yourself, more questions stumble out of your mouth before you can stop them. "When?"

"Now," he glances at the small clock on his desk. "Or rather, about 45 minutes from now."

You swear you short-circuit on the spot—any stoicism you had hoped to display now utterly failing you. That's not enough time to prepare. Why would he only tell me now? Why would he ask me?

As a million thoughts race through your mind, you haven't noticed that Jing Yuan has left the seat behind his desk and is now standing in front of you. You are too caught up in your mind to notice that there is a lot less proximity between you now, only noticing him when he speaks. "There's no need to panic. It's an informal event," his voice drops low, his tone surprisingly gentle. "But I'd be honored to have you accompany me."

Finally, you lifted your head to gaze into his golden eyes. Gone was any sign of mischief, replaced by a comforting golden hue that enveloped your senses. A hue you think could wrap itself around you and offer comfort for ages to come. It is hard to come up with a response, but you won't get a chance to utter it anyway.

A hand rested gently on your shoulder, as Jing Yuan leaned in and spoke softly, "Meet me back here in an hour. There's no need to stress." But you swear you can hear the smirk in his voice as he moves towards the exit.

When he is gone, there is only one thought left in your mind.

What a scoundrel.

#✰ — esther's works #jing yuan x reader #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #jing yuan fluff #hsr fluff #honkai star rail fluff

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thebibliosphere · 1 year

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wrt the AI thing, the doom is in what is just good enough to no longer pay people for it. Machine translation isn't good! The sentences are nice and often grammatically correct, but the information hasn't been accurately transferred a lot of the time (genre doesn't matter, but DeepL is pretty good for news articles, less good for other stuff). AI text is sentences that are made of words likely to go together it doesn't understand any of it. Especially if you want to write something a bit experimental, if you want to use specific words to evoke specific things etc etc... true art will not die, no matter how much some people try.

I mean, yeah, but that’s also just a progression of what’s already been happening for years. Publishing houses and companies have been outsourcing to the cheapest bidder for decades now due to lack of labor regulation and the death of unions. That’s what the major Harper Collins strike was about. Even while publishing houses are making record profits, they’re not paying their editors a living wage.

When I worked for a medium sized mainstream publisher back in the late 2000’s to 2010s, they used to remind us daily that if we didn’t hit our editing quota there were people on Freelancer and Fiver who would do it for a lot cheaper— and I was already earning below minimum hourly wage, that you could “make up” by taking on extra work.

(The salaried editors were the only ones with guaranteed income, the rest of us were told we were just lucky to be there.)

And multiple times a month they’d eliminate someone to ‘cut costs’ and the work would land on your desk and you’d be told to get it done because they knew we had no other options. It was this or unemployment at the start of what would be the second global recession of my life.

Eventually we did all get laid off and they opted for the cheaper, subpar labor. And while it sucked to be unemployed at that time, the relief I felt was real. I was no longer self-medicating with caffeine and alcohol to cope with the work environment. I was no longer churning out 100-200k a week in edits and rewrites to keep a job that treated me like shit. I missed it, because I loved working with my authors and editing and writing was something I loved. But I did not miss the rat race they had us locked into for the sake of profit over quality.

The fact that Harper Collins staff, one of the biggest publishers in the world who contribute to the monopoly that creates that environment, were also not making enough to live, tells me things have only gotten worse inside the industry. Unless, of course, you’re near the top of the corporate ladder. In which case you probably can’t understand why all the peasants are so unhappy.

The machines will not fully replace us—at least probably not in my lifetime. But that doesn’t mean what’s already happening isn’t bad.

AI is just the next wrung on this sordid descent into exploitation and elimination. We need better labor laws. We need better protections. We need fucking respect.

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see-arcane · 10 months

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Today’s entry is one of many that really drives home why I can never quite bring myself to get into softer ‘uwu he’s just misunderstood and sexy-liberating’ versions of Dracula. Just. I can’t. I really really can’t.

Up to this point, he’s already had a monstrous moment in bringing the ladies their first on-screen kids meal crying and squirming in its sack. He’s had outright predatory back-to-back moments in imprisoning, coercing, robbing, and getting increasingly threatening and handsy with Jonathan. This, capped with the fact that he plans to kill/drink/gift him to the Undead Girl Gang by the end of June.

‘But what about his, “I too can love,” huh? He’s just loving as best a monster can! He could be tearing everyone around him to ribbons for annoying him, Brides and Jonathan included! Instead he goes out of his way to feed the ladies, albeit gruesomely, and has no retort when they laugh at and insult the lonely old bat. And he isn’t planning to kill Jonathan. He wants to keep him! Sure, it’s a sick version of it, but to him conscripting and collecting Jonathan rather than executing him outright is the height of affection! Surely that’s grounds for some of the more ~romantic~ takes in warped gothic flavor?’

To an extent, yeah.

But he also just dressed up in Jonathan’s stolen clothes to cover up for the man’s own abduction, imprisonment, and undeadifying, while also increasing the odds of Jonathan already getting mistaken for a vampire, bringing home another child for the ladies to devour, and then ordered a pack of wolves to eat a grieving mother alive for making noise at his gate.

And this? This is just the tip of the iceberg for how downright hellish he gets as the novel progresses.

Dracula can absolutely be a nuanced character within canon, offshoots, retellings, re-imaginings, and so on. And he should be! He’s a very interesting bastard who’s got so much more going on than a few one-liners and a taste for good cloaks and yummy company. But his actual actions in the book--even the smallest ones--just automatically torpedo 90% of my audience enjoyment when I run into yet another ‘Oh, but he did it all because he was in love!/misunderstood!/depressed!/unfairly maligned by the eeevil human Victorian characters in their journals and newsprint and body count records!’ version of the Count.

Even sillier takes that try to heroify him for kids like Hotel Transylvania just kind of make my brain trip and fall into a pit of ???

‘Look kids, Dracula is really a nice guy and a sweet dad who runs a fun little hotel for his misunderstood Universal Horror monster buddies! Isn’t he neat?’

