#stupid capitalist hellscape

[ilonacho]

i miss having time for fandom😔

[sucha-coolcat]

you know you’re in a capitalist hellscape when people come to your desk and tells you you should be grateful you have a window

[beinghymen]

"Money can't buy happiness" OK perhaps but it can for SURE buy all the shit you need to complete the bottom two tiers of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs so

[inuleeli]

So lately I’ve been going through & cataloging everything in my closet. I know I have Waaaaay too much stuff but having it actually put into numbers is really eye opening.

Why do I have 140+ items (with still more to go)? Did I really need 37 tops? How did it get to this point?

I want to be more mindful of what I buy in the future. Having an actual curated closet instead of piles of fabric, monuments to my poor impulse control.

But still the voice of mindless consumption is whispering in my head.

Your closet would be better if you got another pair of jeans! Look, you only have black tee shirts, you should get a few more in a different color!

The dragon of fashion demanding more for its hoard.

[tweedfrog]

That post reminds me of the time I went to a cardiologist because covid fucked up my body and i had to turn down a prestigious internship because I couldn't function and i obviosly started crying cause i was sad and the cardiologist suggested that my emotions were the actual cause of my problem and made my lose my internship....the sadness that had started AFTER i lost my internship....

Like at this point give me an AI doctor at least it understands basic concepts like the progression of time

[theriversarebroken]

It’s crazy what taking your vitamins, drinking water, going outside, having a (semi) decent sleep schedule, and following your creative pursuits will do for you

[theimaginatrix27]

Reblogging specifically because Spotify Wrapped is exclusive to mobile and I'm super mad about it.

But also I would like my PC and everything on it to be spyware-free thanks.

I use Windows because I'm used to it but I don't want this spyware/AI bullshit doing stuff to my system and tracking what I do. I just wanna live. And be able to access features of things I was more than capable of accessing a year ago before they broke something that was working.

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

[ilovelickingrocks]

the depression is hitting super hard out of nowhere today

[squircatlies]

You know what? Fuck you.

Abandon all misery ye who enter here.

Sunshine and rainbows motherfucker.

*blasts you with my "have a good day" beam*

[cure-icy-writes]

i think the reason i like the murderbot diaries so much is because the dystopia feels very real and relevant in a way that no other "oppressive government fearmongering" has, and because murderbot is such a compelling protagonist.

this is an autistic person who is struggling and angry and terrible at having emotions. it lives in a capitalist hellscape where people are disposable. it's traumatized as hell, but it's easier to consider itself disposable than confront the terrifying reality of personhood.

(it confronts the terrifying reality of personhood.)

it likes escaping into fiction. it has a fucked up relationship with pain and its own body. and it reads so strongly as disability coding to me, how it doesn't see the bullets or the chunks missing as horror but merely annoyance. it's fundamentally different from those around it, in ways that they struggle to understand. (they make a distinct effort to understand.)

this is an autistic person who is not like you, who suffered in ways that you cannot understand, in ways that would horrify you. this is just another tuesday.

this world is not kind. there is legal fine text that destroys lives and there is hereditary indenture and contract labor where you're forced to still pay for preventative medical care out of your paycheck and no one says slavery, but everyone knows what it means.

these people are kind. they will watch your favorite shows to help understand you, they will forge documents to give abandoned people their freedom, they will allow you to be near them because they like you. these people are proof that there's love in the world, and you can come out of your shell if you are ready to see yourself as a person.

science fiction is one of the genres that has the potential to be amazing, but is quite often just plain shitty to disabled people. and, to people in general? "oooooo look how scary it is, people have all their basic needs fulfilled by technology!" when technological advances are what gave housewives the time they needed to actually get jobs and put together the feminist movements, when this new technology that the narrative regards with such disdain could provide disabled people with newfound mobility and independence.

it speaks of a truly dismal view of humanity, the belief that without strict labor under capitalism to keep us all in line, we would just fall prey to our vices. and I think it also speaks to a loathing of one's self, to think that humans are not capable of self regulation, to think that pain and suffering and punishment are somehow moral and virtuous. that humans need to be punished constantly, that suffering will bring them closer to something like god, to something like goodness.

but murderbot doesn't do that. murderbot says, "i have seen humans do horrible awful stupid things. they can't be trusted with weapons or security and they shoot me all the time and it sucks. but they make stories and art. the people in the entertainment media gave me the tools to contextualize my own emotions. they are my coworkers. i don't care about them. i got shot in the back protecting them but i didn't care about them. okay fine maybe i care a little. they're annoying. i'll eviscerate anyone who hurts them. they're mine."

[thedandeliongarden]

Spoilers:

I had to translate from morse code to binary to text to try and get my rick roll, but it was fucking ruined by an advert. You really can’t just rick roll people like you could before. (The twist is that it’s a cover version)

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I see.....

[phonoix]

I'm so tired, I'm so so tired.

Watching TV shows has become the most tiring thing in this dystopian, late-stage capitalistic hellscape.

