#Something something capitalism destroys art.

[thepersonperson]

Since Sukuna still has that final finger. Maybe that’s where we’ll get an afterlife scene or even a backstory? Yuji basically confirmed Sukuna is only like this because of circumstances. So…I would like to be shown those circumstances.

I’m ok with Sukuna dying and all the students surviving. But the execution of that has been so poorly paced and unsatisfying. Can I please get a proper grieving scene? Megumi and Nobara being all smiles at the Gojo letters is...weird.

I think there’s something to say about a manga where overwork/exploitation kills people having its mangaka rush the ending because of overwork/exploitation.

[sciderman]

How do you feel about the increase in really weird NSFW ads on here (advertising panels that look like sexual encounters, and AI art apps that pride themselves on porn) but will take down NSFW posts from their users, even if it isn't technically sexual.

i hate all social media and it's consistent prioritising the advertisers over the users and the internet simply was a better place before capitalism sunk its hooks into it

[twilightarcade]

i still can't believe she said that shit to me

[froody]

“I don’t know how to reconcile that my favorite piece of media was made by someone awful.” Because they’re a shitty person who made something good. It’s not that rare of a phenomenon. Shitty people make good things everyday. A piece of art being made by a terrible person does not make its effect null and void and making good art does not redeem a terrible person. People who are irredeemably nasty can say something true and honest on occasion. To reevaluate a work after finding out more about the artist’s horrendous biases and actions and still find things that are honest and true even when consuming it through a critical lens, that is a beautiful thing. If the artist’s actions and words completely destroy it for you and distort the meaning you once found, it’s okay to feel a sense of mourning and loss at that.

This is not to say that you should continue to lavish social and financial capital on the artist because you enjoy their art but to say that enjoying art made by horrible people does not mean you are in some way unclean.

[harpygon]

I‘ve acquired both tea and a Malibu cocktail. Let the last writing commence

[leviathanspain]

Hey could you write a Finnick odair / reader where snow forces them to pretend to date like he did with katniss and peeta? The whole convince him and get married as a distraction thing? Thanks :)

the pretender

finnick odair x reader

synopsis: being reaped from the victor’s pool changed your life in more ways than you imagined

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

you were his favorite girl.

girl. you were a girl when you had been reaped, a girl when your feet stepped off the platform, more shocked that you didn’t immediately blow up into bits. a girl when you had committed your first kill. you remembered the sound of your knife slicing into human flesh for the first time. the ringing in your ears had become permanent after you had been too close to the explosion that had killed half of the tributes. an explosion that you had accidentally caused.

your rebellious spirit was fun at first, for the capital to laugh and delight in, until you stopped using the scripts that they had written for you, and tried to destroy the idea of the girl in their minds.

snow subdued you, tried to barter your family’s life with cooperation. unbeknownst to him, you hadn’t seen your family in years since they had abandoned you, for fighting against your father’s abuse.

“kill them. do whatever you want to them. just leave me alone.” your own words haunted you since the day snow had presented evidence of their murders. you didn’t dare flinch in his presence, holding a strong facade that you didn’t care, that they were beneath you.

as he left, irritated at your refusal to comply, letting ideas stir in his head with what to do with you, you broke down. tears shed as you realized that they were gone because of you, because you couldn’t let your anger go.

but snow liked you, he must’ve had a reason to keep you around for so long, and until just a few days ago, you hadn’t known why.

you breathed deeply as you heard your name called. it was deja vu, and suddenly you were back to the thirteen year old girl, who was so emaciated and starved that when her name was called, she believed she was hallucinating.

you looked crudely into the screen, not offering any smiles or sign of pride that you had been reaped, all over again.

“y/n l/n.” hearing your full name made you turn around immediately. you were slightly blinded by his blonde hair and pearly white smile.

“finnick odair.” you realized who the man was, quicker than you’d admit. the last time you had seen him was at a ridiculous capital party that snow had forced you to attend. finnick had been leaned against a wall, with two capital sluts hanging onto his shoulders, whispering in his ears simultaneously.

he smiled, not surprised that you didn’t say anything else besides his name. you had that tendency about you, to shoot down any attempt at conversation. even going as far to avoid it all together. “i’m glad you haven’t tried to run away, not after i had caught you eyes and you dashed off at that party. how long ago was that? three,” his speech hung onto the words, “four?”

“five months. it’s been five months, finnick.” you remembered his gaze, and remembered how your feet made you run at the sight. you had heard stories about finnick, and you weren’t exactly planning on ever talking to him.

“that’s right.” he smiled, “i hope you’ve been well since then. it was nice seeing you in something other than a bloody shirt.” his gaze suddenly seemed very far away, as if he was remembering exactly what you wore that night.

you shrugged, deciding to change topics, “everyone else is polishing their weapons,” you heard a guttural war cry, and saw another tribute lunge at a partner, “and methods.” finnick turned to the source of the cry and laughed slightly, “oh yeah? what’s your choice of weapon, again?”

“knives. anything long and sharp.” you always had an affinity for knives. it was second nature to you, an art of your district. your mind drifted away slightly to the array of knives that you had collected during your games. every tribute that you had slaughtered had a knife, and you collected them as a token. by the end, you had 23 knives, all representing a kill.

it had been upsetting when you went on your victory tour, to see the look on their family’s faces, but you had blurred out their emotions, and at the height of your submission to snow, had given out the same apathetic speech to every district.

finnick watched as your mind drifted back to reality. wherever you had gone for the better half of a minute, was a place finnick spent every waking moment, running away from.

he grabbed your shoulder, squeezing it slightly as he looked into your eyes, whispering your name, “hey, hey.” you focused on his eyes, gaze shifting to his mouth as they shaped the syllables of your name. you swallowed thickly, “im sorry-i…” you pulled away, his hand falling free of your shoulder. finnick watched as you exited the training room, your hands balled up into fists as you disappeared through the doorway.

