#economic horror

[highshelfcollective]

🧟 TONIGHT, 8:30PM EST - It's the wrap up that you've all been waiting for - #RedMarkets : The Incidentals Post Zombie Apocalypse Post Mortem! 

It's been a long journey and now that the curtain is closing, WE'VE GOT SO MANY QUESTIONS! Come hang out with us on Twitch and get the real scoop on all the ends and outs of this mega-campaign! We're remembering the good times, the sad times and all that's in-between . . .

Follow us on #Twitch to know right when we go live: https://www.twitch.tv/highshelfcollective

[quixoticanarchy]

when my grandfather moved to the us after living through wwii in occupied norway he said the most striking thing he noticed here was the waste. the wastefulness, the sheer amount of excess stuff and the fever for consumption and how blasé people were as they threw it all away. and despite nominal awareness of the issue since then and and sometimes-counterproductive efforts to recycle, overconsumption trends have only gotten worse. trash, like any other ‘flow’ of materials, goods, etc, has gone global, and accumulates unevenly between where it is produced and where its burdens fall

which is a tangible, material disaster for the people living next to incinerators and landfills (in environmental justice communities of the imperial core; or abroad, in the poor countries where the rich ones dump their waste), and for the people doing the also-toxic and dangerous work extracting all the materials and making the things that are destined for the landfill, and it’s also a psychological and paradigmatic disaster for the overconsumers: to be so disconnected from where your stuff comes from and what it really costs, to expect endless cheap varieties of food and consumer goods from all over the world, to think no further than the instant gratification of next-day-delivered fast fashion orders or a new phone every year, to not realize that what you throw out never really goes away. the ‘western consumer lifestyle’, wherever it’s practiced, depends on and enforces the willful ignorance of its consequences and the disinclination to see other people and places as real. and while most waste is industrial, not just your personal household trash, the finished products you throw out have an industrial history too, and are tied to far more waste than you’ll ever personally see. which is to say not just ‘we shouldn’t buy so many things’ or ‘we shouldn’t send our trash to be dumped in other people’s countries’ - true, but also most of these things should never even be made

[gamenburger]

In

TAMMY DAYS

A review will be posted about a game... (also in zine format)

[gluttonoustouch]

i dont really get how visibility works on this site like if i just put every tag in the universe will it reach everyone it needs to? i will tag everything i know anything about for future reference and we can see how it goes

[phoenixyfriend]

AU ask: Satine Lives

send me an au and i’ll give you 5+ headcanons about it

I think she deserves a cool facial scar. As a treat.

Running with the Rebellion. She's too powerful a symbol to be allowed to take her seat as Duchess back, especially if she decides to work with Bo-Katan; pacifism may be incredibly important to her, but there is a limit to how far you can push someone before they engage in self-defense, and even as ardent a pacifist as Satine will rally her people to survive the Empire. With her and Bo working together, they can do a lot... and that's why the Empire will absolutely not allow either of them to become leader of Mandalore again. (So it goes to Korkie, who the Empire believes is little more than a puppet. They think they know about his little violations of the law, and so they miss the big ones, like smuggling force-sensitive children and O66-survivors away from the Empire.)

She doesn't know Obi-Wan is alive, because Bail forgot to get permission to tell her, until 10 years post-RotS... when Bail invites her to greet "Ben" and Leia on their return to safety on Alderaan. She promises to visit him, if there's a chance.

(She doesn't. Instead, he visits her. Satine is far more likely to be tracked to Tatooine than he is, after all.)

She still doesn't pick up a blaster, though; canon gives us some pretty solid evidence for her PTSD preventing her from being any use at it. However, she's very convincing and is very good at getting on-the-fence politicians on the Rebellion's side... and donating credits, rations, and transports to the cause. (Some even donate weapons. She... tries to ignore that part. She lets it happen, but... it hurts.)

[pasdetrois]

Anxiety is fuelled by the ease with which walls and fences can be crossed. No one, in their expensive apartments or, even, in secure psychiatric units, seems to be safe. The ‘“gothic” rapport between persons and places’ has turned into a ‘pervasion’ of all symbolic and social spaces by terror and horror (Seltzer, 1995: 145): no longer is the rapport localised in a house or castle; it extends across all social and subjective relations. A Gothic tone spreads to the most unexpected areas, the well-lit and luxurious bathrooms of white yuppie apartments being the most unlikely in the film.

