THERE IT IS. NEIL JOSTEN I LOVE YOU MORE WITH EVERY REREAD
which one of u was going to tell me that tea tastes different if u put it in hot water?
y- you were putting it in cold water?????
Radish. Answer the question radish.
yeah??? i thought for like. 5 years that ppl just put it in hot water 2 speed up the tea-ification process didn’t realize there was an actual reason
You dont have the patience to microwave water for 3 minutes???
[ID: Tags reading “u think i have the patience to boil water wtf ?????” /End ID]
why are you. putting it in the microwave to boil it
Do you think I have the patience to boil water on the stove
Its takes less than a minute
Bestie is ur stovetop powered by the fucking sun
How long does it take you to boil a cup of water on the stove
Like seven minutes
Just stick the mug on top of the stove on medium heat n it boils in like two minutes… less than that is u use a saucepan…
Crying you’re putting the whole mug on the stove ???? On medium heat???? Ur stove is enchanted
Every single person in this post is a fucking lunatic
Yet another post that reads like four shakespeare characters who come out in the middle of the play to talk about something completely unrelated for comic relief
(Enter RADISHN’T, MOTHMAN MISATO, BOIMG FROG and CATS'N RAINCOATS, stage left. They are having a HEATED DISCUSSION.)
RADISHN’T: Prithee, which one of you had planned to tell
Of diff'rent flavours gained by simple act
Of brewing tea with water hot, not cold?
MOTHMAN: Egad! you poured the water cold? Wherefore?!
FROG: An answer from you, Radish, I must beg.
RADISHN’T: Indeed I did, dear friends - why does this shock?
Without the guide of others I assumed
That heat was merely added for the sake
Of expediting this solution’s brewing!
Half a decade I have spent, or more,
Not questioning this worldview I had made.
In fact, I am myself a bit surprised
That you might think that I, your dearest friend,
Might have a patience of sufficient stock
To wait until a pot of water boils.
FROG: Three minutes overtaxes patience so?
The microwave will beep when it is done!
CATS'N: My friend, this answer vexes me the more!
Can it be true that thou dost boil by nuke?!
FROG: Are you in turn, my friend, so shocked to know
That I have not the patience, like our Root,
To boil upon the stove our favour’d drink?
CATS'N: It takes less than a minute!
FROG: On what plate?
Perhaps your dinner cooks atop the sun?
CATS'N: How long can take your stove to fill the task
Of boiling but a single cup alone?
FROG: In minutes?
CATS'N: Yes!
FROG: I counted seven, once.
CATS'N: Perhaps you ought to have your timepiece checked!
If on a middle heat you place the cup
You soon will have the scalding drink you crave.
Two minutes, in a mug upon the plate
Or even less, if you should have a pot.
FROG: You cause me tears - is this how thou dost live?
You place upon the iron stove a mug?
A mug, ceramic, filled with water cold?
How do these flames, though medium in height,
Not shatter like a glass this fragile thing?
Surely, then, your kitchen is bewitched
With magicks far beyond the mortal ken!
(The FOUR realise they have wandered into the THRONE ROOM. The ROYAL COURT watches with fascination.)
KING: Ev'ry single person in this group must be a fucking lunatic, it seems.
I’m sorry but the THOUGHT that has been put into this, I actually CAN’T—
The fact that nearly every line is so metrically considered- near perfect iambic pentameter witb the occasional trochee for emphasis, but usually retaining a strong sense of rhythm nonetheless. And then the king comes in at the end, so wound in his disbelief that his response is reduced to prose.
And the even better thing about this is how easy it would have been to structure the king’s line into iambic pentameter: it is effectively already said as such because of the way wizardlyghost has phrased it, yet they haven’t!! They did not break the line, rendering what, by all typically of both Shakespearean canon and other periods context should be the character with the most command and authority in the whole play. If there was ever a more effective way to convey a genuine “what the fuck??”, I know of it not.
But it gets better!! Shakespeare regularly uses meter in order to represent class divide; the nobility usually speak in iambic pentameter, save for a few particularly chosen moments (e.g. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness, Othello’s realisation of Desdemona’s “betrayal”) or just lines where Shakespeare needs to suggest high emotion or when a character is lost in thought. Supernatural characters like the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Witches in Macbeth usually speak in trochaic tetrameter, an inversion of iambic pentameter. Lower class characters, particularly those used for comic relief (usually under the influence of alcohol), speak with no structure at all: their language is plain prose. Therefore, if this is a conversation between these types of characters, as the prompt from silvergirachi suggests, why the hell are the characters speaking so eloquently???
