Lamb

Idk if this is a hot take or not but I genuinely like most of the G3 monster high designs. Like hey, just because it's not the same vibe as the original doesn't to automatically make it bad. I can also agree that the quality of the clothing/accessories has probably fallen (like with every other doll line over time) but the general designs are still pretty good. Sure there are a couple wonky ones, and plenty of critiques to be said about erasing certain representations to be replaced with other less tactfully done (who tf thought it was a good idea to make Lagoona a Latina stereotype?????) but I genuinely appreciate this generation trying new things in reference to diversity. Anyway yeah I'm sad that the cute cartoon got canceled because a bunch of millennials refuse to support new projects for a newer generation of kids. (Lowkey gives the same vibes as when a couple gets together in a show and all of the anti-shippers rally so hard that they end up just killing off one half of the couple or changing the story but anyway)

I adore him ❤️

Some old never posted sketches of a homebrewed Batman AU I was crafting alchemy-like by taking my favorite aspects of each incarnation and putting them in a blender until smooth and emulsified.

it simply must be stated that trans men who present femininely on purpose have such a vibe about them

maybe it’s the confidence that requires, especially since I’ve seen a lot of men talking about how it still gives them dysphoria, but they just radiate this undefined swagger. Like.. rock on dude, I am in awe of your strength and dedication to your choice.

Watcher's Expenses

I didn't major in accounting: I took three classes and it grinded my brain to a fine powder. However, after graduating with a business admin degree, being a former eager fan of their videos, and from a cursory glance over their socials, there's a lot to consider in their spending behavior that really could start racking up costs. Some of these things we've already noticed, but there are other things I'd like to highlight, and I'll try to break it down into the different categories of accounting expenses (if I get something wrong, let me know. I was more concentrated in marketing 🤷‍♀️). I'm not going to hypothesize numbers either, as that would take out more time than I'm willing to afford-- you can assume how much everything costs. Anyways, here's my attempt at being a layman forensic accountant:

Note: All of this is assuming they're operating above board and not engaging in any illegal practices such as money laundering, tax evasion, not paying rent, etc.

Operating Expenses

Payroll: 25+ staff salaries and insurance

Overhead Expenses

CEO/founder salaries

Office space leasing or rent (In L.A, one of the most expensive cities in the US)

Utilities (water, electricity, heating, sanitation, etc.)

Insurance

Advertising Costs

Telephone & Internet service

Cloud Storage or mainframe

Office equipment (furniture, computers, printers, etc.)

Office supplies (paper, pens, printer ink, etc.)

Marketing costs (Social media marketing on Instagram, Youtube, SEO for search engines, Twitter, etc. Designing merchandise and posters, art, etc. )

Human Resources (not sure how equipped they are)

Accounting fees

Property taxes

Legal fees

Licensing fees

Website maintenance (For Watchertv.com, Watcherstuff.com, & Watcherentertainment.com)

Expenses regarding merchandising (whoever they contract or outsource for that)

Inventory costs

Potentially maintenance of company vehicles

Subsequent gas mileage for road trips

Depreciation (pertains to tangible assets like buildings and equipment)

Amortization (intangible assets such as patents and trademarks)

Overhead Travel and Entertainment Costs (I think one of the biggest culprits, evident in their videos and posts)

The travel expenses (flights, train trips, rental cars, etc. For main team and scouts)

Hotel expenses for 7-8 people at least, or potentially more

Breakfasts, lunches and dinners with the crew (whether that's fully on their dime or not, I don't know; Ryan stated they like to cover that for the most part)

Recreational activities (vacation destinations, amusement parks, sporting activities etc.)

The location fees

Extraneous Overhead costs (not sure exactly where these fall under, but another culprit, evident in videos and posts)

Paying for guest appearances

Expensive filming & recording equipment (Cameras, sound equipment, editing software subscriptions, etc.)

The overelaborate sets for Ghost files, Mystery Files, Puppet History, Podcasts etc. (Set dressing: Vintage memorabilia, antiquated tech, vintage furniture, props, etc.)

Kitchen & Cooking supplies/equipment

Office food supply; expensive food and drink purchases for videos

Novelty items or miscellaneous purchases (ex. Ghost hunting equipment, outfits, toys, etc.)

Non-Operating Expenses

These are those expenses that cannot be linked back to operating revenue. One of the most common examples of non-operating expenses is interest expense. This is because while interest is the cost of borrowing money from a creditor or a bank, they are not generating any operating income. This makes interest payments a part of non-operating expenses.

Financial Expenses

Potential loan payments, borrowing from creditors or lenders, bank loans, etc.

Variable Expenses

Hiring a large amount of freelancers, overtime expenditure, commissions, etc.

