#not to say i dont have friends who care

[brainrotdotorg]

.

[runningwithscizzorz]

I feel a deep sense of anger and grief for Palestine. I’m angry at God, at the world powers donating to those who are killing civilians, angry at people looking away and encouraging you to worry about yourself when people can’t even walk down their streets without being attacked. I’m angry that my friend donated, only for it to be stolen and taken by the soldiers abusing Palestine. I’m angry that I can’t do much of anything but tell you to at least CARE about the people being bombed and slaughtered. Please, if you can’t do anything please just CARE about these people and listen to their stories. Hold them in your hearts at the very least. Don’t pretend they don’t exist or just brush it off as “its been going on for centuries, there’s no point in stopping it.” I want to do more, I want to make people care and love those who need it, rather than continue spreading anger and hate.

These are real people I’ve drawn. Keep the people of Palestine in your heart at the very least please.

[txttletale]

what does it mean when people say stuff like individual morality or action is incompatible with class analysis or class struggle?

alright so like one of the key ideas about class analysis is the idea that classes (as a whole) have economic interests that affect all their members but don't extrapolate out to an individual analysis.

for example, let's say that you can't find a job, and somebody offers to pay you below the table for below minimum wage. it's in your individual interest to do this--it beats having no job! but as a member of the working class, once this practice becomes normalized, suddenly the standards of pay for everyone are lower because people know that they can just pay less than minimum wage under the table. competition between workers for jobs drives wages down for everyone, leaving them all in a worse situation overall even if each individual choice to scab, to accept lower pay, to resist unionization, etc, leaves the person who makes it better off. cf. karl marx on what happens when wages and working conditions deteriorate:

The labourer seeks to maintain the total of his wages for a given time by performing more labour, either by working a great number of hours, or by accomplishing more in the same number of hours. Thus, urged on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous effects of division of labour. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he competes against himself as a member of the working class.

— Karl Marx, Wage Labour & Capital

similarly, any individual member of the working class is completely dispensable and replaceable by capital. if one person refuses to work unless they're paid a higher wage, they'll be fired and replaced with somebody who doesn't. the individual worker has no economic leverage whatsoever. but the working class has incredible economic leverage! and so does the intermediate stage between the working class and the individual--organized segments of the working class (e.g. trade unions) have economic leverage. if one person strikes, the capitalist can fire them. if 40,000 people strike, your industry is going to shut down.

so the reason why class analysis is compatible with individual action is that your incentives measurably change when you start organizing--it's in the interests of the individual to compete, but in the interests of the class to cooperate. and obviously you cannot just expect everyone to spontaneously coordinate! you, the individual, are disposable to capital! if you, personally, refuse to take the under-the-table offer, either on moral grounds or because you recognize your class interest, your neighbour's going to take it--unless you and her get together and agree that neither of you will take it. that's the only way that the guy making the offer is going to have to give in and offer the job for a living wage.

and this is what organization is--trade unions (although they have severe limitations!), communist parties, and other worker's organizations allow the working class to pursue their collective interest--which can only be pursued by collective action, because engaging in the strategies of collective action as an individual, without the cooperation of your peers, is high risk for no reward.

[phykoha]

me when big youtuber says that DID isn't real and something thats for "kids who watch too much tiktok who start to think they're anime characters in real life"

[andi-o-geyser]

Percy de Rolo and Keyleth of the Air Ashari my beloveds, my dearest companions, my comfort pair, nobody does it like them. They are the basis of what all friendships should be, they are the fucking blueprint, they show how meaningful profound affection in different forms other than romantic is, they are best friends, they are siblings, they are the platonic ideal of platonic ideals, they are soulmates, they have matching earrings, they are both massive nerds, they gift handmade jewellery to each other, they are the exact opposites, they are so similar, they are sunshine and shadow, they are nature and science, they are all the elements of the universe working together, they are creators, they are leaders afraid of their destinies, they care incredibly deeply about everybody around them, they are fuckups, they try to learn and grow, they argue, they fight, they hug and make up and never hold it against one another, they joke and drink and are always there for each other, they have died and been revived and brought each other back from the brink, they have met the gods themselves and still know that the connection between each other is worth more than divinity itself will ever be, they have fought monsters and titans and their greatest fears together and have come out the other side broken and battered but stronger for it, they are brother and sister, they are siblings-in-law, they are the epitome of chosen family on all possible levels, they will live through their lifetimes and legacies, they are love itself.