“absolutely not.” you had spent your childhood under the thumb of one man, and you had barely made it out from under snow’s. this was only another way to get you under it once more.

finnick had his head bowed, having listened to snow’s pitch to make the two of you a couple. he needed something to distract the capital citizens from peeta and katniss, who everyone knew, was just a thorn in snow’s side.

“my dear, i really don’t think you have a choice in the matter.” snow’s eyes narrowed at you and you sighed, “what else is there left for you to do? im already being marched to my death, again, just speed the process up. poison me like you do the rest.” you took a good jab at one of the many secrets you had obtained, living in his cage.

snow laughed, “i would’ve done that a long time ago, y/n.”

just as you were beginning to argue again, finnick looked up, eyes catching yours. he held your gaze for a minute, blinking his wet eyes at you. there was something that was telling you that this wasn’t just about you.

finnick.

oh how could you forget finnick.

there was something clearly at stake for him too, otherwise why had he remained silent this entire time?

compliance was something he had to get used to, also under snow’s control.

“okay, fine.” you felt yourself swallow bile, “i’ll do it.” you looked at finnick, your future husband, and the reason why you were even agreeing.

“why did you do it?” his voice cracked, a raw noise as he looked over at you. you had been silent the whole time since leaving the meeting with snow. you shuddered with the strong winds, having been sat out on the stoop of the building, housing all the reaped former victors.

you looked at finnick, having caught his gaze, holding it for a moment, “my entire life i’ve been selfish, and i guess i realized that it isn’t always about putting myself first.” you knew the stories, heard the rumors. snow had barely played with the idea, making you like finnick, but you had always refused. there was nothing left for him to leverage, and so it never went anywhere.

but this, pairing the two of you was nothing short of cruel. finnick who has everything to lose, with you, who he probably didn’t expect to agree.

finnick hitched a breath, understanding what you weren’t saying. “thank you.” he breathed, “and im sorry.”

you stood up suddenly, nodding as you turned towards the entrance, “just-“ you cut yourself off, waving a hand as you continued inside.

he made the announcement. finnick had decided that with the pull he has on the capital, that he would be the one to do it. especially since he was so beloved, the attention from it was to challenge katniss and peeta’s.

you had agreed to play the part, and now you had to act like it.

there was loud cheering and applause from the crowd, and you were pushed out onto the stage, more cheers erupting as finnick stood up to meet you halfway. you kissed his cheek, grabbing his hand tightly as you two fluttered across the stage.

caesar flickerman was already standing there with a bright, capitol smile. “this is your lovely bride. we hear the honeymoon is the arena?” he looked at finnick who tipped his head back for a laugh, but didn’t answer outright.

you gave a soft laugh, “we just loved each other so much, we couldn’t wait.”

caesar looked at you, as if remembering who you were exactly, “wow.” he seemed truly amazed, perhaps even shocked.

finnick noticed the heaviness in the interview and turned his head at caesar, trying to keep the attention on the union rather than the individuals.

he grabbed your hand suddenly, clutching it tightly. as he held it for the rest of the interview, you staring at the faces in the crowd, more love struck than you, you wondered if he was trying to comfort you or himself.

“finnick.” you looked around behind you, only seeing peeta in front of you. the first few days in the arena had been a blur. you had stuck by close with finnick, who made it his mission to stay close to katniss. there was something he wasn’t telling you, but you didn’t once doubt him.

“finnick?” you whipped your head around and couldn’t find him. you were always in front of him, so he could remain in his eye line at all times. except you had failed to make sure he was in yours.

your ears started ringing as the panic set in. you scanned the trees and couldn’t find any sign of him or katniss, realizing this as peeta shared your same panicked look. your throat felt tight as you screamed his name, “finnick!” peeta suddenly took off, feet blazing towards more greenery. you had no choice but to follow, knowing finnick would’ve had you stick with peeta.

as you barely caught up to peeta, you saw him hit the floor as you ran up. whatever he had bounced off of was holding katniss and finnick back.

you looked at finnick, unable to catch his eyes as he looked up frantically. there was something you were missing, there were just bir-

“jabberjays.” peeta groaned out, “they can’t hear us, but they hear our screams.” he swallowed thickly, resting near the force field. katniss was knelt down at the edge, eyes tightly shut. you stared at finnick, at a loss for words. the panic in his face looked so real, you wondered who he was hearing.

you tore your eyes away, watching him suffer was not something you had signed up for. you felt defeated, unable to do anything as you and peeta sat like sitting ducks, waiting this torture out.

you hadn’t talked to him since the jabberjays. peeta had comforted katniss, in any way she’d let him. but they were different, you and finnick were different.

yes, you were married, he was your husband. but the issue was, you hadn’t much time to even begin to share intimate details, let alone have a good conversation. this was what snow wanted, an empty marriage to stir up all the attention.

except you knew your performance was failing. the audience could see right through you.

“hey.” finnick had snuck up on you. you had stayed a few feet away from him and the others, unsure how to handle it all. but it seems like finnick was trying to make it work. but it should be the other way around.

“finnick.” you breathed a sigh of relief unintentionally, hoping he didn’t catch on, you watched as he sat down on the sand beside you. he grabbed your hand, and for a moment you thought it to be genuine, until he raised an eyebrow.

right.

“i’m so sorry.” your voice hitched, and finnick steadied his gaze, “seeing you like that-“ you faked a choked sob, “i just couldn’t do it. i couldn’t look at you and see-“ you cut yourself off, throwing your head in your hands.

snow had to be happy that you were selling yourself off to protect finnick. but beside that heart to heart you had with him in the beginning, you had nothing else to go off of.

