#so for the love of god stop thinking like a fucking little capitalist consumer for a moment and think like a human being w empathy!!

[rollercoasterwords]

hey guys btw there is actually never a good reason to loudly and publicly talk about how much u dislike a fanfic!! Like. let's break this down for a sec:

i don't like it

ok, understandable. i've dnf'd lots of fics because i didn't like them. but the people writing fanfiction are doing it for free and for fun, and you don't know anything about their lives. they could be a young writer just starting out! they could be an older writer getting back into writing after years of being unable to! they could be someone going through a rough patch whose only source of joy right now is writing their silly little stories! talking about how much you dislike a fanfic literally does nothing except hurt the person writing it. that's it. it is not productive, it is not necessary. even strangers on the internet deserve basic human empathy.

ok but i really don't like it

babe, i feel u! i'm a hater too. rant about it privately. shit on it in private messages or group chats with friends. u can dislike something without dragging its creator into the town square to throw tomatoes at them, yknow?

ok but i really don't like it AND it's popular

ok? shouting about that on the internet doesn't make you cool or special or unique. it just makes you kind of mean and, honestly, bitter. like i said before, this is fanfiction. nobody is paying for it. nobody is profiting. there is no standard that these writers are obligated to meet. clearly, other people like the work. why not let them enjoy it in peace?

no u don't understand it doesn't deserve to be popular there are better fics that deserve it more!!!

talk about those fics then!! post about how much u love them!! uplift those writers!! ur tweet or tiktok or tumblr post is not going to suddenly make a popular fic lose all popularity, no matter how undeserving u perceive it to be. if this is actually coming from a place of frustration because you feel like there are other fics that deserve more attention, then just give those fics attention.

no but it's problematic

mmm ok. let's sit with this one for a second. i want you to ask yourself--is it really, really problematic? is it perpetuating harm against a marginalized group? remember, this is fanfic; it is outside the consumer economy, and the stories it tells will almost never make it to a mainstream audience. so is the story actually hurting people, or is the author just exploring something that you're uncomfortable with? because if you're just uncomfortable, then assuming the work is tagged properly, the best course of action is to just click away. as uncomfortable as it may be, people are allowed to write stories that you might find upsetting or gross or weird, and those stories existing is not inherently harmful in and of itself.

it is actively reinforcing harmful stereotypes/rhetoric/etc

okay! ok. if you are deeply concerned because you feel that this fic is genuinely harmful, then go to the writer. leave a comment. send them a message on tumblr or twitter or tiktok or wherever. explain your situation and see what they say! nine times out of ten, i'd bet that an ao3 writer means no harm and would be willing to listen and address your concerns. in fact, they might even be grateful to you for being kind enough to make them aware of a problem and educate them on it. every ao3 writer i've ever spoken to is an incredibly kind and thoughtful person; you don't need to immediately go on the attack

the writer is unreachable/nonresponsive/not willing to address or change the problematic thing

alright. if you truly feel that this fanfiction is actively harmful and can't reach any kind of conclusion with the writer, and you want to warn others who might read the fic, then do that. do that. make a post that says hey guys btw, x thing in this fic is not a good representation/perpetuates a harmful stereotype/whatever the problem is. and leave it at that! you don't need to go further and insult the writing or the person who wrote it. that is helpful to exactly no one, and if your goal is actually to make the world a better place, then you should learn how to draw attention to an issue in a way that encourages actual dialogue instead of dog-piling and personal attacks.

anyway the next time you feel the desire to post about how bad you think a fic is, feel free to use this as a guide before u do! xoxo

#like i genuinely don't understand u guys sometimes #why do i keep seeing posts w hundreds or sometimes even thousands of likes #that are literally saying nothing except #i think this fic is bad and i don't like it #if someone was making cookies and handing them out for free and u didn't like them #would u go stand next to that person and shout about how shitty their baking skills are?? #or would u just move tf on!! #bc they are doing something nice for free!! #and if u don't want to eat it u don't have to!! #like if u post abt disliking fics u are literally just mean #im sorry but u are just mean #and not even in a fun way #i love talking shit i love hating on things!! #i do it in PRIVATE #in PRIVATE!!! #where it's fun for me but i know it won't hurt anyone's feelings unnecessarily!! #some of u guys treat fanfiction like a product to consume and it's NOT #it's a gift! #it's a piece of art that someone is giving u! #so for the love of god stop thinking like a fucking little capitalist consumer for a moment and think like a human being w empathy!! #ranting and raving #txt

[cynic-view-ahead]

you have three wishes. You cannot wish for more wishes or revive or kill anyone. Anything else is fair game. What are you wishing for?

Oh geez oh god this is so hard aaa lol -Okay, okay let's try this. It would be cliché as all hell (not to mention vague af) to wish for something like 'world peace' so I'm gonna try to be a little more specific: I wish all humankind naturally had the urge to better each others' lives. Does that make sense? That we could collectively be more reasonable about equity, and not have the lens of capitalistic greed poison literally everything. That humankind could naturally, collectively be more dedicated to the advancement of science, education, medicine, conservation etc to benefit everyone on earth. It just is endlessly infuriating to me that we have, right now, the tools and knowledge and means to feed, clothe and house everyone on earth, as well as work less, consume less, fix climate change and poverty but we just... don't. I mean not that -nothing- is being done about all of this right now but it could be so much better, it could all be fixed if we just stopped being so damn... primitive. This is getting wordy as fuck and I have trouble expressing what I mean clearly but hopefully it's clear enough lol -Second wish... I wish I didn't have to work. Or at least not as much. It's not that I don't like it. I just... yeah no okay I don't like it. Would 100% rather read, or draw, or paint, or write, or play video games, or watch documentaries, or take a long walk, or nap... I have NO shortage of hobbies that fulfill me but work makes it that I often don't have time/energy/creativity. So I guess I'm wishing for a lot of money so I don't have to work? Super original I know hahah but I don't want millions or a lavish lifestyle or a big ass house... I just want to have enough to be able to take it easy and enjoy my hobbies in peace. UBI. I just realized what I want here, is UBI. -Third wish... hmmm. What the hell this is hard! Okay this one is a bit dumb but I wish I could live somewhere warmer, with no winter (or at least NO SNOW) and at a walking/public transit distance from the sea. I despise cold and I love the ocean so much, I miss it dearly. Sadly there's no places that check both of those criteria in Canada and I'm not too keen on moving to the US... I think I wish I could be a snowbird, actually! Hahaha! There you go, wow this was way more lengthy than I thought it would be OOPS

#ask #my shit

[carriagelamp]

Weirdly enough, I often find myself reading less in the summer, since I have more time than I do during the rest of the year to do other things. Also artfight has been eating up more than a bit of my free time! But here’s a collection a graphic novels I sat around on the hammock reading, and some novels I finished up...

(Everyone go read All Systems Red, holy crow guys)

A Whale of the Wild

The “sequel” to A Wolf Called Wander, though it doesn’t actually connect to the previous novel except in the stylistic/thematic sense. A Whale of the Wild is very much a standalone novel. And a pretty decent one! Personally, I think I liked Wolf more, but this one was a pleasant, informative read, with just the right amount of crushing dread sprinkled in. It’s about a young orca called Vega who is learning to become a new wayfinder for her pod but who still has a lot to learn, especially in an ocean that is becoming increasingly hostile to orcas and the other sealife that live alongside humans. When a devastating earthquake hits, Vega and her little brother find themselves separated from their family, lost in a now horrifyingly unfamiliar environment, and fighting starvation as the salmon that sustain them become more and more unreliable. It’s a desperate fight for survival as they search for food and their missing family. This book is written for a middle grade level, and does a really good job of putting the current environmental crisis into an animal’s perspective while giving the readers something to hope for.

The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom

Every July I eagerly anticipate the next Adventure Zone graphic novel. This one is for their fourth arc, The Crystal Kingdom, in which Magnus, Taako, and Merle respond to a SOS from a floating laboratory that is gradually being consumed by crystals and which threatens the entire world should it fall into the ocean. Carey Pietsch’s art continues to be absolutely fantastic, so beautifully and hilariously expressive, and this one delivers some great Merle moments, lots of Carey Fangbattle, and, of course, Kravtiz. Kravitz, my beloved…

Anyway, I obviously always recommend these. If you’ve never gotten into The Adventure Zone, I totally recommend either trying these graphic novels — or even better, just go listen to the podcast because it really is both hilarious and creates a shockingly good and heart-wrenching story by the end.

All Systems Red

I’ve seen The Murderbot Diaries on my dash occasionally, and it always looked interesting, but a friend’s recommendation finally compelled me to read the first novella of the series. And holy shit y’all. Absolutely the best book I’ve read this month, it’s amazing. Mind-blowingly good. Also, if you’re like me and want a good audiobook, it’s a nice three-hour listen, very chill!

Anyway, All Systems Red is about a Security Unit, an artificially created being that’s part-organic part-mechanical and all-company-owned-and-controlled. However, self-named “Murderbot” has managed to hack into the system that suppresses its own will, and is now coasting along, doing the least amount of work its job requires not to be noticed, while preferring to spend all its time watching the hours and hours of soap operas it has downloaded into its brain. And it’s a tolerable if somewhat dull life, until the science team that it's currently rented to is attacked and the whole mission goes pear-shaped. Suddenly Murderbot has to scramble to keep its humans alive… while its humans scramble with the realization that their “SecUnit” isn’t actually a mindless robot like they had all believed...

This story is both gripping and hilariously funny. Murderbot has such a unique voice and perspective and it’s an absolute pleasure to follow its story. I reallly need to read the next book...