It doesn't matter how much we love those shows, how much we talk about them, how much we promote it online. Big streaming services will just cancel them on a Friday night and then let them slowly fall into oblivion. If by SOME MIRACLE the show doesn't get cancelled after the first season, it'll just decline over the years, some crazy writer will cook up a poorly written plot, or they'll just lose interest in the project and then leave the fans in the trenches.

Big corporate streaming services just think that views are gonna materialize out of thin air??? They barely promote their new shows and they DEMAND high views just to let them keep going? It's THEIR JOB to promote shows, but obviously they couldn't care less, they only care about money, and they leave the promoting job to the fans which is batshit insane if you ask me.

Streaming services were supposed to be the solution, the chosen one if you will, but they turned out to be the villains.

Owning a movie or a show is now absolutely impossible because God forbid they release DVDs anymore. Streaming services will just randomly DELETE their cancelled shows and movies from their platforms. Fans are now supposed to be PR teams for Netflix, HBO, Prime and whatever other stupid streaming apps out there because they couldn't be bothered to,,, idk,,, do their job and promote their own shows!? They're literally acting like villains.

It feels dystopic really.

I know I probably sound like a person yelling at a cloud but it's starting to become exhausting.

And I know that there are far worse things out there, that there are more important matters to focus on, but I'm so tired.

They're killing art. There are so many people out there that put all their love and all their passion and skills into creating amazing shows that SO MANY other people love and they feel represented by, but they don't care.

This is literally my last straw.

They're killing art with their greed.

[open-sketchbook]

... okay that post going around about the wind rises is fucking killing me. no, the movie doesn't go to nazi germany to admire nazi engineering. the movie goes to nazi germany, portrayed as a nightmare where the gestapo chases people through the streets, a nightmare the myopic main characters are blind to because they get distracted by the shiny planes.

there, they admire the work of hugo junkers, who their company made a deal with eight years prior. the man who will, a year later, lose his airplane business because he refused to build warplanes for the nazis, who takes the principled stand that Jiro fails to. who sees the same visions Jiro does and has the courage to say no.

the film is not fucking subtle about how germany and japan are both lurching toward a monumentally monstrous and stupid thing, a thing that Jiro just kind of ignores because he's infatuated with his art, with his planes. this is, you know, the central theme of the movie, which sees the man neglect his dying wife to draft more blueprints?!?

no, the movie does not look at the screen and go "this is a bad thing" because its not a movie for fucking four year olds, but if you think the movie ending with a character standing in a nightmare hellscape of all his broken dreams, his wife dead and country in ruins, going "yeah but we built a nice airplane" isn't a statement about that fucking guy, you've very much missed the point.

and look, the wind rises is not even, really, about history. the film is a metaphor for what it feels like to dedicate yourself to making art under capitalism. it's about how Miyazaki feels about his legacy. it's about dedicating yourself to your craft at the eve of destruction (be it World War Two or climate change driven by capitalist consumption) and knowing that the beautiful thing you are making is contributing to it. it's about the nightmare of knowing you can't control your art after you release it, disgust knowing what you make will be used to advance causes you despise.

its a complex and raw movie, a meditation on despair and pain and pride. there's conversations to be had about how responsible it is as a film, but you are not having that conversation because you are incapable of anything more that the barest surface read.

[snarky-art]

Worst couple you know

Figuring out some Eraklyon stuff rn

Info on some fashion and cultural notes as well as general outline for where Eraklyon is situationally at the start of my rewrite:)

Tl;dr tho: it’s a hellscape lol

Traditionally feminine clothes have rounder gems.

Traditionally masculine clothes have more angular cut gems.

Red is the color of power so the Emperor must always wear it.

Asymmetry is big in style right now and so are pearls. Jewel and pastel tones are the norm for high fashion and the wealthy with most of the nobility sticking only to jewel tones.

The orange gem present in Erendor’s crown and outfit is their most common jewel on their planet.

Lots of golden and coppery color ores and unique rock types there.

The green gem is cut into an octagon to represent the entire Magical Realm, green for the concept of life energy of other beings. Only the Emperor and next in line for the throne may wear green gems in that cut.

The orange color from their gem is claimed to be a sign The Great Dragon blessed them, and they are above the concept of life, that they are a power all their own. The diamond shape is to represent their rigidity in customs and categorization which they claim has lead them to their (once) great power and expanse over everything, the green octagon included as a sign that they reach to and claim power over all in the 8 realms, the rulers of a mighty empire that will one day encompass everything.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t work out and they only have direct rule of Dyamond and whatever planet I’m having Samara be from (might be Dyamond too, am unsure rn) and have an excellent alliance with Solaria through its Imperialist faction. That’s about it though. They’re considered a Pillar of The Magical Realm because of their industrial prowess but even that is being diminished in its qualifications as magical culture as a whole is redefining what that looks like and means and as other planets are finding more effective or enjoysnle methods for things in ways that aren’t relevant at all to how Eraklyon would go about it. Eraklyon is also trying to push production on mining up through overworking their people to an insane degree and demanding things get done faster and as a result are producing lower quality product. Their whole socioeconomic culture right now is just Late Stage Capitalist Hell Scape.