PR consultations (Not sure if they had this before the scandal)

Extraordinary Expenses

Expenses incurred outside your company’s regular business activities and during a large one-time event or transactions. For example, selling land, disposal of a significant asset, laying off of your employees, unexpected machine repairing or replacement, etc.

Accrued Expenses

When your business has incurred an expense but not yet paid for it.

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(If there's anything else I'm missing, please feel free to add or correct things)

To a novice or a young entrepreneur, this can be very intimidating if you don't have the education or the support to manage it properly. I know it intimidates the hell out of me and I'm still having to fill in the gaps (again, if I've mislabeled or gotten anything wrong here, please let me know). For the artistic or creative entrepreneur, it can be even harder to reconcile the extent of your creative passions with your ability to operate and scale your business at a sustainable rate. That can lead to irresponsible, selfish, and impulsive decisions that could irreparably harm your brand, which is a whole other beast of its own.

My guess at this point is that their overhead and operation expenses are woefully mismanaged; they've made way too many extraneous purchases, and that they had too much confidence in their audience of formerly 2.93 million to make up for the expenses they failed to cover.

It almost seems as if their internal logic was, "If we make more money, we can keep living the expensive lifestyle that we want and make whatever we want without anyone telling us we can't, and we want to do it NOW, sooner rather than later because we don't want wait and compromise our vision." But as you can see, the reality of fulfilling those ambitions is already compromised by the responsibility of running a business.

And I wrote this in another post here, but I'll state it again: Running a business means you need to be educated on how a business can successfully and efficiently operate. Accounting, marketing, social media marketing, public relations, production, etc; these resources and internet of things is available and at your disposal. If they had invested more time in educating themselves on those aspects and not made this decision based on artistic passion (and/or greed), they would have not gotten the response they got.

Being a graphic designer, I know the creative/passionate side of things but I also got a degree/got educated in business because I wanted to understand how to start a company and run it successfully. If they’re having trouble handling the responsibility of doing that, managing production costs, managing overhead expenses, and especially with compensating their 25+ employees, then they should hire professionals that are sympathetic to their creative interests, but have the education and experience to reign in bad decisions like these.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TedTalk. What a shitshow this has been.

ignoring the conversation about tori woods being arrested because there’s more to talk about than just that,

I hope people (specifically dark romance lovers and defenders specifically) start to see just why others have such a hard time swallowing dark romance being mainstream. Because all the rest of us see is a race to the bottom with no care about HOW to present these topics to a wide audience.

it’s not just her dad’s friend, it’s her dads older friend in his thirties ;) no no wait it’s not her dad’s friend it’s her uncle!! And she’s barely legal!! No wait!!! It’s her cousin AND her uncle and they act possessive! No it’s a stalker! And he doesn’t care about her consent! It’s her step brother!! And she’s underage!! No wait-

She was groomed. She was assaulted. She was abused.

I fully understand the point of using this sort of fiction to cope with painful trauma, I’ve even done the same thing. But after a point it is reckless to contribute to the romanticism of abuse, especially to young girls and to a wider extent AFABs and feminine presenting people. You may be gaining a helpful perspective or healing but what happens when another abuser gets their hands on this material and uses it to manipulate another victim? What happens when someone impressionable (young and impressionable are not the same, elders are often impressionable, stop muddying the conversation by bringing up that “teens shouldn’t be reading this anyway” because it doesn’t matter) reads this and it only reassures them that their current abusive situation is okay? Hell, booktok had been openly listing over a REAL 16 year old boy and suggested he read a book with romanticized rape in it.

this issue goes beyond dark romance but it is most prevalent in dark romance because everyone for it and against it has a trigger finger for attacking anyone who says something they don’t like. I’m hoping that this doesn’t fall on deaf ears and this can help a conversation to be had. Because this conversation has needed to happen but everyone has been too stubborn to even begin.

So as a brain worm for you to think about because I can’t find my own answers to these questions yet:

What dark romance is good? Does the genre require more restriction? What is a respectful way to portray the topics often used in dark romance? At what point should the publishers/publishing company be held responsible for any harm done by the book? Does the use for survivors to cope outweigh the possibility victims created by romanticized abuse?

I fully blame the acceptance of this behavior on the abhorrent representation in the show. Fans are sexualizing the one character whose sexual trauma has been discussed in show at length? Mayhaps its the show itself..

More bullshit I found on the hazbin subreddit

Im sorry but

What??

No we wouldn't???

What the fuck is wrong with this community!? Nobody would want to put cameras in people's changing room! (The original post was talking about Vox having cameras in Angel's changing room, btw)

This is a long as fuck post for me but… Fujoshi discourse is old kinda but Pinterest comments are rancid places and there are very recent comments either not understanding what’s so bad about fujoshis or straight up in support of fujoshis so like UH:

First of all reducing queer men as a whole down to something for cishet women to obsess over and get off to is disgusting. Full stop.

