The Missing Middle

Mar. 21st, 2026 12:13 am
elf: We have met the enemy and he is us. (Met the enemy)
[personal profile] elf
Found a nice gaming article on Bluesky (Three Tiers of RPG Publishing), which led me to another article, which I found insightful and clever (and a bit sad, as accurate talk about economics these days tends to be), and then hit the bit that blew my mind.

They Killed Normal and Called It Progress: "Julia Roberts, Applebee's, Bandcamp, your manager, and the death of everything in between. (Also, Sweetgreen is the A24 of dining and I will die on this hill.)"
Have you noticed that the middle is gone from everything? Restaurants, companies, careers, music, retail, the economy itself. What replaced it is a barbell: one enormous weight on each end, nothing in the center, and most of us trying not to get crushed by the bar.

And the replacement does look better every single time, I grant you that. The A24 film is better than the $40 million adult drama from 2007, yeah, we can all agree on that. The Sweetgreen bowl is better than the Applebee’s chicken parm, sure. Your favorite Substack is sharper than the mid-list magazine that folded in 2019. Every replacement is a genuine upgrade. But every replacement serves fewer and fewer people.
That's not the mind-blowing part. That's the thesis, the baseline, the part that he spends half of the ~3000 word essay explaining, giving examples of, making neat comparisons across different industries.

It's amazing that it doesn't get boring because it truly is the same damn pattern )

disney direct to video interquels

Mar. 18th, 2026 10:01 pm
stepnix: Nanoko from Wish Upon the Pleiades (magical girl)
[personal profile] stepnix

they made a bunch of these. let's make a list

  • Beauty and the Beast: An Enchanted Christmas (1997); Christmas special, frame story is a sequel but the main body is not. makes sense, include their most marketable designs.

  • Belle's Magical World (1998); Beauty and the Beast again, compilation movie of a cancelled TV series (another recurring theme among Disneytoon output)

  • Hercules: Zero to Hero (1999); EDIT, MISSED THIS ONE, another tv compilation movie. I guess adding all the tv series and not just their movie versions would add to the list too but i'm not doing that this time

  • The Lion King 1 1/2 (2004); this is the famous one! This is the one people remember. get some use out of that split-second teenage simba design. fair amount of prequel to it too.

  • Tarzan II (2005); this is now the third (Edit: FOURTH) of these that takes place during a single song during the original. i can't find any production details but it feels too close to be inspired by the success(?) of Lion King 3/2

  • Bambi II (2006); BIG throwback, the others weren't as distant from their originals

  • The Fox and the Hound 2 (2006); they're churning these out huh. got Brother Bear 2 in there too somehow

  • Cinderella III: A Twist in Time (2007); this one is a time travel thing not a "true" interquel but i'm including it anyway because it's the time travel sequel to Cinderella and that's just fun

did you know? now you do

duskpeterson: The lowercased letters D and P, joined together (Default)
[personal profile] duskpeterson

The original palace of the Chara was built nearly seven hundred years ago (around 300 years after the giving of the law, as the Emorians date it), under the supervision of the Chara William. In the earliest years of Emor, the Chara and his council lived in a small hall, similar to the Royal Residence of the Kings of Koretia. After a time, though, the Chara and his council fell into a terrible civil war. By the end of this war, the Chara had gained so many followers that a larger building was clearly needed.

The original palace was a one-storey building set atop a high hill, though the hill was lower then. Around it gradually grew the capital of Koretia. This palace was intended only for the Chara, not for his recent enemy, the Great Council of Emor. As part of the peace settlement, however, it was agreed that one-third of the new palace should be given over to the Great Council. Another third was retained by the Chara. The exact purpose of the remaining third is not known for certain, but it appears to have been for rites that have since died out in Emorian culture.

Within two hundred and fifty years, Emor had grown into an empire. With the arrival of a vast bureaucracy to deal with imperial matters, it was clearly time to build a new palace. This palace was built atop the original palace, the old palace being buried under soil that heightened the hill. So well hidden is the original palace that, within a hundred years, many visitors to the new palace were unaware that an older palace still existed under the new one. That remains the case to this day, though the present Emorian government makes no effort to hide the existence of the underground rooms.

The palace that began to be built in 568, under the supervision of the Chara Rowland, was not the vast, sprawling palace of today. It covered only the area that had been taken up by the old palace. This second palace would later be dubbed the East Wing, as the palace expanded.

Like the original palace, it was single-storeyed, but it was as high as a two-storey building. This lent it a majestic appearance. Emor's finest architects were brought in to build the palace, aided by the fledgling engineers who were beginning to transform life in the new empire. Arpesh and Marcadia, close to the mainland, were at that time only just establishing relations with Emor; Arpesh, in a gesture of friendship that it later came to regret bitterly, sent down some of its artists to help with the building. The result was what is widely acknowledged to be the most beautiful building in the world, as well as the largest and most impressive. Only the Daxion palace, a full six storeys high, comes close to rivalling the Chara's palace.

The Chara's palace has vastly expanded in the four centuries since then, but the character of the East Wing has not changed in any substantial manner. It remains in appearance and use as it did in the centuries of the Middle Charas.


[Translator's note: The expansive nature of the Chara's palace becomes apparent in Law-Lover.]

duskpeterson: The lowercased letters D and P, joined together (Default)
[personal profile] duskpeterson

Heir


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