#I HATE CAPITALISM I HATE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION FUCK

[szaryherbatnik]

You know the brainrot is bad when you get emotional while reading about the impact of coal and steam engines and it reminds you too much of gideon...

[writings-ofthe-heart]

my sister just asked, "how many layers of skin are there?" and my brother responded with "I don't know,.like two" and she said

"No it can't be two because Olay and CeraVe, i mean only Olay actually says it goes 10 layers down!"

She's 7. Guess what she watches on TV all the time

[demonbarbers]

so high rn so sorry if this doesn’t make any sense i’m just so emotional about josh and annaleigh and this production so i’m gonna ramble a bit about what i love about it and them. ok. enjoy.

the thing about sweeney todd is that it’s mean. it’s a mean show. it ends on the cruel irony of 2 officers bursting in on toby slitting sweeney’s throat, surrounded by 2 other bodies and one in the oven; on johanna watching her father die holding her mother and not even knowing it. everyone is an abuser or abused, and there is no hope or redemption to be found. and it fucking rules! it just rules. it’s so fun to indulge in our basest pleasures for nearly 3 hours, delicately served to us by one of the greatest composers who’s ever lived.

and every major production takes the bile and cruelty inherent to the material and runs away with it. like- just look at this swedish production from 2006, directed by vernon mound. or the last time it was on broadway, directed by john doyle:

productions tend go smaller and nastier, more intimate, in keeping with the spirit of how sondheim originally conceived the piece. (side note: i LOVE when they do that. my ideal sweeney has buckets of blood and visera right in your face)

the original production of sweeney was MASSIVE, but that came from hal prince. hal couldn’t really get an emotional foothold on the material until he found within sweeney an extended metaphor for capitalism and the industrial revolution; people literally eating people and the machine of capitalism grinding everyone up. revivals also tend to seize on the brechtian class elements, like this absolutely gorgeous korean production from 2019 directed by eric schaeffer:

sondheim, meanwhile, always objected to readings of sweeney as brechtian- it was all a farce to him, just a good, nasty time at the theatre. he approached it as a horror fan who wanted to write some fucked up stuff, which is maybe now some of the best art is created. but hal made it into epic theatre.

(if u don’t know what epic theatre is or what brechtian means google will explain it better to u than my ridiculously stoned ass can rn but im just focusing on one aspect of it rn: the distancing effect. basically, emotionally distancing the audience from the characters and the material so that everyone is engaging with the work on an intellectual level as opposed to an emotional one)

obc sweeney is an alienating show. it’s so fun and brutal and deeply felt, but these characters are grotesque. they’re cartoonish in their cruelty. just look at their makeup! john doyle also embraces the distancing effect; his revival is actor-muso, so we’re pretty aware at all times we’re watching a show. it’s all so cold, and the only warmth to be found is in the humor. and it rules. it’s nasty. i love it. this is the show i fell in love with.

all these things have become inherent to sweeney over time, all teased out of the greatest broadway show to ever exist; visceral horror, cruelty, coldness, and class commentary.

but this revival is just.. it’s warm! it’s lush! it’s romantic! and i don’t mean that in the sense of lovett and sweeney (tho this is the warmest they’ve ever been towards each other in any major production i’ve seen). i mean that it gestures at and plays with romanticism.

my biggest critique of this production is, in doing away with the brechtian elements (sondheim just cheered), it also does away with overt class commentary. it’s all still there in the text- turpin is a corrupt judge, beadle is effectively a sheriff, sweeney and lovett are working class, the beggar woman is homeless- but as a director tommy kail seems… uninterested in any biting political commentary, to put it generously lmfao. and i hate so much how little of it there is to be found in this revival, bc you can still Do It without invoking brecht. but i’ve long made my peace with that. i wanna talk about what i love.

and what i really love and what kept me returning to it (beyond the fact that it’s sondheim, and it’s sweeney, and josh groban is so stupid fucking hot) is how human everyone is. the entire production, from the ground up, is built around taking these characters and their pain seriously.

the ensemble all have incredibly period accurate costumes, unique to each character they’ve crafted (fun fact even the swings have their own unique costume that’s only seen when they perform). gone is toby as a mentally disabled man child with an oedipal fixation on lovett. in gaten’s hands he’s a young teenager, aging out of being a cute urchin and just looking for a mother. in daniel’s hands he’s beaten down young man with a limp and a genuine love for lovett.

ruthie’s beggar woman has developed DID after a brutal rape and the trauma of institutionalization and homelessness. she’s not played for laughs, even if sometimes the audience chuckles, and she makes u feel guilty if you ever did laugh at her situation. daniel yearwood leans so far into anthony as a sweet guy completely unaware of the story he’s actually in to the point of comedy. maria is just a revelation as johanna, all nerve and tension and bloody nails from years of self-harm. it’s easy to lean into johanna as a princess track, but ~crazy~. and maria plays jo as mentally ill and traumatized from years of incesteous abuse, but it’s not a pastiche or a praody of it. jo feels human in a way i’ve never seen her depicted before. i love it. maria bilbao u have my heart forever for this.