Fujoshis and their ilk essentially see MLM relationships as inherently more sexual than others. A piece of media that depicts a relationship between two men or two boys with absolutely no mention of anything sexual will still be seen as sexual in nature by fujoshis simply because it was about two dudes, which feeds in to the harmful idea that queerness is inherently sexual and therefore inappropriate. Think about how, after Luca (2021) came out and everyone was talking about how obviously queer it was, there was a pushback about how headcanoning these two boys as queer at all was automatically dirty or wrong or even pedophilic because to those people being gay = having gay sex or whatever. A straight relationship wouldn’t be treated this way, because there is an understanding that being straight does not automatically equal having sex, but that same understanding is not applied to queerness.

A lot of fujoshis are drawn to MLM media or relationships because they see is as like “sinful” or scandalous, which makes it more enticing to them. I should not have to explain to you in any way how seeing gay people as sinful or wrong is homophobic.

In addition, a lot of the media fujoshis are drawn to is not just depicting MLM relationships, but depicting incredibly unhealthy or abusive MLM relationships. Fujoshis tend to like shit like CMBYN and fucking Killing Stalking, two disgusting pieces of media that I really don’t want to think about right now but depict decidedly unhealthy or straight up abusive relationships but are romanticized by fujoshis and fujoshi-type creeps. Which then feeds into the idea that queer relationships, especially MLM relationships, are abusive whether it’s emotional, physical, or sexual. CMBYN in particular also feeds into the idea that queer people are sexual predators that prey on children or teens. Both of these ideas are absolutely disgusting and deeply homophobic and fujoshis often reinforce them.

Moving on, in media where the MLM pairing isn’t actually canon, fujoshis are absolutely awful to the female characters and, if the media is a television show or movie, the real life women who play those characters. A lot of times they see an MLM ship, any MLM ship, as automatically more progressive and meaningful and good solely by being queer. Sorry for bringing up BBC Sherlock in current year, but think aggressive Johnlock shippers from the BBC Shitlock era of tumblr hating on the character of Mary Morstan before she was even introduced because she would “get in the way” of their precious queerbait ship or sending hate to Lucy Liu, an actress on a different (and better) fucking show purely for playing a woman on a Sherlock Holmes show. They acted like, because the version of Watson that Lucy Liu played was a woman, a hypothetical romance between her and Holmes wouldn’t be as meaningful or progressive because it wouldn’t be gay, despite the fact that positive representation of interracial relationships is just as meaningful as a queer relationship, even if they’re straight. The hatred sent toward Lucy Liu specifically often also descended into blatant racism. 

ALSO those same cis and often het women who fetishize and obsess over MLM ships and media are often really lesbophobic! In the average fujoshi’s mind, queer men = sexy and enticing, while queer women = unsexy and often straight up gross. The cishet woman/girl who obsesses over her precious gay ships is likely the same cishet woman/girl who is “uncomfortable” around sapphic women/girls because they- gasp!- might hit on them! The same cishet woman/girl who thinks it’s so important to read MLM fiction refuses to show that same support for sapphic fiction. To them, MLM romance is “cute”, “sweet”, “charming”, and “enticing” while sapphic romance is at best “boring” and at worst “gross”. To bring up the whole BBC Shitlock VS Elementary ordeal, how many of those Johnlock shippers who hated Elementary because it wasn’t a blatant queerbait gay would have been as supportive of a Sherlock Holmes retelling where both Watson and Holmes were women? Of a hypothetical retelling that had actual canon queer rep that was between two women instead of two men? Much to think about.

Also you will rarely ever see a fujoshi showing actual support for actual queer people. They don’t care about the real people they’re fetishizing. A fujoshi doesn’t care about queer people of all kinds that are facing bigotry and violence, a fujoshi doesn’t care about actually learning about real queer people and queer history, a fujoshi doesn’t care about supporting queer people, they only care about the fictional queer men that they use as their porn.

Anyway that’s all I can think of right now but I’m sure there are more reasons that fujoshis are the scum of the earth. Peace and love <3.

10 year old Dick: "Bruce, when you get married, can I be the best man?"

Bruce: "Of course, chum."

---

12 year old Dick: "Hey Clark, do you think when you get married, I can be your best man?"

Clark: "I don't see why not."

---

25 year old Dick: "In my defence, I had no way of knowing you'd end up marrying each other."

Genuinely upset that the supernatural fandom didn’t decide to call ourselves “supernaturalists“ like come on the pun was RIGHT THERE

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. . . .

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. . . .

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. . . .

Excerpt from George Washington's farewell address

You can read the full address here, this specific quote comes from pages 13-14