“i heard you.” finnick’s voice cracked, “you were screaming, these terrible, horrible screams.” he shook his head, as if he were hearing them all over again, making you realize that he was telling the truth. “and it wouldn’t stop.” he breathed. his breathing got harder and you found yourself kissing him to make him stop. finnick panted into the kiss, as if you had grounded him. you pulled back, catching his eye as you looked away.

your hand that he had been holding gripped his harder. you looked out into the water, watching as it’s dangerous waters moved, unsure on how you would survive this.

with or without him.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Spamley

Debut: Ralph Breaks the Internet

Hey, remember the Ralph Breaks the Internet craze of 2018? What a time to be alive! Disney's film about What If The eBay Was A Place was an instant hit, due to the fact that everyone knows the Internet, and everyone wants to see a movie about it! You couldn't stop hearing about it! No wonder it won the Academy Award for best animated film! I think it beat out some movie about spiders, or something...?

Kids today might not remember, because 2018 was so long ago. They're too obsessed with their new age sexymen, like Raymond and the big balls Dwarf. But this movie wouldnt've been the cultural phenomenon it was without one character taking the world by storm: a certain J.P. Spamley!

The Internet fell in love with Spamley at first sight, flooding social media with memes and fan art about the loveable green prick. He rose to the highest ranks of the Tumblr Sex Man for a good while! You couldn't scroll for a few minutes without seeing his catchphrase, "Now's your chance to get rich playing video games!"

What kind of a megacorporation would Gisnep be if it didn't capitalize on Spamley's popularity? So they held a special Spamley Sweepstakes event on November 2019, allowing fans to donate money in honor of Spankley himself! All proceeds would go to Bob Iger and Baby Yoda, and if that's not wholesome, I don't know what is. Those who entered even had a chance of winning WILD prizes, like:

That's it that was the only prize

See him in theatres! This is what Disney told us all to do, and we listened! Little did we know they were doing this to hide a dark secret! If you buy the Blu-ray version of the movie, you can actually manipulate the Scene Select to watch the movie out of order and make some... strange things happen. You can look up a walkthrough online, but the gist of it is making Vanelope kill all the Disney Princesses. Especially Merida. And when you do, you unlock a weird alternate ending...

Spamley NEO is the secret true main antagonist of the film, and he wants to take over Oh My Disney to spread spam and advertisements! No! Not Oh My Disney! Please, for the love of God, NOT OH MY DISNEY!! You have to kill him. You have to destroy your Blu-ray copy of Ralph Breaks the Internet now. I hope you're proud of yourself.

[cure-icy-writes]

i think the reason i like the murderbot diaries so much is because the dystopia feels very real and relevant in a way that no other "oppressive government fearmongering" has, and because murderbot is such a compelling protagonist.

this is an autistic person who is struggling and angry and terrible at having emotions. it lives in a capitalist hellscape where people are disposable. it's traumatized as hell, but it's easier to consider itself disposable than confront the terrifying reality of personhood.

(it confronts the terrifying reality of personhood.)

it likes escaping into fiction. it has a fucked up relationship with pain and its own body. and it reads so strongly as disability coding to me, how it doesn't see the bullets or the chunks missing as horror but merely annoyance. it's fundamentally different from those around it, in ways that they struggle to understand. (they make a distinct effort to understand.)

this is an autistic person who is not like you, who suffered in ways that you cannot understand, in ways that would horrify you. this is just another tuesday.

this world is not kind. there is legal fine text that destroys lives and there is hereditary indenture and contract labor where you're forced to still pay for preventative medical care out of your paycheck and no one says slavery, but everyone knows what it means.

these people are kind. they will watch your favorite shows to help understand you, they will forge documents to give abandoned people their freedom, they will allow you to be near them because they like you. these people are proof that there's love in the world, and you can come out of your shell if you are ready to see yourself as a person.

science fiction is one of the genres that has the potential to be amazing, but is quite often just plain shitty to disabled people. and, to people in general? "oooooo look how scary it is, people have all their basic needs fulfilled by technology!" when technological advances are what gave housewives the time they needed to actually get jobs and put together the feminist movements, when this new technology that the narrative regards with such disdain could provide disabled people with newfound mobility and independence.

it speaks of a truly dismal view of humanity, the belief that without strict labor under capitalism to keep us all in line, we would just fall prey to our vices. and I think it also speaks to a loathing of one's self, to think that humans are not capable of self regulation, to think that pain and suffering and punishment are somehow moral and virtuous. that humans need to be punished constantly, that suffering will bring them closer to something like god, to something like goodness.

but murderbot doesn't do that. murderbot says, "i have seen humans do horrible awful stupid things. they can't be trusted with weapons or security and they shoot me all the time and it sucks. but they make stories and art. the people in the entertainment media gave me the tools to contextualize my own emotions. they are my coworkers. i don't care about them. i got shot in the back protecting them but i didn't care about them. okay fine maybe i care a little. they're annoying. i'll eviscerate anyone who hurts them. they're mine."

[whereserpentswalk]

Select an inhuman entity to go on a date with:

Iva: vampyr who was first turned in medieval Russia. Surprisingly enthusiastic and talkative. Always wears a black suit. Their body lacks any biological sex, and is inhumanity pale with yellow cat like eyes. They're mouth useally looks normal but can expand into a massive complex maw filled with many rows of sharp teeth when they want it to. They'd love to drink your blood as a form of bonding, and sort of want to infect you with vampirism.

LX73: a cyborg from another plane of existence whose had most of their human body replaced. They're head is really the only part of their body that still has skin, and even then the lower half of their face has been fused with a gas mask. They're still mourning the loss of their humanity, and they're still very skittish and sensitive. They might not want to be touched until they get to know you, but they really crave praise and kindness.

Shalshan: some sort of underworld spirit loyal to hades. They don't show any skin (if they have any), covering their body in a strange uniform of some kind, and their face with a hood and gas mask. Despite their appearance and job they're actually pretty naive, and curious about how the world of the living works.

Skishasri: subterranean goblin, who looks kind of humanoid, but completely albino, with pointy ears, sharp teeth, and long limbs. They're pretty excited to see the human world, though they don't seem to have much in the way of people skills. They are quite talented as an engineer/tinkerer though, and might try to take apart your phone if you let them.