and then josh and annaleigh…. ugh!!! annaleigh really captures the avarice at the heart of lovett, but still brings in enough genuine moments of humanity and compassion that you find yourself (like sweeney and toby) endeared to her. lovett is always cruel and can only love through manipulation, but annaleigh’s lovett is a woman who makes small concessions. bit by bit, piece by piece, she erodes whatever goodness she had inside her until nothing but her desire for sweeney is left. she’s a woman who’s used seduction to get her way, and it’s easy to envision that when lucy returned from turpin’s, she shamed her for “giving it away” without getting benjamin back. she’s a monster! and yet, when she dreams of a better life, you feel it. when she holds toby in her arms and cried at her perfect little life unraveling, you feel it. annaleigh makes you laugh so hard she gets under your skin and stays there, exactly how lovett seduces sweeney in ALP. and there it is- identification! the complete opposite of alienation. we’re in it with them.

and then there’s josh and his sweeney… i really feel like his sweeney is undervalued. annaleigh steals the show. she won the drama desk for a reason. it’s a legendary performance. but josh…. man. i just. i keep returning to josh’s open wound of a sweeney over and over again. i think he’s probably had this take bouncing around in his head for years. they smartly leaned away from sweeney as this embodiment of rage and physical menace, which surprised a lot of people. but instead leaned into sweeney’s grief in a way i haven’t seen any major production do. josh’s sweeney feels like a man who was put on this earth to be a father and a husband. there’s a buried sweetness to him and you can still see benjamin barker in him until the very end. i keep calling him “kendall roy sweeney” bc it’s the closest way i can covey to other ppl what josh is doing here. he’s all big sad eyes and suicidal ideation, tragedy and twitchy hands. he’s so deeply pathetic he just endears himself to you. i want sweeney to succeed more than ever before. even though he spends all of act 2 killing people and being a shit father and thus killing benjamin barker, i still find myself wanting him and lovett to get away with it. and when the reveal comes, and even worse the betrayal hits- that this woman who he let into his life and body and who, in some odd way, became a friend, lied to him this entire time- it hits like never before for me.

i just love it all so much. i’m so happy it exists, so happy this revival does something so new! sondheim has said sweeney todd is a show about obsession, and it is. this revival supposes: what is the difference between love and obsession? what if the two look the same?

i think often of this quote from luca guadagnino’s suspiria (a masterpiece btw): “Love and manipulation, they share houses very often. They are frequent bedfellows.”

to me, that’s this revival in a nutshell- the thin line between love and obsession, and all the blood spilled in between.

[narutosux]

i want to talk about the frank castle, mr The Punisher, of my dreams

the version of the punisher that is canon to me in my heart and idgaf about reality because men wrote him anyway and i dont respect men in general. im also going to talk a tiny bit about daredevil because to me they are literally two sides of the same coin they're literally bbc merlin and arthur and im this woke ass dragon going "two sides of the same coin go freaky on each other"

In my heart of hearts, Frank Castle is an anarcho communist. He is a hardcore anti-establishment commie who believes that revolution cannot come without bloodshed. He respects and cares about the wellbeing of Daredevil, Matt Murdock, and other heroes who have similar goals, because they do want revolution and change, but they don't have the balls to actually kill wholesale like Frank. Frank sees himself as the only one willing to actually get shit done, and he's okay with being an attack dog. He's used to it, because its what the US government used him as when he was a Marine.

The concept he would ever respect the police, a violent force used to oppress lower classes and protect capital, is LAUGHABLE. It's foolish. I ignore iterations of the Punisher who is fine with killing drug addicts because they're "breaking the law", and I believe in versions of Frank Castle that kills CEOs of pharmaceutical companies for pushing opioids as harmless drugs. I think the Punisher of the 80s might focus on street level drug offenses, however I think he would learn that the problem is systemic and tearing the leaves off a tree won't kill it, you have to attack it at the root.

I believe that he would work willingly with Daredevil A LOT... Obviously, Frank Castle is more than capable of doing investigative work on his own, and he's great at planning, however I think that both men recognize their ability to work well as a team and function together. Frank is willing to work with him on jobs where he can admit that killing isn't NEEDED, even if it would do things a whole lot faster.

Frank Castle, without a single doubt in my mind, HATES the US Military Industrial Complex, and the enforcement of violence. He accepts violence because it's all he's ever known. He's a good trained attack dog, and it's where he feels comfortable, but he's both a dog and his own master, and he feels he can only make up for the attrocities he's helped commit by righting the wrongs he's done. He's single-minded, headstrong, focused on his goals of destroying in order for rebuilding a better version of the world. Allowing people to take time to change means they can fuck up and harm others in the meantime. He's not willing to risk that.