Asterix and the Banquet

A classic. I was startled when I realized I hadn’t actually read this Asterix story… but hell I’m not gonna complain, it lets me read one of the originals for the first time again! In this Asterix volume, the Indomitable Gauls and the Romans end up arranging a bet — the Romans intend to keep them under siege, trapped in their village, while Asterix is confident that he can easily evade them… and will prove it by going on a tour around all of Gaul, collecting iconic foods from each region in order to return and put on a fine banquet. So we get a fantastic adventure in which Asterix and Obelix run all over the country, pursued the whole way, while making cheerful stops at the various eateries along the way. Also the first book Dogmatix shows up in! All around, a wonderful read, fun like all the best Asterix comics are.

Beauty Pop v4

A less impressive graphic novel. The first Beauty Pop is one of my guilty pleasure manga because… it really is pretty stupid but in the best possible ways. I mean, the whole thing is framed around hairstyling battles, like a shojo sports manga without the sports. It’s bonkers. Unfortunately, the series does not really manage to hold up, and it really begins to feel repetitive and dragging as it continues… as a lot of series like this do. *shrug* Unsurprising but still kinda disappointing I suppose. The building three-way romantic tension is mildly interesting if for no other reason than the main character Does Not Notice and Does Not Care about any of it, which is amusing and refreshing.

FRNCK v5

Now this series only gets better and better as it goes. This is the first book of the second arc, and somehow the danger just seems to be ramping up and up and up. The cavefamily have lost their home… as well as Léonard and Gargouille. Heartbroken, shocked, and angry, Franck is the one who ends up shouldering the blame for their presumed deaths as the others mourn. Things only get worse when Franck finds himself separated from the family, and in the territory of another tribe, this one hostile and cannibalistic...

Haikyuu v5

I continue to read this series because it continues to be charming… though it is beginning to feel, maybe, just a little repetitive. Kind of an inevitability with sports manga. But so far it continues to be good enough to overcome that. I’m not sure what I can say about this series that I haven’t already, so I’ll simply say it continues to be one of the most impressive sports manga I’ve read, and the author does a fantastic job of creating engaging characters, fleshed out teams, and really compelling relationships. I do genuinely adore all the main members of Crows, along with a number of characters from the rival teams as well. And of course it has some kickass volleyball scenes that are just drawn so dramatically they can’t help but take your breath away a little.

M*A*S*H Goes To Maine

Meh. The original book of the series was actually quite good in my opinion. This one… considerably less so. The first part I enjoyed more, since it was about Hawkeye, Trapper, Duke, and Oliver Jones trying to set up the FinestKind Clinic and Fishmarket in Crabapple Cove (which… is just the best premise I could have ever asked for). However, the book spends most of its time describing the quirky lives and times of other people living in the area and I�� just… don’t care. It was funny at times but… I just don’t care. I wanted to hear more about the main cast. Also I found this book felt more racist and misogynistic than the first which also put me off :/ Wouldn’t bother if I were you. Go read the first book instead, or better yet just watch the TV show which is an obvious banger.

My Heart’s in the Highlands

I have had this on my “currently reading” list for so long but I’m officially giving up. It’s a really good book in theory but my god I can’t get over the pacing.

It’s about Lady Jane, a woman studying medicine in Edinburgh in 1888, and who suddenly finds herself back in the Highlands in the 13th century. Lost and confused, Jane is now at the mercy Clan Donald’s hospitality while she tries to adjust to this new world and hunts for her broken time machine. Fortunately, this hospitality include a burgeoning friendship with a red-haired warrior woman, Ainslie nic Dòmhnaill, who opens Jane’s eyes to the way the world could be.

Listen. It drives me nuts. This book should be completely up my alley, it has everything I like — IT HAS ALL OF ITS HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES CITED AT THE BACK, LITTLE EXTRA DETAILS ABOUT EVERY CHAPTER. THAT’S MY SHIT RIGHT THERE. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LIKE BEING ABLE TO GO OVER HISTORICAL DETAILS?? AND WELL RESEARCHED FOOTNOTES?? And yet it doesn’t. Fucking. Work for me. It has a kickass Scottish warrior lady as a love interest! It has a badass lady doctor! It has fish-out-of-water culture shock! But it also has a completely meandering plot, no sense of building tension, and a romance that just happens out of nowhere and feels completely unearned and uninteresting.

I would genuinely just rather read Outlander again, which I know has its own host of problems, but at least Outlander felt exciting and interesting and tense and funny. The romance built in fits and starts, it was complicated, and kept me interested. That book had me hooked (and has me hooked every time I reread it) whereas this book I’ve been sadly picking at for months like its a plate of overcooked spinach. This felt like an attempt at a queer, historically accurate knockoff which I would normally be super into but which just could not stick the landing.

Moomin on the Riviera

My first time actually reading anything from the Moomin canon. I have zero idea how to feel about it! It certainly is as feral as I’ve heard described! Overall, I think I enjoyed it but it sure made me feel strange emotions I didn’t know existed. I’m not even going to try to describe it. Read it if you want a batshit insane anti-capitalist comic.

Surviving the City

This was good in some areas, less good in others. It had a very interesting indigenous perspective on life in the modern city, the foster system, and The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women issue, which I’ve never seen handled in a book before. Something about the pacing did not completely click with me and I found myself getting easily distracted, but it’s definitely worth the read just to experience it and look at the issues it deals with through the characters’ (and author’s) eyes. It did give me a lot to think about and wrestle with, which is sometimes the best thing a book can give you.

Torchwood: Pack Animals

A really fun read, more so than I had ever expected! If you like Torchwood and want more stories about the team before everything goes to shit, this is perfect for that. It includes the entire cast, an interest mystery to be unravelled, lots of slavering monsters, Rhys being really wonderful and sweet (which I didn’t know I wanted until I read this book), and all the humour I expect from Torchwood. I had to send a lot of quotes to my long-suffering girlfriend who a) does not watch this show but b) needs to tolerate it because I find it too funny to keep to myself. It was good enough to make me go out another book of the series since this was the only one my library carried.

#book review #book reviews #torchwood #moomin #queer lit #queer literature #queer books #canlit #canadian literature #manga #haikyuu!! #beauty pop #all systems red #murderbot #mash goes to maine #taz #the adventure zone #the crystal kingdom #a whale of the wild #surviving the city #frnck #asterix

[blushing-starker]

Insanity brings me truth and you

can you guess what Peter's doing to not be understood by the guards?

It's not easy, being crazy. There are expectations to run away from, a bar to limbo under, a specific number of people one has to betray and scar. The unknowable becomes knowable, so you have to skirt the edge of that Venn diagram very carefully. Or very recklessly. Either way, it's a complex thing except for when it's not. Jesus, how infuriating to think about. The point is, the paradox that crazies carry on their shoulders? It's a fucking hassle, a tricky one and Peter is tired of it.

He sighs, lets gravity bend him backward, legs slipping dangerously off the blanket he's hung as a hammock inside his cell. Act like a psycho and you're predictable, don't act like an ax wielding murderer and whoops! Predictable. It's the downside of being insane; you leave the weary capitalist consumer mask out in the world, probably set that shit on fire and make yourself sick with the fumes. But you just replace it with the one labelled 'danger to society' and get forced to play along with that. He did what he did to avoid the world and its predetermined fate, its standards.

Peter closes his eyes, thinks of the nauseating smell on his left. Rupert, the guard that dared graze him while he came back from the shower naked, has a broken nose thanks to Ned and his loyalty to him. The idiot barely cleans the open wound and the whole cell reeks of pus because of it. He does the math of how long it's been going on for and shudders in disgust. His bare calves slip a little more.

An inhale near the front of his cage. Slow, but controlled. Not the usual. Thank God for a circus family and heightened senses.

The doctor is paying attention to him.

"Doctor Stark. Gnittor gnihtemos llems ouy nac?" Rupert grumbles from his perch on the second floor, curses a hare brained psycho that's incomprehensible. Peter hums, pleased to know that after ten months, nine days, twelve hours, and...

Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus on sinking deeper into nothing, into a yawning void. The blanket shakes and his thighs are starting to tremble. Blood is rushing to his head, veins most likely beginning to protrude. Irrelevant.

His favorite guard Stan wears a Swiss watch his wife got for him on their fortieth anniversary. It sings to him now, smooth and cool like a river. A skipping stone is thrown, tic, a fish heads towards the sound, toc. Above all the other stimuli in the room, the watch announces itself. Ten fifteen.

Ten months, nine days, twelve hours and twenty minutes into a game, his tiny gnat still hasn't caught on. Not like the charming doctor. He sees him then, behind closed eyelids, as clearly as a sweet nightmare. Tall, taller than Peter, but less strong. Wide shoulders that morph into a slim waist and a delectable ass he aches to sink his teeth into. Shapely calves from running, curiously delicate looking ankles.

Down and back again. A full head of dark hair with a dusting of silver. Dangerously clever mouth, what his aunt would call a noble nose. Agreeable cheekbones. Piercing eyes that tear his walls down, rip apart the bricks and mortar until he's scrambling on the other side, desperately, clumsily attempting to reinforce them for the millionth time. Those eyes saw the trick, the mirror reflection on his second day here, Peter offhandedly talking in reverse with Ned when they passed the new doctor. A dark gaze had pinned him in place, a spider fixed in place with its own silk against the cold dissection table.

Ned had rambled on, Peter had met a worthy playmate and the doctor had seen all he needed in that eternally prolonged glance. That very afternoon, a psychiatrist signed on as his very own voyeur.

Doctor Stark seems to be as interested in cutting him open to peek inside as Peter is in taking a dagger and comparing their hearts. He does this a lot; wonders how fate and the absence of lucky fate led them here. On opposite sides of a prison when perhaps it should be the other way around. Or perhaps there should only be Peter and Doctor Stark.

