#anyway capitalism is trash

[rdjpwns]

closing society6 & redbubble shops

heeeey. i know i'm not really active here anymore, the motivation to make art shifted to other hobbies and responsibilities. i like to cook now apparently, and bike, and spend time gaming with friends. i also got a dog!

for those that are still here, thank you, i hope you're doing awesome and having a great week ♥ i do miss drawing, and i hope my motivation for it will come back one day.

now to the important part:

i will be taking down everything from my society6 and redbubble shops, and deleting the shops afterward. this is due to the poor return margins to artists, newly introduced tier systems to shops, the account fee based on sales, and of course, the rampant art theft and AI copying everything. truly feels like artists, even casual hobbyists, cannot win.

i'll be deleting stuff over the weekend, so if you want anything from either shop, grab it now. i might go back to INPRNT if their policies seem decent, but it'll take me a while to AI-proof images and upload again. some of those pieces are sadly lost forever, as i've since deleted the original files.

hope you guys understand :')

[martinsorbit]

Finders Keepers warm up sketches b4 I start designing some character stuff

I missed themm

The DCAs arms/hands keep breaking because of how much they move and do silly acrobatics, pairing that with some leftover water+fire damage, it is one of the things that Y/N has to repair often;

New compatible parts are hard to find + expensive (considering how old the DCAs model is), so Y/N normally has to go to old faztech electronic trash dumps to find something that might work, which is usually pieces of other similar-looking Attendants from some old FAZCO animatronic line. You really hope sun and moon don't know about this, or else things will get awkward

[illithilit]

One of the struggles I have with Vhae is that I vm get more genderfluid vibes from him much like you do from Corellon; happily one or the other. But also?? I think Vhae almost exclusively lives in male alignment for the benefit of the people who need him most. So you will almost NEVER see him portrayed as female, bc v little else would be so immediately alienating to those he's trying to help.

[moonyinthehouse]

Rasheel: I don't get why you still listen to all this bullshit. Just beat the crap out of them and make them listen! You're stronger than all of them anyway

Alberu: i know, but that's really not my style and i don't feel like it. If they know what's good for them then I'm sure they would listen

The nobles and vassals at the meeting: *sweats profusely, scared for their lives*

Alberu: *sunshine smile*

[max--phillips]

Oh shit okay so we had a guy (fraud case too, and he got arrested for something having to do with identity theft? I guess?) who was returning his car, but it got impounded, and he had just enough documentation about the return to pin the impound bill on us, so we had to go pick it up today right. (After it had been there for ~90 days and racked up a $9k bill lmao) Well. This was definitely a case of “this dude did not know his car was getting impounded” because his car was 1) trashed and 2) full of stuff, including audio equipment & weed. And that’s the story of how I may or may not have gotten a speaker & 3 amps & $75 worth of weed for free today

[katyspersonal]

Movies should return to looking like cheap theatre plays

I feel like the biggest problem with the decline of quality of the movies is capitalism. I mean, obviously, but I just want to talk about it a bit. The huge problem with the movies is that they cannot be treated like a usual job; a company that creates them HAS to show the positive dynamics in profiting - more money with every next year. So they can convince their investors to stay and still pay them. Because otherwise they might not have enough money to MAKE more movies!

That’s why the quality of the products is dropping - to lessen the production costs. That’s why you often can see the case of ‘but this is a completely original story, it did not NEED the name of [popular brand] to be attached to it’ - to sell more tickets, because investors decided that original concept would not bring as much money (the recent animated movie about Buzz Lightyear off the top of my head. Same with endless reboots that are so tone-deaf to the original it’d be more honest to just make new universe and characters entirely.

Like... in a way, making movies is just a job like others. It is entertainment at least, education at most. Except it isn’t because people that make the movies cannot simply earn stable amount of money every year or god forbid earn less than the previous year. Studies just have to violate beloved and classic franchises and violate the art as a concept just to keep existing- I mean, Disney is the quickest examples of severe decline in quality I can recall. And like, I still think nerfing Strange World with a complete absence of advertising had to be a planned sabotage. Like a somewhat expensive way to gaslight people that ‘hey, you see, new and original universes do not sell well, we constantly make reboots or force [brand] into irrelevant stories not because we want to, but because people ONLY buy that :)))))))’

And like? The alternative is if government was to fund the movies (kind of the case in my country). And that, of course, means heavy censorship and involving propaganda of the ideas that the government wants to spread, so yet again, movies cannot be a truly free form of art.

I do not really see any legit way to escape the loop of movies being very troubled as art, because people need money to make them. If investors pay for them - they’ll be garbage and constantly torment popular brands with whatever they think is cool these days instead of telling original and interesting stories, if government pays for them - they’ll be infected with propaganda and only “approved” ideas and stories will make it through.

The only at least somewhat optimistic way out I personally see is to drop the visual quality bar very low. Like... to come back to shitty cameras, environments made out of tinfoil and wallpaper (seeing this in Star Trek TOS), very shitty low polygon CGI... all that. Because it will cut the production costs a LOT but crappy visual quality will NOT be able to ruin the good story, interesting concepts and well-written characters that’s what. The worst crappy visuals will do is to create a lot of memes in the internet - and that is even GOOD because it can draw a lot of attention. Investment of simple rich guys that want to be even richer feels like lesser evil when it comes to the movies than government funding because of lacking censorship and propaganda; companies and individual studios can do whatever they want as long as it will bring STONKS! Art must be free in expression and what it wants to tell.

But the visuals at this rate feel like a useless leech because people need to justify before the investors that the astronomical money they’ll give will pay off. And why they’re astronomical? Right, because they need the most realistic CGI and the coolest assets.

I just... I think most people can agree that ‘pretty picture’ is not only not everything there is, but also the lowest priority. People would, in fact, look at awful animation or crappy effects as long as they are being told exciting, meaningful, or simply fun story. Basically, what is making movies worse is the same shit that puts even us, simple visual artists and writers, into lasting creative block; once a masterpiece is created, it raises the bar to this level, so now everything else has to be not worse, preferably better, but it is not EVERY time a masterpiece can be created. If anything, it might be once in a lifetime deal.