It leaves me biting my tongue and holding this mental grimace as I think about the sacks full of weeping children, the slaughtered mother, a young man imprisoned for making the mistake of endearing himself so much to a sadistic monster that the latter has decided to keep him as a tortured toy and undead pseudo-slave for eternity, with an entire blood buffet of human cattle still waiting to fill out the rest of the novel with trauma, horror, and death.

‘Ohhh, but look at Francis’ tragique sweetheart version who stole all his redeeming qualities from Jonathan Harker! Ohhh, but look at the funny silly Adam Sandler cartoon and his new everyman-settling daughter! Ohhh, but look at how #cool and modern-sexyedgy an antihero/villain he is when penned by every projecting director and their grandmother! Lighten up, it’s just a different interpretation!*’

*Of the character whose whole deal is psychological torture, being a predatory creep, casual murder, and worse-than-murder of innocents.

I know it skews me towards being a whiny purist. I know. Let folks have fun. I know. But still, it feels so wrong every time I see someone try to ‘awww, he’s not so bad!’-ify him in new media when. No. He is exactly that bad and probably worse. If he’s not, then that’s not fucking Dracula.

tl;dr: Can people just make some new fun/sexy/antihero vampires instead of stapling Dracula’s name on all of them? Can Dracula just be an interesting villainous monster again?? Please??? (Please save me Renfield 2023 and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, you’re my only ho--)

#ranting and whining this morning #dracula #re: dracula #dracula daily #jonathan harker #adaptation #bastardization

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steddieas-shegoes · 1 year

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For the requests: heard of hearing and/or partially blind Steve + his parents realizing. Maybe they come home & see how their house has changed to be more accessible for Steve? Or something like that.

HONESTLY THIS ONE HURTED. But as usual, you provide the quality shit!!!! Poor Steve, but also if it ain't hurt/comfort, then did I even write it? Everyone loves Steve. Except his parents. His parents suck. But everyone else? Angels. Hope you love it darling!!! - Mickala ❤️

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Concussions were a bitch.

Multiple concussions in a three year period were a bitch.

But the worst part was when he noticed he couldn’t hear out of his left ear. Robin had been talking to him at work on his left side, whispering about some customer that was walking down every single aisle as if they didn’t know what movies were out, and he didn’t even notice until she switched sides halfway through a sentence.

He pretended it was fine, that he’d heard her the whole time, but then she asked him a question he couldn’t answer. She walked to his left side and said something, and when he shook his head, she bit her lip, fighting back tears.

“It’s okay, Robs. I can still hear out of the other one,” Steve said to comfort her, but also to comfort himself.

If he lost it in one ear, he could lose it in the other, and then what?

She tried to convince him to get a hearing aid, but he didn’t think he needed one.

“Your parents sent you money for medical expenses, use it for this!”

But he couldn’t.

And then he started getting blurry vision in both eyes. The left was rapidly growing worse, and Dustin noticed.

“Dude, you’re squinting. Do you have a migraine? You could’ve had Eddie drive me.”

“Nah, just tired. Trying to focus.”

Part of that was true. The squinting helped him focus a little, but he knew he had to do something about it.

So he sat down with Robin and came up with a plan.

He hated every fucking second of it.

“You get a scan first, we need to know if this is gonna keep getting worse or what permanent damage is there. You get glasses-“

“I might not need-“

“You get glasses. Then you get fitted for a hearing aid.”

“Yes ma’am,” Steve rolled his eyes.

But looking back, he was grateful Robin made him do it.

The doctors had been amazed he was able to talk with the damage done.

“Will I lose my ability to talk?” He asked, realizing that not being able to hear, see, and talk was too much for him to deal with.

“I think we can work through some physical therapy type exercises to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m glad you came in now and not a few years from now.”

Robin never said ‘I told you so,’ probably sensing that Steve wasn’t coping well with the news.

They told him he would most likely lose all hearing over the years, and his vision would progressively get worse, though it would most likely plateau and he wouldn’t lose it completely.

They said he needed to do vocal exercises every day, brain exercises as often as possible, and to come back the moment he recognized any change in his speech.

So he lived with the anxiety of not being able to communicate with anyone he loved every second of every day.

Dustin, Will, Mike, and Max had done research for weeks, finding things they could do to help him live in his house alone. Sure, they were there often, almost enough to be considered roommates, but that wouldn’t always be the case.

They would all grow up and leave.

Max had lost her own vision after Vecna, only able to see light and sometimes movement, but never any detail.

The day he got his glasses, she threatened him with murder if he didn’t wear them.

“The more you strain your eyes, the worse they’ll get. Wear the glasses. I’m sure you look just as cute as always.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that, but he didn’t want to piss Max off, so he wore them all day every day.

Dustin had found a way to wire the doorbell to the lights in the whole house, so if it rang, and somehow Steve couldn’t hear, he’d see the lights flash three times from any room he was in.

He’d done something similar with the walkie, so Steve would know if someone was trying to communicate with him.

Will figured out a light system for the phone, where it flashed with green while it rang and red if he missed a call that went to their voicemail.

It only worked if he was in the kitchen, living room, or his bedroom and paying attention, but the thought behind it made him want to cry.

He got debilitating migraines frequently, which left him bedbound, unable to even get up to use the bathroom on his own sometimes.

They figured out a signal for his walkie that he could push the button in a sort of Morse code to make sure someone knew he needed help.

If he couldn’t get to his walkie for some reason, Dustin programmed buttons on all the phones: *1 called Robin, *2 called Eddie, and *3 called Dustin.

All of his meds were moved to the drawer by his bed, with a reminder note in every room of his house, just in case he forgot.

Which was apparently another thing he had to worry about: his memory.

The doctors seemed to think he would be okay if he stayed active and healthy otherwise, and definitely needed to avoid another concussion, but they did say he could notice some issues as he got older.

Mike looked up what vitamins he needed to help boost his memory and vision, and increased his iron intake to hopefully stave off some of the migraines before they even started. He put the instructions with his medication reminders all over the house.

But what surprised him most was what happened when his parents came home early on a random Thursday morning.