He feels himself falling, plummeting ever downward into fantasies and hazy dreams. It's not until the good doctor sharply calls out his name that he realizes he's also plummeting towards the floor. Now, MJ had warned him; had specifically said that the hammock being ten feet off the concrete ground was a bad idea. Ned had said he'd be fine and Peter loves the guy, ok? He has to do everything he can so that his best friend wins a bet over his other best friend.

Peter slightly regrets that when he's forced to arch his body backward, flip right side up in order to hit the floor on his feet instead of his face. The impact chokes the air right out of him, shakes his bones, but he doesn't react. Cracks his neck and that's all. Most of the guards were kind, some shade of understanding. They weren't harmless, though. He knows what he looks like, knows how many hours these men are cooped up with the scum of the earth.

"To answer your question," Peter leaps onto the bars of his cell, slithers higher than any sane person would and somersaults off the vertical slits, sinks into his trustworthy hammock with its trustworthy knots (MJ and Ned had tied them, one each), "yes, I do. It's less potent this time."

He stills, frowns. "How? There haven't been any changes. External or internal." No need to act like the Mad Hatter when the conversation could be had normally. Quicker and more reliable with meanings. But the doctor pauses, enunciates his next words slowly.

"Ti koot uoy erom emit yadot." God, he loved hearing Doctor Stark talk that carefully and smoothly. It was as comforting as it was uncomfortable. (He and sex don't particularly get along. It's like a headache that comes and goes; with the right medicine it can dissipate and evolve into something soothing, pleasant. With the majority of medicine, it blossoms into pain and soreness, a dry throat clogged by a thick syrup that won't leave him be no matter how much water MJ and Ned encourage him to drink. Peter isn't yet completely certain which side of his scale the doctor falls on, but he's guessing it's likely the first.)

(The man seemed to live in the grey areas; fitting that with this, too, he'd reside in the in between.)

The reverse effect is in play and he grins, genuine and wide, when he catches it. "Monsters are visiting more frequently, taking up space in the light." His nightmares had intensified recently, and they're starting to accompany him even in moments Peter knows are real; shapes drifting by the corner of his eye. As a coping tactic, he rips parts of his nails off. Not entirely, just the corners. His mind could concoct lots of things, but in his dreams his hands are always pristine.

(He hasn't caught up with it, hasn't noticed that although his nightmares have a clearness to them, a bright intensity, Peter can't shift enough focus to realize his hands aren't his own. They never are. But he usually has more pressing bodies to deal with than the good doctor's.)

Another pause, this one being done by Tony Stark, doctor and healer of men, instead of Doctor Stark, curious keeper of deranged souls. "I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe this will help." Peter peers over the edge of the grey hammock, watches with interest as the doctor approaches his cell with a glass bottle of clear liquid sloshing inside. The other man stops an inch away from the bars, looks up at Peter.

There's a slow tension simmering between them, something as thick and addictive as honey. There's scientific curiosity, a desire to seek out and maybe comprehend the unknown lurking inside their mirror image, as other and as alike as oneself. But there is also a gleam of something he's afraid of acknowledging in Doctor Stark's eyes. A madness once tucked away steadily unraveling itself with each glance they share.

Peter returns the look, unblinking and thinking. " 'If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.' " A lesson Nietzsche offered to those wise enough, sane enough to live blind.

The doctor raises an eyebrow, is otherwise still. Sometimes, if Peter considers their current predicament for too long, his grasp on his masks loosens, and the Spider begins to spin its deadly thread round and round its very own body. He sees a guard exchange money with a partner; the crazy quota has, he guesses, been filled for the week. And they had such a nice streak going on, too. Oh, well. This web is unavoidable anyways.

He pitches himself forward, is the one who controls the descent instead of gravity this time. Letting the air rush up to meet him, he inhales, tastes a distinct sharpness around him. Crouching, Peter takes it all in, every last detail. Looks, really looks, at the doctor and suspects.

As if he were none the wiser, he calmly heads to the front of the cell. Meets the doctor at the divide and wonders what it'll be. Wonders if he'll rise higher than ash and flame, an acrobat testing the fates by flying just seconds ahead of death. Doctor Stark hands him the bottle and he can see now, tiny pieces of lavender. A distraction for the guards. "That should keep the monsters in the dark. Use it before you got to sleep and tuck away your hair."

Like a schoolgirl with a crush, he self consciously brings a hand to his curls. They're getting a bit long, but the warden only allows haircuts once a month or two. "I don't have anything to use." Digging into his lab coat, the other man retrieves a single black stick.

Well, to everyone else it's a hair pin. Peter knows the truth though, can see it and smell it and very nearly touch it. As it is, he gently plucks the items out of elegant hands and refuses to look at them. Looking draws attention. Doctor Stark gazes at his face, eyes flickering in a rehearsed way around his own, but not into them. That's alright, he understands.

"The lack of movement around your face should also help." The question of why is out before he can reel it in and act as a sane, normal person. Christ, he could handle crazy, not rude. He would have to practice being in control so as not to slip up when the doctor is around. Said doctor cocks his head, doesn't have to do anything more for Peter to get the message: go on, ask the devil why he made the deal.

Peter B Parker does not back down when intrigued. "Why are you helping me sleep better?"

Why help me escape?

"It's my duty." Three words. Not the explicit declaration of affection typical, normal, dull people receive from an admirer or partner. Not a grand proclamation of wanting what the heart wants, or a sonnet regarding the connection between star crossed paramours. Simple, short, concise; enough to turn to religion, to sanctity and salvation if it means hearing it again. He'd do anything, including putting on a discarded mask from his past if it gets him what he desires. Peter would suffer through sanity for this man. He would if it means hearing what sounds silent to those around them.

You're my duty. Whatever happens tonight, Doctor Stark believes it's his duty to see it through. To see him through, in a way.

"Why would you accept?" Ah, silly doc thinking any of his principles have changed since the first time they met, since the first time he brought fire to life and gave death in return. Peter smiles, brings forth the prisoner that had not seen the light of day in almost a decade.

(His uncle often said Peter's greatest gift to the world was his smile, his true smile. His aunt said it was the final move needed to capture a king and make him his pawn.)

"Why, doc, you know I hate to be bored." Call him a psycho, a freak, a sick, pitiful creature. Call him anything and everything and maybe those words would ring true. But Peter will never allow himself to be bored, not when there's so much fun to be had. Especially with a doctor as crazy as he is. "This looks...promising."

" 'He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.' " The first part of Nietzsche's warning.

"Nietzsche didn't understand; those who fought monsters were already fated to become what they struggled to defeat. They believed salvation could be found by killing the monsters outside, but all they did was feed the ones inside."

Anthony Stark, the truest version, grins at him, all glinting eyes, sharp teeth and a crooked smile. Peter Parker, armed with a match, gasoline and soon to be glass shards, grins right back. In this instant, being crazy isn't such a hassle. After all, he has someone to share the crazy with now.

#starker #dark!starker #insane!peter #insane!tony #patient!peter #doctor!tony #peter parker x tony stark #i mean sorta dark #arsonist!peter #demisexual!peter #legit a harley/joker version where theres no manipulation #theyre insane and in love yall #sophie writes

[qiankunfics]

KunTen Masterlist Part 3

AO3

1. La danse des masques (The dance of the masks) by skymoonlight

Summary:  A month full of balls that all the princes had to attend and, to make it worse, Kun had to host them all in the palace, being forced to endure that odious Thai prince who seemed to enjoy making his life miserable. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

2. Turbulence, and then none by pyakpyaknation

Summary: Soulmate au where the first words your soulmate says to you are written on your wrist and while A has an absolutely unhelpful 'Hey' written on them, B has something very unique and weird. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

3. hearts like drums by lovelight (Delenaley)

Summary: Ten's completely and utterly fucked, he can't even confess without straight up insulting his crush. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

4.  must cry out loud by andnowforyaya

Summary: He wanted to shake himself apart. In pieces, maybe it wouldn't hurt as much. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

5. Boxing Day by violetpeche

Summary: Christmas: for all the superficial, capitalist hell it stood for now, Kun rather liked that time of year. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

6. yesterday, today, and until the end of the world by rowenabane

Summary: He is still searching, though. He won’t stop until he finds it. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

7. Come Back (Nightmare) by NovemberSuns

Summary: After disappearing for four years, Ten comes crashing back into Kun’s life. Kun doesn’t know what to make of this stranger he once called his best friend. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

8. needlepoint by fairyslush

Summary: in which ten is a fashion designer, and he decides to embroider their little family of four onto his neurosurgeon husband's labcoat. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

9. flavour you by mikararinna

Summary:  Ten sacrifices his staff meal for a chance at an Americano, Kun waits for Ten to bring in his favourite flavour. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

10.  go the distance (a new chapter with u) by borntovixx

Summary: Alternatively: YouTube chef Kun shows off his boyfriend to his followers. Rating: General  Status: One-Shot

11. ursa major by lowkeyamen

Summary: "It's a star map." Ten let out a little breathy laugh; it was pretty obvious Kun had no idea what this was. "It's a snapshot of what the sky looked like the night you first told me you loved me." Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

12. Family Planning by eggboyksoo

Summary: Starting a family is hard. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot Trigger: unaccepting family of teen pregnancy?

