#WHAT THE FUCK CAPITALISM???

[nando161mando]

What happened to the damn ceasefire everyone believed would happen?

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[georgethebarbarian]

Important hot tip for literally anyone purchasing art

If an artist you rly like doesn’t have a public commission sheet or perhaps you have an odd but reasonable request your best friend will be “I will gladly compensate you for your time.” Literally the moment an artist sees that you’re actually going to pay them for whatever weird request you’ve got, they’re like a million percent more likely to respond positively to whatever your weird request is. For example: I love birds, and I was seeking out a nice state bird cross stitch pattern that wasn’t too complicated. I found one I liked on Etsy, but it was actually selling the finished product (a gorgeous quilt for about $2000) and not the charts, which was what I wanted. No problem! I messaged the seller and said “hi! I love your beautiful quilt, but I am actually interested in the cross stitch charts. Do you still have them? I would be more than happy to compensate you for the trouble.” I have no doubt that this lovely woman has been demanded for free labor countless times. It has happened to every quilter on planet earth. She told me that she would mail me HER ORIGINAL HANDWRITTEN CHARTS for about $30, since she drafted them herself and wasn’t planning on making another quilt. I gladly sent $50 her way and told her she could just scan them for me if that was easier for her. Artists are, by and large, lovely people who want to help you. Please, just promise them that you will fucking compensate them for their time and labor.

[existennialmemes]

Not to sound like a terrifying communist or anything, but I think it's bad when we let people die from preventable causes.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

while teen while goblin while aroace while injured while doing your best

[softwaring]

loving this stage of capitalism,,,,

[bakudekublogblog]

kacchan there is actually a way you and izuku can be together forever i have this crazy inventive solution for you it's called a marriage license

[katabay]

original thief series basso & garrett :)

ngl, it's about quality over quantity for me. an npc can have a total of three minutes of screen time, but if they have a cool name, they can live rent free in my head and I'll spend several hours trying to decipher drawable features from a blurry screenshot of pixels

there is a vague hint of a story here, and that's because every time I try to play thi4f, I get incredibly frustrated with how Not Fun the game play is. like, is the story good? well. but it has a PLAGUE. that should've given it instant 'I'll replay this once a year' status in my heart, but the game play sucks so bad that I've never finished it. I can't believe Not Fun gameplay beat out my obsession with narrative plagues.

anyway, the idea is basically if the original era had a game with a plague centric narrative and some other stuff I liked out of thi4f thrown into a narrative blender, with a heavy dash of horror thrown in because some parts of the thief games were scarier to me than entire dedicated horror genre games.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

[uncanny-tranny]

The bourgeois or "exploiting class" doesn't inherently include the person who gets their nails done biweekly, or the disabled person who has a carer, or the guy who got a $70 video game for full-price, or the person who relies on medication (yes even the ones you don't think they "need"), or anything else like this. None of these people will, on average, have the ability to exploit workers by means of ownership or whatever.

While you are busy fighting with fellow workers, you are still being exploited by your boss, by capitalism, by (potentially) not having healthcare, by being overworked and underpaid, and so are they.

[jjadmanii]

i love that the hunger games is getting the appreciation it deserves but boi some of these takes are truly making me question ppl’s media literacy because ???

[nando161mando]

Rashida Tlaib reminds Netanyahu that he is a war criminal!

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[ipostmysimpingstuffanonymously]

Oh i forgot to post this one. Ahhhh

Went down a rabbit hole reading The Final Indignity 

[sausage-rolll]

I always find it particularly funny when people say that Ranni is just manipulating the player and that she’s using them as a means to a much more nefarious secret end, because if you actually pay attention to the game and character then one thing becomes abundantly clear.

Ranni literally cannot lie to save her life.

No seriously, she’s a cunning mastermind but she is a fucking terrible liar. When a random tarnished comes looking for her and accuses her of the assassination of Godwyn, she just goes “yeah? And what of it?” as if she’s not admitting to being the one behind the biggest act of heresy in known history. That's not something you should just say to people, least of all a tarnished!

You get her alone with you and within seconds she’s rambling about her plan, her past, her family, her friends that she adores with all of her heart, how you’re actually a lot like them, nevermind forget that last part please-

Sorry to burst the bubble of all the nihilist theorists out there that really want age of stars to secretly be a bad ending but if Ranni was planning anything nefarious with her godhood then I’m willing to bet that she wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about it until the end of her questline.

[incidentale]

Sportsnet : And that's a wrap on the 2024 NHL season. 🏒

[mymarifae]

hsr's a great game it's like "hey here's this guy who's a cyborg cowboy of all things isn't that fun. look at how wild and flamboyant and entertaining he is! an automatic censor was installed into his universal translator when he got his rockin robot bod so he can't swear anymore and this is especially funny in the cn and jp text of the game because his swears are replaced with things like sweetie, baby, and cutie."

"also his entire homeland was wiped out by the intergalactic capitalistic monolith that's been cruelly siphoning valuable resources from countless planets with little to absolutely no regard for the residents. they spared nothing once their boss gave them the go ahead to use military force. not even his baby daughter, who had just barely learned how to walk."

"he never got the chance to erect a grave for her. or the other loved ones he lost."