Another piece that I did like from the version of him where he was the leader of the Hand, I really liked the idea that Maria was planning to divorce him right before his family was slaughtered. I think it would make him recognize just how little of life he had, and it would make him even more angry at him failing to protect them and failing to be a genuinely good husband. But, he also recognizes that it was never love, it was a role he thought he was supposed to fill. I just don't think he really loved her. Love doesn't look like what he put Maria through.

He knows how to fill roles, but he doesn't know who he actually is. Something quite similar to Matt Murdock, who feels he's the Devil, but also doesn't know who he is when he's Matthew. They're both constantly trying to fill roles in other people's lives, or fill the roles they think that they're supposed to be in, but they don't actually know who they truly are as people.

I think that's so powerful, for these two men who are so full of conviction and so firm in their beliefs but when it comes to thinking about who they are as people, they don't know themselves. But, they know each other. I think they know each other better than they know themselves, but they don't recognize that it's because they see so much of themselves in the other man.

Sorry, but you can't convince me they aren't completely fucking obsessed with each other. Daredevil sometimes wishes he could be the Punisher. He wishes he could just kill the evil he has had to hear for years and years and years and years of his life. But he knows it would never solve anything, it would only make him as bad as the evil around him. The Punisher wishes he could see a world where redemption is possible, he wishes he had that scrap of humanity left in him still. I think when he works with Daredevil he feels himself growing weaker and he has to run away and can't stay with him long, because it makes him recognize that he might not have the resolve to kill. He also fears he might taint Matt Murdock. He might eventually actually convince him to kill. And that scares him. Frank Castle taints everything around him, even his bloodsoaked, mangled children. Even his wife Maria, brought back from the dead, still covered in bullet wounds and beautiful as ever. He drove her to kill.

One day he might ruin Daredevil like that too, and the only saving grace of that moment would be that Daredevil would finally put down the sick dog that is Frank Castle.

[trickstarbrave]

i hate when ppl dont understand how intertwined all the fucked up systems of capitalism are. they present it as "take away [x] and things will work better!" when that damn well will not fix it. or they dont even realize the problem is actually capitalism not some other thing they have been fixated on

like. veganism argument: "we subsidize grains to feed livestock. if we stopped feeding livestock, we would have more food for everyone! the problem is livestock are eating too much of grains we could be eating"

a lot of the corn they are eating are byproducts of the ethanol industry. we are not in fact just growing huge fields of grains and refusing to eat them bc we can feed cows it instead. that would be way too costly. "subsidies" wouldn't cover it. at no point was the corn being grown for human consumption. most of the corn in the US is grown for biofuel. without livestock, we would not have MORE food to eat, we'd have a lot of leftover slop we have to toss out to slowly degrade in landfills.

its not the most healthy option to pump them full of byproducts. they should be allowed to forage and walk. but the problem is much more complex than than just "get rid of the cows to make more food for people!!" the cows eating the byproducts is whats making more food for people. not less. you can't just look at "grain products" and decide all of those were fit for human consumption. most of the stuff we feed farm animals is NOT fit for human consumption. for better or for worse.

and this is only one problem. some are relatively easy solutions (once all of the, yknow, capitalist incentive is removed) like how we have more houses than homeless people. just give people houses. except we should also look at: where are these houses being built, are they being built for quality and to last? because the answer is: they are built mostly in suburbs for cheap with lazy building standards and poor quality materials. we are tearing down homes with better bones and foundations for cheap, paper thin wood, new construction houses when many of them can be saved. these are homes far away from doctors and jobs that you actually need a car to get around to important places, so many people who don't have reliable transportation will still have many problems once settled in. to create more sustainable, walk-able communities and to have better public transportation we are still gonna need to tear a bunch of these down and rebuild communities, which is going to be a daunting task too.

food insecurity: okay we'll just give people food! except they might not have reliable ways to cook that food either. a lot of people who are food insecure grew up food insecure. they grew up in food deserts where microwave self stable meals were the norm. they might not have pots and pans or know how to find a recipe or make one themselves. many are chronically ill or disabled and don't have a lot of time and energy to cook. many people still think its better to give a food bank 10 cans of green beans that you forgot about and don't plan to use in donations rather than just giving the food bank 30 bucks.

idk. i dont really have an answer i suppose. i just wanted to complain about how messy and complicated these problems are. and i think if you're a serious activist you are going to need better, long term plans and big picture perspectives. these problems can seem incredibly easy to tackle on the surface to lots of online activists but are very complex issues to actually dismantle and combat. we can't just keep complaining and hope society collapses so we can rebuild from scratch. there is no after the revolution when everything will be good and perfect. no after the end of the world to pick ourselves up and make a utopia from the ashes. we gotta figure out the problem and start untangling it and deal with the first steps NOW. start with realistic goals. contacting local government. creating bettering, temporary solutions that are better than what we have now. disrupt the system bit by bit. get other ppl in on it. the world we wanna live in will not come to us overnight. we gotta build it brick by brick.

capitalism counts on it being too daunting of a task. they count on ppl just complaining and wishing it was better to sell them the solution without any real change. but real change has to come from small shit first. maybe start a community garden if you want a more sustainable community. make your own garden if you have the ability. collect rain water (YES ITS LEGAL IN ALL 50 STATES just heavily regulated in some. dont tell me its illegal in the US). create alternatives for companies you boycott. tell your local representative you want public transport and ask how to get it and rally your community for it enough that they have to bother ppl higher than them and actively have to start considering it. do ride shares. help out food banks with real stuff they ask for. look around your community for small problems you can address and find solutions.

