This is an actor whose talent and savvy would ideally be earning him a comfy living in a fair world. Instead, he has to do food delivery to help pay the bills between gigs.

I've adored voice actors since I was tiny. It hurts to know they're not only underpaid, but so badly disrespected as well.

So, in a classic repeat of the cycle of things becoming mainstream enough to catch the eye of profit-seekers, the concept of convention guests at anime cons has shifted to a customer-funded business model.

We don’t get residuals, so many DEPEND on cons.

But YOU are the ones paying us, not the con.

The talent are caught in the middle.

Making more at cons means “selling” harder to you, pushing products more, incentivizing spending your money on them.

But they HAVE to, because if they aren’t making enough…cons (especially larger ones) won’t care to invite them versus someone who’s making more.

I mentioned it before, but - doesn’t it feel like autographs are more expensive? Or interactions often feel like TRANSactions?

Cons are saving money by doing Guarantees instead of Appearance Fees - but they want to bring talent who will have big draws.

What metric do they use to measure it? Sales.

There was that post a couple weeks ago about “how great AI videogames have gotten” and it was a cutscene. Sure it seems great unless you want to pick up a controller and engage with it. And it’s the same damn thing with all of it. It’s “this thing looks like this other thing”, it’s killing your soul