13. not even you could destroy your shine by jeannedarc

Summary: Kun closed his eyes and prayed for something exciting to happen to him. Anything. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

14. people say (we're so weird) by sayounarahitori

Summary: In which some WayV members know more than they'd like, some know less, and nobody has a crush on Ten, okay. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

15. Stamped by Lertsek

Summary: There is one soul mark in particular that Ten treasures, one that appeared when he passed the audition to train under SM Entertainment. It's that of a little dancer, looking up, face not visible but hands in the air, ready to jump. Rating: Mature  Status: One-Shot

16. The Retreat by andnowforyaya

Summary: Kun begrudgingly attends a week-long relaxation retreat at his friend (and business partner) Johnny's behest. There, he meets Ten. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

17. You have weird taste by princessgongjunim (MyOwnCharacterInEverything)

Summary: In an universe where you can taste what your soulmate is eating.  Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

18. in limine by florulentae

Summary: Kun goes to sleep in New York and wakes up in Madrid. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

19.  A Lotus in Bloom by Crucified_To_A_Star

Summary: Ten is the Mogwai that bought Kun's soul; set to protect and elevate him until the contract's time runs out, by any means necessary. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

20. Happy Home by taeyongseo

Summary: Kun is doing just fine on his own. Being a single father at age twenty-one isn't easy, but he has the lines of his life clearly drawn. That is, until Ten comes in and blurs them all. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

21. come and find me by sayounarahitori

Summary: Ten comes home. Rating: General  Status: One-Shot

22. to the moon and back by staryukhei

Summary: ten is a good parent. he just can't say no. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

23. You Get Me Closer to God by dustysadderdaze

Summary: There was nothing Ten adored more than defiling angels. Rating: Explicit  Status: One-Shot 

24. No Manners by SenpaiJecho

Summary: “You’re such a fucking asshole” Kun murmured against Ten’s skin, his hands wandering all over his body, desperate, needy. He was furious with him for fucking him up but, at the same time, he wanted to consume him completely. Rating: Explicit  Status: One-Shot  Trigger: Cheating

25. 家 (jiā) by moonfleur

Summary: “Missed you,” is all he says and Kun smiles, all knowing and more than a little fond. Ten sighs, squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to control the shaking in his voice. “Miss you all actually.” Rating: Teen  Status: One-Shot

26. It Starts with a Wish by nu-exo (Nekohime)

Summary: The man lowered himself to a knee before Ten, reaching out a hand to tip Ten’s chin up with a finger. “You ask for a lot, little prince. You have a dragon’s hunger.” Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

27.  The Anatomy of Change by vinylcherry

Summary: Kun and Ten meet at three points in their life, but circumstance always seems to pull them apart. Will this time be any different? Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

28.  silk and snakeskin by fairyslush

Summary:  ten is a lamia who eats the hearts of those who love him. kun is a reaper who collects the souls of the devoured. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

29.  to lost by mikararinna

Summary: It was initially Ten's idea to go on a road trip, Kun was just there to execute it. He didn't really expect to get lost in the middle of it. But it was better than losing each other. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

30. Exit Strategy by cobalamincosel

Summary: That is until a stranger named Ten makes his way into Kun's oasis and suddenly, Kun doesn't have only himself to worry about anymore. Rating: Teen Status: One-shot  Triggers: Zombies

31. Tease by dojaefairy

Summary: Ten looks at him and briefly considers answering “dick”. Rating: Explicit  Status: One-Shot

32.  heaven is a place on earth (with you) by storytimewithme6

Summary: a look into kunten's married life. Rating: Mature Status: One-Shot

33. Face to Face by winterofouryouth

Summary: Ten had been thinking about it for a long time but his thoughts had been extra loud lately. He didn't know why, but something about the stale heat inside the tent and Kun's slow breathing next to him made him feel like this was the right moment. Rating: General  Status: One-Shot

34. That's What Friends Do by tensfilm

Summary: “We were just cuddling.” Rating: General  Status: One-Shot

35. now or never now by sayounarahitori

Summary: Ten can always be too much, but today is a new high even for him, especially considering Kun is live on instagram. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

36. face to face by andnowforyaya

Summary:  Ten said, "Sir's traveling. He couldn't make it back in time for me. Of course I'm a little sad, but he promised he'll make it up to me. Plus, I've got all of you to keep me company, right? And since you're here, I should be good to you, too." Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

37. prayer from an angel by seolay (speos)

Summary: Kun is a succubus who doesn’t want to seduce humans for food. In the process of finding other ways to survive, he alerts the attention of an angel who might be willing to help. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

38. Elbow Rub by speckledsolanaceae

Summary: Qian Kun has bumped into you! the app announced, and Ten tapped the notification on impulse. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

39. In The Morning by devinemoon

Summary: On a Sunday morning, with the sun kissing his loved one’s skin he realizes he loves him. And he wants to stay like that forever. Based on “Kissing in cars” by Pierce The veil. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

40. the bigger the hoops, the bigger the hoe by johnrens

Summary: kun got dragged out to the club when he’d rather not be there, but the man with the hoop earrings from across the club changes his night for the better... Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

41.  same deep water as me by sayounarahitori

Summary: Kun cared too much. Ten, unfortunately, cared even more. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

42. creation myth by madhoney

Summary: Kun’s eyes narrowed as he watched Ten float through the soiree. He moved like fluid, drenching everything and everyone in his path with hunger – not that anyone present needed any further persuading before succumbing to the haze of lust that clouded the expansive villa. Rating: Explicit Status: One-shot

43. let me help you by loudqueen

Summary: Sometimes it got too much for Ten to handle, and sometimes he couldn’t get out. But Kun always managed to guide him through it all. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot Trigger: Mentions of depression

44. annoying is kind of my type by aprofessorstale

Summary: Ten and Kun are baristas at a cafe and they can't stop insulting each other because they definitely have crushes they don't want to admit to. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

45. The Crimson Flower by muffincollection

Summary: Ten, a rich businessman is sent to the city with little income to ‘teach him a lesson.’ Upon his job search, he meets a young and philosophical artist Kun— who is more than displeased of his presence. Rating: Mature Status: One-shot

46.  the seven ways i love you (and the seven ways it kills me)

Summary: Ten and Kun have a high risk of dying any second, but that won’t stop them from making each other’s lives impossible. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

47. Perfect Little Family by oonymay

Summary: In which Kun and Ten find a crying child in a forest and naturally decide that raising it in secret is the best option. And therein begins a battle with languages, the meaning of home and feelings. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

48. Ten, Kun, and the Cat by thesunflowerchild

Summary: “No, Kun, he’s my son!” Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

49. instagram? by mooniesuhs

Summary: “What if we made an Instagram for Louis and Bella?” Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

50. i take care of an eldritch creature w my bf (NOT CLICKBAIT!!!!) [1080p]

Summary: four times yangyang almost reveals himself as an eldritch creature (and two times he definitely does) Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

#kunten #kun #qian kun #masterlist #part 3

[mithranqueersmusings]

Before This Dance Is Through V

Chapter: 5/16

Rating: M (Smut Warning)

Summary: Ringo's being going through a dry spell for the last year or so and when he regretfully tells his best friend John, he insists on taking them to an all-male strip club for some "fun". Ringo isn't sure whether it's the alcohol, his desperation or a mixture of the two but he thinks he might be falling in love with a stripper.

Tags: AU - Strippers, Modern Setting, Smut, Slow Burn

Pairings: George Harrison/Ringo Starr, John Lennon/Paul McCartney

AO3 link here / Fic masterlist here

Despite what John had suggested, Ringo didn't go back to The Helter Skelter the following week; he'd considered it when John sent him yet another late night text but ultimately decided it wasn't the best idea. Spike had been playing on his mind daily and Ringo wasn't sure he was prepared to face him again. Instead he focused on his drumming and searched for a few more students to teach, which were fairly easy to find. Usually Ringo enjoyed his time off, he understood he was lucky that he didn't have to work a 9-5 job just to get by, but recently he wanted his fill his time up as much as possible, to distract himself.

One of his new students seemed incredibly interested in him, they'd spent an hour just chatting in his living room before they'd even moved over to the drum kit. Ringo wasn't too fussed, he was getting paid by the hour so wasting time was beneficial to him but he didn't want to give the guy the wrong impression. He was a little bit older and attractive enough but Ringo simply wasn't interested.

"Why didn't you just go for it?" John had asked him when they next met up.

"I dunno..." Ringo mumbled, but a part of him knew very well.

He'd given the guy another lesson since then and it became clear that the guy's interest in him wasn't going away any time soon. Ringo felt bad about the whole thing, wasn't he just doing exactly what Spike was doing to him? He tried to act as professional as possible the second time around in attempt to get the guy to back off, considering he hadn't heard from him since he was hoping it had worked. What was wrong with him? Was he really going to make himself suffer like this all because of one guy? And not just any guy, a stripper who had shown absolutely no interest in him at all. It was ridiculous, he kept telling himself, but no matter how much he tried to convince himself that he had to get over Spike, he would still think about him every day without fail. Trying to distract himself with clients had been working somewhat, but it had been difficult, especially when his best friend was John Lennon.

       youre gonna love me

The text came through when Ringo was sat in a café getting some lunch. He'd finished with one of his younger students, a sweet girl who's parents had tried to convince her to try a more 'ladylike' instrument but she had promised only to give up the drums if she was awful; much to her delight, and Ringo's for being able to prove the stereotypical parents wrong, she was pretty good. Seeing her always put Ringo in a good mood, the parents mostly stayed away partly due to the noise but mostly due to disappointment, which meant they could joke around together. Ringo could tell she admired him and he welcomed it gladly, one of the best things about teaching was inspiring others, at least for him it was.

        do i not already?

        well yes         but youre gonna love me EVEN more

        what have you done

        well i happened to stop by the club last night

        oh god what did you do

        wow is that how little you trust me

        can you blame me

        suppose not         ANYWAY i got talking to paulie

        surprise surprise

        do you want the good news or not???

        fine fine sorry

        AS I WAS SAYING i was talking to paulie         and he told me that your special little someone has an onlyfans account

        first of all fuck you for calling him that         second of all wtf is onlyfans

        oh sorry i didnt realise you werent living in the 21st century

        ......         care to grace me with your knowledge?

        basically its a website where you can post exclusive stuff for ONLY FANS to see         its not a porn site or anything but its basically where people sell their nudes         MEANING spike has an account so you can totally see loads of raunchy filthy perverted pics of him

        but i have to pay?

        well weve all gotta make a living

        i can basically see him naked for free

        but this way you wont get all freaked out and embarrassed         well you will but nobody will know at least         so do you want the link or not???