Now, this is Tumblr. It is subsequently logical to assume that this may have merely been a humorous recreation (and a very good one at that) of the Shakespearean style in a way that is widely recognisable to an audience that may or may not have read a great deal of Shakespeare, which is understandable. However, logic is boring so I’m going to probe further into this to the point where future historians will look to this as an example of overanalysing.
The inherent eloquence of the characters here suggests an unusual subversion of the roles typically assumed in Shakespearean comedy. This could be interpreted along two major avenues: firstly, that the rhetoric displayed by the speakers is fundamentally representative of how truth can be expected even from the most seemingly pointless or ludicrous discussions. Furthermore, it could suggest that it matters not how well constructed your speeches are: if you talk bullshit, it’s going to sound that way despite your attempts to hide it.
This is similar but not identical to the second avenue of interpretation: there is the implication that the noblemen in the play are in fact the comic relief characters, therefore implying that the “common people” of the play are the ones whose influence, though not expressed in such a highly spoken manner, makes a lot more sense than whatever the hell this is. If this was a real Shakespeare play, I would call it a subtle exploration into the innate corruption of the rich and powerful. Well done, op.
Now, I doubt any of this is actually grounded analysis in any way, shape or form, but if someone else can take this to the extremes of writing a Shakespearean scene, why can I not analyse it as such? And where else to do so than Tumblr?
im in tears i didnt think anyone would put this much analysis into this‚ thank you so much
Do your followers know about Libby? It's an app where, at least in the United States, you can listen to as many professionally recorded audio books as you'd like for FREE, so long as you have a library card. You don't even need to visit the library, you can just borrow the audiobooks from your phone.
I don't know. I hope they do. But perhaps a few more of them will after reading this.
My library is using Hoopla now, which is how I was able to download So Much (for) Stardust for free. Definitely check your local library's website!
This is the only time I have ever been able to truthfully say I love the internet. Thank you, I have so much trouble reading and and absolutely broke and this is really helpful.
Check out Open Library, too!
If you're looking for classics, there's also LibriVox!
Something that genuinely hits me in the angst feels when I think about it is Neil staying behind when everyone graduates. The kid who was on the run for nearly a decade, who finally found a home and people to run to and depend on. And then one by one, they all disappear. They talk daily, sure, but they're busy with things they don't share anymore or things they can't do together. Neil's left behind with a vacant home and memories with only Abby and Wymack to keep the loneliness at bay. Considering Neil's backstory, I feel like even the addition of new freshmen feels like an intrusion into his home. Neil has nothing to do anymore, why go to Edens on the weekend? With what car? His life becomes exy and studying. Around this time, I think Wymack and Abby start acting more like parents to Neil. Giving him things to do and giving him the stability he desperately needs, in the form of a family that's waiting on everyone to come home.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
for context:
“Beep Beep Bitch, You’re Gay!”
Updated the lesbian flag and added nonbinary, pan, ace, and aro for all your tacky LBGTQ+ barcode needs.
Hope yall like my abomination
That last one is fucking moving istg
at last. the gaydar
Get hot water, not boiling hot but almost hotter than you can stand, and put a metal spoon in it for a few seconds. Take the spoon and put it against the mosquito bite for about 30 seconds. Do it a few times if you like. The proteins that cause the itching are susceptible to heat and break down.
WHY DON’T THEY TEACH THIS SHIT I have four decades of suffering from skeeter bites behind me
One study on 146 individuals treated with a Bite-Away heat pen found similarly effective results from heat treatment; thankfully, spoons dunked in water cost way less than the Bite-Away’s 30 bucks.
You can also blast the bite with a hair dryer - learned this from my mom and it works great
wow millennials are glued to their i-phones and laptops so much they cant even be bothered robbing in person anymore!!! maybe these trust fund babies should stop phishing credit cards while sitting on their butts and go out there and put some elbow grease into their thievery!
I know exactly what happened. Because it happened to me.
I trained for years to be a con artist. I told my friends and family that I wanted to be a magician, but that was just a cover for why I was constantly practicing sleight of hand.
In junior high and high school, I would shop lift a bunch of candy on my way to school, sell it to kids at the morning break, and use that money to run a crooked poker game at lunch.