TLDR; I think movies should return to looking crappy so the original, interesting, eccentric ideas do not scare the investors away with demanding too much money, because at least this way new stories will more likely see the light. And won’t have to cheat by just slapping names of a previously known brand over completely unique and new story that we’re all sick of. Visual quality is just the lowest priority, so if something to cut production costs it can only be this.

[gothamcityneedsme]

literally could walk around in cyberpunk endlessly without even doing quests or combat.  i could just explore and take screenshots

[unluckyxse7en]

I'm so tired of being critical about what I consume. And by that really what I mean is I'm tired of waiting to be shamed for any given thing when like. There's always Something to find fault in for any given piece of media.

And maybe that's a sign I just really know how to gravitate to the wrong stuff? But there's always a reason, from even a single 'off color' joke that encourages some form of bigotry to the creator being horrible, to the company that produces any tv form of it being even worse.

And people are choosing to show their activism by shaming people via inbox or in replies. On Tumblr. The world's most listened to and popular site, especially known for raising awareness on shitty things in media or the world at large.

Oh wait.

Point being... I don't think people should drop their activism entirely. But seeing a one off fandom post and just Knowing someone (or someones plural) had to remind everyone there how shitty x or y is in that franchise is just. Exhausting. Tumblr is meant as a site for sharing memes and writing goofy posts, and some people need that. Some people need good silly things to feel like the rest is worth fighting for.

Like... The world is shitty and we already have posts dedicated to reminding us of that and how to be mindful of that. Let us have goofy posts too, if they're not doing any harm.

[sadlynotthevoid]

If I had a nickel for everytime I dreamed that Lily was kidnapped and Og!Cale ran looking out for her, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird it happened twice.

In the first one, Lily got kidnapped in the Capital and og!Cale instantly started running around, doing detective work but also really in panic. At some point he figured out who could have a hint on Lily's kidnapper, but the person in question was in the castle dungeons. So he went and straight entered in a room where Alberu was having a meeting with other nobles, not caring at all who was there, and asked him to sign a permission.

Og!Cale: *opens the door* Your Highness, sign this! *Slams form on the table*

Alberu, who wasn't expecting a random noble to crash his office: ...

The nobles: *shoked in victorian era* ...

Alberu: how did you got here?

Og!Cale: I flew through the third floor entry. It has my mom's name on it. More important, I'm in a hurry. So could you sign it already?

Alberu, confused as fuck because 'wdym by third floor entry? That's just a window': *reads the paper* permission to visit the dungeons? Why do—

Og!Cale, too worried to even keep his trash act and also practically a mind reader (not really): My sister was kidnapped and that guy may know where she could be. As I said, I'm in a hurry.

Alberu: That's terrible. *About to sign it* Is there any other way I can help?

Random noble: Excuse me?! Your Highness, this is not according to the protocol. I had to wait for months after my solicitude was sent to have this meeting. Why does he get a special treatment?!

Og!Cale, without paying an eye: Aren't you that Viscount that keeps wasting big sums on gifts for a mistress? *To Alberu* I guess he's asking money "for his territory". I bet he spent all his budget and is trying to hide it from his wife.

The noble: *pales* That— you— Your Highness, I can explain *faints*

Alberu: *sighs* I'll have someone investigate it. *Signs the form* Is there anything else I need to know?

Og!Cale, already exiting the room with the permission at hand: *tilts head* I've heard that people had been dissapearing in the Southwest region. *Narrows eyes* Huh. It's near the Gyerre territory now that I think about it.

Og!Cale: Anyways, goodbye. *Leaves*

Alberu, absentmindedly: So that's what father meant when he said redheads are "a crazy force of nature that could destroy a little country without force".

Antonio, who happened to be in the meeting: *silently having an existential crisis*

It turned out that the culprit was Og!Cale's past teacher (yes, that guy) who was working with traffickers. He wanted to see whether Og!Cale would resolve his "little game" or he would "lose" (have Lily sold before someone finds them). He also kinda hates her because "he lost his student by her fault" (no, it wasn't her fault. He's just crazy).

Og!Cale found out where Lily was being held and he, along with a pair of knights, went for her. All of them had a fun time beating the creepy bastard.

Then Og!Cale walked to their house carrying Lily on his arms.

In the second one, a monster-like creature broke into Lily's room, took her and flew away. Og!Cale was sitting on his bedroom's window and saw his little sister being taken away by a blurr of mass. He jumped out of the window to follow, of course. Then the knights saw a thing flying over their heads and the young master speedruning after it.

Og!Cale: Come back here!

Hillsman: Young master Cale?!

Og!Cale: What are you doing?! Stop that thing! It has Lily!

Knights: Ah! *Start chasing the thing too*

I don't know what happened next because I woke up.

[relatableblorbopoll]

Round 1 of preliminaries, group 11

The first two places get a place on the bracket

Little reminder: there will be 2 more rounds of preliminaries, the losing blorbos of this poll still have 2 chances of getting in the official bracket

Propaganda under the cut

Mae Borowski (Night in the Woods)

"Spoilers! She's a college dropout in her early twenties, who suffers from untreated mental illness and dissociation and had a complete breakdown at college, causing her to come home. Now she's living with her parents again, but life in her dingy little hometown went on without her. Her friends are adults now - in a relationship and planning on moving to the big city, or having to waste away in a dead end job instead of following their dreams. Mae is the only one without a new adult role in life. She's not great with people either - she's blunt and often doesn't think things through, and in many ways just doesn't get the world of adults. She's also prone to petty crimes and general anarchy. She's kind of lost and purposeless, and trying to find meaning in life by desperately clinging to the past. Her decision to drop out of college probably saved her life, but it's also put her family in a tough financial situation and is viewed by most people as her just thoughtlessly doing whatever she wants. She's also kind of shamed a lot about not having a job or other productive role in life, despite the fact that her untreated mental issues are actually disabling for her. She also plays the bass real bad. Anyway, i love Mae a lot. Playing this game as a college dropout in my early twenties, sitting in my childhood bedroom in my mom's attic, back in my dingy little hometown, desperately missing my old friends who have all moved on to better, resposible things in life... yeah, it felt like the game was pointing dead at me. Given tumblr's general demographic, i figure i must not be completely alone in this"

Shigeo Kageyama / Mob (Mob Psycho 100)

"autistic. likes milk. if we reach a certain level of emotion we turn into a psychic bomb. cool brothers :)"

Barry the Quokka (The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog)

"Their only skill is working the microwave, they're non-binary, when seeing a trash bin their first instinct is to look through it, they're always the most normal person in the room, they can beatbox, and they were only hired due to being the only one who applied."