He was dealing with a bit of a migraine hangover, the day before being a blur of calling for help, reaching for his meds, and Eddie arriving to make sure he stayed hydrated and made it to the bathroom as needed.

Eddie was still here, in fact.

So when he heard them banging around downstairs, his eyes flew open and he looked at a still sleeping, very shirtless Eddie next to him in his bed.

Nothing happened obviously. Eddie just ran hot.

But his parents had already been questioning him a lot about not having a girlfriend in a while and hanging out with “queers” like those two things alone could make him gay.

And if they saw Eddie like this, they would make assumptions.

Assumptions that would get him kicked out of the house that everyone just worked so hard to make accessible for him.

So he got up as quickly, but quietly as he could, ignoring the buzz in his ear where his hearing aid was loose from sleeping in it. He wasn’t technically supposed to, but he didn’t like anyone touching his head on migraine days so it stayed in.

Eddie didn’t budge, and he hoped he stayed that way while he tried to keep his parents busy.

Then the lights flashed and he heard the distant high pitched ring of the doorbell.

“What the hell?” His father asked as Steve ran down the stairs.

“Steven?” His mother asked as he flew past them and made it to the front door.

“Steve!” Dustin yelled excitedly as Steve glared at him.

“Dustin, not now.”

“Why? I saw Eddie’s van, so I figured-“

“Who is at the door, Steven?”

Steve closed his eyes and heard Dustin mumble ‘shit’, before he turned around to face his parents.

His glasses were dirty, but he could see that the looks on their faces were not impressed.

“Since when do you wear glasses?” His mom asked.

“Is that a hearing aid?” His dad added.

“Dustin, I’ll call you later.”

“Answer the questions.”

“I started wearing glasses and the hearing aid after a few concussions that caused a lot of damage.”

“What’s going on with the lights? Do they always flicker like that?”

Steve hadn’t really expected them to care much about him, but it still hurt a little how quickly they became concerned about the house instead of him.

“They’re a visual aid so if I’m not wearing my hearing aid or my hearing gets worse, I’ll know when the doorbell rings.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Yeah, it is,” Eddie said from the stairs, luckily not shirtless.

“Who the hell are you?” Steve’s dad didn’t waste time with pleasantries, he never did unless someone had something to offer him.

“I’m Eddie. Steve’s friend.”

“His friend?” Steve’s mom was hesitant to be obvious about what she meant, but everyone could understand where she was going with the questioning.

“Yeah, or would you prefer if we were boyfriends?”

Steve couldn’t help the snort he let out.

Eddie wasn’t the type to hide himself away, but he wouldn’t purposely make Steve’s life harder.

“Is there a reason you’re here?”

“I was taking care of him yesterday. It got late so I stayed.”

“Take care of him?” His mother turned back towards him. “Are you sick?”

“I get migraines.”

“We all get migraines, Steven,” his father said as he crossed his arms.

“But we all don’t get the kind that leave us crying and throwing up for hours on end because we can’t even see straight, do we, Richard?” Eddie asked as he walked closer to them.

“I don’t know who you think you are-“

“I told you, I’m Eddie. And as far as I’m concerned, I, and quite a few other people in town, are quite good at taking care of Steve. Unlike his parents.”

“Steve’s a grown man-“

“Yeah, now. But where were you when he wasn’t and got the concussions that caused this?”

Steve could feel his head pulsing, and he knew his migraine would be back at full force if he didn’t rest.

He took his hearing aid out for a bit of relief, the volume of his father and Eddie arguing going down considerably.

He massaged his neck the best he could, knowing that the release of some tension would at least keep the pain at bay until this could be over.

Then, he saw the phone start flashing green.

“What is going on with the phone?”

His mother directed the question at him, but Eddie stopped berating his father long enough to answer her.

“It’s so Steve knows it’s ringing if he happens to have his hearing aid out like he does now. In case no one is here with him and someone needs to reach him.”

“That explains not answering our calls.”

“I think that could just be that you don’t call at all.”

Eddie moved closer to Steve.

“Go upstairs, Stevie,” he said quietly into his right ear. “I can handle them.”

Steve was too tired, too frustrated, too borderline on a migraine to fight.

He walked upstairs, ignoring his father’s protests, his mother’s pleas, and Eddie standing in front of them both raising his voice to be heard.

Everything felt blurry as he removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes when he made it up the stairs.

His room was dark still, the blackout curtains still drawn closed, lights off, like Eddie had suspected it might be a bad day again.

His pills were on the table, a cup of water next to them. He set his glasses down and took them, trusting that Eddie followed the instructions perfectly.

He always did.

He always took such good care of him.

He came at the drop of a hat, even if Robin was already here. He brought Steve’s favorite soda, insisted it helped with migraines even though it probably didn’t. He massaged the spot on Steve’s neck that always held the most tension, pulled him close until he fell asleep on the couch or in the bed, always on his chest.

He’d been learning and teaching everyone sign language too.

Steve had started learning immediately, and so did Robin, but Eddie had insisted on it too, and started teaching the kids. He’d been showing Max one sign at a time, putting her fingers and hands into the movement so she knew how to do it.

And Steve didn’t think he could love Eddie more.

But he figured if Eddie was interested in him, he would have made a move already.

He could very distantly hear Eddie’s voice saying something, but he wasn’t sure what. With his hearing aid out, he usually couldn’t hear anything downstairs from his room.

He closed his eyes, settling under the blankets so he could try to do what Eddie wanted him to.

He drifted in and out, tired, but not quite enough to fall asleep all the way.

At some point, Eddie had made it back to the room and got in bed, his hand running through Steve’s hair gently.

“Eds?”

“It’s alright, Stevie. Your parents are gone. They won’t be back again for a while.”

“Mkay.”

He let himself drift again, safe with Eddie there.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #robin buckley #the party #hurt/comfort #hard of hearing steve harrington #visually impaired steve harrington #steve harrington has terrible parents #he also has migraines #but he also also has the kids and eddie #so thats a plus #requests #ficlet

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identitty-dickruption · 8 months

Text

tired.