Finally, when I was 19 or 20, I felt I was ready, and I picked my first pocket. I was on the bus, bumped a guy as I passed down the aisle, got his wallet, super clean.
In the wallet was several hundred dollars. A huge first score, I had been hoping for a couple twenties. I sat there looking at the, like, 400 bucks, thinking.
That was my rent at the time. We were both on the bus. It was likely his rent too. Lord knows the only reason to carry that much cash on the bus is you’re on your way to pay a bill. We were both on the bus, you know? That’s not someone I was comfortable stealing from.
I tapped him on the shoulder and told him “hey i think you dropped this” and gave it back to him with all the money still in it. It was the first and last time I ever picked a pocket.
Picking a rich person’s pocket is a loosing game. They probably have credit cards and not cash, those credit cards probably have the best anti-theft measures their bank can provide, and you probably can’t get close enough to those people to pick their pockets unless you’re already rich yourself.
The people who’s pockets you can reliably pick are the people around you. The people who are also on the bus, who are in this same shitty situation with you.
As wealth inequality becomes more drastic picking pockets has very clearly become “stealing from other poor people” and it’s not satisfying. I want to steal from Google and Apple and Fox and Facebook and General Mills and Hershey and Tesla. Not the person next to me.
Wow. This post went from funny to a life lesson in a way I wasn’t expecting, amd I’m not sorey at all.
See, unlike the capitalist elite, common criminals have a sense of morality and empathy.
the thing is like. i get that it's scary and makes people who do desire to get pregnant uncomfortable when we talk about the brutality and violence of pregnancy and the damage that pregnancy can do to your body
but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.
the lies around pregnancy - that it's inherently safe, that it doesn't do you permanent damage, that it's only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like
all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that
there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are
but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo
this is a process that permanently changes most people's bodies, and that's even if the pregnancy doesn't do them like. severe illness or injury
and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that
bc to live in a society that intentionally obscures and hides facts about a completely optional and dangerous process does so for a reason, and that reason is based in a very sinister ideology that does not value bodily autonomy or informed consent
the number of people who are pregnant and don't know about what induced labour entails and what post partum bleeding is horrifies me
Here is a story about the depths to which pregnant people are seen as a vessel for a baby, and the importance of finding prenatal care that assumes you are a human and not a baby holder:
When I was pregnant I was in a million forums for pregnant people because (cough adhd hyperfixation) and I had something called SPD (Symphysis pubis dysfunction) (not Sensory Processing Disorder though I also have that) which is where your pubic bones separate early (more or less) because they get all loosey goosey as your body gets ready to crank that baby out.
Except my pubic bone got confused and got misaligned at like 3 months pregnant. I could barely walk. I couldn't roll over in bed. Doing something that required me to shift my weight from one foot to another like opening a door knob was like an excruciatingly painful knife being stabbed into my pubic bone, I can't express how intense and blinding it was.
So I am in one million baby forums like "am I dying what is happening why is there a knife in my pubic bone" and all these people are like "I have that too! my doctor says it's normal and not to worry because it doesn't hurt the baby. I just deal with it by laying in bed for months in excruciating pain and think about how lucky I am to be having a little miracle growing in my body."
So lol nope. I went to my midwife and they are like, "Oh squeeze a can between your knees look up a physical therapy youtube on SPD" and I did that can-squeeze thing and it CURED THE PROBLEM in ONE DAY. I had been SUFFERING, y'all, it felt miraculous.
And I was so full of rage (flames, flames on the side of my face) that people are being told "Oh, it's NORMAL just deal with it" "It doesn't hurt the baby." Like, look, yes it's NORMAL but it's 100% treatable!!! SPD (again, not Sensory processing disorder) affects 1 in 5 pregnant people.
I was lucky to have amazing midwives (need a gender neutral term for that profession, but they see pregnant men and women)(side note highly recommend midwives if you are gender nonconfirming/a man/etc) and I have DOZENS of examples of shit like this.
(Another example is post partum friends being like "oh I am peeing my pants 900x day after giving birth" and my doctor says it's NORMAL so I just dealt with it for decades. My midwives were like "Oh that's normal and also physical therapy cures that in like 2 sessions")
*cackling*
If OTW weren’t around, this wouldn’t be “scaremongering”: It would be the inescapable status quo.
The people who believe this crap are the anti-vaxxers of fandom.
Oh god. They kind of are, aren’t they?