Kaveh (Genshin Impact)

"In a fantasy world, be a guy with a regular profession losing his goddamn mind. Poor guy has a guilt complex, (so true) and a lot of deep embarrassment regarding his life.(ehe) He just wants to do what he's passionate about but capitalism is evil and also he keeps getting scammed. Claims to not want anyone to know Things, goes into depth about these Things anyway. Is probably most definitely gay. Can be found face down on a table lamenting his fate. Terrible sleep schedule. (HA) He is such a guy. Wants to believe the world is a good place and people are inherently good. And wants to help people and do good himself. It's just hard. [And he has a roommate. Oh my god he has a roommate]"

"He was, and still is, regarded a genius. He aced his Akademiya days, he has the admiration and appreciation of so many people because he is oh-so remarkable. But what for, when reality is that he sits at home depressed and with guilt consuming him, faking the image people have of him, not only broke as fuck but actually in debt, drowning his sorrows in wine."

Yusuke Kitagawa (Persona 5)

"highschooler who wants to spend the rest of his life doing what he loves. is obsessed with art and beauty and it's on his mind 24/7 received help from his now friendgroup to break from his abusive foster father who he still have complicated feelings with had to move into school dorms and am struggling to live independantly since he'd rather spend money and time on his art but he's still surviving and enjoying the good times id say also ends up saying whatever is on his mind and is pretty eccentric. very passionate about what he loves. doesn't want to do anything else."

Nanami Kento (Jujutsu Kaisen)

"Ex-salaryman, now jujutsu sorcerer. During one life-and-death fight, kept talking about how it was almost six pm with is when he is getting off work at 6pm no matter what because he hates overtime. While his opponent repeatedly almost kills him. Normalest adult in this shonen anime. Teen MC: "Let's go all out!" Nanami: "No. Where moderate effort will suffice, use moderate effort." Some of his quotes from the anime: "I studied at Jujutsu Tech and one thing I learned is that Jujutsu Sorcerers are shit! Then I worked at your typical company and one thing I learned is that work is shit! If both are equally shit I'll take the one I'm more suited to." "You've faced several life-or-death situations, but that does not make you an adult. Finding more fallen-out hairs on your pillow, watching your favourite stuffed bread disappear from the convenience store... The accunulation of these little despairs is what makes a person an adult." "I don't praise or disparage anyone. I adhere to facts and judge on that basis. That's who I am. There was a time when I mistakenly believed society operated the same way." "

[fordford]

hnghhhh can you draw fiddleford. doing something silly idk

i got carried away with this and lost the plot a bit. sorry anon. hope you like it anyway (text under readmore because cursive is hard with a pixel brush)

Header

Ford: At this point I am convinced the only thing he is wearing that is not stolen is his prosthetic, which he constructed himself. Although he probably stole the scrap metal he used to build it. Fiddleford: i doubt folks care much what happens to their trash once they bring it to the dump and let he who is without sin cast the first stone! [Ford has marked up Fiddleford's sentence, indicating where letters should be capitalized and where a comma should be] Ford: If you're going to vandalize my journal, at least use proper punctuation. [Ford has crossed out Fiddleford's Biblical accusation of hypocrisy] Ford: You can't prove anything and I am immune to your gentile condemnations.

Diagram

Ford: hat stolen from a scarecrow Fiddleford: it was a gift! besides i needed it more than him

Ford: shades stolen from my brother [Fiddleford has crossed out the word "stolen" and wrote "RECLAIMED" above it] Fiddleford: ain't stealing if they were yours to begin with

Ford: shorts say "BAD MOON RISING" on the rear. not sure where he got these. kind of afraid to ask. Fiddleford: no illustrated diagram of the writing? Ford: LEAVE ME ALONE

Ford: sweater stolen from ME! again... Fiddleford: i'm keeping it. mine now

Ford: [pointing to the socks] fairly certain he just plain old shoplifted these. Fiddleford: i did ♥︎

Ford: wlm'g dzmg gl pmld ru sv hglov srh ylcvih Fiddleford: i can read atbash darling Ford: decode this then [message in substitution cipher] Fiddleford: oryh brx wrr

[teriri-sayes]

Reactions to Young Master Shield's Chapter 209

TL;DR - Lily worries about failure and disappointing her family. Everyone reassures and supports her. Cale meets academy staff and is overwhelmed by the welcome. Effric keeps saying stuff that makes Cale embarrassed. Sui and Alberu laughing at Cale's situation. A wanderer gatecrashes the event.

Lily's Worries The first quarter of the chapter was about Lily. She was happy that her brothers were attending, but also worried about her future. Like what if she failed? Fortunately, everyone was supportive of her.

CH said with a sincere and gentle smile that he couldn't study and was bad at it. Basen told her that he was bad at swordsmanship. And Cale told her that it was fine to fail. Her family would not be disappointed in her even if she failed. Awww~ 🥰

Effric's "Attacks" on Cale The entire chapter after Lily's part was so hilarious. Effric, the president of Roan Academy, dealt several blows on Cale that made him feel so embarrassed. And Raon's comments that his human's eyes kept shaking added to the fun. 😂

Effric: *bows at a 90 degree angle* It's an honor to meet you, LORD CALE! Cale: ... Various deans from other departments: IT'S AN HONOR TO MEET YOU! Raon: Human, your eyes are shaking! Effric: A lot of people wanted to hear your speech, and we barely managed to reduce it from the tens of thousands who wanted to. Cale: (Huh? How many thousands?!) Effric: We cleared all schedules today for your speech! Hahaha! Raon: Human, your eyes keep shaking! Effric: I'm sure you'll be a great role model for the students. And for us adults too! Hahaha! Raon: Human, why is your smile like a shrivelled persimmon? Effric: I am looking forward to it, Lord Cale. No, Commander Cale. Hahaha! Cale: ...Yes... I'll do my best...