Ringo paused for a few moments, he was gripping his phone tightly in both of his hands as he unblinkingly looked at John's words. If his mind was going to decide to make him suffer by enabling his intense interest in Spike, he may as well get something out of it.

        fine

        where are your manners richard??

        can i please have the link to the strippers nude photos please john please

        alright calm down         let me know if its worth while i might have a look

        idk if im even gonna look at it         paying for porn is a little dated

        treat yourself ringo         id offer to pay but im broke

        if youre broke why were you at the strip club last night?

        well SOMEONE had to go

        they really didnt

        im supporting my local economy

        i dont think thats how that works

        sure it is         anyway here you go

Ringo stared at the link for a while, his eyes even began to blur, he didn't want to risk opening it in public even though he knew there was little chance of anyone seeing. He finished his lunch in a hurry and headed home quickly, only when he was in the privacy of his bedroom did he dare open it. First he had to make an account, when he saw the screen loading up asking for an email address and password he just turned his screen off and put the phone down. This was far too much effort for something he shouldn't really have been doing in the first place. But it only took a few minutes for him to pick the phone back up and begin signing up, he used an old email as it felt less seedy that way and he didn't want to risk his name cropping up anywhere for Spike to see. Now he could load up the link properly and take a proper look at Spike's profile.

Just looking at the small profile picture was enough to startle Ringo a little, the dark eyes looking into the camera with that unreadable glimmer behind them. He was shirtless in the picture, Ringo wondered why that didn't catch his attention first, with the frame cutting off just before it showed anything too explicit. The header was a photo taken from the club, showing him in tight, leather pants and tassels on his nipples which matched the whip he held in his hand. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. He'd spent so much time and effort trying not to think about this man, attempting to keep him out of his mind as much as possible. Ringo knew that if he went through with this all that progress would be lost, he'd be giving in to whatever strange obsession he'd developed for Spike, one that no doubt wasn't going to lead to anything good.

Ringo kept staring at the screen as though it was going to tell him what he should do. Spike's profile had no description, which wasn't very surprising, and it dashed any hope Ringo had of discovering something new about him. Right before he was about to put his phone down again, it vibrated.

        howd the wank go??

        john i dont care how long weve been friends asking how my wank was will always be weird

        youre right sorry         so how did it go???

        if you must know         i havent had a wank         i havent even paid for entry

        now whos the one being inappropriate??

        ha ha

        why havent you???

        feels weird

        oh i see         youll consume a bunch of unethical porn for free but god forbid you actually give sex workers any actual money

        you are the last person who can lecture me about unethical porn

        hey now watch yourself         ringo if you dont get a subscription I WILL

        go ahead

        and ill tell you every day what sexy sexy pictures hes posting         ill tell you EVERY SINGLE TIME i have a wank over them

        every time? i dont think youve got enough data for that

        im not joking

        neither am i         you wank A LOT

        ringooooo just buy it i swear to god         if its not worth it or you regret it or whatever ill give you the money back

        on top of the money you already owe me?

        have you always been such a capitalist

        youre not doing a very good job of convincing me

        fine         spikes cock         now are you convinced???

        maybe

        naked pictures of spike whenever and wherever you want them all for the low low price of 10 quid a month         convinced??

        fine fine         if itll shut you up

        im starting to think thats code for 'i really wanna do this but im too embarrassed to admit it'

        i hate you

        now that DEFINITELY code for 'john youre right'         anyway theres no time to be telling me how right i am all the time youve got dick pics to look at         even i wont stand in the way of a good wank         so dont bother replying to me until youve paid for that subscription young man

        im older than you

        DONT BOTHER REPLYING

Ringo let out a sigh and rested his head against the bedroom wall from where he was laying on the bed. He opened up the link again and his thumb hovered over the subscription button, why couldn't he just do it? The money wasn't an issue, it could've cost half as much or be double the price and he'd still be debating it all the same. Somehow it felt like an invasion of privacy, after all Spike hadn't told Ringo about it himself, but then again that didn't necessarily mean he didn't want Ringo to see it. After all it was like John said: everyone has to make a living somehow. Sometimes Ringo wished he could turn off that part of his brain that was so empathetic, so concerned about how everyone felt and what they were thinking. He knew that he wanted this, so why wasn't he allowing himself to have it? Ringo could see that he was being ridiculous, as he was with almost anything involving Spike, and after lying there for a while pondering and debating he decided to flip a coin. Heads would mean he got the subscription, tails that he didn't. He watched the coin spinning through the air after he flicked it upwards, then snatched it and slammed it down onto his forearm before slowly moving his hand away: it was tails. What a relief. Ringo chuckled to himself for being so foolish, settling down into his bed; it was still only around midday but he didn't have anywhere he needed to be.

So why didn't he feel relieved in the slightest?

This whole thing was getting tiring, the constant debate between what he believed he should do and what he wanted to do, and it seemed like it wasn't going to be ending anytime soon. Apparently he was in this for the long run, whatever that meant, but if he was going to turn down relatively attractive guys practically throwing themselves at him, he may as well go all the way. While he was putting in his credit card information, he stopped to think around three of four times, but once he'd finished and the images became accessible to him, his brain was barely able to conjure up a coherent sentence.

"Jesus..." Ringo breathed out as his eyes flicked across the plethora of pictures loading up on his screen.

There was a lot of them, and a lot of Spike was on display. Most of them were pictures taken at the club, either from a professional photographer in the audience or photos he'd taken himself in the mirrors backstage - Ringo could even see glimpses of Paul in the background of some of them. The ones that caught Ringo's eyes the most were those that seemed to be taken in his house, these also happened to be the ones in which Spike tended to be fully naked. It was very different experience to see him like this: a static image that he'd intentionally taken of himself and posted for so many people to see, an image that couldn't look back at Ringo and make him feel that strange mixture of excitement and shame. He began scrolling down the feed which only revealed more and more enticing photos. Ringo began to feel himself hardening, he suspected it had been happening for a while now but he'd been far too distracted to notice. He felt like a teenager discovering porn for the first time, it was difficult to remind himself that this wasn't anything new. Seeing Spike naked shouldn't have excited him so much, and yet it did.

One picture in particular drew Ringo's attention: Spike was stood in front of a bathroom mirror with a loose black tie lying against his bare chest, one hand was holding a phone and the other gripping his cock. He had dark eye make up on and his hair was messy. Ringo wasn't sure exactly what it was about this photo that was so enticing but he couldn't take his eyes off it. The prominence of his collarbones, the faint curls of his dark hair, how his slim fingers wrapped around himself. Slowly Ringo slid his own hand under the waistband of his boxers as he stared at the picture. At first he hesitated, his fingers stopped right above the base. It's not like this would've been the first time he'd touched himself while thinking about Spike, it would've been far from the last he imagined, but this was different. It was more concrete, more of an admission. Nothing felt quite as real when it's only being imagined, the haziness of lust fuzzing up the mind as it so often did, but now with a very real photo of Spike in front of him - which he'd paid to see - the feeling was far more tangible, far harder to ignore.

He'd come this far, he told himself as his hand sunk lower until his fingers were running along the length of his semi-hard cock, he may as well go all the way. To begin with Ringo stayed looking at this single picture as he slowly pumped himself, but as his lust began to grow he perused through more and more pictures: Spike kneeling naked in front of a mirror with a loose cigarette hanging from his lips, lying in the bath with bubbles only just about covering his nakedness, spread out on the bed with a gag in his mouth, handcuffs forcing his slim arms behind his back with his cock throbbing. None of this was anything Ringo hadn't seen before, like most people in this day and age he'd searched through the darker corners of the internet - sometimes willingly, sometimes John was to blame - but to see Spike in such a way was like an entirely new rush. Each picture drove Ringo further and further on, at times he almost dropped his phone with how sloppy his movements were becoming. Who took these photos? Ringo figured it was best not to think about it, the possibility that Spike had a boyfriend who took all these pictures of him would've been the quickest way to kill his erection.

Ringo began moaning and cursing wantonly as he got closer and closer to his orgasm, he had to stop flicking through the pictures because he could hardly concentrate on what his other hand was doing, so he settled on a final one to help him finish; it wasn't particularly strategic but he was definitely grateful that he selected the one that he did. In it Spike was looking directly into the camera, allowing Ringo to gaze longingly into the rich brown of his eyes and how his dark lashes curled beautifully around them. He was shirtless with nothing but a necklace on, the same necklace that Ringo had seen him wearing in the record store and Ringo couldn't help feeling a sense of satisfaction that he'd seen it with his own eyes, as though it meant something. Deep down he knew that it didn't but his inebriated mind was latching onto it. The nudity in the photo was hardly interesting Ringo by this point, although it would be wrong to say that he completely ignored the flatness of his stomach or the faint shadows of his ribs beneath his pale skin, it was the personal aspect which truly affected him.

This wasn't just lust. Lust Ringo could understand, he could compartmentalise it and give into it without much shame or a second thought. If this was just lust, he would've bought the subscription without a care and touched himself looking at the nakedness of Spike's body as though it meant nothing more than a way to get off. Yet here he was on the brink of orgasm looking into another man's eyes, eyes that felt like they were looking straight back at him as though they were sharing this moment together. It wasn't hard to imagine Spike's hand in place of his own, those deep eyes watching Ringo come undone piece by piece. Ringo's hip began to stutter, his leg twitching a little as he had to drop the phone down onto his lap as his head fell back against his pillow as his orgasm approached. It wasn't the image of Spike's naked body that filled Ringo's mind as he came, it wasn't his arse or his cock or even his chest, it was his face, his voice, it was him.

