i am really so sorry to continue harping on about the watcher entertainment streaming service. but this kind of stuff (internet content as a business & marketing it as such) is truly my obsession, and i think i will implode if i don't talk about some of the takes i'm seeing.
i'd like to emphasize again i don't have strong feelings about watcher either way. i like ghost files, i watch mystery files sometimes, i watched worth it back in the buzzfeed days. i don't watch any of their shows religiously.
anyway, here's the main things i keep seeing crop up and my thoughts on each:
"watcher has 25 employees they have to pay, and employing people in this economy is good, so we should be banding together to pay them."
employing people is good if you currently have the capacity to pay them. i checked watcher's linkedin page, and many of their employees were hired within the last year or two. if they hired people they cannot pay with the business model they had before, something is seriously wrong with their internal bookkeeping/decision making. it means they either didn't know they couldn't pay these people long term, or they did know and were content with risking newly hired employees' livelihoods on a huge content pivot in the next year.
of note is that none of their employees' titles have anything to do with managing the finances of the company. they are the size of a small business but have no one aside from the figureheads of the company in charge of their finances.
this is the kind of company decision making that leads to downsizing and layoffs, which can be devastating. but you know what's worse than laying off a portion of your staff? laying off everyone because your business is going under.
"not everyone can afford the subscription, but those who can should pay it to support the watcher team."
no. $6/month for a couple hours of content (depending on what shows you actively watch and the natural fluctuation of their release schedule) is a fundamentally bad value. i can pay that much for a few movies on amazon. i can pay that much for dropout, if i want to support a smaller business instead.
and to be totally frank, even if people do sign up, i don't think they'd get enough to compete with the amount they get through patreon/sponsorships. and the fact that they didn't know how many of their subscribers would realistically sign up is a bad sign.
a pretty good conversion rate of free to paid subscribers of a service or content is 3% (usually accomplished through a free trial). given the very poor reception of the announcement, let's say about 1% of their 3 mil youtube subs pay for their service. that's 30k people paying for their new platform. that's $180k a month in their pocket.
(they currently only have 12k subs on patreon so we are being generous here.)
a sponsorship deal (based on my googling, i have less direct experience with this) is anywhere from $10-50 per 1000 views. they've gotten about 1 mil views on their last few videos. 3 mil subs is nothing to shake a stick at, but let's say they're on the lower end of the payscale at $25 per 1000 views. that's $25k a video, $100k a month if they release 1 video a week. their lowest patreon tier is 5 bucks, so even if all their subs are at that tier, that's another $60k, so $160k total. it's entirely likely they're bringing in much more than that when you factor in merch, adsence, etc.
did anyone on their team crunch numbers on how many people would need to sub to make the switch worth it? did anyone do market research on how many people they could convert to paid users? because if not, if they really didn't have a game plan for this, the subscription service was always doomed to fail.
"this was their only option to continue making the content they want to make, with the production value they want."
i watched their announcement video. a key point in that video is that they have done sponsored videos and that's what used to pay for their content, but they did not like the amount of creative control the sponsor had over the content.
look, i get that's no fun. we'd all love creatives to be able to make whatever they want. but when you are a small business with a team of employees relying on you, you have to think about making money, sometimes at the cost of creative liberties.
and they had so many other options to make money for the projects they want to make without jumping to a subscription platform.
they could have started actually promoting their patreon, and maybe done some restructuring of the tiers. why not a highly produced, special series just for patreon members? or a special high-budget episode of each series, while the main series is lower budget?
bite the bullet and continue taking sponsorship deals on some less-produced shows, while axing sponsorships from the ones the crew feels more passionate about.
schedule larger, blowout-production shows only when they can be afforded. this is what Notorious Amongus Guy streamer jerma does. he saves up for big productions like his baseball or dollhouse streams, so he can really get creative with them.
they had other options and they've tried very little, especially when you compare them to other content house business at similar scales. try guys and good mythical morning both put out significant content with significant staff, and have had to diversify their income streams with auxiliary products, shows with widely varied levels of production, etc. but it seems to be working for them. watcher has merch and that's about it, and seems to only want to increase the production quality of ALL their shows.
really, all this just boils down to a terrible business decision. it's hard to say if the watcher team is working with a consultant or anyone outside of their team, but they certainly don't have anyone internally who is experienced with running a business like this. to me, it seems very much like they got in a room together and did some extremely optimistic income ballparking with no research behind it.
and that might have been fine for three dudes running a channel alone, but if they're a business, they have to start making decisions like one.
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I genuinely believe Naksu haunts the narrative. Her actions and existence as Naksu heavily impact the entire story. Her past, the life she lived and the shadow of it in Mudeok. But we don't actually know any of it because Naksu is not in the story.
Like. What she lost as Cho Yeong is something that we are never allowed to forget, the loss of her body, her powers, her freedom, and her impending death as a soul shifter hangs over Mudeok's head like guillotine.
All the while we don't actually know the Shadow Assassin Naksu, she died in the first episode, as soon as the story began. Other than training and killing (soul shifters) what kind of person was she when she didn't have to rely on another person else or hide or live as someone else? We don't know and we don't ever learn any of that.
Still, her absence is the plot, yet her former existence as Naksu influences everything; Yul's actions and what she was to him, Jang Uk's goal of returning her powers, the revelation of soul shifters to Park Jin, Jang Gang's departure, Jin Mu's accomplishments, the King's Star even.
Everything is about her existence but she doesn't actually exist at all anymore.