There is a certain degree of ableism I just have to tolerate. There is an amount of ableism that I know I’m hypersensitive to by virtue of being someone who is disabled themself. And I know that I always have to hold myself back, because abled people start to get tired if I point it out too often. Well, I’m tired too.

I’m tired of reading a philosopher I usually enjoy the work of, only for a comment about “retards” and “cripples” to throw me off-guard. I’m tired of searching for a philosopher’s answer to disability justice, only to find that they never thought to consider how to look after those of us who need to be looked after for our entire lives. I’m tired of sitting in philosophy classes where the worst-case scenario is that someone brings up the problem of disability, because I know we’re always no more than three degrees of separation from someone who will happily justify eugenics. I’m tired of having to hear sterilisation and torture justified to my face, because “disabled people just don’t have the quality of life”.

I’m tired of having to read the lectionary ahead of time to make sure I won’t be going to church in a week when we’ll be discussing “the cripple” or “the crazy man”. I’m tired of weighing up which is worse; them talking about the terrible life of a disabled person, or them using disability as an allegory for the suffering we all go through. I’m tired of comments about God’s plan and strength in faith. I’m tired of being in communities dominated by elderly people who can’t help but comment about how lucky young people are to have such well-functioning bodies. I’m tired of spending entire church services too scared to stim or do a compulsion, just in case someone glares at me for making noise or moving too much.

I’m tired of holding myself back, even in progressive spaces. I’m tired of “abortion access is important! What if the baby is going to be disabled?”. I’m tired of protest advertising not having a single comment about whether it will be safe for me to attend. I’m tired of “conservatives are all idiots/psychotic/psychopaths”. I’m tired of being shut down any time I dare to ask, “what do we plan on doing about healthcare during the revolution?”. I’m tired of having to choose between talking about my queer identity and my autistic identity, in case talking about them both exposes me to arguments about queerness being a disease.

I’m tired of being the nasty cripple who has to come along and ruin everyone’s fun. I shouldn’t have to justify my existence, or the existence of my siblings in the disabled community. I shouldn’t have to come up with a well-constructed argument about why I dare to be openly disabled and love myself for it. I deserve to feel safe. I deserve to not have to grapple with this constant gnawing question about just how disabled I’m allowed to be at any given moment. I’m tired, but I shouldn’t have to be.

#disability #disabled #tw ableism #ableism #creative nonfiction

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

Text

Wellness surveillance makes workers unwell

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TORONTO on Mar 22, then with LAURA POITRAS in NYC on Mar 24, then Anaheim, and more!

"National conversation" sounds like one of those meaningless buzzphrases – until you live through one. The first one I really participated in actively was the national conversation – the global conversation – about privacy following the Snowden revelations.

This all went down when my daughter was five, and as my wife and I talked about the news, our kid naturally grew curious about it. I had to literally "explain like I'm five" global mass surveillance:

https://locusmag.com/2014/05/cory-doctorow-how-to-talk-to-your-children-about-mass-surveillance/

But parenting is a two-way street, so even as I was explaining surveillance to my kid, my own experiences raising a child changed how I thought about surveillance. Obviously I knew about many of the harms that surveillance brings, but parenting helped me viscerally appreciate one of the least-discussed, most important aspects of being watched: how it compromises being your authentic self:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/may/09/cybersecurity-begins-with-integrity-not-surveillance

As I wrote then:

There are times when she is working right at the limits of her abilities – drawing or dancing or writing or singing or building – and she catches me watching her and gets this look of mingled embarrassment and exasperation, and then she changes back to some task where she has more mastery. No one – not even a small child – likes to look foolish in front of other people.

Learning, growth, and fulfillment all require a zone of privacy, a time and place where we are not observed. Far from making us accountable, continuous, fine-grained surveillance by authority figures just scares us into living a cramped, inauthentic version of ourselves, where growth is all but impossible. Others have observed the role this plays in right-wing culture war bullshit: "an armed society is a polite society" is code for "people who make me feel uncomfortable just by existing should be terrorized into hiding their authentic selves from me." The point of Don't Say Gay laws and anti-trans bills isn't to eliminate gender nonconformity – it's to drive it into hiding.

Given all this, it's no surprise that workers who face workplace surveillance in the name of "wellness" feel unwell as a result:

https://www.ifow.org/publications/what-impact-does-exposure-to-workplace-technologies-have-on-workers-quality-of-life-briefing-paper

As the Future of Work Institute found in its study, some technologies – systems that make it easier to collaborate and communicate with colleagues – increase workers' sense of wellbeing. But wearables and AI tools make workers feel significantly worse:

https://assets-global.website-files.com/64d5f73a7fc5e8a240310c4d/65eef23e188fb988d1f19e58_Tech%20Exposure%20and%20Worker%20Wellbeing%20-%20Full%20WP%20-%20Final.pdf

Workers who reported these negative feelings confirmed that these tools make them feel "monitored." I mean, of course they do. Even where these tools are nominally designed to help you do your job better, they're also explicitly designed to help your boss keep track of you from moment to moment. As Brandon Vigliarolo writes for The Register, these are the same bosses who have been boasting to their investors about their plans to fire their workers and replace them with AI:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/advanced_workplace_tech_study/

"Bossware" is a key example of the shitty rainbow of "disciplinary technology," tools that exist to take away human agency by making it easier to surveil and control its users:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#bossware

Bossware is one of the stages of the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve: the process by which abusive and immiserating technologies progress up the privilege gradient as their proponents refine and normalize dystopian technologies in order to impose them on wider and wider audiences:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The kinds of metrics that bossware gathers might be useful to workers, but only if the workers get to decide when, whether and how to share that data with other people. Microsoft Office helps you catch typos by underlining words its dictionary doesn't recognize; the cloud-based, "AI-powered" Office365 tells your boss that you're the 11th-worst speller in your division and uses "sentiment analysis" to predict whether you are likely to cause trouble:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Two hundred years ago, Luddites rose up against machines. Contrary to the ahistorical libel you've heard, the Luddites weren't angry or frightened of machines – they were angry at the machines' owners. They understood – correctly – that the purpose of a machine "so easy a child could use it" was to fire skilled adult workers and replace them with kidnapped, indentured Napoleonic War orphans who could be maimed and killed on the job without consequence:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/12/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk/

