Have we… Have considered they might be betting *against* their own show?
LIke this screams to me of “designed to fail so miserably that we can collect tax writeoffs for the loss that cover our profits for the next 20 years.” Cause that’s a thing. People forget that’s a thing. You know that awesome TV show you watched as a kid, that was totally awesome, and had no right to be as good as it was, but got canned after one season? or the film where ever actor cost more than the yearly gross income of your entire state, but was am absolute dumpster fire to boot? Especially ones that get release towards the star or end of a fiscal year?
Yah, those are a common tax evasion tactic. There’s a bit of tax law in the states that basically lets you go to the IRS and say “yeah, we invested a ton of money into this project, and it failed miserably through unforseen circumstances, so uh, can we have a tax write-off to help cover those loss and keep us afloat???.
It’s meant to help businesses survive things like a natural disaster destrying their main production plant, or an outbreak of disease forcing the shutdown of a major project. But unlike the insurance we all pay too much for with little to know useful return, this is meant not just to effectively pay off the capital you had already invested, but to also help keep you afloat as you rebuild than infrastructure, covering not just the cost of replacements, but the loss of profits you expected to see from the failed project, usually paid out over the expected profitable lifetme of the project.
What this means in the film and TV industry though, is that if a particular piece of media is written off as a complete failure, due to “unpredictable market volatility”, the company that made it can continue to collect tax breaks every year equal to the projected profits that a show or movie franchise would have made if it were successful. And they can keep collecting that money as long as the franchise remains dead. The minute they try to do anything with the franchise again, the IRS looks at the books again and starts removing any profit actually made off of it from the tax deduction, and all that free money is gone.
So there’s a non-zero chance that this utter bullshit is designed to fail. Because imagine the “projected income lost” value for something like a lord of the rings television universe? All it would cost to have that sort of free money forever would be to tank a beloved film franchise with thinly veiled self sabotage, and then hold it in limbo for another 10 years while you collect your free money.
Seriously? Oh, for God’s sake. Didn’t Uwe Boll do the same thing with his movies, or at least something similar?
Either way, Tolkien’s spinning in his grave, I’m sure of it.
Little Sonic hot take I’ve been sitting on in the lead up to Frontiers.
Yes, the 2000′s had ‘06 and Shadow. We all know that by now. They also gave us Adventure 2, as well as all the Advance and Rush games. And I enjoyed Heroes and Unleashed despite their quirks. I can’t exactly call it the ‘Dark Age’ when I liked the majority of what came out.
And you can go after Lost World and Forces all you like and I won’t stop you, but in a decade that brought us Colours, Generations and Mania (my favourite game in the series), I honestly can’t call the 2010′s the ‘true dark age’ or any hyperbolic nonsense like that.
And that’s without getting into spin offs and side media too. Sure, I can name stuff I dislike (from both these eras), but I can also name a lot of great side stuff too.
Call it a ‘cope’ if you like, but I think Sonic media has always had more hits than misses. Doesn’t mean I embrace it all uncritically. But I wouldn’t still be a fan of the series if I didn’t have as much fun with it as I do.
Frontiers is seeming very promising so far. It also looks to be changing things up a lot, and we might well on the way into a new era of Sonic. And I hope this fanbase will be able to look back at this series, the ups and the downs and say ‘you know what? This series is pretty great.’ And with luck, it’ll stay that way.
[This is the first of several European monsters on the World Tour that double as “If I Ran The Zoo”. The PFRPG draugr is a perfectly suitable low level undead, for when you want something smarter than a zombie but don’t want to deal with ability damage or negative levels. But they owe more to the skeletal sailors in Pirates of the Caribbean than they do to actual Scandinavian folkloric draugr, which tend to be big, magical and associated with curses. The obscuring of the genuine draugr is pretty much complete post Skyrim, with them almost universally being depicted as skeletal these days.
This stat block is based primarily on Glam, the murderous revenant who appears in Grettir’s Saga (which is why I went with an Icelandic alternate name instead of a Nordic or Swedish one). A lot of hay is made about how terrible his eyes are, which is why I gave mine mesmerist abilities. And as Grettir kills Glam, Glam curses him to outlawry, hence the death curse (which is mechanically based on the curse of the outcast spell from Ultimate Intrigue) ]
Afturganga CR
8 CE Undead This
enormous creature might once has been human, but is swollen and stretched to
half again normal human size. They are clearly dead, with discolored skin, open
wounds, and a stink like rancid butter. Their eyes possess a terrible haunting
stare.
An afturganga, or draugr lord, is an
undead creature animated by pure malice. If someone who is especially greedy,
envious or spiteful dies, particularly in an area infused with negative energy,
they may rise again as an afturganga. Such creatures go out of their way to rob
and murder, and particularly relish tormenting their former neighbors and
family. These attacks tend to build, first with the afturganga targeting their
victims with nightmares, then attacking their livestock and crops, and finally
culminating in lethal assaults on them personally.
Most draugr lords eschew weapons, as their
bodies have swollen so much that they have a difficult time wielding the tools
they did in life. Instead they grab and tear with their hands and broken teeth.