[two-red-lungs]

Could you write reader finding out food tlb liked from when they were human/their childhood and making it for them as a gift?

I know you wanted a fic but I have so so many thoughts about each of the boys that I'm gonna collect them all in this post!

The Lost Boys: Their Favorite Old-World Foods

Marko:

The little Italian stallion <3333

I HC him as growing up in inner Florence, Italy, during the artistic revolution. He was fairly elite/in high demand as a model

Basically, a brat with an ego

Still despite rubbing shoulders with the greats, he loved to come home to his family’s little city house and eat his mamma’s cooking

I think Marko’s favorite ‘old world’ dish is Garmugia: a simple springtime soup with cured pancetta, lima beans, scallions, and all sorts of other green veggies

It’s not fancy or especially delicious at all. But I think the smell, the taste, would make him freeze up, flooded with memories

and maybe for a second he’d stop being a feral, combative, snapping undead animal, and you’d catch a glimpse of the athletic young human from centuries ago

Dwayne: 

My personal HC for Dwayne is he got put in a residential school for native Americans at a young age, basically ripped away from his family

He probably escaped, hightailing it out at around 16, and then survived alone on the streets of early 1800s colonizer cities with the rest of the dredges of society 

(Which to me gives him a very strong “I fucking hate capitalism I truly hate this country and deep down I do genuinely want to see this broken system burnt to the ground, also FUCK cops” mentality)

I think Dwayne’s most memorable old-world food would be Gingerbread. Not the gingerbread we know: a soft, cake-like bread flavored with molasses, ground ginger, and cinnamon. Very dark and not very sweet

He worked odd (and illegal) jobs to stay alive and when winter rolled around street vendors would sell big hot slices of the stuff

Bringing him some real, legit circa-1810-gingerbread would probably make him remember the far-distant, little moments of actual joy he had in his human life

AND you’d probably be able to convince him to actually talk about his past for once

Paul:

Country boyyyy, I love youuuu

In my mind Paul is rural midwest, late 1800s when the industrial revolution was really kickin’ off and the cities were poppin (with drugs and alcohol lmao)

He was probably raised on a farm & did farmwork most of the time. Picture him in a low ponytail and work duds, pitching hay. That was probably for the best because that dude 100% has dyslexia and a math learning disability

But oooooh he was prettyyyyy and he knew it: I think Paul eventually ran away from his family’s farm and basically became a partyboy in a big city, like New York, and was changed there

I think Paul’s favorite old-world food is (brace for the cliche) Apple Pie!

Probably a rare treat his momma and sisters would cook up in the autumn and winter: smelling a good, home-style pie now makes him think of barefoot evening sitting on the farmyard porch, listening to cicadas

Unrelated, but I think Paul- that’s right, partyboy druggie bonerboy Paulie- still remembers how to tie a hog

David:

I have conflicting thoughts abt this motherfucker

His backstory HC for me is still a little elusive, but I have some basic details for him

He comes from a pretty fucked-up biological family (probably a crazy-abusive dad and absent mother), was 100% drafted in a war at some point (I suspect the civil war), and 100% deserted his station in that war. Out of cowardice, fear, or distain, I don’t know. 

I don’t think David really has a favorite food?? He’ll eat plain rice. Plain, oily noodles. Hard-tack biscuits. Literally anything like whatever it’s not his personal thing

David like drinking and smoking. I think David’s favorite old-world vice is Irish Whiskey. Again, not the drink we think of. A lot less refined, very rough and coarse: it was the most popular and easily-accessible spirit in the 1860s 

I think it reminds him of ‘simpler times’: just him, alone, human, in a dingy old bar, getting the cheapest drink he can get, ducking his head to avoid being seen by military officials and wondering where he can run away to next

Give him a straight shot of Irish whiskey in an old-style enameled bar glass and it’s one of the only times he won’t be full-on Mansplain Manipulate Manwh0re: he’ll probably sit on a beachside bench with you, drinking in silence, watching the waves crashing far away. Lost in thought. Looking as old as he really is.

