#stagnation if

[stagnation-if]

You blink languidly, and all you see is light. When you fell asleep, that information evades your mind. All you see is light and whiteness, and you don’t know where you are, or what you’re supposed to do. You remember a long dream, fields of daffodils and dewy meadows, and a voice deep and haunting like a nightmare.

The Deity of Dreams has awoken.

It's the year 2524, and you're a defeated God/Goddess/Deity in a place and time where your kind is rarely needed anymore. After being locked away and thought to be dead for nearly a millennia, you wake up.

Features

Customize your God/Goddess/Deity of dreams.

Retrieve (or not) your now metaphorical throne, stolen by your killer, the God of War and Discord.

Explore and survive in a futuristic and very posthuman world. A world so much different from the one you were pried from.

Blend among mortals, pretend to be one of them— whether you embrace that side of you or not is up to you.

Get your power back after a thousand years of slumber.

Romance or befriend a cast of six characters.

Poly options: Dawn/Bruno, Eris/Dawn, A/Seth, Bruno/Seth.

Characters

Dawn (she/her) • THE REBEL

A rebel and a hacker. Possibly the sole reason you’re awake today, too. She hates deities but seems desperate to get rid of the God of War, even if that involves working with you.

Bruno Lee (he/him) • THE HISTORIAN

Bruno may call himself a historian, a curious old soul in search of unveiling the secrets of the past. But given the fact that he's the only other being locked away with you, there must be more to him.

Vex (they/them) • THE CYBORG

Vex—who also goes by V—is a law enforcer who seems to be more metal than flesh. They represent the crude reality that time has moved on without you. Though V claims they're loyal to their God of War, they've been roped along to help their little sister Dawn.

Amara/Aiden/Asher Moonless (she/her he/him or they/them) • THE LOST ONE

Your memory fades and wavers but you remember A (how could you not). You know they're not the same person you were oh so close to so many centuries ago, but their similarities are eerily noticeable.

Estelle ‘Eris’ Lawrence (she/her) • THE CELEBRITY

Also known as The Voice, Eris is an actress, singer and model. She's every teenager’s daydream, the vivid representation of rags to riches. And, according to Dawn, a valuable ally to have by your side.

Seth (he/him) • THE GOD OF WAR

Your killer and enemy. You knew him once, or so you thought. All that your relationship with him got you was a sword through your chest.

DEMO

[buttercuparry]

Tumblr is more about reblogging social justice posts than anything. Everyone gets to have their moment of tongue clucking at the newest antics the racists on this website put up, and that's it. Let me tell you something; your continued attention on fundraisering posts would do more good to those these racist Zionists are trying to harass, than you reblogging the hundredth post about them threatening to snitch to the FBI.

Today is Thursday and Siraj Abudayeh still hasn't reached 50k. He escaped death yesterday, and today he had to risk his life again to get a hotspot connection- all so that he may continue to campaign...Him reaching his end goal of 82k, would help him better than you picking a fight with Zionists on tumblr. Please he is stuck at $49636 CAD.

I BEG YOU TO BOOST AND DONATE AND GET SIRAJ AT LEAST TO 50K.

(Vetting at 219)

[skellyjingles]

the gap

[sushiisiu]

thisis so fuckin embarrassing but the spirit of jayvik just wormed its way back into me after i realize how close arcane s2 is

[zondearts]

Wxs, the sillies, the goofies, the goobers

wxsloids below cut

[stil-lindigo]

ARTISTS FOR PALESTINE 🇵🇸 - ROUND 2!! On the 16th and 23rd of March, I'll be doing art requests on stream with other notable artists to raise money for Operation Olive Branch and Project Watermelon.

This round's roster is very lucky to include notable webcomic artists like explodikid, Graveweaver, Curryuku and Speremint who respectively create Covenant, I'm The Grim Reaper, Not So Shoujo Love Story and Brimstone and Roses on WEBTOON. We also have Onstamonsta, an artist, streamer and Kiryu fan who Drawfee fans might recognise and the exceptionally talented Jessie Lam!

Last fundraising event was a great success, and I hope some of you might show up for this next round of streams. All money will be donated directly to Palestinian escape funds as the situation of Rafah is becoming exponentially worse (and if you'd like to donate directly, here's a link to a spreadsheet of over 750!)

As always, these fundraisers will always be available to watch over on my twitch channel. Thank you all and free Palestine!

[fairsweetlonging]

just thinking about how binghe had no idea that without-a-cure even had a cure and he spent all his years as a disciple thinking his shizun would at best be disabled for the rest of his life and at worst die a slow and painful death, and it was to save him.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The housing crisis considered as an income crisis

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

A paradox: in 1970, everyday Americans found it relatively easy to afford a house, and the average American house cost 5.9x the average American income. In 2024, Americans find it nearly impossible to afford a house, and the average American house costs…5.9x the average American income.