Cale: *sees the academy plaza* Effric: What's the matter? Cale: It reminds me of the capital's plaza. Effric: You're right. It was modeled after the capital's plaza. Cale: *freezes* Effric: *smiles* I guess you remember that time. Cale: ...Pardon? Effric: Where the legend began. Cale: *freezes again* Effric: *talks more about Cale's shield legend in the capital plaza* Cale: *awkward smile*

Embarrassed Cale Next part was funny. The way to the podium had a red carpet laid on it, and Cale felt embarrassed walking on it while thousands of eyes were watching him. Raon's comments weren't helping him either, especially the one about how Sui kept laughing for some strange reason. Cale could only mentally curse and hold it in. 😂

Cale was dressed in his black commander uniform, so the students were very excited. And when Cale met eyes with a knight student, the "Shield" chant began and spread all over the plaza. Cale was embarrassed again, and Raon made it even funnier again.

Raon said that Alberu had arrived and was laughing out loud at Cale... 🤣🤣🤣 Poor Cale... 🤣🤣🤣

We did get some thoughts on Cale about his past. His KRS self found school life as dull, and he found speeches boring, so he decided to keep his speech short. And also a line about original Cale not having gone to school because he was busy acting like a trash.

Speech Curse is Real We were all expecting the speech, right? Unfortunately, Cale's speech curse is back! 😂 Anyway, we find out that CJS actually headed back to report to GoD after his time on the Central Plains. Cale had messaged GoD, asking to send CJS and reporting about his finding of the Five-Colored Bloods being like wanderers, but GoD ghosted him... 😂

As for the speech curse...

Cale to the students: Nice to meet you. Raon: Human, CJS is here! Cale: (Okay, I just greeted them...what now?) Raon: CJS said it was urgent! He said he could sense another wanderer nearby! Water AP: The sky is strange. Cale: *looks up the sky and sees an incoming black dot* Cale: (Is that a person? A wanderer? No, why is this always happening to me?) Cale: Damn it.

Ending Remarks I loved today's chapter. Reading about an embarrassed Cale is so fun~! 😂 And the speech curse at the end! 🤣🤣🤣 Given the chapter title, I guess we'll see the return of Cale's shield legend next chapter. I can't wait for Friday to come!

[reasonsforhope]

"A new community housing development in the Bronx will feature a cool piece of kit: an on-site aerobic digester that can turn 1,100 pounds of food scraps into 220 pounds of high-quality fertilizer every single day.

Built by Harp Renewables, it’s basically a big stomach filled with bacteria that breaks down food scraps and wasted food into their component parts, and in the future could be a standard part of all apartment units as the amount of food waste in American reaches 30% of the total mass of all trash collection.

The Peninsula, organized by Gilbane Development Company, will feature 740 units of affordable housing, 50,000 square-foot light industrial space and equal sized green space, and 15,000 feet of commercial space, all of which will send their castaway comestibles right into the digester...

Fast Company reports that Christina Grace, founder of a zero-waste food management company, helped plan the design and implementation of the digester into The Peninsula, and helped organize a 40% grant from the city to pay the $50,000 upfront cost.

“The goal is for this material to work its way into the community garden network in the Bronx,” [Christina Grace, who helped plan the design] told the magazine, adding that she expects it to pay for itself over just a few years. “We see this as highly replicable in both commercial and residential venues. We know there’s a need for fertilizer.”

Producing fertilizer right there in the city reduces the need for it to be trucked in from afar, chipping away, even if just a bit, at NYC traffic.

Big problem solver

Perhaps uniquely beneficial to New York City compared to other spots in the U.S. is that the digester will have a significant impact on the Bronx’s share of the city’s rodent problem.

Those who’ve watched the Morgan Spurlock documentary Rats will understand why that’s significant—while those that haven’t will have to imagine what living in a megacity where rats outnumber people by around 8 or 10 to 1 looks like.

Another big problem the bio-digesters could potentially help is pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Fertilizer is a big emitter of all three of the most-targeted GHGs. Fertilizer, like quarry dust and ammonia is, like so many commodities, often imported from countries who specialize in its production, such as Norway, but also Russia and Ukraine, whose conflict has recently highlighted the fragility of the supply chain with sharp increases in prices...

Bio-digesters by design keep the CO2 and methane in the fertilizer produced, rather than it entering the atmosphere.

For these reasons and more, the aerobic bio-digester is slowly making its way into residential and industrial spaces around the country.

GNN reported on an enormous bio-digester at the heart of the D.C. advanced resource (sewage) recovery center outside the capital, and on the use of bio-digesters on Australian pig farms which are helping reduce the environmental and psychological impact of the effluent produced from such operations.

Harp Renewables tweeted how happy they were to have installed their bio-digester in the town of Cashel, Ireland.

Expect to see more stories like this pop up around the globe."

-via Good News Network, March 17, 2022

Note: Obviously gentrification bad and "affordable housing" is sometimes nowhere near as affordable as it should be, etc. etc. That said, this is such a fantastic use case that I felt I had to post it anyway.

[artiststarme]

Don't Call Me Stupid

Can I make you cry four times in one day @pyrohonk? I hope you guys like it and please leave your thoughts in the comments!

Now with a Part 2!

~*~*~*~

Steve was used to being the dumb one. He was the kid in class that would ask stupid questions that the other kids and sometimes even the teacher would laugh at. He never quite understood what teachers were saying in class or what the words written on the board were supposed to mean with their squiggly letters that jumped around. Eventually he learned not to raise his hand at all. Better to be confused than embarrassed, right?

Nancy, when they were dating, would always call him an idiot. He brushed it off at the time but looking back, it made him wonder. If he was a little bit smarter, a little more astute, would things have gone differently? Would Nancy have sought comfort in him instead of running off to Jonathan? Would he have noticed Barb’s disappearance from his yard that started all of this in the first place? He had to wonder but even that wouldn’t change anything. 

His stupidity was also a highlight point for his parents to focus on. He once was the popular jock, an airhead but one that was popular and good at sports. Now, he was just a deadbeat that barely graduated high school and certainly couldn’t get into college. He was a loser working at a dead-end job that was going nowhere in life. Ah, what pride he brought to his parents now. He could only grieve the life he used to lead every time he saw his parents staring at him in disdain. At least he had the Party… right?

It was a well known fact throughout the Party that Steve was a little slow. His brain worked at a different pace than the rest of them, a concept woefully apparent to everyone. His brain was focused on the music underlying the Russian code and the Black Widows underneath the floorboards. He was the last to connect the dots and truly only helped the Party by taking hits to the head. They only kept him around to take the hits after all. 