A hundred years ago, the "Taylorites" picked up where those mill owners left off: choreographing workers' movements to the finest degree in a pseudoscientific effort to produce a kind of kabuki of boss-pleasing robotic efficiency. The new, AI-based Taylorism goes even further, allowing bosses to automatically blacklist gig workers who refuse to cross picket-lines, monitor "self-employed" call center operators in their own homes, and monitor the eyeballs of Amazon drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

AI-based monitoring technologies dock workers' wages, suspend them, and even fire them, and when workers object, they're stuck arguing with a chatbot that is the apotheosis of Computer Says No:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

There's plenty of research about AI successfully "augmenting" workers, making them more productive and I'm the last person to say that automation can't help you get more done:

https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/augmented-workforce

But without understanding how AI augments class warfare – disciplining workers with a scale, speed and granularity beyond the sadistic fantasies of even the most micromanaging asshole boss – this research is meaningless.

The irony of bosses imposing monitoring to improve "wellness" and stave off "burnout" is that nothing is more exhausting, more immiserating, more infuriating than being continuously watched and judged.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/15/wellness-taylorism/#sick-of-spying

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #surveillance #workplace surveillance #disciplinary technology #bossware #taylorism #ai #automation unemployment #wellness #health #labor #parenting #luddism

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askmerriauthor · 9 months

Text

I said the game demands microtransactions, not that it requires them. That's not just me being pedantic about wording, but rather a big indication of how the developers designed the game to work. Pokemon Sleep doesn't want you to play for free and is designed to make playing-without-paying a worse experience.

Like many free-to-play games out there, they operate on the idea of monetizing convenience and "fear of missing out" (FOMO). Such games will either create a problem in order to sell you a solution, or rely on a rotating/limited availability of enviable items to encourage impulse buying to avoid losing the chance to have the item. Pokemon Sleep does both of these.

Despite Pokemon Sleep being presented as a passive "something in the background while you sleep" kind of novelty, that's not the actual gameplay at all. The game actually wants you to be extremely active and paying a lot of attention to it non-stop, along with encouraging you to get others involved as well. Up to 500 potential invitations with a 50 individual approval list of contacts, specifically, and the system "helpfully" lets you link to your Google, Apple, or Facebook accounts in order to facilitate that and further scoop up lots of personal data for advertising.

The basic gameplay cycle of Pokemon Sleep is that you have a 7-day period in which you can power up your Snorlax as much as possible, with a higher power score equaling a greater variety of visiting Pokemon for you to catch. Visiting Pokemon will appear in a variety of sleeping types, of which there are at least 415 to collect (with individual Pokemon having multiple sleeping types). These Pokemon can also be "befriended" by giving them a sufficient number of items, which means they'll then join your team and help you boost Snorlax's power score over time. You can further boost Snorlax's score by feeding it, which the game encourages you to do three times per day within a given time window. Your Helper Pokemon will supply you with ingredients to make meals for Snorlax at different intervals, and the meals you make have different potencies based on the ingredients used.

So, to summarize, you have a limited period in which to get a number as big as it can be, with various randomized factors able to improve the rate of progression, before it all resets and you're back to square one.

Yes, you absolutely can play this game without spending any money. But the game itself is designed in a way that urges you to spend money at every turn. Every element of gameplay is improved if you spend money, and will actively degrade in effectiveness and quality if you don't. Remember how you can befriend Pokemon to help you out with getting Snorlax's score up? That's faster and easier if you spend money. Those same Helpers who gather ingredients for you? They lose Energy (an arbitrary limit put in place by the game system) the longer they're around, and become worse at gathering ingredients the less Energy they have. But, good for you! You can just buy more Energy for them! Rather, you have to make two purchases - the Energy-restoring item only gives back 50% of their Energy, so you need to buy two in order to max them out again. And you can just buy a box of random ingredients too! How convenient! And if you really want to get the most out of sleeping, you can buy the monthly auto-renewing (until you manually cancel it through Google or Apple, not the game app itself) Premium Membership! Which literally makes your sleep more valuable than the same - or even higher quality - sleep of people who aren't Premium members! But you better buy fast, because all of these items for sale are on a rotating schedule and will swap out of the shop at different 15 or 30-day intervals. You wouldn't want to miss your chance, would you?

A core facet of microtransaction pricing is that it's intentionally and carefully designed to never be enough. You'll always be in a position where you need to buy just a little more than the minimum, and it always comes out at odd numbers that never fit exactly where they need to in order to maximize your purchase, and are priced in unorthodox values specifically to trick the buyer's brain into thinking it's a better deal than it is. With that in mind, it pays to look at the minimum and maximum amounts the game wants to try and charge you since that gives a good idea of their intended range of interaction with your wallet, and how far a given amount of paid microtransactions will take you. Because, remember, such games are built around the idea of NEVER giving you enough. They ALWAYS want you to be in a state of wanting a little more and being tempted to dish over some more cash for it.

In Pokemon Sleep's case? The minimum buy-in for "Diamonds" - their premium microtransaction currency - is 60 Diamonds for $1.19. Their maximum? 7000 Diamonds for $97.99. So what this says outright is that the game is designed in such a way that it expects 7000 Diamonds to NOT BE ENOUGH to maintain a player's best experience. Because, again, such games will NEVER give you a value sufficient enough to deter the need for further purchases. This is a game that wants players to spend $100 multiple times over throughout the lifespan of their interest in the game. Will the majority of players do this? No. There's absolutely going to be a number of whales who will, especially among influencers and content creators on social media who make their own career off these sort of things. But what Pokemon Sleep is relying on is that there will be a far greater abundance of players who think "Oh, it's just a dollar..." or 'Oh, this item is going away... it's not even $5, so why not?" on a very regular basis.

And I haven't even touched on the overt security/privacy issues and the personal info scraping the app has potential for as well. So, yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and sleep on Pokemon Sleep.