The gothicisation of the most banal and apparently innocuous social spaces remains tied to the circulation of anxiety and fear in a consumer society so that even the acceptable and mundane enclaves of middle-class life, the suburbs, resort to Gothic patterns. Kim Michasiw argues that the ‘gated community’ resuscitates a gothic mood in ‘disneyfied’ terms: the community itself becomes ‘the avatar of the threatened maiden’ (Michasiw, 248). Significantly, the image reduces a community to a single threatened body. In this model, the gated community both condenses all threatening features in a single egotistical individual and, at the same time, recognises that such a model has expanded to cover the evacuated terrain once called ‘society’. The imaginary, once a model of subjective development and symbolic integration, substitutes itself for all social relations.

In Lacan, identity is an effect of identification, the inverted image of the body in the mirror being recognised as oneself: the reflection of bodily integrity allows for the projection of psychological unity and, in turn, the assumption of social identity. An effect, then, of external appearance that unifies corporeal fragmentation, the image in the mirror, is translated in dreams in the form of fortified buildings. As it is opened up and expanded to cover all social relations, this version of the imaginary is simultaneously more exposed and in greater and constant need of protection and fortification against the forces that would dissipate its integrity. Imaginary boundaries, however, remain hard to police: look into the mirror and utter his name five times. Candyman … Candyman … Candyman … Candyman …

Fred Botting, Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic Candyman (1992) dir. Bernard Rose

[diaryofaphilosopher]

But the monster also makes us realize that in an unequal society they are not equal. Not because they belong to different ‘races’ but because inequality really does score itself into one’s skin, one’s eyes and one’s body. And more so, evidently, in the case of the first industrial workers: the monster is disfigured not only because Frankenstein wants him to be like that, but also because this was how things actually were in the first decades of the industrial revolution. In him, the metaphors of the critics of civil society become real. The monster incarnates the dialectic of estranged labour described by the young Marx: ‘the more his product is shaped, the more misshapen the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous the worker; the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker; the more intelligent the work, the duller the worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature… . It is true that labour produces … palaces, but hovels for the worker… . It produces intelligence, but it produces idiocy and cretinism for the worker.’ Frankenstein’s invention is thus a pregnant metaphor of the process of capitalist production, which forms by deforming, civilizes by barbarizing, enriches by impoverishing – a two-sided process in which each affirmation entails a negation. And indeed the monster – the pedestal on which Frankenstein erects his anguished greatness – is always described by negation: man is well proportioned, the monster is not; man is beautiful, the monster ugly; man is good, the monster evil. The monster is man turned upside-down, negated.

— Franco Moretti, "The Dialectic of Fear."

Follow Diary of a Philosopher for more quotes!

[willknightauthor]

Wraith: The Best Game That Never Was

It occurred to me that even among RPG nerds Wraith is more obscure, and that makes me sad. Like people know it existed, but even at the time it was an also-ran. Among insiders at White Wolf it was a darling, but it never took off, so they stopped its line half way through. Even in high school I had to buy the books used online.

Wraith is one of the most original and compelling approaches to the afterlife I've seen in any medium, but especially in an RPG. In many games ghosts feature as NPCs, but rarely do you get to play as them, and even more rarely in an interesting way that centers the subjective experience of being dead.

The first thing that grabbed me was the art, all faded gray-scale, scratchy, often grotesque and surreal. The cover is striking: stark gray bound in chains. All far bleaker and genuinely scarier than anything else put out by White Wolf. Turns out the art matched the vibe of the setting very well, because the ultimate conceit of Wraith is that if the living knew what the afterlife is really like, we'd all be even more terrified to die.

Wraiths are a violation of the laws of nature. Biological life is already an improbable struggle against entropy, but the continued existence of consciousness after death? An absolute affront to the universe. Reality wants you gone, but you can't be killed. That contradiction manifests as Oblivion: non-existence as a visible, active force; the Freudian death drive become physics. And it goes all the way down into your very thoughts.

The afterlife is a world of ideals, not materials. Your well-integrated mind shatters into pieces when you die, and your "physical" form is a manifestation of it. Your Jungian shadow-self, once an unconscious and abstract thing, becomes a real, tangible person living inside you. All your vices, your self-loathing, your misanthropy, your death drive, become a voice in your ear: your best friend and worst enemy, helping and tricking you, constantly trying to gain control.

But you can't be killed. You're already dead. Instead of death, you just decay, further and further towards becoming your shadow. Eventually all that's left is a nightmare of who you used to be, existing only to torment others and drag them down together into nothingness. The world is full of these monsters, the things that go bump in the night and terrify both the living and the dead.