Even Robin, his best friend in the world, his platonic soulmate with a capital P, called him a dingus on a near hourly basis. Sure, it was affectionate now but it started as a derogatory term to poke fun at his intelligence, or lack thereof. He was a fool in her eyes, affectionate or not. Even still, he was just the dumbass that slept around with half of Hawkins, a sassy soundboard for her to bounce lesbian crushes off of. 

He was used to being called stupid but it still hurt every time. 

So in the first fight he and Eddie have as a couple, it really hits a sore spot when Eddie hisses, “what are you, stupid?”

All of the fight drained out of Steve in an instant leaving a broken, empty shell in its place. His anger melted away to reveal the hurt hidden underneath. “You should go.”

“What? No, we’re talking this through,” Eddie shook his head, giving him a look of confusion. 

“I probably won’t understand anyways since I’m so stupid. So you should go, save your breath. Whatever you think is probably right anyways.” With that, Steve walks up the stairs to his bedroom and locks the door behind him. He pulls his old Walkman over his ears and lets the sad tones of Queen’s All Dead, All Dead wash over him. 

He was sick of being treated like trash by everyone he talked to. Everyone that was supposed to love him; his parents, Nancy, Robin, Eddie, the kids. They all thought he was a dumbass. He’d tried so hard to be better, to be smarter, to be more useful to everyone else. But in his quest, he lost everything that he once was. He lost his charisma, he lost his old friends, and his hobbies to become this loser who still no one liked. 

So, he ignored his boyfriend’s knocks on his door, turned up his tunes, and planned his move away from Hawkins. If he wasn’t appreciated here, maybe he would be anywhere else.

Permanent Tag List: @doubleb11 @nburkhardt @zerokrox-blog @newtstabber @i-less-than-three-you @carlyv @pyrohonk @straight4joekeery @trippypancakes @conversesweetheart @estrellami-1 @suddenlyinlove @yikes-a-bee @swimmingbirdrunningrock @perseus-notjackson @anaibis @merricatty @maya-custodios-dionach @grtwdsmwhr @manda-panda-monium @lumoschild @goodolefashionedloverboi @mentallyundone @awkwardgravity1 @anzelsilver @jestyzesty @gregre369

[happyhauntt]

BURIAL GROUND, a hunger games fic.

─── summary:  In District Four, they teach you  how to survive the Games. They don’t teach you how to survive what comes after. ─── warnings: this story contains triggering themes including sexual assault & rape, prostitution, self-harm and thoughts of suicide, death and canon-typical violence. these themes, along with others, are prevalent in the hunger games universe and will come up in this story, so please don’t read if these things affect you! ─── fic tag. read on ao3. fic masterlist.

CHAPTER ONE ─── the uglier truth (3.8k words.)

     YOU WOULD THINK, by the way people in the Capitol talk about Nimah Caplan, that she was some kind of deity. That she wasn't born human, but instead rose from the sea foam crashing onto the shores of District 4 one day, skin glowing like the inside of a buttercup and eyes greener than the freshest grass.

     The Capitol likes to forget the uglier truth  ━  that she was never some goddess that appeared out of the blue one day, some beautiful woman to be at the center of President Snow's glistening parties.

     Nim hates to disappoint, but her life certainly didn't start out that way. She was a child, once, a long time ago. They drag it up every year, her adolescence reduced to nothing but a newsreel; it hurts to look at the films and see how young she used to be, still soft with innocence. She grew up a feral child, practically born with a knife in her hand, and yet still, before the Hunger Games, she'd been... something else.

     On mornings like this, though, she wishes she were born of the sea. Dragging herself out of bed, the silken sheets still tangled around her legs, she stumbles into the bathroom across the hall. She runs the tap and holds her hands beneath the freezing water for a moment before splashing it onto her face, hoping the chill will wake her up faster.

     Nim is fairly certain that goddesses don't get hangovers.

     She groans, drying her face off with a towel. A mirror hangs above the sink, large and oval with a silver-painted frame. The sheet she threw over it years ago, in an effort to ensure she never saw her own reflection again, is loose at the edge. For just a moment, she catches a flash of blue-streaked curls, desperately in need of brushing.

     She holds her breath and tugs the sheet back into place.

     The clock says it's late. Later than she should be waking up, anyway, on market day. She learned a long time ago that alarm clocks weren't the best way of rousing her from a dead sleep, and Nim had destroyed more than enough of them in a panicked haze to prove it.

     Heading back into her bedroom, she tugs on the nearest pair of black slacks she can find and grabs her tan wool-lined jacket from where it is draped over the foot of the bed. The empty bottle sitting on her bedside table glares at her until she grabs that, too, taking it downstairs with her and tossing it into the trash.

     Her boots, slippery black leather, slide on too easily over her narrow shins. At the door, she pauses. The nausea comes quickly, an unpleasant burn lingering at the back of her throat, and Nim presses her forehead against the glass until it passes.

     It isn't always so bad.

     Most of the time, these days, she doesn't need to drink. At night, she can take her sleeping pills and drift off to a dreamless netherworld where little can trouble her, and the nightmares cannot fight their way into her subconscious to tear her brain apart. Nim is happy to survive in this way, half-rested, as long as the terrors stay safely trapped in the lining of her bones where they belong.

     There are the bad days, though. Less now than there were a few years ago, when the Games were still fresh and the trauma was new, but they still happen. Those days, she cannot sleep without a bottle in her hand and enough alcohol in her system to tranquilize an elephant.

     Those days only come when she knows the inevitable is coming. A fast train to the Capitol, a few nights clinking glasses with society's elite, a shining example of what a young woman should be, with the right stylists, escorts, manners  ━  and a particularly memorable stint in the Hunger Games under her belt.

     The thought of brushing shoulders with Capitol folk again always makes her want to crawl inside a bottle. The thought of what happens when the lights go down and the party is over makes her want to never come back out.

     She swallows the bile back down and breathes deeply until her headache subsides a little, but the static on her skin never goes away. The hangover is only half of what makes her so sick; leaving her house in Victor's Village always feels like treading through a minefield. The wide open spaces, the eyes peering at her, judging her, reducing her to nothing but a tiny grain of sand...