Aria Aldorph: a which who was forced to sacrifice their eyes to a ancient entity to be granted power and forbidden knowledge. Despite technically being human they now have a very inhuman way of seeing the world due to their eldritch knowledge. They're very calm and relaxed, and will probably want to sing for you if you let them.

Trezoch: massive demon who takes the form of a horned reptilian humanoid with a pot belly and firey eyes. They're good humored and have a deep bellowing voice, though be warned, as good natured as they seem, they are still very much a demon, and will buy your soul if you let them.

Uaeiieo phrthdrn IX: a deep one who escaped dagon's control. They look like a humanoid creature, with transparent skin, a lamprey like mouth, tentacles on their back, and long black hair. Since they don't have jaws they can only communicate through sign language or aac. They're very interested in what humans are like, and while they can be a bit nervous, they enjoy being cuddled or pet a lot.

Aeullion: a fallen angel, whose body looks like a human sized porcelain doll, with a golden halo and wings, though now the segments of their body are cracked, and their halo is broken in half. They're pretty depressed after what happened to them, and they're kind of quiet right now. A hug could go a long way for them right now.

Aereon: an horned faerie knight with green armor (that could just be an insectiod exoskeleton that looks like armor), their mind is alien to a human’s, and they probably see you as something to protect and/or study. There's a good chance they will try to lift you at some point.

The Flesh Sculptor: an unknowable masked entity with many arms, with strange powers over human bodies. They seem good natured and extroverted at first, talking about their craft as if it's a form of art. But be warned, they probably really want to be allowed to scult your flesh.

The Operator: a reptilian entity whose race is heavily involved in an organization attempting to destroy capitalism and liberate humanity. Like all of their kind they're an expert shapeshifter, though they haven't yet figured out how to emulate human mannerisms. They're probably the nicest entity on here, though a bit socially awkward, and they'll probably infodump Marxist theory to you if you let them.

Ithquol: an entity that's half faerie on their mother's side and half demon on their father's side. They look like a stunningly beautiful humanoid, with a horned head, massive black wings, and a snake where their reproductive organs should be. They're very affectionate, and will encourage you to enjoy yourself more, though they don't have the best idea as to what's acceptable in human society. They also really don't like that you're mortal, and might try to make you something not human because of that.

Reblog to meet the entity. Like to give them a little gift.

[myfriendpokey]

tunnel notes

i wrote some extra little notes and thoughts for the bonus tunnels in anthology of the killer, and then removed them before release; i didn't like the prescriptive feeling of leaving that stuff in the "final package" as if it was something people should feel obligated to engage with. but as of today it's been 30 days since the loader came out, so i figured i'd dump some of them online, for the benefit of whoever is interested in these things.

History: HISTORY IS A NIGHTMARE FROM WHICH I AM TRYING TO AWAKE is one of many famous zingers given to Stephen in Ulysses and I’ve always wondered if it’s especially Irish as a sentiment, Ireland sort of feeling like the “Oops! All Peasants” edition of European history as a whole – same misery, exploitation and death minus the occasional episodes of feudal colour or triumphant empire-building that seem to make the past tolerable for other people, and give them their own sense of demarcated time. But then I’ve never been much good on Irish history, which has always just felt like an interminable, indistinguishable series of massacres and betrayals and missed shots. Was I not paying attention or was this how it was taught in school? Well, it would have fit the style at the time – I was born in 1989, smack at the start of the famous end of history era. The 90s in Ireland meant the peace process and infusion of American capital to our backwards shores, all the more reason to cosign the idea of an abrupt and permanent break with a history notably lacking in the non-depressing or picturesque. All our history textbooks seemed to trail off at the point we’d joined the EEA. And even as this new modernity just started seeming like the monstrous antiquity dressed up in different clothes – hooded prisoners transported to torture sites through Shannon airport, our patchy social infrastructure dismantled by burghers, ghost estates and half-completed monuments scattered around like the ruin theory of value with more leprechaun imagery – there was still a sense that any change was off the table. You didn’t want to drag us back into history, did you? History seemed to have “ended” in the same sense Freddy Krueger did – done away with in ways that none of the grown-ups ever wanted to talk about, and now officially a non-presence, even if all the kids in town were mysteriously disappearing.

--

Art: One reason I wanted to do an episodic series is just to see what would turn up, if any recurring interests would build despite a minimum of planning. One of the themes turned out to be, “art” – or specifically modernist art – and I am curious about why that would be. A recurring tendency in modernism was the idea that only by destroying the world as it currently existed could we clear space for anything better to emerge. Under the cobblestones, the beach! But this was always attended by a kind of fear: that clearing away the old structures would just allow something even worse to emerge, unmasked. Under the cobblestones, more corpses! And that the bleakest tendencies of the period would now run free without even the emptiest symbolic constraints to chafe against. Max Ernst’s painting of the fascist victory in Spain, of a huge, grinning oaf rampaging over the landscape like a kaiju while a miserable birdlike figure remains haplessly grafted to its leg – is titled both “The Angel Of Hearth And Home” and “The Triumph Of Surrealism”. As if to suggest that these are each the same thing, as though a cause of creative liberation worth devoting your life to and an empty cliché of domestic repression had so little light between them as to not even be worth the effort of distinguishing.

Part of the reason works like that make their way into the games in little ways is because I just like them, and go back to thinking about them. But the status of modernism in the 21st century is an odd one; the most tentative and inventive parts got dropped, while the brashest and stupidest aspects curdled into a kind of official state ideology – the idea of “creative destruction”, which just seems to mean a vague sense that it’s punk rock to create ridesharing apps. The monkey’s paw curled and the emptiest version of the modernist credo became something we all have to live with.. and yet I still can’t help but be moved by the source works and the goofy, ridiculous temerity of that wish to transfigure the world. sometimes it feels like only way to keep faith with those ideas is to travesty them, to try returning to them some of that sense of fear and doubt without which they just sound like so many web design agency manifestos. Kept alive in the breast of so many grimacing waxworks, underground.

