#good write up

[csmeaner]

Thank you for the Google Doc, I hate it 2/2

first part

Splitting this because I am so fucking pissed at Caravan and Gremble all over again and need to get it out one more time before I just bury the memory of these two in the yard with a backhoe.

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Why is it Caravan's fault the final art is rushed when you had almost 6 months to tell her to make up her mind or drop her as a client with a partial refund? And whining you got threatened with chargebacks at month 5? That's how it works, fucknut. The protection period with Paypal is 6 months.

The doc does show Caravan was not in the right place to be making a 20K purchase. The moment they realized Caravan was in the intersection of grief and mental illness, all the pieces of her other purchases should have come together, and the entire Grem staff should have put the brakes on the operation. Call it Operation Be Empathetic or Operation Get Rid of This Ticking Time Bomb, whichever angle you want to take most.

The right thing to do would have been to do the partial refund like Caravan asked for. The partially completed Cypherus would have sold well because people were rabid for them back then. If it'd been sold as a semi-custom (ie: "you have this base to work with, and understand we won't make extra art for it, but we'll let you choose the rest of it), it would have sold even better. Probably 2K - 3K for the semi-custom even with restrictions.

For the rest, they could have fundraised. At the time, Gremble could pull the same numbers as Pajuxi and Chams. Grems were insanely popular back then. Gremble would have been able to keep the original money (hey, it wouldn't be coming out of her pocket) but still do the sensible thing. Don't even think of it as the right thing at this point. It's sensible to get nightmare clients out of your hair and not do things that reveal just how much of a capitalistic pig you really are.

Hell, they could have said, "we'll pay you 5K in one go to make you go away" and Caravan sounded done enough to just take it. And I know 5K sounds like a lot, but Gremble and Tooth would still get their 15K and again, fundraising straight to Caravan would mean they felt no pain in their wallets.

Thanks, Gremble, for clarifying that you knew someone was out of their mind with mental illness and grief and still wrestled with them so that you both came out covered in pig shit. Thanks for clarifying that you've never changed because you're the same now as you were then: greedy, entitled, stupid, and now, covered in pig shit for as long as Grems limp along. You are incapable of personal growth, apparently. I hope you step on a Lego every morning with a bare foot.

And Caravan...I hope Caravan got help and turned out to be a decent person in the end. If not, I hope she has Legos in her shoes every day. I hope she bites down on a Lego whenever she eats a sandwich. Do better, or get Lego'd until you learn.

And for fuck's sake, take some financial literacy classes.

[everydayescapeartist]

Winter comes again on Game of Thrones star’s new movie

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau put himself back in extreme conditions for his latest adventure, Against the Ice, shooting on location on glaciers in

[coolman229]

You know what really gnaws me about Legend of Korra? Like, above many other things? The fact that the themes in it are handled sloppily and are infuriating.

Ostensibly, Legend of Korra is supposed to be an exploration of whether the Avatar fits in the modern world. You’ve got Korra being stripped of her bending (even though that’s immediately returned to her), being stripped of her Avatar state (even though she also has that immediately returned to her, sans past lives, which she doesn’t give a shit about, and ignoring how badly that fucked up canon), and finally, an attempt to strip her of her life and agency (the Red Lotus). Individually, Korra’s reaction to any of these makes little sense, as Zaheer trying to kill her is immediately good enough to emotionally break her for years, but Unavaatu destroying her past lives for good doesn’t even make her feel guilty or disturbed. Together, it makes sense as a sort of progression of her character (also Amon, Unalaq and Zaheer are supposed to be reflections of aspects of Aang, which is pretty much the only thing I can say was somewhat cleverly done by Bryke), if you ignore Korra’s illogical reactions along the way.

The problem arises when we get to Book 4 and see the resolution of this. Kuvira is supposed to be Korra’s dark reflection, but the problem is that Kuvira has virtually NOTHING IN COMMON with Korra aside from being a good fighter and a woman. They say she’s brash and hotheaded - she’s not, she is in fact portrayed as very calculating and cool-headed. She’s determined and ruthless, yes, but you could say the same thing of Amon, Unalaq and Zaheer. Then, how does Korra’s problem get resolved? Toph tells her to forget all doubts about her role in the world (“let your enemies go”), along with some bullshit about what their motivations were supposed to be, and cures her of poison (symbolized by THREE fucking drops). But of course, we still have 9 episodes to go, so Korra still has PTSD, which brings up the question of what was the point of the poison still being in her body, aside from padding out screen-time.

Effectively, the message is supposed to be that the world still needs the Avatar, and Korra needs to get over her pity-party. So Korra defeats Kuvira, with help from her friends (and General Iroh II is once again played for a joke), and then…do we get an answer as to how the Avatar is needed? The show seem to pretend that Korra is the only one that can defeat Kuvira, never mind that Suyin and Lin were giving her a good fight, and Toph destroyed an entire battalion of her troops with one move. So instead, we get an answer…in the form of Korra stopping a beam of spirit energy, and Kuvira saying that she’s never seen such power.

Yes, ladies and gentleman. The show is saying that the world needs the Avatar simply because Korra is Superman. Not because the world is broken, and needs peace to be mediated by an indifferent third party. Not because keeping order between spirits and humans is the Avatar’s job. But simply because we need the Avatar to come in and kick ass when people get too uppity.

It utterly amazes me that the show is seemingly trying to show Korra’s growth from a hotheaded destroyer to a more calm-headed mediator (so much for that when she starts threatening Bataar Jr. right in the second last episode) on one hand, yet ends with such a clear affirmation of Korra’s hotheaded brashness being the superior way and the reason the Avatar is needed.

That’s exactly how all of Korra’s problems are solved. Violence. She punches Amon out a window and Tarrlok murders him. She straight up kills Unalaq. The team slaughters the Red Lotus. And Korra and co. just fight Kuvira. In a show that talks a lot about spirituality and growth Korra shows none of that at all over four seasons.