     Nimah can be confident. She can fake it with the best of them, hold her head high in the Capitol and wear her dazzling smile and bat her eyelashes, because when the cameras are out there is nothing else she can do. This was the part assigned to her when she won the Games, and it is the role she'll play for the rest of her life.

     In her home district, though, Nim just wants to be invisible. Every pair of eyes on her feels like a dagger in her back. The navy streaks in her hair and the inhuman green of her eyes mark her out as a creature of the Capitol, now. An outsider.

     Steeling herself, she wrenches open the front door and steps out into the street. 

     Nim used to think that Victor's Village was pretty. As a child, she'd stand at the gates and press her face between the bars, looking at the long row of a dozen white marble mansions, six on either side, dreaming of the day she'd get to live in one.

     Now, as she treks down the path, gravel crunching beneath her feet, the mansions aren't so pretty anymore. They line up like pale tombstones on either side of her, empty windows leering into the street. At the very end of the road, six of the houses sit dark, with no one inside to make them into homes. Every other mansion in the village bares the flaws that Nim was blind to as a child; the cracks in the paint, the wrinkles in the skin of a Victor, the proof that the Games are not all they are made out to be.

     Mags' home is nearest to the gates. Orange chrysanthemums blossom in the window boxes  ━  gardening was the talent Mags chose when she won her Games around sixty years ago  ━  but her gnarled hands haven't touched the soil in years. These days, the caretakers are the ones keeping the village looking perfect.

     Annie Cresta's house sits across from it. There are little stars and hearts carved into the front door, from when the pair of them sat on the doorstep one day a few summers ago, intent on letting the world slip by for once. They'd been able to hear the voices from the square, where the rest of the district had gathered to watch that year's Victor on their victory tour. They were both supposed to go, but Annie's breakdown prevented her, and Nimah volunteered to stay behind and sit with her friend.

     She'd stolen knives from the kitchen and they'd sat in silence, gritting their teeth, carving happy symbols into the wood, forcing their anger out in a way that was more productive than smashing things. The caretakers painted over them, but when Nim goes to visit her friend, she runs her fingers over the marks left behind by their knives. It reminds her of a solitary, pleasant memory in the midst of so much bad.

     Next to Mags' house is Cowell. Winner of a Games that had long-since past, the windows of his mansion were broken years ago in a fit of rage, and boarded up with wood. Sometimes Nim can see the light from inside peeking through the gaps in the boards, but she doesn't see Cowell often. She doesn't mind. There is a haunted look lingering in his eyes, the kind she knows is mirrored in her own, and she hates to be reminded of her failures.

     Hobbs lives next door to Annie. Almost as old as Mags, his door is always open for anyone who needs to talk. When Nim first returned from the Capitol after winning her Games, it was Hobbs she ran to when she could no longer stand the quiet in her own house.

     Finnick and Nimah live opposite one another. She has been inside Finnick's home enough times to know that he keeps it immaculately tidy, as if cleaning up a physical mess is his way of sorting through the trauma he keeps buried. He always needs to keep his hands busy.

     Nimah sleeps with every light on in her house. Before she goes to bed, she treks through all the rooms and closes all the curtains, only to turn on the light before she leaves. If she wakes up in a darkened room, terror clogs her throat until she can't breathe. Her screaming wakes up the whole street. Even now, at midday, if she looks back over her shoulder she'll find her bedroom window glowing with golden light. It's how she finds her way home.

     When she reaches the gates, Nim pauses. Just beyond, down a long pathway, she can hear the bustle of the docks. From her window she can see the beach, the sea rising up in raucous grey waves to crash against the sand, and all the fishing boats bobbing in the water.

     Her old house, a brown shack with only a few rooms and a leaking roof, isn't near the beach. It sits in a long row of other shacks, all different shapes and sizes, in the shadow of the huge fisheries. Her parents used to work on the conveyor line, sorting the fish. Nim grew up in a house where the scent of rotting fish permeated everything, and she shared a room with her brother, and her grandparents lived in the room next door. There were six of them in that house. Her family wasn't poor, they earned better wages than many in the district and Nim and her brother never had to take tesserae, but every spare bit of her parents' money was spent sending their children to the combat academies.

     They didn't want the Hunger Games to take their children away.

     At least not without a fight.

     "Nim!"

     The crunching of gravel creeps up on her, and she turns weary eyes upon her new companion, offering him a small smile. "Finnick. I thought you had left for the Capitol already."

     His throat bobs as he comes to a stop beside her, holding the gate open so she can go through ahead of him. "Tomorrow." The smile he offers her in return is dazzling, white teeth gleaming like a shark's. "I've got business to attend to before the party next week. Are you going?"

     His voice dips, and for a moment it vanishes in the cool wind blowing in off the sea. Nim can't help it; she shivers. The party in question is the Victor's Ball, held at the Presidential Palace for this year's newest winners, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark. Former Victors have always been invited, but most of them don't bother to go; Annie hasn't been to the Capitol for years, not even as a Mentor, and Cowell never passes the threshold of his front door these days.

     For Finnick and Nim, though, their attendance is not optional.

     Nim grimaces at his question, knowing he is only asking to be polite. "I'm putting it off until the day before. I've no desire to be in the Capitol any longer than required."

     Part of her likes it. The mindless gossip, the glitter and the gold, all the strange people and the way it distracts her for an hour or two. Her prep team dolls her up, and Nim has always shone as the center of attention, able to command a room with little effort.

     The days after, though, she has to bury herself beneath the covers and cry. To be so outgoing comes at a cost. To allow strangers to touch her, to rub shoulders with them and laugh with them, takes all of her energy. At one of her first parties after winning, someone grabbed her wrist when she wasn't looking, and she nearly clawed their eyes out.

     Surviving them takes everything she has.

     Without another word, the pair of them start the slow trudge down the path towards the town square. Nim pulls her jacket tighter around her. In mid-winter, the weather in District 4 is mild. It never snows here, but on the coldest days, the wind coming from the sea nips and bites.

     Her earliest memories are of summers spent playing on the beach with her brother, digging her toes into the warm sand. Those days were few and far between  ━  the peacekeepers only opened the beach up to the public on holidays  ━  but Nim's fondest memories are of chasing her brother into the surf and jumping over the waves.

     Every one of those moments feels tinged with red, now. The salty tang in the air reminds Nim of blood on her tongue.

