#what is with the weird capitalization stuff

[liquidstar]

How is tumblr going to ban porn and then show me ads where two triceratops are straight up having sex

[xiii-e]

//ooc posting: I NEED to find more fun/silly things to do with my two they are Not meant to be all agony all the time I swear- I just have a penchant for the dramatic and they're a little in the torment nexus o(-< but on god they will Have Fun too

[b4kuch1n]

found out this year’s snow miku contest is happening yesterday while on call with my friend and then I blacked out and woke up to this being posted on the piapro site (it’s here btw)

[fishyartist]

Tumblrina 2 me btw. Would ride up and say some shit like “I’m not trans but I believe in their beliefs” or maybe say some shit about leaving to “steal some shoelaces” then kicking Joe Biden in the sack or something

[bread-tab]

i bought a cheap squishy toy and it smells like something i should definitely not be inhaling at all (kind of like gas/petrol but more factory-plasticky? i'm a retail drone not a chemist) and, of course, it was made in china.

("of course" not so much because of the price or quality but because everything is. at every price range and standard, tbh. i'm not trying to say everything made in china sucks. for the tumblr-pedantic record. rip to the workers in the stinky plastic factory though. :/)

so i was like "if this was made in america i could figure out where. we put the company address on everything here. but can i do that with an overseas company?" and the answer is yes maybe (i found the import/middleman companies and there are "trading" websites that track this stuff) but also no because i can't read mandarin. (sorry ancestors)

anyway that's how i find out about this place

yiwu "market" aka "international trade city." alleged "world's largest wholesale market." the mall to end all malls. this place sells stuff to the entire world by the shipping container. didn't even slightly exist in 1980; now does billions of dollars in trade annually which supports a city of 2 million people. which previously was just. like. a farming village.

(btw take this info with a grain of salt *please* i got it from youtube, google and wikipedia and i'm existing in an incredulous sleep-deprived haze)

literally miles of showrooms of every random manufactured item you can imagine. toys, clothes, electronics, household goods, christmas decorations...

i cannot stress enough that we do not have this kind of thing here. (... do we?) but. we have the stuff. this is where all the stuff is from. all roads lead to yiwu, apparently

sometimes you just get reminded... world big. but also. world interconnected. not so small after all. but so connected.

[kuiinncedes]

???

[neonvioletlight]

why is being an artist so expensive. first of all its not easy to earn money as one and materials are so expensive???? whydid you give me creativity and the will to create some silly images

[blueish-bird]

sorry if I don’t remember your name or conversations/experiences or basic things about myself, every few weeks my brain gets factory reset and I have to relearn how to be alive

[rowan-guerrins]

9 fandom peeps to get to know better:

thanks @dragonagelesbian for tagging me! i am so eept rn so i have,,,, no idea how coherent this’ll be lol

3 ships you like: gigolas (gimli and legolas; i refuse to use any ship name other than the most ridiculous one lmao) (they invented love methinks); nerdanel x fëanor (their love and epic divorce compel me… rotating them in my brain like The Cube); and bagginshield (idiots 🫶). i like (love, even) many ships akfkskf but right now im in my tolkien era (again.) so uhhh yeah. all tolkien ships here. shoutout to dinkus tho.

first ship ever: literally aragorn and arwen. i was obsessed with them and wanted them to be my parents. in after-school daycare i would sit in front of a whiteboard and draw a big ole castle and draw out my elaborate fantasy role play i had w a friend in which i WAS their child. this brainrot has been with me for as long as i can remember i inherited it i will live forever with it. incurable disease (liking tolkien) haver.

last song you heard: squints. well earlier i was SINGING many songs from the broadway beauty and the beast musical but that was acapella so that doesn’t count. it’s uhh. (opens spotify). well i’m halfway through doom days by bastille (doom days by bastille my beloved). so that. (unless you do count what i was singing for some reason. in which case. uhhhh. if i can’t love her. THEE beauty and the beast song of all time. helloooooo is this thing on do you hear me? do you understand? it’s the musical song of all time to me actually. it’s so good. listen to it. evermore wants what she has.)

favorite childhood book: uhhh so i only remember really early childhood and later childhood. i know i had other favorites between like 5-8 or so. but you’re getting what i can remember ajdjwjd. as a YOUNG kid i loved “goodnight moon”. the kids book of all time. and in later childhood, outside of my obsession with the warrior cats franchise (a given), i really loved the inheritance cycle books. i need to reread them so bad SO BAD. also i need to get the illustrated edition of eragon. shakes.

currently reading: “the fellowship of the ring”. don’t look atme. don’t— look. look. when i said it’s my tolkien girlie era again. well. yeah. anyway. i am. 97-98% thru it so probably it will change to two towers. also TECHNICALLY. i am still. technically. reading “carmilla” (she’s somewhere in my room but i don’t know where oops). and also. technically. “the silmarillion” (LOOK.), because i need to actually read it all the way thru for once and not just skip to the bits about my favoritest worst guys alive who are hated by god and also do war crimes but they’re funny. so it’s. look. it. it’s okay. hey look at me. the murder is not a big deal. it’s all so catholic here. i’m more worried about that.

currently watching: stares into the distance. it’s been so long since i’ve watched anything. at least TV/movie-wise. i watch a simmer’s streams and youtube vids is that anything? no…. naur…. i think the last. thing i watched was. uh. an episode of ATLA.

currently consuming: BALDURS GATE THREE. i am obsessed w my tav rn. i restarted my playthru bc i wanted to good recruit minthara bc i feel like she’d have a crunchy dynamic w my tav, lleuad. somehow less crunchy than i expected but we just got her so who’s to say. anyway. shakking,,,, look at Them. (talking to one of the besties.)

currently craving: japanese curry……… mmmm. with. chicken katsu. yeag

tagging: open tag bc actual tagging always gives me anxiety lmao. if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged!