[androgynousblackbox]

Sometimes I feel like the only person who loves seeing media critiquing capitalism, talking about class, and just don't like at all the Menu. Like, I saw a video of someone saying that the movie is really about violence and how "if you want a violent revolution, then you are just as bad as the people who want to exterminate you", and I also don't vibe that, but also I don't really buy into the whole "oh, this movie is about destroying the elite and literally eating the rich", like.... I can see parts of that, but more than anything is... meh. I still think it's kinda weak even after seeing reaction and review videos from people who do actually work on that industry, who understood the little nuances behind the dishes and what not. I guess my biggest issue is the main guy. Like, he makes this huge fucking deal about how he has come to hate everything he does, about how he wants to punish the people who don't appreciate his work, who are so filthy rich that take it for granted, and I am here like but, my guy, you are part of this industry too. You made it so the people who work with you in this bullshit island idea have no life outside of this. You created this shit. Nobody forced you into doing this. You made this hell. You put yourself on it. Why should I root for you to take it out on people who did nothing to you? Taking it back to that "this movie is about violence on both side of social conflict", fuck that shit because oppressed people did fuck all to be on that position. They didn't choose to live that life and they did nothing to deserve it. This guy literally couldn't have done anything to reach that place that wasn't his own will. So I am fucking ass confused as to WHY people are taking this movie as some kind of "fuck you" to the elite class, when the "fuck you" comes from a part of the elite that prefers to do anything before going to therapy? Like the first death is an angel investor and like, sincerely, just why is this guy being punished for giving you the money for this stupid bullshit you wanted to make? I just never get a sense that either he or the movie is aknowledging this? Like, what, I am supposed to feel bad because making a simple cheeseburger is fulfilling for him and he forgot that while he was making those fancy ass dishes? Why was just giving up this island bullshit and getting your own restaurant with cheesburgers not an option here? "Uh but then we wouldn't have the movie" doesn't cut it for me. Why are we treating this like a tragedy that just happened to this guy, and that is why he has a right to lash out, instead of just his own fucking choices? And like, if you tell me "my guy, this is just a horror movie. It's supposed to be unhinged. If every serial killer went to therapy instead of doing unhinged evil things we won't have a genre anymore" and like, fine, sure, but then why are people treating it like it's something bigger than that? Why I see so many people being on the side of this guy or even rooting for him? I don't get it, I truly don't.

Like, when he starts monologuing about why everyone is going to die and he just shit in John Leguizamo because he did a bad movie that he went to see on his one free day, I am just like bitch, you are your own boss. You did that to yourself. And you can watch more than one movie in a day? He didn't want that role either, the fuck are you on about. Maybe that is just part of the comedy, it's supposed to be just one joke about how truly petty and nonsensical this bullshit has turned into, which like good, fun, but then that really clashes with that being on his side. I don't want to be on the side of a guy who shits on actors for just doing their job with bad scripts they didn't write. It's confusing to me seeing people saying "this movie is a true criticism of class while something like Saltburn is not" and maybe that is the thing about art, that everyone is supposed to have different interpretations and tastes and whatever, but I feel like a fucking alien seeing this kind of discourse pop out because I just fundamentally disagree with it. I don't even know if it's a me thing that I don't understand or it's a gringo thing somehow? I don't know, it's weird.

[miss-oranje-disco-dancer]

rant, anti-capitalist internet hot take

the worst thing about old games is that they are hard, but the best thing is that there are game guides online that are actually helpful and correct bc they were made before articles on the internet were all just for making profit :( i'm playing RE1 remake rn and i've looked up walkthroughs bc i keep getting confused and i just find lil guides on neoseeker and game faqs (also steam community, but that's newer i assume?), but i see stuff from 2002 posted on the internet and it's so cute to me and also "wow" bc we didn't have the internet at my house until maybe 2007? (I was born in 2000, so obviously i wasn't using the internet in 2002). it's like your friend's big brother or dad sitting on the couch with you and your friend and helping you beat a hard level of a game 🥹 like it's just some cool guys you know and look up to when you're a lil kid playing the gamecube and they help you out and idk shit like that gives me happy tears bc everything sucks these days!!!! (in my holden caulfield era, my therapist called it)

instead of big companies (ew capitalism) like ign and gamerant which consistently give 1. less information than what i needed and 2 wrong information - verifiably incorrect, like, i was looking at something about RE4 remake (mind you, i have 150-200 hours, and i'm working on getting 100%, so i know a lot about the gameplay at this point) and there was something blatantly wrong on one of those sites, plus, they have fucking endless ads, so if i'm on my phone (bc i don't wanna use my computer on the couch) loading it is impossible!!! (i have horrendous wifi bc i live in SC).

i hate that like every article on the front page of google is written for profit (and half of them by AI)!! i look up writing advice a lot and i almost never find anything useful. but once I found like the best page ever and i looked to see when it was published and it was clearly a super old webpage (tbh kinda hard to read) and it was someone's advice from their book published in 1999. back when we could have good advice.