Feels like a puzzler, right? Can it really be true that the average American house is as affordable to the average American earner as it was in 1970? It is true, as you can see from Blair Fix's latest open access research report, "The American Housing Crisis: A Theft, Not a Shortage":

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/10/23/the-american-housing-crisis-a-theft-not-a-shortage/

Fix also points out that is even more true of rents than it is of house prices. The ratio of rent to average income has actually fallen slightly since 1970. Rents are also, in some mathematical sense, "affordable."

Now, those of you who are well-versed in statistical card-palming will likely have a pretty good idea of the statistical artifact at the root of this paradox: the word "average." If you remember your seventh grade math, you'll recall that "average" has more than one meaning. Sure, there's the most common one: add several values together, then divide the total by the number of values you added. For example, a nonzero number of people have one or zero arms, so the average human has slightly fewer than two arms.

That average is called the "mean." The mean US wage is pretty robust: $73,242/year:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A792RC0Q052SBEA/1000

But the majority of Americans are not earning anything like $73k/year. Since the Reagan years, the number of Americans living in poverty and extreme poverty has climbed and climbed. And while their declining income sure drags down that average, it's dragged way, way, way up by another group of Americans – the ultra-rich.

You see, as Fix writes, back in the Reagan years, America initiated an experiment in redistribution. Reagan enacted policies that moved most of the nation's wealth from the great majority of working people to a tiny minority of people who ended up owning pretty much everything. Throw their income into the mix, and the average American's income is sufficient to finance the average American home, with plenty to spare.

In other words, this isn't an "average human has fewer than two arms" situation, it's more like a "Spiders Georg" situation. Spiders Georg is a Tumblr meme about a guy who eats 10,000 spiders every day and is thus single-handedly responsible for the (false) statistic that the average human eats two spiders a week:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiders_Georg

The American rich – Reagan's progeny – are the Spiders Georg of house prices. By hoarding the great mass of American national wealth, they create a statistical mirage of affordable housing.

Now, that's interesting, but where Fix goes next with this is even more fascinating. If the average price of housing (relative to average income) has stayed fixed since 1970, then it follows that the price of housing isn't being driven up by a problem with supply. Rather, these numbers suggest that America has enough housing, it's just that (most) Americans don't have enough money.

If that's true – and I have a couple of quibbles, which I'll get to in a sec – then the most common prescription for solving American housing (building more of it) is somewhat beside the point. For Fix, using public funds to subsidize cheaper housing is like using public funds to pay for food stamps for working people whose wages are too low to keep them from starving. Sure, we should do that: no one should be without a home and no one should be hungry. But if working people can't afford shelter and food, then we have a wage problem, not a supply problem.

Fix – as ever – has a well-thought through, painstakingly documented "sources and methods" page to back up his conclusions:

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/10/23/the-american-housing-crisis-a-theft-not-a-shortage/#sources-and-methods

And while Fix acknowledges that reversing the mass transfer of wealth from working people to their bosses (and their bosses' idle offspring) is a big lift, he rightly wants to keep the question of wages (rather than housing supply) front and center in our debate about why so many of us are finding it hard to keep a a roof over our heads. We need progressive taxation, higher minimum wages, protection from medical and education debt, and hell, why not a job guarantee?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/25/canada-reads/#tcherneva

I love Fix's work, and this report is no exception. He does it all in his spare time. Some nice progressive think tank should give him a grant so he can do (a lot) more of it.

That all said, I do have a quibble with his conclusion about the adequacy of the American housing supply. In California, we have a shortage of 3-4 million homes, a number arrived at through the relatively robust method of adding up the number of California families that would like to have their own homes and subtracting the number of homes available near those families:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage

How to explain the discrepancy? One possibility is that the price of housing is artificially low, because more than 181,000 people are homeless here. Hundreds of thousands of more people are living in overcrowded housing, with multiple families inhabiting spaces intended for just one (or even a single person). If all of those people were competing for housing, the price might rise even higher.

Think of the people who have given up looking for work – because they're not in the workforce, wages go up. If they were competing in the labor market, wages would fall. Maybe all those people would prefer to have a job, but they're missing from the statistics.

That's one theory. Another is that we're getting tripped up on averages again here. California does have some towns with many vacancies, extra supply that is pushing down prices; it's also got many places with far more people who want to live there than there are homes for. It's possible that there's enough supply on average across the states, but – as we've seen – averages are deceptive.

Ultimately, I think both things can be true: we have a wage problem and we have (many, localized) supply problems. Both of these problems deserve our attention, and neither is acceptable in a civilized society.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/24/i-dream-of-gini/#mean-ole-mr-median

[chalkrub]

svanhildr my beloved returns

[dyspunktional-leviathan]

Gazan fundraisers I’ve found while looking for info on another fundraiser. Most of them are very badly stagnating.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/37i128z6u0 — €43,249 out of €109,5K; last donation was 15 days ago

https://www.gofundme.com/f/amal-family-evacuation-from-gaza-fund — $15,089 USD out of $40,000 USD; last donation was 5 days ago, only two donations in 10 days

https://www.gofundme.com/f/nspxr-help-my-dad — €884 out of €20,000; last donation was two days ago

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-remas-yazans-family-in-gaza — $8,167 USD out of $30,000; last donation was 9 hours (as of writing) ago.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-remas-and-her-baby-survive-gaza-crisis — $2,834 USD out of $15,000 USD

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-reimas-and-tulanes-family-escape-war — $2,975 USD out of $55,000 USD; last donation was 22 days ago.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-reunite-remas-and-lina-with-their-ailing-mother — $1,314 USD out of $14,000 USD; last donation was 15 days ago.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/reemas-with-medical-bills-food-tent — $4,597 USD out of $7,5K USD; no donations for four months.