     "What do you need from the market? I'll get it for you." Nim already has a list for Annie and Mags tucked into her pocket. The old woman had tried to insist that she was perfectly able to buy her own bread, but Nim had refused to listen.

     Finnick shakes his head. "You look like you need the company." He looks at her, his eyes lingering on the plain silk eye patch and the dark circles beneath her uncovered eye, her unruly curls and the odd pallor of her skin.

     Nim turns away. "I don't..."

     She leaves her sentence unfinished and lowers her eyes, careful to ensure her steps are even, one boot in front of another. Part of Nim craves silence; where Finnick must always keep his hands busy, must always have something to do, Nim adores nothing more than the quiet rooms of her too-large house, legs crossed in the middle of the plush carpet, trying her best to breathe.

     The small, traitorous heart of her, though, needs the company. Not to be surrounded, but to just exist with someone else, in the little moments of peace. To breathe with them. To be reminded that, no matter the horrors she has endured, there is someone else in the world that bleeds the same way she does.

     That doesn't mean she appreciates it. Finnick Odair, the Capitol's golden boy, hovering over her shoulder like she's a fragile thing about to break. Him and Mags and Hobbs, all watching and waiting for her to snap again. Wondering if it will be worse than last time.

     The pair of them walk on in silence, until they reach the town square. On market days, the square in front of the Justice Building fills up with stalls selling all kinds of goods. Peacekeepers mill through the crowd, white-gloved hands ready with their guns. They used to chat with stallholders, gossip and buy their bread without much trouble, but since Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark came through last week on their victory tour, things have been different.

     There is a tension in the air that wasn't there before.

     The shouting batters her ears. Nim closes her eyes for a moment, struck by the sudden rise in volume. Without a word, Finnick presses closer; not close enough to touch her, but she can feel the warmth of his hand hovering over the small of her back, close enough to shield her from the noise.

     Releasing a slow breath through her nose, Nim heads over to the first of the long line of stalls. Drawing the crumpled list from her coat pocket, she passes it over to the stallholder, who sets to work putting a series of glass jars into a basket.

     Finnick leans over Nim's shoulder. "What is Mags cooking up that requires that many jars?"

     Nim shrugs. "Ask Mags."

     They move along the line of stalls. Nim keeps her head low, eyes intently focused on the movements of her hands  ━  passing the money across to each vendor, inspecting her purchases before carefully putting them into her basket. She can feel Finnick at her back, only a few inches taller but feeling infinitely more like a human shield the longer she spends in the midst of a crowd.

     She hates this. Every time someone she doesn't know accidentally brushes past, she flinches away. A vile feeling coils in the pit of her stomach like a viper waiting to strike; an urge to run coupled with the instinct to attack first, to drive a knife through someone's throat before they can get her.

     Her muscles tense. She keeps a tight grip on the basket, lime-green eye darting from stranger to stranger, her pupil narrowed to a tiny black pinprick. Everyone is an threat, even the people she recognises  ━  a girl she went to school with lingers by one of the many shellfish stalls, hardly paying attention to her surroundings, but when Nim blinks, she sees a flash of bare teeth lunging for her neck.

     To be that ignorant, she thinks, pushing the obtrusive thoughts away. It does not stop the horrible prickling of her skin, but she loosens her shoulders a bit. Even with the Peacekeepers wandering around, everyone in the marketplace seems so carefree in comparison to the thundering of her heart. None of them know what it is like to have blood on their hands; to feel the slick warmth of it as it runs up their wrist, to scrub and scrub until their skin is raw and still feel no closer to clean.

     The girl  ━  her name tugs at the edge of Nim's memory, but Nim hasn't thought of her old schoolmates in so long that it feels like that life belonged to someone else  ━  moves along. Nim tracks her movements like a predator until she has moved just out of view, and suddenly someone else, someone heartbreakingly familiar, crosses into her line of vision.

     She can feel Finnick looking at her, wondering why she froze like a deer caught in the sights of a hunter, but with one look at where she is staring, he understands.

     Her grandmother hasn't seen them yet.

     Distantly, as if she is underwater, Nim can hear the irritated mutters of people as they step around her and Finnick, annoyed that they've stopped in the middle of the path. Finnick wraps his hand around Nim's arm and gently tugs her out of the way. Almost automatically, she tears herself out of his grasp, shocked out of her haze.

     The old woman stops at one of the stalls further down, clutching the hand of a young child. Something stony and cold ripples through Nim as the little girl, no older than six, chatters happily away. Beneath the eye patch, the marbled scar over Nim's eye burns.

     "Have you talked to her recently?" Finnick's voice is soft in her ear, but Nim wants to reach up and rip his tongue out. Finnick, darling of the Capitol. Finnick, who, in the eyes of the world, seems never to have done anything wrong in his life  ━  except save her.

     Nim scoffs. "What do we have to talk about?"

     He grimaces, a poor attempt to hide his loathing of the old woman. He has never been so good at biting his tongue when it could get him into trouble with Nim, but these days, he knows better than to push her where her family is concerned.

     Her grandmother buys a loaf of bread and carries on walking, pulling the little girl along beside her. The child tosses her head back to giggle, a wave of brown curls cascading over her shoulders, before suddenly she looks back over her shoulder, beaming a bright smile at no-one in particular.

     "I'm not a masochist," Nim says through gritted teeth. Jaw clenched, she watches as her grandmother and the girl press on, eyes lingering on them until the crowd swallows them up and they vanish from sight.