I’d go bigger and just say that they’re the conservatives/reactionaries of fandom–or, to frame it differently, this is how conservative and authoritarian ideologies express themselves in the context of Fandom.
my opinion on AO3 is that it’s an important asset but i still find it scummy that they’ll ask for money but when their users try to ask for money they slam them with their non-monetization rules. Like Anne Rice is dead and this isn’t the 90s anymore, people are making money from fandom please catch up with the times.
I think you’ve misunderstood:
AO3 was built by a bunch of us with our free donated labor for the purpose of being a space free from commercial spam.
It’s not a public service. It was built by us to house the type of fandom culture we liked.
People who want to do fandom differently, including making money, are welcome to go build their own site with their own money or their own donated labor.
AO3 does not forbid commercial links because they think fans making money from fanworks is immoral but them making money (to run the damn site) is fine.
AO3 forbids commercial links because they are making a very specific claim about the legality of fanworks, and that claim is about noncommercial fanworks.
They’re not saying that commercialized fanworks are against the law. They’re just not prepared to host them–nor defend them in court.
In case people missed it: The OTW will not honor DMCA takedown orders that are basically, “I own X work and that’s a fanfic of it, and that’s copyright infringement so make it go away.”
The OTW says, lolnope, we don’t think that’s copyright infringement. If you disagree, sue us.
The OTW says: Disney - we will not remove explicit Mandalorian fanfic. Rowling, Warner Bros - we will not remove trans Harry Potter fanfic. Gabaldon - we are not removing Outlander fanfic no matter how much you think it’s illegal or a personal violation. Yarbro, if someone puts “The Adventure of the Gentleman in Black” on AO3, you will need to actually take it to trial to (try to) get it removed; none of this C&D order followed by fans caving because they can’t afford a lawyer.
…So far, nobody has sued them. (This is, in my mind, the strongest proof we have that fanfic is not copyright infringement. In 13 years, not a single person or company has scrounged up a lawyer and filed a lawsuit against AO3/the OTW for hosting fanworks.)
But they’re not willing to put themselves on the line for commercial works. Those get considered differently in copyright law. They’re not always infringing - there’s a whole history of parody books & songs to prove that - but the OTW is not dealing with them.
The OTW does not care if fans are making money. The OTW cares if fans making money interfere with its legal defense of its archive.
If you are not a copyright lawyer, your opinion about the situation is not going to be considered.
Also, it wasn’t just Anne Rice coming after fandom in the 90s as though this is some relic holdover terror from ancient history.
Events like Strikethrough and Boldthrough happened in the early to mid-2000s. It felt like you’d wake up every day in 2007 and find another fandom group on LJ gone. (And not just fandom groups either, important community groups for education and trauma survival were also wiped out in those purges as well.)
And while not exactly the same, Yahoo Groups–and yes Yahoo Groups was a major online fandom hub at one point–were deleted as late as 2019 with very little warning, leaving a lot of older fandom groups scrambling to back up decades worth of content.
I might be projecting, but Fanfic.net seems to be wobbling too. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out they go under in the next few years despite performing similar purges of adult content in 2012 and allowing for obnoxious ads, which made the site unusable on mobile unless you wanted to see an ad what felt like every couple of paragraphs. (It might be better now, I haven’t checked in a while.)
It has only been in very recent memory that fandom has gained any sort of foothold that isn’t poised directly over a precarious faultline that could at any moment open up and swallow entire communities whole, and a huge part of that is the volunteers at Ao3 who decided to play chicken with the likes of Anne Rice and won.
Ao3 at its core was and is built by fandom. Some people don’t like it and that’s fine, but to even suggest that the volunteers are lounging around eating peeled grapes and lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills making bank through fraud while fanfic authors are left out in the cold is beyond the scope of laughable.
They ask for all of that money for two reasons, one being larger than the other.
1. Employee expenses. Someone has to renew the page license, update firewalls, improve the webpage, and add beneficial features that the users are explicitly asking for. They also keep good copyright lawyers on retainer, who stay up-to-date on potential law suits and draw up legal responses to those Cease and Desist letter. That is not a nothing-expense. People deserve to be properly compensated for their labor.
2. This is the big one: Servers. I don’t know if y’all know this, but internet web pages do not have endless and infinite storage capacity. Since AO3 is ad free, it needs to come up with the money to buy and maintain servers from elsewhere, aka DONATIONS, which are willingly given.
It’s not a subscription service. Authors don’t have to pay to submit stories. There’s nothing predatory about it. If you don’t want to give, don’t give. But also don’t try and smear their name when you don’t understand a single thing about what they do for fandom and fanworks.