And the one I was looking info for is https://www.tumblr.com/remasalimarouf/767581797869551616 (€110 out of €70,000, no donations for a month). Reverse image search would not be reliable for it, because the photos are cropped. It's especially clear with one that is both in the gfm's header and the gfm itself, both have areas that are cropped out on the other. There has been an instance of a proven impersonator campaign that had cropped images to evade RIS.

Photos in the campaign number 5 here also seem to be cropped to me, but I am not as certain about that.

If anyone has any info on any of these campaigns, it would be very greatly appreciated.

Tags for reach under the cut

@selkiebrides @streakoflavender @keepinitwrd

@bloodandgutsyippee @wherethatoldtraingoes2

@butchniqabi @appsa @frigidwife

@vetted-gaza-funds @gazagfmboost @heliopixels

@neechees @beserkerjewel @brutaliakhoa

@deepspaceboytoy @kibumkim @rhubarbspring

@lesbiansagainsttheatre @malcriada @applejupiter

@sxpph0 @rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world @neptunerings

@dykesbat @halalgirlmeg @userpeggycarter

@brokenbackmountain @minosbull @magnus-rhymes-with-swagness-blog

@buttercuparry @captainsaltymuyfancy @timetravellingkitty

@socalgal @xinakwans @kahin

@arsonistbunny @cloudster-clown @cosmos-hime

@diddykong-racer @teaviary @typhra

@daxdraggon @skittybot @lesbiannova

@fleshdyk3 @irangp @bitegore

@lesbianmaxevans @frustrated-froglet @c-u-c-koo-4-40k

@1stuffedtiger @boosting-donations @politicalblade

@its-feminism-not-terfism @rainy-fog @officialpenisenvy

@opencommunion @pannaginip @postanagramgenerator

@redbuddi @retvolution @riding-with-the-wild-hunt

@sar-soor @sawasawako @sayruq

@shartreuse1312 @sissa-arrows @sivavakkiyar

@sliceofdyke @soon-palestine @stuckinapril

@t4tails @tadpoledyke @tamamita

@thatdiabolicalfeminist @think-queer @timetravellingkitty

@timogsilangan @trans-girl-nausicaa @transingthebourgeoisie

@transjjester @turian @ubernegro

@vague-humanoid @vakarians-babe @victoriawhimsey

@womenintheirwebs @yurischolar @2spirit-0spoons

[bluedelliquanti]

I did some drawings for ShortBox Comics Fair reads that I really enjoyed, including:

Stagnation Seed by Bennizone

Irene's Reverie by Bolzemo

The Solar System by Seosamh Dáire

[stagnation-if]

PROLOGUE Part 1 release!

Word count: 13k

It's time to wake up, Deity of dreams.

DEMO

[sage-nebula]

She still doesn't get it. She just doesn't get it!

Vi. Sweetheart. Bruiser with a head as thick as her fists. Your sister is not "gone." Your sister grew up. And, as all people do when they grow up, she changed. This is something she told you when you first reunited with her:

"Things changed when you left. I changed."

Of course, you dismissed her, saying she just did what she had to in order to survive. Which, yes, but also no. Six years passed between when you were taken from her and when you saw her next, and those were her formative years. Formative, meaning forming who she is as a person, a growing and grown person, because time moves ever forward and no one stays a little girl forever.

Now, does this mean you have to like the person your sister changed into? No. Certainly, your sister doesn't like you putting on an enforcer uniform to help oppress the people of Zaun so you can live a cushy life in Piltover with your new girlfriend. But she still IS your sister. Yes, she changed her name to one that lets her reclaim something traumatic from her past. Yes, she's decided to fully move on and look toward the future now. But her past is still part of her. She doesn't have dissociative identity disorder. "Powder" and "Jinx" were never two separate people. She's the same person, and always has been. She was only ever torn between trying to go back to her past life with you, or accepting her present and future — and she has chosen the latter.

But she is still, and always will be, your sister. Something she knows ("Finally got the name right, sister"), even if you, for some reason, have a very hard time understanding this very simple concept.

Get it together.

[nonasbirthday]

If you were going to make a character that was the soul of planet earth in a human body you might think to make her motherly. Wise. Forgiving. Mother Earth cares for us, she provides, right? But Tamsyn Muir wrote Nona the Ninth and said YES planet earth is loving but also she is SO SO ANGRY and HURTING. And actually she cannot care for others right now she needs to be cared FOR.

Also she wants to eat pencils and she thinks flowers are sexy.

[awzominator]

ICK and Mikey!!!!! 🧡💖

I’ll link the og meme once I refind it

[sleepsucks]