#pokemon sleep #pokemon #game development #game design #microtransactions

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heartkyeom · 1 year

Text

perfect timing

chwe hansol x gn!reader

word count: 1.7k

tag list: @weakforsvt @junhui-recs @rasparagus @just-here-to-read-01 @baekhyunstruly @enhacolor @yourfavoritefreakyhan @todorokiskitten

warnings: best friends to lovers, mentions of female anatomy, oral sex

notes: hi remember that valentine's thing I made y'all vote on? yeah this is that! this is two weeks late but ... she's still cute! I hope you enjoy it

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Vernon mumbles.

“You paused the movie,” You smack his chest lightly before turning your head back to face the screen.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” He chuckles and finds the remote on his side of the couch and unpauses it quickly.

You were both typically able to keep your annual Valentine’s Day movie nights lighthearted, and tonight was no different. You would both choose an iconic romantic comedy to watch with tons of snacks and, as you got older, plenty of alcohol to help you process the absurd plot lines and outdated jokes.

For years, it helped distract the both of you from the suffocating corniness of the holiday. It originated as a way to forget your high school exes that managed to break both of your hearts right before Valentine’s Day in junior year.

Now, it serves as a chance to set aside your responsibilities to spend quality time with each other.

As the movie crawls on, you both get progressively more drunk until you’re only paying attention to each other.

You’ve somehow sat yourself on his lap, pulled against his chest with his arms wrapped around your middle.

The sensation of his fingers rubbing against your hand with his breath lightly fanning your neck leaves you far more relaxed than you originally intended.

“Fuck,” You breathe out, eyes fluttering shut.

“You ok?” That raspy voice of his doesn’t help at all, sending butterflies straight to the pit of your stomach.

It’s moments like this where you’re certain that you’re in love with your best friend.

You can avoid confronting those feelings most times when you’re not thinking too hard about it, but when you remember the intimacy that’s worked its way into your relationship over the years, it becomes hard to ignore.

You’ve cuddled with him endless times, but this feels unlike anything you’ve done before.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” You shake your head to attempt to force the thought out of your mind.

“Doesn’t sound like it,” He scoffs.

“The movie’s almost over, we can talk about it then,” You deflect once again.

“Okay,” You’re grateful that he leaves it alone, focusing his attention back to the screen. You weren’t exactly lying, you knew there were only a few scenes left even in your intoxicated state.

The final kiss plays on screen and your cheeks burn in embarrassment. You were so close to admitting the truth that it almost left you feeling sick.

Once the credits roll, he pauses the movie and calls your attention with a gentle hand on your hip. You reluctantly turn around in his grasp and he immediately picks up on your discomfort.

“It’s okay, love. It’s just me,” His voice lowers to invite you to share. His eyes are so forgiving, that nickname was reserved only for the moments where he needed to be vulnerable with you.

“I love you,” You say it without thinking. His face remains unchanged.

“I love you too, what’s the matter?” He asks, slightly oblivious to your tone of voice.

“No, Vernon, I love you,” You emphasize quietly, “and I have for a long time.”

“Oh,” He goes quiet. You’re always nervous watching Vernon contemplate his thoughts. He’s always been quite expressive, so seeing him process your statement starts to plant seeds of doubt in your mind.

It’s worse knowing that he’s tipsy as well, but it doesn’t seem to impact his train of thought very much when he locks eyes with you.

“Well, I really love you too,” He offers his hand to you, you grab it without hesitating. He fights a smile, but gives in once he sees your reaction, a mix of surprise and relief that he finds incredibly endearing.

“I didn’t think we’d ever get to tell each other that,” He avoids your eye contact with a short smile before looking at you again.

Of course, you’ve both said I love you to each other countless times, knowing that your love for each other has been evolving into something so distinct and fulfilling. It’s often unspeakable, laid out in spontaneous late night road trips, deep talks, holding each other accountable for your individual fuck ups, and countless other events that have kept your heart full.

“Me neither. Sorry it took me so long,” You admit sheepishly.

“Well, you were brave enough to actually tell me, so don’t worry about it. I was probably just gonna die without saying anything.”

“Vernon, come on,” You try to laugh it off with a playful hit to his chest.

“I’m serious,” He insists, adjusting you on his lap by tightening his grip on your waist ever so slightly. It’s as if your dynamic shifted in an instant.

“I just always figured there would be someone else for you,” He sighs. He wasn’t exactly wrong, seeing as you’ve been in multiple relationships since you’ve first met. Since the last one ended only a few months ago, you’ve finally come to terms with the fact that these people were merely a stand-in to avoid thinking about being with Vernon.

“That’s fair, but I always wanted you,” You affirm.

“Always?”

“Yes, shockingly, even when you had that weird middle part,” You recall his old hairstyle to his chagrin.

“You’re so mean for bringing that up,” He laughs and traps you in his arms further, pulling you into his chest until you fall on top of him.

“I’m sorry,” You giggle uncontrollably and surrender to his hold, causing him to lay you flat against the couch underneath him. Your mutual tension leaves him hesitant to touch you, but his hands eventually cup your cheeks and it already leaves you flustered.

Your breath hitches in your throat as he leans closer to your face, finally confronting you with the scene that you’ve dreamt of for ages.

Vernon is going to kiss you and it’s completely real, the fanning of his breath against your lips brings you back to reality.

You nudge your chin up slightly and it’s enough for him to close the gap between your lips, pressing against you gently. You can barely register it at first, but the taste of him leaves you breathless.

You instinctively let him take the lead as he pushes his tongue into your mouth, gladly accepting him with a tilt of your head. He swallows the moans that you let out, absentmindedly moving his hand down until it settles underneath your shirt, resting on your breast. He gently rolls your nipple underneath his finger, forcing your head away from his mouth with a quiet whimper.

“Vernon, don’t tease,” You whine pathetically. He retreats his hand from underneath your shirt and chuckles at you.

“Feeling desperate, love?” He teases you yet again, rubbing your hip with a quiet ease. You can only nod and adjust yourself underneath him, your brain can barely catch up to the desire of your body.

“Let’s take care of that then.”