[munamania]

ok um i am going to vent on something as someone with an outside perspective and people are going to be normal about that right. okay lol. im sick of hearing about taylor swift <3 as compared to a few years ago even she is like... suffocating. and i feel like we never advance this conversation because on one hand we have people who swing into full misogyny when talking about her, and on the other we have people who won't admit that she blatantly uses feminism to deflect from her problematic behaviors, or at least they won't like, do anything about it, and in this way she sort of ends up misleading a lot of young girls into like. girlboss liberal white feminism. im not saying shes a supervillain for it but you can't deny the ramifications of what she does and doesn't speak up about, just given the absolutely massive platform she has. she is the biggest pop star in the world

for the record, i don't expect taylor to be like. a normal person. she was very famous from a very young age and people aren't normal about teen/adolescent stars, especially when they're girls and women. she had her personal drama aired out in front of the world, had so much misogynistic dialogue surrounding her, from demeaning her success to interrogating her dating life (and never holding the pedos who preyed on her at a young age to any sort of standard!) and for many years people weren't very critical of that. it was normalized to be trashing this young girl's name and saying vile shit about her to like the entire nation and i dont blame her for being like, a little off after that. and yeah i also don’t think we should look to celebrities as our end all be all of activism and opinions on sociopolitical issues

but we've gone full swing into like. she is so famous and so big that her actions can be harmful and she does these things anyway because she doesn't expect her fanbase to hold her accountable, lest they be acting like the very sexists who tried to ruin her career. at least i imagine that's what the thought process is like, at least at some level, but at this point it's just like. this woman makes so much money. so much money it's ridiculous. idk how y'all fathomed paying so much for concert tickets but like i'll give props that they at least seemed to have some insane production/theatrics... so like alright. there's that.

but she is reselling the same songs. sometimes that don't sound that good. and making more money off that. yes yes to 'officially own them' and whatever. and releasing vault tracks and other versions of albums with different songs on them. but never all the same bc u need to collect them all. and the thing is some of them are like kinda bad. but you listen to them anyway because we live in a time of overconsumption/consumerism in late capitalism and it's like trendy and fun to be able to tell what song of hers is playing in the first millisecond. sorry or just your personal attachment to her. and don't say it's embarrassing to be a taylor swift fan these days she's like. so huge. and some of you equate embarrassment with having to hear criticism toward her. which might not be as common if swifties idk stepped it up and actually expected something from her?

which i guess is getting me to my main point here. can you imagine like. what would happen if taylor swift actually said anything about palestine? or anything of value in the world right now? no one's asking her to be a fucking scholar on it but genuinely sorry there’s like a genocide. several. the most documented real time genocide of our time i don’t care if it makes you upset that people expect something from her. she is time's person of the year. she has everyone from young girls to lesbians to gay men to bored football wives to dads to well fucking etc you get the point tuned in. she has dabbled in so many different spaces done so many collaborations aligned herself with so many entities who can keep up? if she, as massive as she is right now, posted something as simple as 'free palestine' or called for a ceasefire, can you imagine what would happen? i can’t help but think about it when day in and day out my feed is filled with screaming people being pulled from rubble or having their limbs amputated.

but she won't, because, quite frankly, what does she have to gain from it? she’s teaming up with the nfl right now to make some more money, she's gotta have at least like 4 new albums recorded in the last two years and at least um what three more that you're expecting? and she doesn't even have to like? write new music really? (edit: oh boy!) why the fuck would she be doing anything with her time other than poisoning the planet with jet fuel to visit her pr boyfriend?

taylor swift is never gonna be punk or what the hell ever beyond like a white liberal-at-best moderate woman. but if any of you could talk to each other and talk about, like, organizing in ways that it would be impossible for her to continue to ignore these situations, and just keep playing her tour FILM (how could i forget) in israel and etc, like if you could flood her socials or do a mass movement (and it would be massive given the sheer amount of peoples' top artists she's in) of not listening/buying/interacting with her stuff, until her agents and whatever had to make some sort of statement? like that's the only chance we've got with her

i'm not saying don’t be her fan, or listen to her music, or have an attachment, etc, but she's been around enough vile, anti-feminist, racist things this past year that y'all DO need to hold her accountable. like way more than you do. or it's going to be like really difficult to. tolerate it. haha. like you SHOULD be vocally and loudly disapproving of her actions when it causes a lot of damage overall. speaking up about her insane climate irresponsibility when we're having the hottest years on record is not the same as the people who felt the need to like pick apart her dating life on the news. but can we talk about how she's officially like. circled back and now is purposefully making news about her dating life? for her personal gain and that of the fucking nfl? lol. in a way it is funny for her to ‘take that power back’ in a way, of her image, and i think that’s how some people might view it, but like on the other hand she obviously is gaining a lot from this. you know. a lot of actual money. she is going to profit off this image of her being misunderstood etc for as long as u guys allow it and well i just think that has run its course. yk

continuing into 2024 (edit: and now with the release of a new album!) i don't want to see swifties automatically exonerating themselves from difficult conversations because like they feel like their fave has faced enough unwarranted criticism. or bc other people should also be criticized. much of it is warranted! and you guys need to grow up and be able to talk about it and stop painting taylor swift's face as like the Pinnacle of feminism. she doesn't and shouldn't have to be, and she isn't, and she should in fact be held accountable when she does really fucking shitty things on account of they're shitty! i don't care that she's a woman! it's like that meme of oh yay a woman democrat sent these missiles. oh yay a woman is massively damaging the planet and proudly dated a violent misogynistic racist, and faced minimum criticism for these things over and over because your only comeback is ‘well what about’ if a man did the same thing, etc, you refuse to just look at the situation we do have. yes we should. we should do that we should hold men accountable but you can also like not accept awful fucking behavior from your faves when you have a chance. do you think that’s helping feminism genuinely. use your voice use your power (your money) to like. do something for once. i cannot keep living in the taylor swift echo chamber.

and for the record. i like enjoyed taylor like back when i was a young girl and she had a few songs on the radio, and i honestly even had a moment where i used guys' opinions on her as a first step to navigate who i felt safe around in a very hypermasculine sexist college space. because yes. some people do need feminism 101 and some people's genuinely misogynistic rage will be demonstrated in their hatred of taylor and her success. but at some point we gotta move on from that. if some people will look at the most powerful woman in the world, who has enough money to stay away from them and an extremely massive loyal fanbase watching and supporting her every move - if some men take out their hatred on her, a powerful white woman, how do you think they view and treat women who are not white, thin, "conventionally"/eurocentrically attractive, or accessible to cis/het audiences?

anyway i hope that i can bring a conversation to the swiftieverse cause i honestly believe u guys could have comparable impact to like. bts stans. maybe. if you put your minds together for a good cause. and we don’t have to do the oppression olympics or whataboutisms or WHATEVER for forever. can we please move the conversation forward does anyone else feel insane with like where we’re at

on that note, i really do think now is the perfect moment for you to disrupt shit with your voices and demand better from her. it might not save the world, but it could make a huge difference in changing peoples' minds

okay um. thanks 👍

tldr i can’t do another year of swiftie discourse i just can’t please if there is a god out there help us