also, people really discount fanfiction but all the romance related fanfiction that i've read is so much better than contemporary romance writers (colleen hoover et al.) and it's bc we don't get paid to do it! we're literally just getting excited about things we like and bonding (and even the people who do commissions and stuff are people who actually care, not like a big shitty corporation)

i should ask ign/gamerant for a job as a fact checker of some sort. i'll be like "please, ill literally do it for free bc it pisses me off so much". me emailing them: your articles are so bad i want to kms

also, fuck ign for giving until dawn a 7.5/10, that game was at least a 9 if not a 10 and i'm strict with my 10/10s!!!! reading that article i can truly say, wholeheartedly, that i rarely see worse opinions than that

basically, in conclusion, the industrial revolution and its consequences yadda yadda

[venusandmarx]

Fully convinced that the root of all problems in life is technology. I hate cellphones i hate digital concert tickets i hate credit cards i hate capitalism fuck the industrial revolution. Yes i am posting this through a phone but at the same time it is the only way for me to express myself considering i have to pay like 100k to get a fucking appointment with a therapist. Dont fucking at me ill bite you. I hate life there is no happiness in my horizon.

[finsterhund]

Conservative party of BC is bitching and moaning about how medical euthanasia is available to mentally ill people and it pisses me off because like the abortion argument there's nothing wrong with medical euthanasia. And people who want to die are going to try it anyways but they're going to do it in a way that's unsafe. The problem is that the government should be allocating more resources to solutions to prevent people needing it as a last resort. The issue is that the only solution the system can currently give is the euthanasia for certain situations when we wouldn't be as inclined to seek it out if say for instance rent was affordable and the disability pensions were a living wage. But these people are also AGAINST THOSE THINGS. Better sex ed and easier access to birth control and assistance for child care are the only things that will lower the need for abortions but the anti abortion people are also against those as well. The underlying reason as to why the people who want to ban medical euthanasia are against programs to keep disabled people safe, housed, out of poverty is ultimately that these fuckers don't care about the people affected. It is all about control. Keeping disabled people around but not thriving so they're good little wage slaves. Forced to work beyond our limits because the resources available are not enough to sustain us. Forcing people to carry babies to term to create more future impoverished wage slaves even if the resulting child doesn't have a snowballs chance at a good upbringing or future.

This extends to people who aren't disabled as well of course, but disability income is less than minimum wage and we need additional help so it's more noticable. I read somewhere that the average lower middle class person in America has longer hours and less vacations than fucking feudal serfs. The industrial revolution brought with it far more work for far less pay.

It's sickening and I hate it so much.

Imagine thinking the solution to people wanting to die is to try and ban dying safely instead of trying to stop people from wanting to die. Hell world.

Also I read a while back that homeless people in Ireland in the 80s could be given apartments. For free. And I just.

Man.

And I know things get even better in some other countries. So things getting better is possible. But we have these freaks that fetishize the industrial revolution and are part of doomsday cults fucking everything up for us. Gah.

Then there's other things like how car dependant we are these days. If you're unable to drive to the grocery store that's not even close to being walking distance you gotta buy food from the overpriced gas station instead. You have a bike? Well good luck trying to actually cycle there with the roads the way they are. Hopefully you don't have a disability that prevents you from driving and a roommate who drove off into a "ditch" or whatever. Stuff like that.

Someday I hope that everything is just a little bit kinder. I know things have gotten better. But it's so frustrating to know things could be so much more better but there's people actively fighting against it. Using their power and their thirst to keep that power to accomplish it.

To avoid rambling on again about how I hate capitalism and borders and not being able to live with my American friends in a little house with a parcel of farmland I'm going to leave it here and focus on my current project of trying to measure the ratio between the length of Whisky's ears and the size of his head but just know that I don't want to give up. Not right now at least.

[sillycatgriddy]

what’s the point of owning a windows operating system laptop if i can’t even fcking own powerpoint 4 free i hate capitalism or the industrial revolution or whatever the fuck is to blame for this

[flagellant]

I Want To Go To College (And Make It The Government's Problem)

Friends. Romans. Followers. Countrymen. Cuntrymen. Lend me thine limited attention spans and autistic superpowers, I promise I'll keep it short. Bolded mine for ADHD TLDR.

I got accepted to one of the best fashion design colleges in America. This is great because I'm a poor QPOC and if I were given the opportunity and contacts within the fashion industry to actually pull off the revolution within it that I fully intend to, I could make this the government's problem. Also boring-ass couture's problem. It'll be great.

Problem, though: I got accepted to one of the best fashion design colleges in America. This is great, but I'm a POOR QPOC and therefore I'm already going in a system set up against me. My family is helping me pay for student housing, and I'm currently on SNAP benefits so that'll help provide some buffer as well, and I'll be pirating as many school books as I can, and I'm gonna be getting as much scholarship and student aid as possible, but...

None of that is gonna prevent the fact that education is expensive and made to prevent people like us from doing jack shit meaningful with our lives, and I still need to pay up front for the upcoming semester at the end of the month.