To top it off, even back when they were still an actively growing empire, Domino was actually trying to get them to stop with using The Great Dragon in the name of their conquests since Domino was starting to work on reparations for the horrors they’d committed in the past right before it fell.

After it’s fall, Eraklyon used that event as a propaganda to say it was proof they were meant to rule after all and that they would be the ones to show The Magical World what needed to be done. Insert an increase in power and claims over planets for about 200 years, and then a steady decline of power followed by a huge dip in the last 150 years.

Eraklyon is a grossly Patriarchal society that holds a lot of views that are directly anti egalitarian in every way it can be in a culture.

A man (very rigid binary structure too with sex and gender being treated as the same thing. Think our current irl world basically. Like our world, the people are getting more and more sick of it, especially since pretty much all the rest of The Magical Realm is like “that’s a really stupid thing to reinforce so harshly and punish people who don’t fit that construct.” More backlash and pushing for it to change from the public, which isn’t vibing with the elites since the government is already in such a precarious position in terms of its power) must rule. A bride must be taken from off planet as a way to strengthen their Empire.

Green is a color of conquest due to its association with The Magical Realm as a whole, so the Empress is always adorned in it since she is a conquest in and of itself. A selection of gems are also chosen by the council of the royal court that they deem suitable for the bride to choose as her identifier when she becomes Empress. Samara was only given green ones to choose from due to the desperate need to try and reinforce strength and power through conquest, which once again she as the bride is a symbol of. Their Empire is basically no more. They are grasping at straws and the bride being used as a propaganda piece is already the norm so it’s whatever they might as well ramp it up. They also tote her red hair as a way to show that The Dragon still favors them, sending her their way, the fire of It present and on display, and even redder than that of the last Queen of Domino. Samara is proof that they can conquer anything, even The Great Dragon, if the people remain loyal to The Crown and The Empire.

Along with The Eraklyon Empire being in ruin, empires themself are very few and overall wildly shunned by the general public, Eraklyon and Solaria being some of the last notable ones, and even then just barely one at all, still using the term as a way to pretend they are still formidable and far reaching in their power.

[panda-panoptic]

Reworking Alfred’s entire character

I’m obsessed with this stupid son of a bitch, let’s get into it

I think too many people make him too uwu nice and forgiving as if most Americans don’t hold life long grudges over a ball game. Or that we can’t be serious at the drop of a hat when it comes down to it. Like when we say fuck around and find out we mean it, which apparently that’s a very American thing. Yes the dumb bitch stereotype is real, but there’s such a “you’re joking right?” attitude among people when it comes to certain things that I think he could go from playful to serious in a second, to the point where it might trip some people up. Especially when it comes to moral issues.

Also I hate that him being super obsessed with his image and how he’s seen by others is interpreted as sad uwu emo boy instead of clean girl maniac Patrick Bateman type of egotistical freak.

He should also be more apathetic and serious about work instead of “omg let’s build a ladder to the moon!” You have not set foot in this capitalistic hellscape if you think that’s an accurate way to characterize him lmao.

On top of that, he’s a fake ass bitch and that should be expanded on. Like he is definitely the type of person that has a million different ways of presenting himself and his personality to the point where he’s not sure who he really is.

He should be a lot more ego driven too. Like “how is this going to reflect on ME” not “I’m doing this ONLY out of the goodness of my big heart uwu”. Not that he can’t or doesn’t care, but if it reflects well on him then he’s more likely to choose that option.

Anyway, this is just some of my thoughts, im sure I’ll add more in the future

(If you characterize him differently that’s fine this is just me rambling and being obsessed)

[femmesandhoney]

god I hate how brainless trump supporters are. There's signs all over the county I live in saying "Trump low prices, Kamala high prices" and there's this old lady who's a facebook friend (she helped me with a stray kitten some years back) posting about "no more money for wars, vote trump" "lower taxes, vote trump" "stop giving our tax dollars to foreign countries, vote trump" Like excusez-moi, he wants to fund wars, he wanted to fund russia's war on ukraine, he slashed taxes for the rich and now the working class has a heavier load.

Also what's their fucking obsession with deregulation? Sure let's turn america into a capitalist hellscape, what could go wrong!? The triangle shirt waist factory? Let's do that again, new executive order: Bosses can lock their employees in the buildings and no more emergency exits. OSHA? Scrap it too, everyone gets to get sliced in half or cooked alive in the factories. Let's send children back into the coal mines so they can all die of black lung. The endless food recalls? Who cares! The ""pro-life"" nimrods don't believe in quality of life

I know you're joking, but a 19 year old girl just died brutally in a walk-in oven at a walmart (found by her own mother), so the idea that regulations could get any worse is like so sickening since the the US is strict, but not even as strict as we should be.

Secondly, its because trump supporters (not necessarily gen Republicans, mind you) are not voting for him because of any specific policy they legitimately care about, they vote for him because of what he represents morally and ethically. They see themselves in all his disturbing rambles that just boil down to racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and greed. so much greed that they too think will somehow trickle down to them, that they deserve it too. they aren't educated individuals in any way, they aren't moral and good people, but it doesn't matter because trump just feeds off his followers stupidity and fear/aggression towards things to get them to do his bidding.