“Fuck, Vernon,” You moan wantonly, eyes falling shut at the sensation of his mouth on your clit. Your energy is steadily waning, but Vernon’s stamina has kept you in the saddle longer than you expected.

Your escapades had made it to his bedroom, and he wasted no time spreading your legs open to access your dripping cunt. Your first orgasm was explosive, you held his head against your entrance despite how painfully good it felt.

His tongue doesn’t hold back as it prods your entrance without stopping, giving you no time to pull back.

You can already feel your second orgasm building in your stomach, and you let yourself whine louder than before.

He raises his head and moves his thumb to your clit, massaging it faster than you could process. “Come on, baby, you can give me another one,” He mumbles, keeping his eyes focused between your thighs.

“I’m so close,” You whine with a hint of exhaustion in your voice. Vernon senses the tension in your voice and places two fingers inside you without warning, forcing a guttural moan from the back of your throat.

He knew he had you right where he wanted you, his fingers working you open steadily while his other hand keeps your clit stimulated.

It’s a perfect storm, letting you whine louder and louder until you can’t stay quiet anymore.

“I’m gonna cum, please,” Your voice tapers off into a whine, you can barely focus on anything except the heat pooling between your legs and the sensation of Vernon’s touch against your skin.

“Cum for me, beautiful,” He encourages you and it’s only a few more moments before you let go completely, cumming hard around his fingers as your back arches slightly off the bed.

“Shit,” You slowly come to your senses and notice that Vernon is working you through your orgasm, fingers slowing down until you’re twitching underneath him.

You take a few deep breaths with your eyes closed before looking at him again. He seems willing to let you recover as long as possible, rubbing his hand gently on your thigh to slowly revive you.

“You were perfect,” He kisses the spot on your thigh that his hand has been protecting and slowly makes his way toward your face.

“You think so?” Your brain is still foggy enough that you can only question your surroundings.

“Of course, you’re always perfect,” He seems nonchalant, but the way his fingers gently rub your cheek says otherwise. He’s fully lying next to you now, his head propped up by his hand.

“Wanted you to fuck me, but I’m tired,” You rub your eyes as if to emphasize it and he helps you sit up, adjusting your pillow to prop your head up.

“We can do that tomorrow morning,” He giggles and presses a kiss to your forehead.

“Promise?”

“I promise, now let’s get cleaned up, sleepyhead,” He eases you up completely off of the bed and leads you through your nighttime routine.

It’s different now, knowing how often he’s seen you do parts of it, but still knows the entire thing by heart and makes sure you don’t miss a single step. He finds your favorite shirt of his for you to wear to bed, internally knowing that his lingering scent will keep you relaxed.

By the time you’re out of the bathroom, he’s made sure that you’re both completely sobered up. Once you’ve settled back into bed, you indulge him with some pillow talk that feels more natural than you expected.

Eventually, he lets you cuddle up to him before settling on his back. You’re nearly asleep when you hear him mumble into your ear.

“I love you.”

You fall asleep knowing for certain that he’s the love of your life, and it’s not a question that the feeling is mutual.

#slay!#vernon smut #vernon x reader #vernon x y/n #svt x reader #svt smut #seventeen smut

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rabarbarzcukrem · 10 months

Text

The eternal opposing relationship between the two sides of a mirror

or: In defense of Shiori

I feel like Shiori is one of the most controversial characters in Utena. Some love her, others despise her. And I don't have a problem with people having strong opinions on her character. What bothers me is the tendency to exaggerate her most negative traits, focus on her most harmful actions, completely ignore any redeeming qualities she might have and then paint her as a one dimensional villainous caricature, a mean straight girl who plays with the lesbian's feelings for the sake of it, without anything deeper going on.

I'm aware of the fact that some people refer to her like that in endearment or in a satirical fashion, and I'm not saying that you can't consider her your favorite problematic evil girl representation. I'm only trying to make people realize that it's her complexity that actually makes her such a compelling character.

I've seen people call Shiori all sorts of names, some of which were baffling enough to make me wonder if they even remembered what happens in the show, and weren't just judging a version of the character that they made up in their head.

So, let's look at the things Shiori actually does, throughout the course of the story.

Disclaimer: I'm only going to take the series into the account here, because I think we can all agree that everyone's characterization and personality differs at least slightly in the movie. Background characters also get a lot less screen time to explain their motivations in order to fully focus on Anthy's journey and struggles, which is understandable.

1. She "steals" the boy from Juri.

This is her biggest crime, which seems to define her from the very beginning. Even though Juri didn't actually have any romantic feelings for him, this action is detrimental to their relationship - it breaks the trio apart, isolates Juri from the pair, is an act of betrayal against her and proves it was done with full awareness that it would hurt Juri emotionally.

Shiori is a deeply insecure person, who constantly feels inadequate and beneath other people. The only reason why Juri seemed to actually like her that Shiori could think of was pity, and even when she found out she was the object of her romantic affection all along, she still struggled to comprehend it. Her self loathing and constant perceived inferiority make her desperate to gain any sort of control over her life and relationships, but they're also the exact reason she feels that the only way she could ever do that is by hurting others. She's always one step below and incapable of crossing that distance, therefore the only way to become equal to people is to bring them down to her level, by humiliation.

When she "steals" the boy from Juri, she achieves that. For a moment, she feels good about herself and leaves Ohtori thinking that she has found the answer, the solution. But she's wrong. From that moment on, it becomes more and more apparent to her that what she did was never out of love for the boy, even though she doesn't let herself acknowledge it fully. Because the truth is, Shiori actually regrets hurting Juri, which she admits herself during her elevator confession.

When the guilt starts getting to her, her confidence high wears off, and she ends up feeling ever worse.

That's why she breaks up with him and comes back. She's not ready to leave yet, not ready to progress. There's still something binding her to Ohtori - Juri, and Shiori's unresolved feelings for her.