If you're my follower and you at all like my content, I'd deeply appreciate if you could send a few bucks my way. If you're not my follower and you want to support some random stranger who really fucking hates the American government and the way that high fashion has become commodified by corporate capitalism and wants to do something very violent about it, please also send a few bucks my way.

Thanks for your time reading this. All cops are bastards and fashion is art worn on the body or else.

PAYPAL: http://paypal.me/tatteredveil

VENMO: @ItsTheInnkeeper

CASHAPP: $ItsTheInnkeeper

KO-FI: /inneskeeper

[will80sbyers]

the fact that I can't even breathe in my room if I don't have the fan on...jfc this is all because we built shitty houses instead of thinking about proper ventilation and insulation and we thought it was a good idea to make fucking buildings full of people instead of having all cute little houses by ourselves and supporting each other as small communities and respect nature... Noooo we needed to have the fucking industrial revolution of course I hate capitalism and I'm helping the world to burn down by contributing to global warming with my fan because i can't fucking breathe

[fairycosmos]

it sounds like ur trying to make it seem that capitalism is the reason people are fat or obese and like, i hate capitalism as much as anyone but this makes it seem like people are not responsible for themselves? no one is pushing the food down their throats? they can take responsibility for themselves and not all of them have an illness that prevents them from losing weight. when it comes down to it most of them just eat too much and burn too little.

ppl are responsible for themselves but frankly we don't live in a vacuum and capitalism and obesity rates are undeniably linked imo. you think struggling families have both the time and the money to eat healthily 24/7 and to work out regularly? you don't think theres a reason fast food is cheap and convenient, and addictive at that? you don't think having access to free healthcare would prevent eating disorders of all types? you don't think if there wasn't a billion dollar beauty industry dedicated to teaching people to fuck up their relationship with food from an early age for the sake of body image, things would be different? you don't think there could be genuine reasons as to WHY ppl eat too much and move too little, why it's gotten worse as we've progressed after the industrial revolution? we r shaped by the system we grow up in honestly. mass and toxic consumerism always comes first, and in many cases health care is just a business. dietary literacy is not prioritised in a way that counts. i agree that we've all got choices but i think seeing it solely as a personal responsibility thing over simplifies the issue

[misterbitches]

hi! this is long as shit i’m sorry. i hope it makes sense. i ahve adhd and like 5 million learning disorders so this is just word vomit cos there’s so many words in my brain. my b.

i’ve had such a tough day so thank you for replying and sharing! @yeedak​ 

i was thinking about what i wrote and i meant to clarify that as well. some cases are fine for both parties and it’s not like you weren’t consenting and it seems like you were happy! same with my friend who was dating a 20 yr old. if they’re happy you know i’ll clown on ‘em but yea. so for anyone that sees these posts your relationship with your partner who is older or whatever. i’m some dumb girl on the internet okay. ill side eye older ppl tho

i think a lot of people feel the same way you do now (me included.) it feels really good at the time but alter we can see the dynamics playing out. i’m 29 now and i think aging is just such a huge process. it’s wild how you at 31 are a totally different person, right?

and the US racism is probably some of the worst ever in its iteration because of slavery which started from europe etc but USA is so fucking unique bc of columbus bringing slaves here and displacing indigenous peoples or hispanola and because america is so influential the way it views race, particularly with black people as objects, has so deeply permeated into the current historical psyche globally. it’s fascinating to track how necessary anti blackness is to the flourishing of america but also the world at this point. also want to point out how fuckign scary sinophobia is here especially for covid. one is a straight historical line (black ppl + the US) and the other had to be manufactured and to continue to exploit the non-white americans and keep antiblackness in tact.i could go on about this all day. the pain of this place is immense.yet as bad as it is here, this is still the only place i truly feel safe as a black person. because of the unique experience we have in america and through the diaspora especially because we are veyr much ocncentrated here. it would be nice to like move to norway and have some alleviation financially or get free healthcare it’s just not feasible if no one looks like me. it’s fucking tough. 

i hope you don’t hate it here though and people treat you with respect. but as you know being a woman and jewish and an immigrant....shit is tough. the USA is a hellhole. :( america is so deeply tainted and desperately bad because it was founded on strife and blood and there’s no way to reverse that and what this country did in turn when it gained enough power and could capitalize off of the colonial forefathers. this is why we hsould all luv revolution!!!