Ringo lay breathless on his bed for a while, the clarity that arrived as his orgasm subsided wasn't welcome in the slightest and he was reluctant to pick his phone back up to see Spike's eyes looking at him once again. There was no use in feeling ashamed about it, no point in trying to deny it any longer: his feelings for Spike were more than a mere passing fancy, that was clear. Exactly what he was meant to do about these feelings was far from clear but that wasn't something Ringo could figure out right now with cum on his stomach and the daylight seeping through his bedroom curtains.

When he'd picked up his phone he'd closed all the apps immediately, doing his best not to catch a glimpse of what he'd been so eagerly looking at before. Just as he was about to step into the shower to clean himself off, his phone buzzed; he almost couldn't hear it over the music he was blasting out. It alerted him for a moment as though it was going to be a message from Spike stating he knew exactly what Ringo had just done - it wouldn't have really surprised him had that been the case, Spike's face almost always looked like he knew something that nobody else did - but fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, it was John.

        sooo how did the wank go

         who knows          but on a totally unrelated note im about to get into the shower

         well before you do that i have even more good news 

         can it not wait?

         NO because you might cum just at the thought of it and then youd be wasting a good shower

         well arent you considerate          and unnecessarily graphic

         thats me          anyway im taking you to the club next tuesday whether you like it or not

         im still waiting for the good news

         well if youd let me FINISH          next week theyre doing a special event and we just have to go          youll never guess what it is

         what is it?

         guess

         you just said ill never guess

         youre no fun

         WHAT IS IT

         alright alright keep your hair on          its a crossdressing event          high heels make up probably a few wigs all that good stuff

         im still waiting for the good news

         OH COME ON youre telling me you dont want to see spike in heels and fishnets with some lovely lipstick on

Ringo gulped. It wasn't a difficult image to conjure up his mind, considering he'd been staring at photos of Spike for the past twenty minutes and it excited him to say the least. He did want to see that, very much indeed.

#the beatles #beatles #beatles fanfic #the beatles fanfic #beatles fanfiction #george harrison/ringo starr #ringo starr/george harrison #ringo starrxgeorge harrison #george harrisonxringo starr #starrison

[girlwithwolftatoo]

Your “eco-friendly fashion” can go and f*ck itself, and so you do.

Let me explain this: no, I don’t hate the eco-friendly trending of, actually, trying to get the less waste of products and similar stuff, for we need to be more responsible with the planet because, just as Starlord said, we are the idiots living on it. 

The problem comes when this idea of a “green life” becomes just another fashion to follow, building another bloody capitalist industry around it so those poor nasty rich people feel a little less bad for basically being the ones who contributes at more than 50% of carbon emissions  and contamination. What am I talking about? Let’s check some advices to contribute to help the enviroment which are in fact just pacifiers for first world, good wealth people:

Wasting reduction, a.k.a “my zero waste challenge”. Yes, plastic is the big villain at this moment, and to fight against it the population across the world is recomending the use of certain stuff to replace it, like glass recipents (fun fact: some idiotics enjoy saying how millenials are guilty for using plastic containers instead of glass like “my good ol’ granpa used to”, but hey, guess which generation started exploiding petroleum -where plastic comes from- to increase their wealth and reduce costs of production? One clue: not Millenials) or fabric bags. A good idea? Yes, until you remember most of the products like food come in plastic stuff, and I’m not just talking about that first world obssession for covering their fruit and veggies with fucking plastic when, hello, fruits and veggies ARE ALREADY PROTECTED BY THEIR SKIN, YOU JUST NEED TO FUCKING WASH IT A LITTLE BEFORE COOKING. 

Yes, Karen, I know what you’re thinking, “Well, duh, if you don’t like plastic around your food go to an organic market, they have this lovelies glass or fabric containers, stop complaining and do what U need to do”. And here comes problem number two:

Organic everything, the new way to show how rich you are. I have some news for ya, except for the processed food, EVERYTHING IS ORGANIC. The only problem is you are afraid of “toxicity in food for pesticides and dark water” which, guess what, is pushed violently by your bloody wild capitalism in order to produce more food. And now a lot of stores selling you organic, zero-waste, green food is just part of the same system, it just puts a huge stick in front of your ecologic container swearing these overpriced carrot (which vitamins are THE SAME AS THAT DOUBLE-LEGGED CARROT PLACES LIKE FUCKING WAL-MART RATHER THROWS TO THE GARBAGE) is good and fair... yeees, you just need to make some researchs on internet to find out the “fair price” for the peasants and agriculture workers just doesn’t equals the price you are paying to your white, nice lady in white uniform attending your weekly shopping of “clean” veggies and soy and quinoa. 

I know some countries aren’t used of local/producers market where you’re actually buying to the producer and paying a low price that goes directly to the field workers, but here’s a funny thing: the organic stores doesn’t just sell you the idea of “organic, ecologic” stuff, but the key word is “clean”, the idea of a mutant potato sounds “unclean” for them, because if it has a brother stuck in a side of it is because it was soaked in “evil chemistry stuff to make it grow like that”. Well, say thanks to Monsanto for covering the world with their bloody products who are actually doing worse damage than your ugly looking veggies, and all of it just to make money and provide you, person of a wealthy, capitalist, whitey country, of your organic stores and the rest of your nice stuff like year model car and Starbucks. 

In short: organic stores are just face washed supermarkets feeding with the explotation of people in other countries, putting an enormous, unnecessary price to their stuff which not everybody can afford just to make you feel good and a planet savior. 

The cow didn’t suffered, but what about Pablo? I know I’m entering a dangerous point here, but with these eco-friendly trending, veganism has been exploited like the panacea for everything, from enviroment contamination to poor cows and pigs crying in the farms. And yes, becoming more aware of the cruelty towards animals has been the iceberg peak to become more humans and protective to the other living forms in our society, and yes, the carnic industry tends to be awful and utterly disgusting... IN FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES. 

This might sound shocking, but the images of cattle of any shape being tormented since the moment of birth are usually from USA, UK and similar “farms” which act more like a corporation in the middle of a field than like a real farm. Places like South and Central America has a carnic indsutry which works pretty different; you can actually see, in a daily basis, cows and goats walking free in the farm’s territory, eating as much as they want and sometimes getting involved in fights with cars on the road, and though this isn’t an excuse for the late slaughter, at least those aren’t creatures jailed and tortured inside a 5x5 box. Chickens are the same, for instead of killing the males the farms in Mexico and sibbling countries rather let them grow to become the source of meat, the hens aren’t eaten a lot in our culture so they live to lay eggs and they also have a nice life in comparison with their north-americans or european pals. 

In other words: stopping meat consume doesn’t make you the person of the year, but fighting for animal rights and stop eating meat from massive industries will help a lot more than just hating everyone for getting a burger. 

“But still I rather take vegan products, soy and quinoa and other stuff...” Uh, do you remember what I said about the organic stores selling you smoke and mirrors? Yes, perhaps none animal died because of your vegan product (at least not none of the cuties like baby cows and chubby pigs, just a bunch of insects which exists as part of the natural balance and very probably wild life), but a lot of people of third world countries certainly will. Illegal buy of land made by corporations to needy goverments, privatization of fucking water from local comunities in order to create and feed fields of “organic food”, child and indigenous abuse due to this “legal steal” of land and bad payed, forced work (because in the end, the poor need to, you know, fucking live even if it’s at the minimun wage)... All of this so the white lady who enjoys speaking to managers and drives a massive truck just for her and her two children, can go and buy her quinoa and post a pic on Instagram claiming how “nice and easy” is save the enviroment.

Oh, I know, I’m being too mean to that people, am I? I don’t fucking care, because the hidden part of this fashion, the worst part of this idea of “ecologic capitalism” comes with this only truth:

Poor people aren’t “eco-friendly”. Classism has become the key to keep this trending just made for the wealthy, the idea of poor people not being “good with the enviroment” comes from a lot of cultural ideas created by the vision of a thirds of the population. Rich people hates seeing images of countries like India, Colombia, Phillipines and similar because the images sell a complete lie which helps to keep them in a bubble: poor people eating fast food or buying things in plastic containers is gross and they think “Oh thank God I left that life style behind” as they drive his car leaving a lot of CO2 compared to those who takes public transport, that same public transport that looks disgusting in those images I’m talking about, because hat portion of the world has no money to get new vehicles every year, because they can’t #govegan because their only sources of a certain quality food is the normal food, those who doesn’ have a seal of aproval which claims how enviroment-savior is, because that lack of wealth forces them to work much more than people of France, Germany or USA and gaining much less than them, with so little time to think on “being green”, sometimes even with little time to cook natural food in their homes, and of course being unable to pay to an inmigrant to cook for them like... well, you know like who. And because these poor people, who works and dies because their country and the “free market” is pushing them to a modern slavery for international corps which provide to their targets, people who aren’t from the South of the tropics, white and wealthy, free of any guilt because they spend 50 bucks every week in organic coffee which was grounded in the last remains of an indigenous land and harvested for a dark-skin, 10 y/o boy who is forced to work instead of studying because all this economic machine made him part of the poorest side of the society, the idea of being “better than others”. Because they’re selling the idea that being a helper for the enviroment is easy, as long as you can afford it in their terms, becaus they’re making you think your green bag is making more for the world than stop and think how those who make that bag are being paid 5 cents of dollar at day in a dark little room in the East of the world, consumed by the greed and vanity of capitalism.

You can be eco-friendly without spending like an idiot in that special stores and markets. How? You can recycle when you’re able to, you can use public transport or walk for short distances instead of depending of your car, you can carry water in a bottle to avoid buying one-use bottles outside, you can support your local producers market and stop thinking of the “zero waste challenge” and making it the “less, well thinking waste daily basis”. And, for the love of any God you’re praying to, STOP SUPPORTING FUCKING MARKET CHAINS OF ALLEGEDLY VEGAN, GLUTEN-FREE, ECOLOGIC SHIT. If you have the time and money to make your own food or to spend less plastic, FUCKING DO IT FOR YOURSELF AND NOT VIA BUYING USELESS SHIT FROM THOSE COMPANIES.