2. She tries to set things right with Juri and to fix their relationship.

Even though at this point Shiori still thinks that Juri only ever associated herself with her out of pity, she still makes several attempts to get closer to Juri, who understandably (albeit coldly) turns her down ever time. This is a very clear sign of conflicting feelings Shiori has for Juri - jealousy and admiration, resentment and longing, hate and love. After all, Shiori admits that the two practically grew up together. Their friendship may have always felt fake to Shiori, but she clearly cherished it deeply.

3. The Black Rose Arc.

First of all, we should establish what is the purpose of this arc and how it functions. It explores the motivations of background characters and shows their worst side to the audience. The characters that end up in the elevator are the most unstable, vulnerable ones, with the least power in the system, in unequal and/or exploitive relationships with the duelists and their agency under threat. Mikage offers them a way to gain that power by making them follow their most toxic, negative emotions. And despite all other characters doing exactly that, from what I've seen Shiori is the one that gets the most hate for it. I don't think she should be judged any harsher for what she did under the influence of the black rose than, let's say, Wakaba or Kozue. Especially because the reason all of them ended up in that elevator is because they recognized that these urges were harmful and were seeking help and counseling.

What this arc does do is reveal how Shiori's inferiority complex drives her to act against her own desires. Even though she longs for things to be different, even though she is not happy at all with how her relationship with Juri looks like, she is unable to fix it, because that would require her to consider her own affection for Juri. And she can't do that, because it would mean admitting that she's not stronger than Juri, that she hasn't beaten her, that she's doesn't have control and an advantage over her. Although she tries to keep up this smug, self-assured facade, the reality shines through.

They key to understanding Shiori is noticing that she specifically doesn't want to acknowledge that Juri's feelings are reciprocated, and the obsession is mutual. If you paint their relationship as one sided, you're actually falling for her act.

4. She enters a relationship with Ruka.

Ruka is a handsome (arguable), respected boy who appears out of nowhere and starts showing interest in Shiori. It's obvious that for an insecure girl, who in addition struggles with confusing repressed feelings, this would be something unthinkably wonderful. The affection and praise she gets from him is exactly what her low self-esteem craves. You might be wondering why she didn't perceive Juri's feelings for her in the same way. And a part of the answer might be that, post nameless-boy-incident, Juri was nothing but cold to her. She might have been pining after Shiori from afar, but in the end she's distant and untouchable, and they're divided by their messy past. Meanwhile Ruka is a clean slate, seems openly affectionate, engaged in their relationship and he pays attention to her. But I think the main thing that makes Ruka so different from Juri is the fact that...he's a boy. Because, as Revolutionary Girl Utena establishes, gender plays a crucial role in interpersonal dynamics. Attention from a boy is fundamentally coded as romantic, desirable, necessary and most importantly: increases the girl's worth in society's eyes. It makes one a princess. Meanwhile Juri's advances could only be seen as an invitation to friendship, at best. But Juri's status and beauty make her special, while Shiori is not. Therefore, it can only be pity and mockery.

Of course, Ruka only uses Shiori to influence Juri and dumps her as soon as he achieves his goals. It's true that Shiori could have listened to Juri's warnings, but then again... why should she? From her perspective, Juri's her ex-friend that doesn't want anything to do with her, who only suddenly comes to Shiori when she's finally happy and fulfilled, and encourages her to end it. She doesn't know the wider context of the situation, nor does she remember the Black Rose arc. Juri's warnings don't sound sincere to her.

And so, Ruka gets rid of her in the coldest, most indifferent way, not explaining anything or showing even the slightest sign of compassion. Before that though, he makes an interesting remark, about Shiori putting on an act and polishing somebody else's sword.

Honestly, I don't really know how to interpret it in any other way than Shiori actually having feelings for someone else, despite trying her hardest to conceal it. Are my shipping lenses not allowing me to see any different possibilities? Am I going crazy? I don't know.

Nevertheless, Shiori begs him to stay, devastated. Her life got turned around so suddenly, she found appreciation, status, comfort and stability, and now all that's been taken away from her as abruptly as it was given. It's a public humiliation.

I once heard someone say that this would be the perfect moment for Juri to step in and defend her. And to be honest, although it may be true, I'm not completely sure. It may have been the one display of open care that Shiori needed from her, but it might as well have been interpreted by Shiori as Juri affirming her superiority over her and feeling sorry for her again. We will never know. In my opinion, so much of their relationship is going on in their own heads that the only thing that could ever cause positive progress is communication (which neither of them seem to be a fan of).

Instead, Juri only tries to console her after the fact, when Shiori's at her absolute lowest. In the context of all the assumptions Shiori holds and Juri's previous indifference, it quite understandably comes off as a sneering attempt to gloat.

That's about it. You may have noticed that I've summarized all Shiori's appearances into 4 points, and only one of them includes an instance of Shiori hurting Juri voluntarily, out of her own free will, not influenced by anyone. I'm not saying that she was forced to taunt Juri during the Black Rose Arc, I'm not trying to diminish the suffering she's caused or trying to paint her as a perfectly good person. I am trying to make it clear that she is not some cunning plotter, dedicating every minute of her life to finding ways to make Juri suffer that some people seem to take her for. I am trying to humanize people's perception of her a little bit. Especially considering the fact that last scenes of her include those when she waits for Juri and follows her so that they can go home together, and then joins the fencing club. If this doesn't show that she's capable of change, I don't know what does.

She's not an innocent princess, that's true, but she's not just an egoistical, manipulative liar either. She's a bit of both. After all, if Revolutionary Girl Utena is supposed to teach you anything, then I think it's that we're all just people, and the complexities of human experience make it impossible to fit anyone into a box, assigning them definite labels like "princess" or "witch".

And if you look at a teenage girl who, like all people in Ohtori, struggle under the system of patriarchy and heterosexuality, and all you see is a wicked, sinister witch, then you may have just fallen into the trap that the narrative had set for you.

#Shiori: I may be pathetic but you're the one who fell for me lol #no fr you don't need to make up reasons to hate shiori there's plenty enough right there in the text #rgu #revolutionary girl utena #shiori takatsuki #juriori #I guess #she's so fucked up I love her #like girl feeling delighted after finding out your bestie has a crush on you is not very straight no matter how you justify it #moje

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