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hello lindi! i've been following you since you were starting out pulse, and it's been an honour to see you grow both as an artist and as a person⏤the way you approach sociopolitical issues with strength and optimism is simply incredible, and it teaches me a lot about my relationship with activism as well.
in that vein, i wanted to ask a question. on twitter, i've seen people asking others to completely cut down on posting personal art or about special interests and focus 100% on talking about palestine for the whole week. while i am doing it the best i can, i have some reservations and doubts about this approach of striking, especially since it's not a sentiment i'm seeing on any other social media platform or even on different twitter communities.
i just wanted to get your opinion on this⏤do you think it's effective or necessary? i fear i may be being too pessimistic about it, which is the last thing i want to do.
thank you always, i hope these asks aren't wearing on you.
hello anon :) It inspires a lot of awe in me that you're still here after four (five?) years - i'm extremely honoured and humbled to have earned your patronage for so long.
for the twitter/social media strike, I have the stance where I don't think the message for palestine is dampened by people still posting about their special interests, mainly for a few reasons.
While it would have been incredibly powerful to have a general posting blackout besides pro-palestine messages, it was never going to realistically happen. There are people who aren't online who won't learn about the strike until it's too late, people who maintain a main and an alt and only post fandom stuff on the alt (which is private or has 12 followers so who cares, they'll post their genshin husbands), people who just prioritise their escapism over anything else. I can't hold it against them too, because trying to impose a "you can ONLY post about palestine" decree (even for just a week) will breed resentment in droves, which i think would make the movement lose steam incredibly fast. For most people, social media is escapism. It's a privilege afforded to those who can turn off their phone, or close a tab and leave all the horrors behind. But at the end of the day, we all do it, and to some extent I think that balance is necessary so that you stay sane. Activism is a lifestyle, not a brief stint, where balance has to be maintained to make sure you can do as much as you can for as long as you can.
You kind of have to realise that nobody can reach through a screen and police someone's social media use or thoughts. I've been observing the general rules of the strike, but to be fair I'm in the boat where that's not very different to how I've been posting for the past few months anyway, so it's no big sacrifice on my part. There are people out there on social media right now who deserve shame for their "escapism". The type to proudly boast about muting words like "palestine", "israel", "genocide" - they're callous, and cruel, and lonely souls searching for a brief high in attention and outrage. But I am seeing people on my feed observe the strike, I am seeing more resources about Palestine, I am seeing dipshits get shamed. The strike's goal to push Palestine resources to the forefront of the feed, to get it trending, has (so far) been working.
So...this was longwinded but - tldr; we were always gonna have people who prioritised their fandom over a genocide so you can't really be too disappointed by it (well, you can, but I'm not since it's just a "*shrug* that's how most people are"-type situation) but there are people who are observing the strike halfway and people who are doing it all the way and they're lifting us all up, so the strike's call to action did work and is currently doing what it's supposed to.
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Asriel & Toriel | Chara & Asgore
So, we all know the Dreemurr family loved each other very much.
However, parents and kids can have favorites, and I believe that Asriel and Toriel / Chara and Asgore were specially close.
Here’s proof for each duo (that I got from memory):
Asriel & Toriel:
- Asriel/Flowey, even after trying really hard and failing every time, really believed that being with TORIEL would make him feel love again, feel like himself again. And I think that says a lot.
To be honest while I searched through screenshots, Toriel seems to love her children pretty equally (she is THE goat mom so I get it). But Asriel definitely seems to have been closer to her than his father (not that he doesn’t love him as well of course).
- Toriel obviously still misses Asriel deeply, and has a lot of regrets. She is a bit too drunk in this scene but I like to think she managed to recognize Asriel in flowey somewhat. But that’s more like self indulgence on my part.
- Asriel/Flowey still loves Toriel very much. Even before Frisk fell into the underground and he still had his view of “kill or be killed” - he still was empathetic enough to give her a glass of water everytime she passed out. So he cares, always have, just doesnt want to admit it.
(I would also mention how Flowey still hanged around in the ruins all the time. Some would say he was just waiting for humans to fall down or something, but I say he just liked to be around Toriel and I will die on this hill).
- I always found it interesting how Asriel hesitates before saying Toriel’s name here. Of course, he didn’t mention Asgore because Frisk didn’t spend that much time with him but considering previous proof, I’d like to include this here anyway.
Annnnd that’s all I could find (from memory) for them! Feel free to add to this!
Chara & Asgore:
Surprisingly for me, I found a lot! Really thought it was gonna be the other way around here.
- They both seem to have a great love for flowers and gardening! They probably bonded a lot through it.
- Asgore specifically recalling the “feeling of hope” in Chara’s eyes. I thought it was sweet :)!
- It’s heavily implied that Chara was the one that made the sweater. Asriel could have helped, but considering that in the No-Mercy run, Chara doesn’t have a special comment towards the macaroni art that was also made for Asgore - you could safely assume that Asriel made the macaroni art and Chara made the sweater. It was also probably very big and a lot of work, Asgore is a very big monster after all.
- Flowey being extremely sure that Asgore would show the souls to Chara, even after not showing it to Asriel (since that was probably one of the ways Flowey tried to get to them). You can argue it would be because Chara/Frisk would be the last human and Asgore would show it when fighting them..but it doesn’t really fit with the way Flowey says it I think, it was very specifically Chara.
- Chara and Asgore shared love for tea... and how Asgore’s favorite tea is the golden flower tea. Since golden flowers only bloomed in the underground after Asriel and Chara died, and it was Chara’s favorite flower, They probably told Asgore about how you can make tea with them and reccomended it to him. I wish they could have enjoyed it together.
- And also how Chara’s favorite flower is literally everywhere in new home.
Aaaand that’s it from them as well! Feel free to add more if you find it also!
Now that you have seen the ultimate proof for both cases, do you see it nowdo you see thevdo you see the vision--
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