Another reason to put this stuff in a horror game: to try getting at that feeling in a dream of looking in the eyes of people you know, people you love, and seeing nothing there anymore, seeing them look right past you. An earlier horror game idea I used to think about would have ended with the protagonist being dismembered and eaten by Gertrude Stein.

--

The moral: I’ve seen people express a sense, now, that merely working in the negative is not enough; to just outline what’s bad without also trying to give a vision of the good, some glimpsed utopia to shoot for. For the benefit of these people here is an epilogue. Imagine it’s the future and the long nightmare of prehistory is over; history proper unfolds as the full expression of human powers unhindered by material subjugation. Some students are given an assignment by a professor to investigate the meaning of a term that no longer exists, the meaning of horror. Well, the students do their best: they watch lots of old movies, put on rubber masks, comb through old fragments of the world that was. They’re enjoying themselves and that enjoyment warps the process, they keep drifting into pleasure, unsure what’s meant to be funny and what’s not. They get lost, get confused, lose the thread, famous faces appear under the wrong names, espousing things that are the opposite of whatever they believed. In the end they all have to admit defeat: they hand in their assignment with a note saying that in the new world, we can’t even imagine what horror may have been. The professor reads their findings, nods, and gives them all an F. No moral.

[image source: James Ensor, "The Intrigue"]

[davidthephoneguy]

What the hell happened to ai doing the hard labour jobs

No robot can make real art, if you think it can you can go fuck yourself because you are lying to yourself. Only a real person can make new real art

Fuck ai, it was meant to work the Amazon warehouses not stealing art to pretend it painted something.

Also fuck capitalism that destroys artists and commodified art.

Anyone who defends this shit will be mocked by every artist on the planet.

[wifelinkmtg]

There's "spaghetti western" and then there's whatever the hell this Chef Boyardee shit is

Hello! and welcome back to Wifelink. We're talking about Outlaws of Thunder Junction today, Magic's second product in a row set in a version of Nevada, and let me tell you something: I am not impressed. The mechanics are uninspired, the setting is undercooked, the story is overstuffed, and to top it all off the whole thing smacks of settler-colonialism. AND they yassified Vraska, the monsters!

WE WILL GET TO THE HOT WOMEN, BELIEVE YOU ME, BUT FIRST I AM GOING TO COMPLAIN SOMEWHAT, AS IS MY RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN, AS A HUMAN BEING, AND AS A GAMER

The mechanics we've discussed elsewhere, and I will skim over the main storyline except to say that very few of this Big Villain Heist Team-Up gets enough spotlight to justify their inclusion here beyond getting recognizable names on cards, and that Rakdos' presence on the plane alone ought to be an apocalyptic calamity. I appreciate Jace & Vraska going full blackpilled accelerationist, stealing a baby, and aiming to destroy the multiverse & start over (a novel hybrid of Raising Arizona and Doctor Strangelove,) but I also know, sure as the sun rises, that whatever happens with their villain arc will be a underwhelming let-down.

What I actually want to complain about, though, is the setting. Thunder Junction ain't real, and I don't mean it's fictional, I mean it's plywood facades on a backlot. It's the set for a cowboy film. You feel me? This ain't a plane, it's a god damned sound stage.

Lemme go over the facts: we know Thunder Junction has been settled for a bit over a year. A year! - and yet there's multiple towns, multiple railways, and an honest-to-god metropolis. Less than two years and we already have ghost towns! This is not the product of a bunch of people on various planes all individually deciding to seek a new life in the off-world colonies. All of this represents a staggering quantity of people, material, wealth, and labor, being moved between planes, directed and organized - but by whom? For what reason? How, even? The story is totally uninterested in these questions.

One of the few silver linings to the way the Phyrexian invasion storyline ended was that the Omenpaths had a lot of interesting potential! Different planes would come into direct contact with each other for the first time ever! Different technologies, different philosophies and religions, different kinds of magic colliding, coming into conflict, adapting and adjusting to each other. And after a couple of sets where the interplanar contact was limited to one or two particularly adventurous individuals, we finally get to see what interplanar contact at scale looks like here in Thunder Junction... and it just looks like a John Wayne flick. Did people not bring their culture with them? Is there a big rack of hats and boots and dusters right where people step off the Omenpath? Shuck off those old Ravnican rags, kid, get changed. You'll spoil the aesthetic. I mean, it's baffling.

Luxurious Locomotive (art by Leon Tukker). This is one of the few man-made parts of this plane that I can look at and know where it came from: this is a Kaladeshi design. More of this sort of thing would have made Thunder Junction feel more like a real place and less like a Sergio Leone joint.

There's a side story, No Tells, by Isaac Fellman, which I quite like actually: it's about guilt and betrayal and the inevitable regrets of having moved into a queer housing co-op, and one of the things that makes it great is that we know where Yuma came from (New Capenna), we know why he left (the limitations of "be gay do crimes" as praxis under capitalism), and we know what he brought to Thunder Junction with him (cocktails, pool tables, and his co-op's emergency funds). Fellman has written nothing else for Wizards and doesn't play Magic, and even so he's done more to make Thunder Junction feel like a real place situated in a real history than the rest of the story team combined - which goes to show, one, that we should only let trans people write magic story for the next decade or so, and two, that what I'm asking for in terms of worldbuilding is not unattainable, or even that difficult.

And all of this ties into the colonialism, right? Thunder Junction is being colonized, and asking questions about who benefits, who's sponsoring this breakneck settlement of the plane, what they're after and so forth would require the story to take a good hard look at the process of colonization itself, and Wizards is flatly unwilling to engage with anything that thorny in their products. So, just as Ixalan involved a limp-wristed slant reenactment of the Spanish conquest of the Americas - but it's fine because they're the bad guys and they're technically not even trying to colonize Ixalan and they don't win anyway so no one gets hurt! - Thunder Junction is attempting to present a Disneyland version of Western colonialism. Untamed wilderness! Bringing civilization to uninhabited deserts! How cool and heroic these hard frontiersmen and -women are! I'm told they brought in Navajo cultural consultants for the Atiin, a fantasy equivalent, and I hope those folks were well compensated! The Atiin seem cool, and the one Atiin character we spend any time with is well-written, but the Atiin are not indigenous to Thunder Junction. They're not being colonized. And if there weren't anybody being colonized, I'd probably still dislike the colonial vision of a wild land inhabited only by animals, just waiting for us to shape it to our will with railways and violence, but there is in fact a native race of sapients on Thunder Junction, and these cactus folk get no voice in the story, so if they have some kind of opinion on the rapid colonization of their home and the clear-cutting of their cactus forests, we don't get to hear about it.