This was my 2020 year advice, thanks for reading. If you want more info, you can search for “international agriculture explotation”, “organic food origin” and “most enviromental dangerous companies” in your favorite searcher.

#personal #enviroment #eco friendly #organic food #veganism #classism #international companies #food industry

[tedfashionski]

Seeing Red

I was drawing today and reminded somehow of that depressing development where the sister of David & Samantha Cameron has been appointed editor of the Evening Standard. Like, I’m looking past the implied wider corruption problems in ‘real’ journalism here, but one point she said in her announcement interview really bothered me. She said, something to the effect of ‘Oh, thank god I spent 20 years working at Vogue while David was in politics, because I am just so fond of him and I would hate to have to be critical of him. So I was safe at Vogue.’

That, right there, sums up how far fashion media is from even being able to recognise the functional role of journalism. Oh, thankfully, at Vogue we can hide from criticality and awareness of the political dimensions of the world. All the while, the fashion industry is feeding this planet-killing spirit-crushing capitalist consumerism. But, no, why would it be political? Stop making it political. It’s just clothes.

 K, I’m going to RANT a little about these digital fashion weeks we’ve just been subjected to. I’ll preface by saying, yeah, I get it, it’s hard to be creative in the thick of a pandemic. My standards have been accordingly lowered 20%. I am very generous.

 Chanel and Dior’s lack of energy was no surprise. Although, keeping in mind female designers tend to be more pragmatic as a matter of course, it’s sad the two top women are being so listless. I was pleasantly surprised by Azzaro – it gave a hint of a vibe but was sure of itself. It emphasised that there was no reason for the Chanel & Dior videos & collections to exist, no point of view. The smaller couture players like the Dutch trinity of Ronald van der Kemp, Iris van Herpen, and Viktor & Rolf were a little more canny, you got the impression they were enjoying themselves at the very least.

 Regarding men’s, I do think Rick Owens was actually well judged in its boringness – we don’t need product-based experimentation necessarily. I enjoyed the meta-narrative aspect, it seems to me a good time for that kind of subtle, slightly snide interplay of references. Yohji’s design’s really sang, the video could have worked harder, it felt thrown together and didn’t do the clothes justice. (Side note, that showstudio Yohji review video, 45 mins of failing to say anything, was what finally pushed me over the edge. Dude. Are you guys for real? ‘Where is the avant garde’? If you don’t know, give up already. I’m not even a Yohji fanbear but he deserves better.) Kiko gave us a real stab at a pscho-medieval vibe, and I would’ve written a full review about it cus there’s stuff going on there. But fuck that. If he doesn’t want to talk to us, and show his full vision to the public in a spirit of optimism and faith in the culture, why should I bother with him? Mean and snooty gatekeeping gets mean and snotty graffiti right back.

 Fashion culture (twitter, specifically) wants to be wowed by everything all the time. Then, it complains and says why is fashion week even happening during a pandemic, now isn’t the time for fashion. Another example of our schizo cognitive dissonance as we consume this shit. What do we even want?

 I’ll tell you what I want. I want fashion designers to be engaged in a collective speculative in-depth discussion of what the future feels like right now, as an artform. So, I’m not going to analyse anything as a commercial proposition, because the future features less and less buying shit. In part as I believe that with growing internet dispersal of OG systems, awareness will rise, the vocabulary will expand, and we’ll stop caring so much about the performative aspects of fashion clothing. The interiority aspect will only grow, and that means unique-feeling experiences that are like conversing with a familiar presence. The fashion designer as moot, a parasocial meta-commentator. A friend you don’t actually have to talk to, just talk with, in the culture. That process won’t start from a point of ‘buy my shit’. First, a relationship should be built up, set up and running along. Then, if product occurs it’s incidental. Wow, I’m being a real little weatherbear. Check out my prophecies!

 So, I’m pretty disappointed and depressed about the resentful undertone of much of the work presented to us. Like, they’re crossing their arms and getting all grumpy about how they’re not allowed to carry on like they always do. FFS, you’re FASHION PEOPLE. Change is the name of the game, this shit should excite you. It’s your job to guide each other in an open-ended perusal of future possibilities, and to make recommendations. It’s not just clothes, they’re the medium, the language in which you build the commentary. If all you care about is nice product (*cough*, hedi slimane, *cough* jacquemus), stop calling yourself a fashion designer, because you’re a clothing manufacturer and I don’t care about you.

 Why are all these videos so boring? Have any of these people heard of editing, rhythm? They do realise you can hire people for this kind of thing, right? The deadening lack of imagination amongst people whose full-time job it is to be creative about the present’s transition into the future is astounding. This really underlines the risks of nepotism and gatekeeping. The only people who can afford to participate are the gutless products of a bloated upper middle class. I don’t believe in that class’s creative capacities for one fucking minute. They’ve got nothing at stake, no guts to go against anything, because their boring shitty system works for them, so why should it change? Ugh, vom.

Where is the communicative power? Nothing is being said, it’s filler for an elite determined to go down with their ship. I’m glad it’s sinking, it wasn’t fit for purpose and I’ll happily stick some extra holes in to make it sink faster.

 I’m going to single out Jonathan Anderson again. Listen, he’s a little pretty boy who’s working so effectively within the system, who has played the game perfectly to the best of his ability. His work is top level, he wins every time. So, I reckon he can be held up as an example. He can take it. I’m looking at the box-shows he did for Loewe and his own brand, and I’m thinking, oh that’s such a lovely take on alt fashion communication. So much heart, and care. Then, what’s the internet equivalent? A little video showing off the box. Some 3d shots & backs of looks and boxes. A little extemporised pitter patter from Jonny. That’s it. It’s still classist as fuck. With garment design there’ll always be limits on what’s possible in terms of digital translation. This isn’t actually garment design though. It’s fashion design. If I’m stuck with a low-grade clip and some jpegs, it’s pretty clear to me you don’t care about your wider fashion community. There should be an open digital experience that feels equally cared for and crafted. And here’s where I get really angry: all these fashion journalists have been delivered this unique, beautiful experience, and what are they doing with it? Where is the thoughtful response? Every single one of these people in this privileged position should be DOING THEIR JOBS (WHICH THEY ARE PAID TO DO, FULL TIME) and WRITE ABOUT FASHION. Not post online, ‘omg lovee ittt, so cutee!’. Anyone can do that. Are you a fan or a professional? This is an embarrassment. I’m stuck analysing some pixels. You’re getting the ‘real’ experience. I know I’ll never be an insider given these opportunities. I chose this path and I’m not going to try and play that game, because the rules are: you get access, in exchange for sacrificing criticality. Because these people, as educated and privileged as they are, don’t understand the value of criticism. Good criticism, the detailed, even handed, unafraid kind, pushes the culture forward. You can’t have a healthy art form without it, it’s essential because it’s the back in the back and forth. I probably could’ve tried to play their silly PR game a bit harder. But I had a nervous breakdown, in part, because I knew I would never be allowed to get close to the art enough to analyse it fairly if I spoke freely as I do now. And freedom is essential. So, pixels it is. Rudeness it is. Because there is work to do to salvage the bottom-dwelling wreck of our fashion dreams so that maybe we can travel somewhere new and better with them. It just sucks that there’s people standing there with the tools to help and no desire to save themselves or anyone else.

[spamzineglasgow]

(ESSAY) ‘BodiesTM: Poetry. City. Whiteness.’ by Elliot C. Mason

A provocation on whiteness, futurity, capitalism and the fricative movements of racialised and gendered embodiment in contemporary poetics, by Elliot C. Mason. 

//

> Capitalism keeps time in a centrifugal swirl that expands as space. The myth of the future is sucked in to the endless present of working time, the working day that never ends but rather blurrily recalibrates its always-changing relation to the past (the time before Capital, that horrific barbarism which could be called Communism, Africa or Keynesian Social Capitalism, depending on the context) and the future. The mythical future is total temporal accumulation, when the life-times of the disenfranchised are finally worth nothing and the life-times of the Tech-Execs, the Winners, the Exemplary Individuals are worth so much time that they have reached secular eternity: a capitalist immortality. The working time of people is pulled into the blurring vortex, this weightless phantasmagoria, and it expands imperially, ideologically, a waxed leg in steel-capped boots, over geographical codes. The move is architectural, strategically ordering bodies under spatial blocks and signs.

          // James Nixon / Ars Poetica #5 //

//

> The violent horror of this vortex is that it is not there at all. We cannot see it. Our way of seeing is mutually constituted with what we see; Capital’s expansion is simply our sight. Precisely what makes capitalism so different to other ways of organising money and people is that it takes over everything. It destroys religion and becomes God itself. It makes every interaction geared towards accumulation. Dating is like opening a betting account, like browsing estate agents’ windows. The end of a relationship in 2019 is not when you stop seeing each other – it’s when you find each other on a dating app. But this has been happening since the beginnings of this system. Modern sciences are ways of justifying slavery, which Capital needed to produce far more than feudal farmers ever could; the city and its divisive architecture are a response to the need to keep laborers close to factories, to houses given by the factory-owners, to food provided by the factory-owners: to the total subsumption of life in a single Capital. In the beginning there was nothing, and then we traded commodities to accumulate labortime in the imperial movement of endlessly expanding architecture.

…

our new home has cockroaches. an exterminator came –

…

it’s smart how the poisoned gel spreads through the colony by cannibalism. he explains that they will eat their family, that the poison will spread faster that way.