But that's literally the tip of the iceberg. The thin layer of shadow reality is nothing compared to the much larger expanse of the Tempest: a cosmic plane of dream and nightmare, right on the edge of Oblivion. The deep underworld is Lovecraftian Mad Max: an infinite shifting desert of eternal night filled with screaming storms, incomprehensible monsters, and forbidden knowledge. Pockmarking it are islands of stability upon which societies are built--dysfunctional city-states desperately attempting to project power into a world constantly trying to swallow them.

However, if no-one can die, then every awful political trend and tyrant remains forever. And they all have a huge head start on you establishing political power. Their society is a veneer of modern industrial capitalism, layered on top of mercantile guilds, layered on top of feudal lords, layered on top of a Roman imperial bureaucracy, all built on the back of one ancient wraith: the ferryman Charon.

But the Emperor has been missing for a long time, and the bureaucracy is so massive and old that it's rotting in on itself. Who knows how many are secretly succumbing to their own shadows? Their attempts to rule the rest of the underworld are always tenuous, like the last days of Roman Britain. It's a world eternally mid-apocalypse.

The problem with a world of thought and feeling is: how do you make things? What do you make them with? Sometimes the ghosts of physical objects make their way through, and they're mined like whale fall. Undoubtedly the Twin Towers were a huge boon to the dead, probably the site of an entire city.

But it's not enough. Wraiths are still people. They want clothing, and furniture, and buildings, and machines, and tools, and money. Where does all that come from? The only thing left that wraiths can touch: other people. Wraith society is built on a form of slavery more exploitative and horrifying than anything that's ever existed among the living. Slaves are valued not for their labor primarily, but for their use as raw materials.

The vulnerable newly dead are captured, dragged back to the capital, and molded in workshops and factories into goods for the upper classes. They claim it wipes out consciousness, and thus the finished product isn't suffering. If anything it's a mercy! To release them from the torment of the afterlife! And prevent them from becoming monsters! But when it's quiet, if you listen closely, some report you can hear it all whispering.

The bleak alienness of this afterlife to any human religion breaks the minds of many when they first realize they're dead. Some go into denial. Some reject their old religion. Some invent new religious explanations. And some try to twist their old beliefs into a shape that conforms.

The underworld is full of cults. Cults promising escape from the underworld. Cults claiming they know where heaven and hell are. (At best just projections of the collective beliefs of the living into the underworld.) Cults who claim they're building heaven and hell themselves. (These sorts of "afterlife lands" sometimes become tourist attractions.) But Oblivion is Oblivion. If you could describe its structure logically you would be contradicting its very essence. There is only decay.

Most people don't go to the shadowlands when they die. Where do they go? No-one knows. What happens when you're swallowed by Oblivion? No-one knows. Is there a God? No-one knows.

Just like when you were alive, you don't know what comes next, or why you're here. It's not real death, it's something in between. But maybe real death is just nothingness. Better not to risk it, then... even if that means clinging to the sands of Hell under the yoke of an eternal slave-aristocracy.

Maybe if you can figure out why you're here, you'll find a way out.

[coronangelic1]

thankful of not being from the usa scared shitless of the fact that if something goes wrong over there it will fuck other countries (including mine)

[cryingpariah]

I'm pouring one out for Jackie having to go down to packed shopping centers in the freezing cold to report on the Christmas shopping season. Probably on multiple islands.

Morgans gave her a list of things to pick up at the mall on one of these outings and she nearly tied it around his beak

The holiday work season definitely takes the fun out of the actual celebration for her. She does so much work and some random fictional MAN gets all the glory? It burns her up on the inside!

Sure in front of customers and the like she can put on a gleeful expression but boy howdy the second she finds herself back on the ship, absolutely no one is spared from her Christmas rants!

The winds are harsh and unforgiving and find all the cracks in her jacket and gloves no matter the quality or cut, Christmas carollers keep trying to drag her into their songs, and if someone calls her Santa's Little Helper one more time!

Morgans in particular gets the brunt of it (because he’s the one making her do this in the first place) and he honestly find her fury hilarious! Jackie's not an angry person by nature, easily annoyed sure but angry? Only Old Saint Nick can bring out this side of her!