Prickly Pair (art by Brian Valeza) Too much of the extremely-limited presence Thunder Junction's only indigenous sapients have on the cards is devoted to cactus-based puns like this one, which is pretty distasteful given, you know, the colonialism.

I'm talking about colonialism not because I think that replicating colonial myths in fantasy fiction is an unethical thing to do - although it is - but because you can see, right, that Thunder Junction's lack of verisimilitude is intertwined with the colonial vision of the world at play here, yeah? The story wants to have cool cowboy shootouts and train robberies and it does not want its cowboy fantasy to be complicated by uncomfortable realities, so it has to avoid all of the basic worldbuilding questions that would tell us who the colonization benefits and how they're profiting off the plane, and in the end we're left with nothing but an empty aesthetic, like a duster hanging off a scarecrow, blowing in the wind.

ANYWAY SO WOMEN

To be honest, under the circumstances I'm not really feeling like giving the fine women of Thunder Junction my usual more elaborate treatment, so we're going to lightning-round this shit, which is at least thematic.

Blood Hustler (art by Anna Pavleeva)

Vampire MILF.

Rattleback Apothecary (art by Loïc Canavaggia)

Snake MILF.

Wrangler of the Damned (art by Michal Ivan)

Cis lesbian haircut, good with a rope.

Obeka, Splitter of Seconds (art by Ryan Pancoast)

BIG

[alexbrunn]

i loved your pav and marcoh role reversal au art so much!! do you have any more ideas about this au?? for example, does pav have any mob ties here? does marcoh want to kill the kaiser? or do they have entirely different goals / backstories? it's such an interesting premise!

I apologize for the long reply, I had a lot of time to think about this AU because I thought just switching characters around was too boring. I wanted something big, something that would affect the whole world.

You can judge for yourself how good and well thought out I've gotten, as for me, this idea still needs a lot of time to become something more serious. Plus, I haven't touched any of the characters except Pav and Marcoh (and those who are related to them in one way or another), all the other Termina members are unfortunately not involved in the idea yet.

Pav: Oh, you got a big gun like that in your pants?

The only thing that was important to me was to keep Le'Garde's importance throughout the story, because for all my love of Riccardo, he doesn't pull for someone as significant.

A time of crazy theories and crazy thoughts.

It all started when Le'Garde, instead of taking the throne in Bremen and creating Logic, decides to go the other way. He'll find out about the Sulfur God, that it's the second essence of Alll-Mer, and what's not the perfect field for his plan? If it is a part of Alll-Mer, it must be just as powerful to realize his ideas. He learns about all this in the Vatican, the capital of religions, and decides to stay there to realize his plan. Instead of politics and other public activities, he goes underground, because only from there he can learn all the darkest deeds of the Ministry of Magic and the Church, while doing other less important activities inherent in the criminal world. It comes to the point that the entire Vatican is now in his power and neither the government nor the clergy are his orders. If he wants, he will pull the strings and the vector of religious life of all mankind will change, which is gradually happening, when values are replaced by others and everything is slowly moving towards his goal of uniting mankind. Already every self-respecting believer is ready to join the crusade to Prehevil to free the second face of Alll-Mer. All those who thought otherwise were destroyed, first secretly, as if it were a showdown with the mafia, and then publicly, as heretics.

Pav's family was one of those destroyed as dissenters to the new religious dogma. The only one who survives is Pav, he vows revenge on whoever did this. His little investigation leads him first into the Mafia, and step by step he gets closer and closer to knowing that behind this is not a simple lust for money, revenge or anything else that is common in the underworld, but something more.

His character doesn't change, however given the circumstances, I feel like he would be even more self-indulgent. Even more open and swaggering, he would really like the world he is in, he doesn't feel that it was the mafia that ruined his family, he already knows there is much more behind it. In the long run, he's thinking about not just killing Kaiser, he'd love to take his place in the sun, or rather in the shade.

He probably wouldn't be in the ring much because he's not really built for it. If he does get invited, he never fights fair, he's the one who hides brass knuckles in his gloves and gets away with it for good work on the street. He's a beast out there, a guy as skillful as he is: agile, fast, dodgy, hardly had many wounds, except for two bullet wounds.

And Pav's story doesn't change, because when he learns that the boss is going to Prehevil to get the Sulfur God, he rushes off to get it himself.

As for Marcoh's story. Riccardo becomes emperor, though his role is not so significant. He follows the course already chosen by the Vatican's shadow government and the Kaiser as its leader. He is forced to go to war, because he will get money and territories, when the Kaiser himself feeds the Sulfur God with the suffering caused by the war.

With Marcoh, however, things are much simpler. They have never crossed paths in their lives, only a compulsory conscription law forces Marcoh, for all his aversion to violence, to join the army. Otherwise, his sister will suffer when her brother is killed for failing to fulfill his duty to his homeland. Worried for his sister's well-being, he asks her to move to a calmer and more peaceful region and promises to come back for her.

His psyche can't take it, he can't kill people without feeling guilty for each one, which causes him to run away from the army and end up in Prehevil.

[a-fire-that-isnt-burning]

MDZS atla au:

• remnant air nomad wei wuxian (air nomads being a minority of wanderers, like his parents) secretly taken in by the jiang clan after being discovered as the young avatar.