HOWMEVERRRR 

boy oh boy oh BOY OH BOYYYYYYYY. well wlecome to the world of BL lmao especially as an adult with some obviously deep perspective just given your background. it is a fucking mess and it’s a hard mess to like but it pulls you in. i approach it like i do with soap operas since these are essentially telenovelas, you know? just like the drama at a billion. but the tricky part of that is like....what parts of it do we understand for critiquing? because so many of the shows are so bad at being like good pieces of things to look at just production wise and story wise. but i feel like these shows ask us to take them seriously, so why shouldn’t we take the content seriously? and this is being primarily peddled to young girls. 

i bring this up often but i read this thing about yaoi and the interest younger women/girls have in BL and its fascination with pederasty essentially. this component i think is key when we talk about who gets affected by these things the most. society in general is bad 4 girls bla bla we know lmao but in “more sexually conservative” societies it may be harder for these girls to feel safe even expressing normal emotions romantically and sexually and particularly with guys. some people hypothesized, and i think i agree with this hypothesis, that they can live through the casualness of BL. they don’t feel threatened because they can put themselves into the shoes of the other character. oftentimes, the more feminine or the younger. this was in conjunction with the age gap aspect (they say pederasty as well because there’s unethical age gaps that r gross and that is indeed what we would at least call a touch of sexual abuse if people dont feel like calling it an obsession with youth and power and uhhh young ppl and perhaps kids) where maybe girls could see themselves in these situations as the person being saved, loved, taken care of, and sadly also sexually active and penetrated. 

i think that’s just one aspect of it but i do think there’s validity in who gravitates towards it. i cannot imagine seeing this stuff and not getting enough information as a young kid, i sure as fuck know i didn’t!, and seeing these things and you look at it with 0 critique because you’re young and you may have no interest in it or you simply cannot understand what is wrong. no one is teaching you these things and these shows confirm it. and it is wild how intrinsic patriarchy is to BL although in its existence it also can’t be in line with patriarchy given the nature of two [cis] men!

it begs the question about the replacement aspect. is it just so girls can put themselves in these characters shoes? if so then that means we believe that gender is so interchangeable within our relationships and interactions and that doesn’t seem right. there’s more to lgbtq+ than just existing; it’s finding ways to communicate, finding a family, safety, your people, being a free person. there’s a lot to gain and a lot a lot to lose. and a gay man is also not a woman because those are also two distinct experiences.  especially in societies that have a more hidden aspect to sexuality (idk how to word this bc the BL industry would NEVER survive in america but in a way there’s a more “progressive” look at homosexuality but it’s still fucked up because we live in a Society, you know? at the same time look at what we are doing to trans kids. literally waging war so it’s bonkers how we all collectively have some real progress happening but at the same time not at all. the concept of ‘ladyboys’ and the frequency we see trans people in thai shows is wild and something that we absolutely do not see here in the US. still, none of these groups feel safe or are getting better material conditions in either place. we just show the ways we can try and tolerate oppression witout eliminating it imo)

to me it is clear: it’s money. which most things exist to make money so. but also who is the audience for these shows? and they have to market towards them. all that said all hope is not lost there are some decent shows. it’s just like regular media on TV though where it’s so fucking saturated as an industry that it’s literally sifting through garbage. and there are some days when you can handle the trash and others where it really fucking hurts to watch the violence, the rape, the manipulation, the violations, the stupid messaging. i have never seen more people trying to do mental gymnastics and seeing if things were “technically rape” than in teh BL fandom and that is so fucking sad.

i came into these shows at 28 with almost 0 clue of what as media BL was like esp as media that countries can use as soft power with the revenue. but i realize like...i’m 29 now and so many people don’t have a sizeable, though not huge, amount of life experience. and i wonder for people on the internet who are usually searching for something if they spend so much time on it like what a 15 year old girl thinks. what a 20 year old girl thinks. 

it is incredibly problematic and so awful but there’s also some rewards. if you haven’t i would definitely watch i told sunsset about you which i don’t think i’m going to finish and i doubt i’ll watch the second installment (watch this be a lie) but when i say some fucking impeccable storytelling and art? phew. now that is a fucking piece of media that works. it takes from moonlight heavily and you can see like...the artistic dedication is there and the story makes its world and sets up its stakes extremely well. 

i think because this is marketed towards much younger people too they know they dont have to try as hard. but they SHOULD because then you can have a fucking masterpiece like that. i think even this prolific gay thai filmmaker (who is like solidly against the government) who is so respected (and who i like a lot! if u wanna know i can tell u lmao but the films are very uhhhhhhhh “artsy”) would like i told sunset about you. i wish more people had budget like that and also just cared about the stories. it’s the fucking magic of art to figure out what you can do but there is very little incentive honestly. idk i am very pessimistic. there are days when it’s really a great pick me up and distraction but it is never a place i would love for to feel seen or heard but i’m more of the mind of i never trust the mainstream until they prove me wrong ;) 

or i never trust the mainstream and i still buy into it anyway and then cry when i don’t like what i see adn i yell “BOO GET OFF THE STAGE!” when an old man won’t leave a teenager alone

[transxfiles]

hate living through major historical events. domestic terrorists broke into the u.s. capital building yesterday and now i have to go to online school bc it’s a pandemic and write my fucking research paper on how the two genres of literature mary shelley created (science fiction and dystopian fiction as we know it) were heavily influenced by the current events of her time, which were heavily linked to the industrial revolution. fucking what.