[wangxianficrecs]

the field meets the wood by astronicht

the field meets the wood

by astronicht

T, 7k, wangxian

Summary: Wei Wuxian is a dark shadow in the barley. Wei Wuxian is sorry for the kind of compassion that he is about to hand out. (in which Lan Wangji is stolen for salt, and Wei Wuxian unravels the world, a little)

Mojo's comments: Whoa. lwj is kidnapped after being struck with a wasting curse, and wwx goes yiling laozu on the salt merchants who took and hurt him. He's hurt and dripping blood the whole time, yet still manages to have a philosophical discussion about the universe and meaning of nothing before laying down a metaphysical retribution that nearly kills him. It's delicious. The writing is simply beautiful, which is a funny thing to say about a story that evokes such visceral horror.

Excerpt: “Correctly done, your ritual probably would not kill a cultivator,” Wei Wuxian allows. His voice is very cold, very academic. He sounds like Wen Qing, as well he should. He cut his teeth in the finer depths of demonic cultivation first at his shijie’s kitchen table after the war, then at Wen Qing’s elbow. He feels like a creation of the dead women he has known — Madam Yu, shijie, Wen Qing, all of their aborted scorn, their recalled injuries, the way even shijie’s eyes could sometimes look like two dry river stones. Lan Wangji, there on the floor, once had a mother who was kept locked away. Perhaps her qi was bound with a curse like this one; perhaps Lan Wangji has been used before now as a different sort of hostage. Wei Wuxian will try to do right by her. Wei Wuxian would have wanted her as a mother-in-law even if she were as formidable as Madam Yu.

bamf wei wuxian, slight whump, ritualistic self-harm, canon era, tang dynasty style, blood loss, blood and injury, salt economics, post-canon, podfic available, horror, pov wei wuxian, kidnapped lan wangji, established relationship, yiling laozu wei wuxian, curses, happy ending

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

[highshelfcollective]

🥲 Remembering the good times . . .

With our Red Markets campaign coming to an end, we can't forget an HSC favorite NPC - Clammy Pammy. Catch full VODs of Red Markets on our YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW2YGZCblxbf18OhbxDjvyBMBNrTUlWOH

[cipheramnesia]

I saw your tag on the US policy contributing to Israel, which I know about, but what is the thing about Christianity needing Israel full of Jews to bring about the apocalypse?

So it's long and complicated historically, but you can read a little here in the Christian Zionism Wikipedia entry.

But in brief: "Some Christian Zionists believe that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus. The idea has been common in Protestant circles since the Reformation that Christians should actively support a Jewish return to the Land of Israel, along with the parallel idea that the Jews ought to be encouraged to become Christians as a means of fulfilling biblical prophecy."

So, y'know antisemitic in the same general arena as messianic jews, where the Jewish people are like dehumanized into a sort of lever that exists only to allow the xian prophet to return, have all the bad nonxian Others (includes anyone queer, non-white, disabled, etc etc) conveniently handwaved into extinction and they live in literal paradise forever. A bunch of those guys are part of the US government and have been for decades.

[divinekangaroo]

I’m reading the scripts for Yes Minister for attempted political inspiration and can’t stop imagining the culture shock of Tommy’s first few months in office.

[curiosity-killed]

so it turns out i have more thoughts on fashion in TCP than anticipated (...surprise) and this is really only a small glimpse into norms in one city orz

[bitchesgetriches]

5 Horror Movies About Money to Terrify You This Spooktober

You may not know this about us, but we Bitches are high-key obsessed with scary movies. If we’re hanging out together, odds are high we’ll throw on something with ghosts, ghouls, werewolves, or axe-wielding serial killers. There are three main reasons this genre appeals to us:

Horror movies are creative. They often have tiny budgets, which forces filmmakers to work with what they have and hone in on what matters. Many household names got their start in the proving grounds of horror. It’s a chance to see fascinating examples of undiscovered genius.

Horror movies expose uncomfortable truths about life and society. All great spooky films are about something real. The surface-level scares of a zombie horde are symbolically linked to our deepest anxieties about other people. The vampire is the unknown outsider; the werewolf the uncontrollable id. The horror genre boldly leaps into subjects where comedies and dramas fear to tread.

Adrenaline is a helluva drug. We’re too old to know where to get good drugs. We have to make them the old fashioned way: by abusing our endocrine systems. With art!

And really, isn’t that what’s interesting about money, too? Our ~*whole deal*~ is trying to make the best, most values-aligned decisions we can with limited funds. This article is extremely on-brand and aligned with our core mission. DO NOT try to tell us otherwise!

Keep reading.

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