• He's raised as a fire bender as part of the lightning fire Jiang clan of Yunmeng, a firebending clan with the biggest amount of lightning benders and who teach the art, with Jiang Cheng and yzy specializing in it. We wuxian was taught by Jiang Fengmian to redirect it. Yzy comes from a smaller subsect, jfm is a firebender who doesn't really look the part but has adequate strength as clan leader, shijie is a non-bender and a disappointment, and Jiang Cheng has a rather aggressive bending style. The clan wears purple and has a more Japanese style. Jiang cheng and Wei Wuxian are the twin prides of Yunmeng, brilliant firebenders often fighting in tandem.

• Also bending fire is the tyrant nation of the qishan wen, featuring brilliant non-bender wen qing and underestimated fire bender wen ning. They have a similarly Japanese style.

• The Nies are rulers of qinghe and are less extravagant than their fellow earthbenders, the jins. Their earthbending has a classical aggressive and firm style. The second son is a notoriously weak nonbender. They wear the blacks and greens of the earth.

• The Jins of the Lanling kingdom are well known for extravagance similar to the inner city of Ba Sing Se. Their defining trait is the more common ability to bend metal, shown in the brilliant gold displays created by their most talented. Not that they are all actual metal benders, however, as displayed by Jin Guangshan himself. Many can bend only earth with a metal bending style swifter than that of the Nies. They wear the yellow of gold and dry earth. Jin Guangyao is a non bender (or a weak bender) and mo xuanyu is a normal bender, born to a nonbender mother. He's hopeless in metal bending, though. Jin zixun just sucks.

• The reclusive yet powerful Gusu tribes are lead by Lan Xichen and his uncle, the master waterbender similar to Pachu. They wear fur lined clothes similar to their water tribe counterparts but with a more Chinese fashion, especially pertaining to their inner clothes. They can be seen wearing the dazzling white of the water's spray and of ice as well as the tranquil blue of the water they bend. Their style is flexible and peaceful, as demonstrated by their twin jades. They hold themselves up to lofty standards and their elders can be inflexible. They still have token engagement necklaces.

• Wei Wuxian's air bison, Lil' Apple, is a nuisance.

• He wakes in the Cloud Recesses of Gusu after (almost?) being killed 13 years ago after the Qishan fire nation's attacks ended. Part of their seige included attacking the neighboring fire benders, the Jiangs (whose capital they destroyed) and the southern Gusu tribe (of which there is no north?). Only Wen Yuan remains to carry out the Wen bending style. Wei wuxian is rather peaceful and accepting of his fate after waking up again 13 years later, in the company of Gusu juniors, as well as metalbender Jin Ling and Ouyang Zhizhen, heir to a smaller clan.

• Wei Wuxian prefers airbending (which he was instructed to hide before the Sunshot Campaign) and excels in firebending, which he grew up with (although he cannot lightning bend. Maybe he can redirect it?) He can earthbend in a style less firm than the Nies an less extravagant than the Jins (not sure who taught him.) Waterbending is more difficult for him to get used to, primarily because of Gusu and their teaching techniques, as well as his tendency to observe, dodge, and strike rather than patiently use his enemies' strength against them. He does learn it, however, and becomes more comfortable with it after waking up, working in sync with Lan wangji (something he does with other elements, too, mainly air).

• Notable previous avatars include Lan An, Lan Yi, and Wen Mao.

• Baoshen Sanren should be a previous avatar, but because Wei Wuxian needs to lie about the core transfer that wouldn't work. So instead she is a reclusive airbending master who has her own temple instead of living in the mountains (wwx takes jc to an empty temple) and she taught wwx's mother as well as the airbending nomad Xiao Xingchen.

• Song Lan is anything but an Airbender. I don't want him to be a waterbender (so he isn't like a certain someone) so he'll be a firebender.

And I'll add more (about bloodbending) later!

[txttletale]

nothing about ai art is new

[we’re sitting in a taco bell drive through and ive abused my control over the aux cord to make you listen to indie rock classic apollo 18 by they might be giants for hours on end]

so there’s been a lot of yammering on about stable diffusion and how it will revolutionize/destroy/democratize/annihilate the world of art, depending on which impassioned twitter thread you read. what they all have in common though is (incorrectly) treating this as some radical new shift, an unprecedented leap forward caused by cutting-edge technology. this is wrong: nihil sub sole novum.

this post is not about:

ip law

whether ip law is a good thing (no)

whether ai art is Real Art (what is this girls 1917?)

how AI art actually works (as far as i can tell, like this)

this post is about

karl marx babeyyy

so in a sexy little number called wage labour and capital, carlos marx lays out some of the foundations of marxist theory. these include the labour theory of value (that the value of a thing, whether expressed in the use of something or in its exchange for other things, is only created or increased when a human being performs labour. e.g. fabric + hours of human life = clothing, which is both more useful and more valuable in exchange terms than the fabric) and the division of labour

to make a long and well-written argument short and poorly formulated (seriously, read the original, it’s like 25 pages), the price of a commodity* rises and falls around a base price that’s based on the cost of production. ‘wages’ are simply the term for the price of the commodity of ‘labour-power’, or hours of human labour**--and therefore, they rise and fall around the cost of producing human labour.

now, how much does that cost? pretty simple. first there’s the basic costs of the labourer continuing to survive day to day. then there’s the costs of them having children who can grow up to be labourers and keeping them alive too. finally, there are the costs of the labourer’s training, and these can far outstrip the first two. it’s expensive for a capitalist to hire a digital artist because the cost of producing digital artists (the survival of a human being + years and years of practice) is high--so the commodity of their labour power is priced highly.

however, marx also succintly explains supply and demand--concepts everyone’s probably semi-familiar with. when there are many sellers of a commodity, they compete for buyers by offering their commodities at lower and lower prices.

bearing in mind that ‘wages’ are just the price of the commodity of human labour-power--this means that technological development in production has a twofold depressive effect on wages: not only are less people employed (if a capitalist can produce twice as much of a commodity, they’re not guaranteed twice as much of a market--so they will instead tend towards producing the same amount at half the cost), but more people are capable of doing the work. so for the same process of production, there are more people capable of doing it, and less people needed to do it. as marx puts it:

“The greater division of labour enables one labourer to accomplish the work of five, 10, or 20 labourers; it therefore increases competition among the labourers fivefold, tenfold, or twentyfold. The labourers compete not only by selling themselves one cheaper than the other, but also by one doing the work of five, 10, or 20; and they are forced to compete in this manner by the division of labour, which is introduced and steadily improved by capital. Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified.