People do deserve to be properly compensated, but that’s not how AO3 runs. Almost all of the labor is donated, including those expensive tech skills and legal skills.
My biggest beef with the “I deserve a $5 coffee for my fic” thing is that the vital work of making the site exist at all is largely uncompensated. A given fic writer wouldn’t just be monetizing their own labor but that of a lot of other people who did not consent.
Yeah, I don’t think people realize–or can comprehend (!!)–that nobody gets paid–it’s all volunteer from the board on down, and even the lawyers work pro-bono. Server costs, machines, hosting for webpages for related activities, communications software, those things cost money, but the OTW is an all-volunteer nonprofit corporation. We did (I believe) once or twice hired limited-term contractors to help wit specific technical debt stuff (things about gems and stuff underlying the software, updating Rails), but the thing is mostly a giant labor of love. Because it turns out that not everyone creates awesome things for money. As you might think an entire archive of awesome, custom-written fanfiction might prove. :D Or to put it another way–the whole of OTW and AO3 is A FANWORK, YOU GUYS.
Seattle Public Library is doing this awesome program called Books Unbanned that allows teens and young adults (ages 13-26) access to their collection of e-books and e-audiobooks from anywhere in the USA. All you need to do is fill out a simple form and you get their Books Unbanned card. Please share this information far and wide. I know they're not the only ones to have done this, but the more the merrier!
as the crazy person with over 3,000 fics on AO3, who just hit over 2,000,000 hits, i have done... The Math
roughly 5% of readers leave kudos.
0.27% of people leave a comment.
truly, i GET that a lot of people, especially younger people who grew up on youtube and are living on tiktok, see "opening the page and viewing with their eyeballs" engagement in itself. but a) it's not, for fanfiction, that's not how it works; and b) "engagement" does not build a community -- interaction builds a community.
if you like someone's fanfiction, and you want more of that fanfiction, please react to it in some tangible way. leave a kudo. leave a comment. let the writer know that you didn't open it, see the first sentence, and decide it was garbage. let the writer know that you aren't a bot that trawls every webpage for AI content. let the writer know that their work is appreciated.
the point of fandom is to be a community, not a content engine. if people stop feeling like people are being reached with their work, they stop creating work for that fandom and move onto the next. there's a lot to be said for the way binge-model TV is killing fandoms prematurely... but there's a LOT to be said for the way infinite-scrolling consumption is killing fandoms prematurely.
if everyone binges a show on friday and feels weird about reacting to fics posted longer than a week ago/doesn't react to the fics they read at all, that fandom is dying out in about a month, max. even though there are probably a lot of people who would love to discuss it with someone or create more work or finish and post a WIP or whatever. because no actual community is created by consumption alone.
reading a fic is only step one.
reacting to a fic is the crucial step two of the equation.
step three is the fandom proliferating! and you getting more stuff to enjoy!
reacting to a
fic is the crucial step two
of the equation.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Thank you again Haiku Bot for putting this on my dash :]
no
It does help actually, to post the whole context of Hank Green supporting sex workers
Raise your hand if you’re just incredibly fucking tired of people taking things the Green Brothers say out of context to make fun of some of the straight white dudes that use that privilege to their advantage to help marginilized people.
The Green brothers speak out about racial injustice, financial inequality, homophobia, housing issues (including homelessness), mental illness (ESPECIALLY John, who has gone through intense depression and anxiety in the past), and many other topics.
They provide dozens of free resources for students online, specifically Crash Course, and every year during the holidays they donate thousands of dollars to multiple charities.
They actively acknowledge their privilege and use it to lift other people up and provide resources for those who don’t have the same privilege.
I’m sure many people don’t know this, but John and Hank CREATED VidCon. They’re the reason VidCon exists today. They were some of the ORIGINAL YouTubers, and they’re one of the only platforms on YouTube that has stayed true to their original content idea.
People LOVE to hate on them. They love it. John was sent so many death threats and harassed so much that he gave up all social media but YouTube for a long time. The reason? People claimed he was glorifying cancer (which if you’ve actually READ the book, he doesn’t) and that he was a “pervert” for writing about high schoolers (as if LITERALLY every single book about a high schooler isn’t written by someone older than 18 I mean Jesus Christ people). Hes spoken on this a couple times but stopped because people just ignored him and dragged his name through the gutters.