[samaspic31]

Any work that has producers and supervision, any amount of editing, made by a big team that has a hierarchy, and is then commercialized and marketed through capitalist channels has to go through so many rounds of examination, rewatching, overthinking, that if any endorsed bigotry is STILL there in the finished product it was either insisted on and deliberately kept or completely fine by the entire system around it. Which means there’s no room for claiming ignorance, even if you didn’t know you should have someone in the team that does or pass it through sensitivity consultants. This is also why you will never find true radical ideas or any sincere anticapitalism in mainstream media, a capitalist system will not tolerate messages against itself unless its purely symbolic, declawed and commodified

[pepprs]

idk how to reconcile my new self with my old self. also i fucking hate waiting. GRAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[thornshadowwolf]

DAN AND PHIL RETURN????????

[glitterdisposition]

absolute life changing revaluing i had today:

baby steps.

after years of KNOWING i was eating poorly and not getting out enough and focusing too much energy on people who didn’t care about me, and after many many nights where i would stay up until 3am and get drunk and think about everything wrong im doing in my life and creating a 30-step plan on how to fix it (that i never acted upon), i realized.

u don’t need to overhaul your entire life in one sitting. don’t want to go for a run because you only have 15 minutes to spare?

go for a five minute jog and take a nice shower.

can’t cook yourself a nice, healthy, home cooked meal?

order sushi on skipthedishes. or just go eat a veggie platter from the grocery store.

going to the gym is hard and gives me anxiety. and im used to hour long, super intense workouts from dance when i was a teenager. so anything less than that always felt like a failure. but it’s not. doing jumping jacks for a minute or just taking ur dog to the park to play fetch is STILL BETTER than sitting in bed and watching love island. again.

no, you are NEVER going to become a completely different person in one day. and that thought always stopped me from even trying. i wanted to be PERFECT and if i couldn’t do that immediately, why stress myself out? might as well stay in bed and drink wine and eat pizza for every meal. this is why i’ve always hated new year’s resolutions, it’s too much fucking pressure.

so i’ve just been trying to do one thing a day. some days that’s reading a chapter in a book i’ve been putting off, some days it’s doing a full workout, and sometimes it’s just not drinking alcohol before work. and it’s so simple and im SO MAD that people have been telling me to do it for YEARS and i’ve never done it out of spite. “i’m fine, i don’t need to jog” “i’ve been worse, i got through it last time without therapy” “why read at all, if it isn’t a huge intellectual self help book?”.

no, exercise and eating “healthy” (i’ve struggled with eating AT ALL for so long, that eating at all is a success) and sleeping regularly isn’t going to “””cure””” you. and i know when you’re in the depths of depression even trying is impossible. and that’s fine. there’s still days where i eat macaroni and cheese and sleep til noon. i don’t even think the endorphins u get from working out are that important, i think what MATTERS is giving urself a little goal and checking it off. i can’t describe how good it feels to know u did the thing u wanted to do. as time goes on, maybe you’ll feel good enough to add a SECOND thing onto ur to do list. and that is AMAZING. you don’t need to beat urself up over your perceived failures.

for me, the problem was always just getting started. an object in motion and blah blah blah

[afklancelot]

honestly i actually like the concept of fire suppression department articles, where employers go through inhumane lengths to keep their employees on the job and well behaved, but i dont really vibe with it being tied to the foundation. mostly personal preference really since someone’s opinion on the foundation differs, and im of the impression that they are not completely evil nor completely good, and they are necessary to an extent in preventing worldwide anomalous threats.

imo the fsd would work better in a GoI like The Factory. after all, they both share the same theme of being forced to work in a job and preventing from leave. hell, would love to see a modern Factory GoI like an office building or some corporation where they are presented as a “decent” corporation on the surface but treat their employees terribly on the side line while blackmailing and ruining their lives secretly if they try to leave

[pitzer]

I love this person

“Occasionally I’ll have a beer after work and break out the sketchbook. But I had wanted to be this great painter. I wanted to do these grand things: big, huge oil paintings. But those days of painting all the time were such a roller coaster. There were these periods of extreme depression, followed by manic states of trying to put myself out there. I couldn’t do it anymore. I mainly felt sorry for my dad. I know it was rough for him. My mom hadn’t wanted me to go to art school. She wanted me to do something more practical, but my dad said: ‘No. This is what he wants to do, and I want to support his dream.’ And then I abandoned it. That was the first time I had to deal with real failure. A lot of times when you’re an artist, it’s your job, it’s your lifestyle, it’s your entire fucking identity. It wasn’t like I failed to do a thing. It was like: I failed to be something, you know? It was a failure to live up to what I thought was my destiny. But then on the other side of that, there was this figuring out that there was nothing wrong with me the entire time. I didn’t need to be something else to have meaningful friendships, or a good relationship. I didn’t need to be something else to be loved and cared about. After work tonight I’m going to meet up with a person who’s in love with me, and I can’t wait. And that person met me long after I gave up on being a full-time artist. They met me when I wasn’t even a chef yet. I was a piss-poor, part-time line cook. But even then, they decided I was worth it. So you know, there’s something there. There’s something there that’s enough.”

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."