The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production. Therefore, in the same manner in which labour becomes more unsatisfactory, more repulsive, do competition increase and wages decrease”

when marx wrote this, he was talking about artisan craftsmen who made goods by hand in small workshop. since then we’ve seen this exact process sweep across every industry, devouring the manufacturing sector, now creeping second by second into the white-collar service economy. now, we are seeing this on the horizon for artists--there’s far more skill in creating AI artwork than some people give credit for, but it is ultimately in terms of time and accessibility easier and broader to do--it will have these effects if it is able to produce output on par, or even just slightly worse than, professional photographers and artists, for a fraction of the cost of labour-power.

so, like, why have i just written all this? to point out that the phenomenon people are scared of wrt AI art driving already precarious working artists into poverty is not some new and endemic technological horror. it is a social process that’s been ongoing for centuries--and the productive forces are not going to roll back, because capitalism demands ever-rising profits which demand ini turn ever-lower costs of production, including (especially) lower costs of production of skilled labour. if you are trying to stop stable diffusion AI tech from being used then you are trying to stop the horse by pulling on the reins of the cart. 

if you are scared that AI art is going to make your passion and profession economically worthless, the tools themselves are not your enemy--it is the system that decides how these tools will be used, that art becoming easier to make is a vector by which to divide and precaritize working artists instead of to broaden access to the joy of creation--in the same way that industrial production has been used to create the system of wage-slavery instead of providing for all, in the same way that will repeat over and over again until the system that allocates resources and labour to maximize profit instead of human welfare is toppled and replaced

[the drive thru employee politely clears their throat. i turn to them and say ‘oh i didnt want anything i just like the smell out here’ and drive away directly into a lake]

*in marxist terms, a commodity is anything that: 1. has use value, as in, someone wants to have it and use it--eat it, wear it, play with it, watch it-- 2. has exchange value, as in, it can be exchanged for other commodities (price is a reflection of this exchange value through money), 3. has value through the application of labour power (someone has worked to produce it. even raw materials count--coal power plants don’t buy coal that’s still in the ground)

**engels explains the distinction between labour-power and labour in the introduction to the 1891 edition:

 “What the economists had considered as the cost of production of “labour” was really the cost of production, not of “labour,” but of the living labourer himself. And what this labourer sold to the capitalist was not his labour.

 At the most, he could sell his future labour – i.e., assume the obligation of executing a certain piece of work in a certain time. But, in this way, he does not sell labour (which would first have to be performed), but not for a stipulated payment he places his labour-power at the disposal of the capitalist for a certain time (in case of time-wages), or for the performance of a certain task (in case of piece-wages). He hires out or sells his labour-power.”

[hamliet]

hello hamliet, love your meta analysis and they always show me a different perspective. Would love to know your opinion on seperating the art from the artist, if it is possible and if so how to go about it?

A few principles:

Not everyone will reach the same conclusion about whether they are able to separate the artist and art, and that's okay. I can't listen to Michael Jackson. I know people who can. I do not judge them.

That said I guarantee you everyone does this separation for something, so don't throw stones.

Being able to separate it doesn't mean someone endorses an issue. I don't think people who listen to MJ are CSA apologists. Learn to separate what art resonates with people from their own personal morals.

Don't deny what the creator has done. I can't deny that JK Rowling is a toxic transphobe who seems dead set on destroying trans' peoples lives and I want her stopped. Or that Charles Dickens tried to have his wife locked up in an insane asylum to cover up his affair.

Don't fight against justice for the creator. Sorry, JK, but I hope Imane Khelif who is not even trans ends up taking you to the cleaners in court. I want her harmful rhetoric to be stopped. It'd be nice if she changed her mind and repented . Take your own advice JK about how remorse is the only way to put a torn soul back together, but it hurts terribly. But I'm not holding my breath and in the meantime transphobia needs to be stopped.

Competing needs are a thing. Sorry, I have never read a series that addresses losing a parent in the same way Harry Potter does. I have read other series' about this. I've never read one that resonates the same way. I love the series but I do acknowledge the author is actively harming people and make efforts to combat transphobia in my own life.

Be sensitive to the fact that people may feel differently. I'm not going to recommend Harry Potter to someone who is transgender or tell someone they absolutely should read it and must separate author from art. They don't have to. There are some things I can't separate.

Don't deny privilege playing a role in what you can separate and what you can't. It does, because we all have different lives and different triggers, and it's good to check privilege. But life is also really short. Live in the tension. Don't try to ignore it or deny it away.

Have those discussions that are uncomfortable.

No ethical consumption exists under capitalism. I've been mostly boycotting Nestle for... thirteen years now? But I don't think everyone who consumes Nestle is intending to say "oh well" to child slaves in Africa. These children matter just as much as trans children, don't they?

Learn everything about something and something about everything, to quote a professor I once had. Care about everything. Focus all your efforts on one or two causes. You can't save the world but you can help save something.

Acknowledge the reality that humans are contradictory. I think HP as a story has the opposite thematic message to a lot of her current rhetoric. Which isn’t to say it’s perfect.

Don’t fall prey to the stupidity of suddenly denying that art is good bc the author or singer is evil. Every time I see ppl trot out the Ursula Leguin quote on HP I lose brain cells because it is empathically clear that people taking that as some kind of prescient insight have never understood Leguin’s books nor HP nor the complexity and contradictoriness of humanity.

Which also isn’t to say it’s wrong to notice problematic elements in said works that may relate to the issue or may be unrelated. Do critique.