The gaze of an afturganga is particularly piercing, and it saps the will and
abilities of those it targets. Only cold iron weapons can pierce its damage
reduction as far as manufactured weapons go, but those that have the courage to
match its barehanded combat style can also deal grievous damage. The last
spiteful act of an afturganga is its death curse—the one who slays an afturganga
is supernaturally marked as an outcast, shunned and rejected, and often turns
to crime or self imposed exile.
Some afturganga are wanderers, roaming the
countryside to find more prey. Others remain in their burial mounds or
squatting in dungeons, guarding treasuries either buried as grave goods with
them, or collected from banditry and murder. Some afturganga act as leaders for
lesser intelligent undead, such as draugr and wights. Legends tell of even more
powerful afturganga, with abilities such as breathing fire, shapeshifting into
grim undead animals, or raising their victims as draugr themselves.
An afturganga is usually either a livid
pale color or blue-black with decomposition. They typically stand between 8 and
10 feet tall.
Lots of characters means Keep Reading! I’ve done a post like this before, but I thought it needed some revising. So, here are my personal picks for the English-language voice cast of Namco X Capcom and the Project X Zone duology!
idk I feel that ‘normalizing’ asking for clarification and clarifying when asked would actually help more than tone tags, because the way some people use them is very confusing. it honestly would help more if we all felt free to say “hey I didn’t really understand your text” and getting an answer back, and even better if “I can’t tell if you’re joking… is this a joke?” “I don’t understand the joke” was met with straightforward answers rather than more sarcasm or “nobody explain the joke” bc even if you tack the /j after the joke people might still not understand…
remember to do your part by giving Amazon’s Rings of Power show the Morbius treatment
this is one post i actually wouldn’t be mad about it blowing up. i want as many people in on this Morb as possible. i’ll suffer the notes.
in response to your tags, basically, a while back, Amazon the soulless megacorp acquired the rights to some portion of Tolkien’s Middle Earth lore. As someone more heavily in the LotR online fan circles, we all immediately knew it would be terrible and hold no respect for the source material, by dint of it being Amazon.
And true tof form, they decided to do the worst possible low effort job of making a show out of it. Grave mistakes include adding sexual content (very not-Tolkien), rewriting characters just cause they feel like it (turning an elegant, powerful sorceress into a warrior and a wise leader into an “ambitious” go getter), none of the male elves have long hair (and hair is a HUGE part of Elvish culture), party city looking costumes, general low effort all around, and egregious inaccuracies a la Amazon the Soulless Corporation essentially just trying to make Tolkien’s work more palatable for Game of Thrones fans rather than putting effort into just letting it be what LotR fans actually like about it.
Each new promo material makes it worse and worse, and more obvious that no one making it cares at all, hence why we want the Morb treatment to make it flop and show Amazon the fans won’t stand for them trying to just GoT-ify other beloved properties and stray so far from the source material when they could make something original instead
Holy crap, that sounds awful! Also just like something Amazon would do. I’m so sorry. I will happily spread your message to my followers.
There’s also the part about how they started filming it in New Zealand because, you know, Middle Earth is kinda a cottage industry there thanks to the films? A major driver of jobs, tourism, and popular culture which New Zealanders have proudly embraced as a little piece of their national identity?
But then extremely seasoned stunt actors kept complaining about unsafe work practices during the filming of Rings, which they considered particularly egregious on that kind of budget. Their complaints were ignored. There were multiple serious injuries, some requiring surgery. Amazon failed to report these incidents to New Zealand’s WorkSafe program as required by law.
Finally, it pulled out of filming in New Zealand altogether, a costly move for both Amazon and New Zealand, and relocated the production to the UK where worker safety rules are far more lax.
If you ever thought they were taking it seriously as Tolkien work, the fact they punted their Tolkien consultant and specialist says a great deal. They want to have a new GoT. They don’t care what that means.
vampire hunter? no i said vampire HAUNTER. this jerk sucked all my blood out so now i spend my afterlife knocking over shelves and scaring off potential victims and just making the castle generally pretty cold
it’s always ‘bleh why are the plates floating’, 'gah who knocked over my blood goblet’ and never 'sorry for killing you’ ok starve then!
and what are you going to do about it? have a priest exorcise the place? yeah good luck with all the crosses and holy water you piece of shit
It’s a lovely morning in the gothic castle, and you are a horrible ghost.
the only problem with scythes as a weapon is that you can’t design one without some joyless realist deciding it’s their duty to remind you how impractical they would actually be in combat. it’s always “but a scythe would be useless in a real battle!!1!” and never How was the scythe the scythe looked fun it was fun.
the Point of a scythe is to look wicked cool and make you look wicked cool when you swing it around okay your facts and logic have no power here. suspend your disbelief boy.
anyway i love you scythes i love you swords taller than my entire body i love you giant guns mounted on tiny shoulders i love you whips whose length changes depending on how far away your target is i love you throwing knives i love you dual wielding i love you physically impossible combat scenarios and weapons whose only purpose is to look awesome to my eyes
Hey. Name's Martin, or Marty (though I prefer Martin), age 18+, and I'm the mun of musesofthegladeandbeyond (linked in the "My RP Blogs" page, the button for which you can find below in Desktop view; there is my OC blog, too, but that's currently on hiatus) and welovepokernight. If you want to ask me anything on any of my blogs or IM me, feel free (though I don't know if I can answer EVERY question).