The hate on Hank is, from what I’ve seen, fairly recent - he was kind of the forgotten brother for a while. Until he published a book where the main character was bisexual. And he said positive things about trans people. And then suddenly “Hank Green is just a dumb man and his opinions are trash.” Almost like people didn’t like that the “science man” was openly supportive of homosexuality
The Green brothers acknowledge when they get things wrong. They speak out on injustice, on inequality, and they always, ALWAYS try to do what’s right. They are some of the most wholesome straight white men I’ve ever come across in life in general, and it infuriates me that people reduce them to “okay? okay” and “oh didnt he do Crash Course?”
And now hank green is the honorary father of gen z and science tiktok
Somewhere along the line some people saw ‘people with more privilege in certain areas are less likely to be as aware of their advantages because they are not forced to be aware of the issues constantly’, and somehow read it as ‘if someone ticks enough Privilege Boxes then they’re a Bad Person by default and I’m allowed to bully them’, and those people are a blight on the community.
I have a very rough idea in my head that I don't think I can clearly articulate beyond "And that concludes tonight's reports on German air forc—WHAT'S THIS? IT'S KING ARTHUR WITH A STEEL CHAIR"
IDK what this is about, but I want to know more.
This isn't exactly the same idea but it could be but there is more rattling around in here so:
- The Blitz here manages to qualify as Britain's Darkest Hour, thus triggering the return of Arthur from the Realm Avalon.
- He does not speak a lick of modern English. He speaks an unholy mishmash of Brittonic and Late Classical Latin.
- (Honestly I can see the latter becoming a plot point if they manage to get their hands on a Roman Catholic priest to act as a translator. It wouldn't be a perfect arrangement, but probably better than anything else.)
- Truthfully he probably gets mistaken for a madman.
- Somehow manages to steal a Spitfire out from under the RAF's nose, proceeds to use it to bring down like half an enemy squadron on his own, then lands in a field in the middle of nowhere.
- Police and RAF converge on his location on account of the whole "stealing a plane" thing. They eventually overwhelm him with sheer numbers, but he manages to knock out an impressive number of them in the process. I mean, come on. It's Arthur.
"a catholic priest" i mean yeah sure why not but JRRTOLKIEN himself was alive and a teacher at the time so go big or go home.
You know what sure why not let's just make literal real-life JRRT himself a character in this Arthurian return story, he deserves it.
Sega is unionizing
Tumblr refuses to show links, so I'll reblog with a link to their tweet, but Sega is unionizing and they need all the help they can get.
More context about this.
What Sega is doing is standard practice for the games industry. Other game and tech companies are doing this too. Nintendo, Microsoft, Google, Meta, the list goes on.
Many folks in the games industry work "contract" jobs via staffing firms, which means that they don't get the same full-time benefits as other employees in their company.
Most contract employees work on an hourly (not salary) basis. Sometimes they don't even get to take the same holidays off, or they might get less paid time off (if any, depends on the company). They are not allowed to be treated as full-time employees, and some companies treat them as second class citizens (read stories about Amazon, Meta and Google for example).
Contract employees also are usually unable to work more than 12 - 18 months on a project. This is due to a lawsuit against Microsoft years ago, who still heavily utilizes contract employees to this day. The lawsuit was brought against Microsoft because these contractors would work years on specific projects, but never be brought on as full-time
So instead of bringing these contractors on full-time, Microsoft instead restricted how many months they could work at their company at a time. For example, a contractor cannot work more than 12 - 18 months with Microsoft, and then they have to take a 6 month "break" (where they leave Microsoft), and then they can work another 12 - 18 months.
Contractors are also the first to go in most company layoffs, and the benefit (for the company) is that the company doesn't have to report contractor layoffs via the WARN Act.
This is just one example of how this industry treats employees. Salaried full-time folks are also overworked. And they don't get the benefit of overtime hours like hourly employees (most of time, depends on how you are classified as salaried).
Crunch is a huge issue, constant layoffs are a huge issue, burnout is a huge issue, etc.
These employees at Sega are very brave, as these large companies are not above union busting. I hope that they can set the stage for larger unionization efforts across the games industry as a whole.
STOP. moment of gratitude for those precious times of breathing from your nostrils when you don't have a stuffy nose
Everyone who doesn't have a headache right now, stop right now for a moment and appreciate how good it is not to have a headache.
