[nappingpaperclip]

“People who tell you not to vote Biden are psyops trying to steal left votes” type posts are pro-government propoganda.

Last time y’all spread that bullshit around the blogs getting deleted for being “Russian spies” were black leftists.

NOT EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH YOU IS A PSYOP. Get real!!

Not everyone who criticizes Biden or says they won’t be voting for a genocider and that you shouldn’t either wants you to vote for Trump or not vote!! Third party candidates exist!!! Write ins exist!!! If we actually organized instead of y’all pulling the “lesser evil” bs about a GENOCIDAL RACIST RAPIST OLD MAN we might actually see some fuckin progress!!

Did y’all forget Biden is a rapist?????

Btw is the “left” in the room with us? Where is the left? Where is the progress y’all keep claiming Biden is making?

Last time I checked Biden has not let those kids out of cages, has personally approved more huge pipelines that run through Indigenous lands and speed up climate change, has ex-BlackRock leaders (yknow, the top 10 climate change villains company who also funds most American private prisons as well as funding arms manufacturing companies, who spend millions lobbying politicians on environmental regulations, immigration and drug policy) in his cabinet, increased police and military budget, didn’t codify Roe v Wade, in fact he held it hostage for votes, hasn’t codified gay marriage or trans rights, hasn’t legalized marijuana, hasn’t raised the federal minimum wage, oh and also is DOING GENOCIDE in case y’all forgot or wanna tiptoe around the “some bad policies” y’all always talk about

Did y’all forget about his “nothing will fundamentally change” policy?

Y’all heard that and thought “left”?? Babes he’s a right leaning centrist AT BEST.

There are actually left candidates btw! Ones who care about things like Landback and reparations and free healthcare and education and sustainability! The ones y’all are telling people are throwaway votes/votes for Trump!! (Which isn’t even how the electoral college works btw)

So us telling y’all not to vote for a genocider makes us Russian psyop spies but y’all telling us not to vote for leftist third party candidates doesn’t? K.

Vote for who you want, I don’t give a fuck anymore, BUT DONT TELL HIM HE STILL HAS YOUR UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT WHILE HES COMMITTING GENOCIDE IF YOU ACTUALLY WANT HIM TO STOP

The only way to get a politician to stop doing WAR CRIMES is to tell them you won’t vote for them or give them money or otherwise support them until they stop!

You can fucking lie if you want!!! All we’re asking is for y’all not to publicly announce Genocide Joe still has your unconditional support WHILE HES DOING GENOCIDE

His approval ratings are literally less than Trumps!

He has no one to blame but himself.

If he loses in November, I don’t want to hear y’all bitch and moan and blame black people or disillusioned voters or third party voters or “Russian spies” again like y’all did in 2016, I don’t want to see y’all blame anyone but him, BLAME BIDEN FOR HIS OWN ACTIONS. HE IS A GROWN MAN AND HAS THE MONEY AND POWER TO STOP IT IF HE ACTUALLY WANTED TO.

Y’all keep saying he’s doing his best to stop it, that he’s working behind the scenes, that he’s trying, IF HES TRYING WHY ARE WE STILL SENDING ISRAEL MONEY?

IF HE IS TRYING, WHY DID HE SEND ISRAEL MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN SMALL PAYMENTS TO AVOID NOTIFYING CONGRESS?

IF HES TRYING WHY HAVE WE NOT SANCTIONED ISRAEL?

IF HES TRYING, WHY HAVE US SOLDIERS BEEN SEEN FIGHTING ALONGSIDE THE IDF?

IF HES TRYING WHY ARE WE SENDING EXPIRED MREs AS AID? EXPIRED FOOD DROPS THAT ARE NOT ENOUGH TO FEED MILLIONS OF STARVING PEOPLE, WITH FAULTY PARACHUTES THAT KILL CHILDREN?

IF HES TRYING, WHY DID WE BUILD A PORT CUTTING THE GAZA STRIP IN HALF, A PORT THAT NETANYAHU SAID WOULD BE USED TO DEPORT PALESTINIANS?

IF HES TRYING WHY DID HE SIGN OFF $14 BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS ON TOP OF THE ANNUAL CONTRACT AND SMALL SECRET PAYMENTS TO GO TOWARDS ISRAELS BOMBS AND GUNS AND FREE HEALTHCARE WHILE IGNORING THE PEOPLE HERE WHO NEED FOOD, HOUSES, AND HEALTHCARE???

DONT MAKE UP RUSSIAN SPIES TO POINT FINGERS AT! IF HE DOESNT WANT TO LOSE HE SHOULDNT DO GENOCIDE

IF GENOCIDE JOE LOSES THE ELECTION FUCKING BLAME HIM FOR DOING A GENOCIDE!!

[majorshatterandhare]

Them : “There’s no platonic explanation for Tim blowing up the moon when Bertie died.”

Me, a borderline aroace thinking about QPRs and FPs and idolization and the white hot rage felt when someone hurts my closest friend : “Y’all are cowards.”

[threepoint14art]

HAPPY BDAY FOX FNAFHS1!!!!

him and his sibling when they were litollll They were so cute it'd be a shame if as teenagers you didn't talk that much. who said that

[impostorsshow]

I'm actually so obsessed with him it's not even funny if i'm not listening to a TikTok or music directly related to him I can't focus free me free me

This is @/cherubpuppet's OC for a object show [au? pitch? wip show? How do I categorize this] and I've been destroyed by the fact that ruler art is infinitely superior [and 10x longer] and i don't have a good enough grasp on lip gloss's personality to make fanfiction so I am frozen in "want make fanart but fanart takes effort :["

[rxttenfish]

Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

[faaun]

procrastination is starting to have its consequences finally

[reigningmax]

What do you think about the Daniel thing?

That he's an idiot, rich, privileged man in an idiot, rich, privileged man sport where they are all the same. All of them. Each one has had his share of fucked up comments.

That being said, a lot of what was posted and said has become an attack on his fans, which feels extremely unfair. Just because people aren't publicly discussing something or aren't publicly going on a crusade against him, doesn't mean that those discussions aren't being had. I know for a fact that all the "big Daniel blogs" on here have chatted about it and think he's an idiot for it. And it is so so unfair to take a moral superiority take on this towards his fans.

But there have been things said that make it sound more or less like anyone who is his fan can't think for themselves, or that they're stupid, or bad women, or whatever the fuck along those lines cause they like him or buy his merch...no. They can enjoy him, call him out, and buy his merch. All of it can coexist. Just like how we Max fans have had to accept some things he has said. Just like how Charles fans have had to deal with him being a moron during covid.

[existencebringsonlypain]

my feelings with eating disorders are weird. and like, dieting in general. you should be able to do whatever you want with your body, but to see someone wasting away and even encouraging it in front of me while I'm too thin to be healthy to begin with... It's sad. you can do whatever you want, but I'm sorry you feel like you need to do this.

[sonknuxadow]

genuinely i dont think there needs to be a big extended sonic movie universe. i think 3 movies and a spinoff miniseries are enough. we do not need a bunch of sequels and spinoffs introducing all the characters and adapting every game . to be clear this wasnt prompted by any specific news i was just thinking about it

[send-up-my-heart-to-you]

sometimes i feel like i hate everyone

[chiimeramanticore]