          / AK Blakemore / nymphs //

//

> The creation of the body and its technological assemblages that constitute race and racial thinking are necessary components of these movements. The body in other systems is dependent on context: there is the body on the farm who picks tomatoes, the body in the family who teaches children how to speak, the body in the factory who welds iron, the body at war who receives bullet holes; the body is alive, and at any moment, for any misdemeanour, the lord or the law can kill it. The body in capitalism is always a laboring body, always awaiting work: we ask why that mother doesn’t have a job, why that homeless man isn’t working, we ask children what job they want and lament the misery of our jobless friends, hoping only that one day they will enter an office and reproduce some capital; the body is at work, and if it resists work, at any moment the economy can force it to stay painfully and agonisingly alive until it makes some fucking money! This is the totalizing development of the body as a machine of money-production in capitalism, in which each one of us is a camera for capturing space, pushing those architectural movements of Capital a little further on.

look, i’m not going to manufacture any more sadness. it happened. it’s happening.

America might kill me before i get the chance. my blood is in cahoots with the law. but today i’m alive, which is to say

i survived yesterday, spent it ducking bullets, some flying toward me & some trying to rip their way out

          // Danez Smith / every day is a funeral & a miracle //

//

> The white body can never quite die, though, because whiteness is ownership. The white body is coded as the proper owner of Capital. The Black body is coded as property, and it belongs to the white body. The Indigenous body is coded as a misuser of property, the body that doesn’t know how to turn the land into an industrially productive machine and property into an expansive force of racialization. In the racial architecture of capitalism, the white body is property-ownership, the racialized other body is property. And so what this way of seeing in the vortex consuming time does is maintain a spatial boundary between bodies allowed into one racial category and bodies relegated to another, and this space creates existence: the white body lives and must die; it is narrated as the pinnacle of History and its property must be inherited, passed on to the next imperial body in the patriarchal line – it must become a statue marking space in the city. The racialized other body dies and must live; it is always on the periphery of every narrative, of History, of Capital, of wars and events and statues and the school syllabus (EUROPEANS INVENTED EVERYTHING), always on the edge of existence (AFRICA NEEDS HELP), always in the past (CHINA IS BECOMING WESTERN), and yet it can never die, it must work more, it must join the factory, get a loan from a bank, invest in property, make a classic slapstick YouTube clip, date on a narrowboat with fruity IPA and be saved by the bloody claws of white saviourism.

I chose my brother over my desire To be invisible.

We thought your brother was dead… He is.

And his death made you Visible?

You only see me When I carry a man on my back.

          // Jericho Brown / The Interrogation. Part ii: The Cross-Examination //

//

> Seeing is capturing. The city sees, and in the racializing city the police maintain the neat division of which body captures and which is captured, which is inside the wall, which outside, which is allowed into the private park and which is not, all the while keeping up the imperial distraction of the ceremony: nothing to see here! Some bodies are allowed protection from this capturing, and must work endlessly for that protection. To have a body becomes a war, an endless body-on-body battle for superiority, the superiority of more accumulated Capital. Some bodies are accumulated, others accumulate. There is no longer any option but these two, and both these options are endless war. To see – to have a body – is not a secret war, a war by other methods: it is war. The very language and code of being becomes the body-on-body bloody war.

Language has no body.               The message is a virus.                               The message cannot be killed.

          // Jackie Wang / THE DEATH THAT IS NOT A DEATH BUT IS THE BIRTH OF EVERYTHING POSSIBLE //

//

> Time is taken into this fight, stolen from the bodies in their endless war, and more space is made. Space pushing forwards into open land, making it a battlefield. Space-as-Capital conquers everything and then moves upwards, scanning the land with drones now that the whole world is a warzone. As the drone indiscriminately flies above the areas of extraction, every speck of life everywhere is a possibility, another battlefield for producing profit. Every space is coded as beforethe present of American Capital, and every space needs to be violently hauled into now. Everywhere that was unspeakable in the grammar of Capital is retroactively certified as nothing but primordial barbarity always awaiting benediction by Capital, a zone marked for extraction, for abstraction, into the language of spatial domination and the force of being defined as a racialized body with no purpose but reproduction.

I was one burnt daughter in a genealogy. Stepped into the oil spill like a siren emerged dyed black backed with the wings of a tanker’s logo jangling stranded in the outer ocean

// Rachael Allen / Apostles Burning //

//

> This force is whiteness, and it is everywhere because it is unspeakable. Language cannot speak itself. Like the Law that opens everything but itself to condemnation, the centre cannot be self-seen, cannot be captured by the capturing mechanism of the photographic eye that functions only dialectically – the holder of the camera, of the eye, looking at the object and creating subjectivity through the object-status of the other. There is necessarily always an exemption to the rule, and the expansion of white supremacist Capital is exempted from its own language. It is a violence that constantly labels everything, but which disappears when turned to. A violence that abstracts itself as immovable/unspeakable myth above the rest, God to the Apostles, approachable only through the mediation of the myth itself.

Where are you I am not there for You. I’m morning in the milkiest decade

of all, a piece of white snow in a snow dome. Make happy, make ache vanish or dispel well

out on the winter’s wish well well well well

           // Amy De’Ath / Holey //

//

> The Law can only focus on repairing a wound without realizing that the Wound precedes and creates the Law. Without the Wound there is no need for the Law. The Law is a force of imbalanced power that functions to maintain the divisions and differentiations of the Wound. People for millennia have traded in the inequality of bodies, but it was not until Caucasian capitalism that the racialized divisions were retroactively inscribed as the entire ontology (way of being) and epistemology (way of knowing) of life. Every defender of capitalism loves to eternalize power imbalances: Greeks had slaves; feudal farmers were fucking miserable. Obviously. But only in Caucasian capitalism has the racial code become a reproductive dogma, inscribing racial power imbalances in the ideology of time and constructing nothing but the liberal futility of the Law to enforce change, so that regardless of what anyone does, regardless of which laws are passed or who is voted into seats of power, the racial code will survive because to undermine it, the entirety of being, knowing, space and time have to be destroyed. Only in Caucasian capitalism is an ideology of “nature” a homogeneous hegemony. Time, space, being, nature, life: all are bound to Capital. No other system has ever been so self-obsessed. That is the problem with City Everywhere.

If Black Lives Matter, then that means the destruction of America. The entirety. That vibrates deep down into the core of the earth, to emerge and destroy Europe and the imaginings of it.

I’m the angel knocking on yr door To let disease in The place that I fit in doesn’t exist, Until I destroy it.

           // Jasmine Gibson / Hollow Delta //

//

> The greatest show imaginable of the whiteness of the Wound in the terrifying horror City Everywhere is the ejaculating white male. The man staring at his laptop screen, pixels tied around the form of feminized bodies, jizz-spilt, spunky teens, the man in his endless war strumming, rubbing time into this spatial production. Rub, rub, rub, make space, man. Spill it over the time you have used, man. The first act of masturbation is Onan in Genesis, who spills his seed on the ground to protect his property. Wanking, like Capital, captures space. But does wanking steal time? Or is wanking its own kind of temporality? It is circular, endless, it goes on and on and never changes and rewrites all time as itself (while wanking, all you want to do is wank forever…) – just like Capital and the shiny shitshow of the white supremacist city. But in ejaculation there is no promise of a Future. Capital must promise a greater Future, the time when value is accumulated entirely in the Tech Execs and the Supreme White Bodies of the Law and the Economy. Wanking is the cancellation of the Future. It is labor that produces no value except the value of itself as a valueless act. It is the spillingof the Future, the cut in flows of Capital. Wanking is the brief moment of calm in the endless war of body-on-body. The body is still producing spatial codes as it spunks up its Future. Ejaculation is the waste of white supremacist Capital.

          // Fuck Parade / Wank Against Capitalism //

//

> And poetry is so spatial, it’s such a rubbing force, collapsing the solidity of structure and yet being so structural, bound so strictly to the past and its ordered forms. The words rise up, the imperial power of language limiting thought to its own centrifuge, restricting knowledge to its own mythology. Poetry clearly shows the impossibility of Wittgenstein’s famous “Whereof one cannot speak”. One is always already speaking, regardless of what one says, whether or not sound is made. In the language of late liberal Capital, everything is said by the code of value accumulation and racializing modern sciences. Poetry is the spatial performance of language, cutting up pages and fetishizing the blank spaces not yet marked in the ink of languages. It is, as it has been thought since Ancient Greece, a mimesis of the city. It is the towering code of privileged space, placing monumental statues as celebrations of imperial domination and the pride of extracting materials to produce more space which creates the architectural/poetic language of words and buildings versus not-yet-conquered land, which is codified in Capital as white bodies versus bodies of colour. Everything about poetry is a battleground of racialized bodies. I keep speaking to people about this and they keep waving me away. But poetry swirls the myth of poetic time into more poeticized space, turning everything into it while it removes itself. Poetry is the city, and the city is whiteness. For how long can we just pretend that raciality and its violent colonial ideologies that construct divided bodies are not inherent in poetry? We’re walking through the city all the time, picking up new spatial codes that break the seamless ease of futurity, spunking out predictable Futures, and so we are complicit in the divisions and the violence.

We drill through to our body’s core with quack psychoanalysis, drawing ancient oils to conflagration. And it all starts with a tug on the sleeve: desire to be known.

But what we discover in the cistern of our history is pure horror.

// Oliver Jones / tug on the sleeve //

//

> I wish I had some kind of solution. All I can think of is writing poetry about whiteness, confront baldly the violence of the city we exist in. To ignore it is to accept the racializing code of the Law. To say it’s not a problem is to presume the spatial divisions of this city are somehow natural or unchangeable. Poets who exist in the category of corporeal privilege called Whiteness (which is the City and the Law) have to undermine the solidity of their bodies by writing it away with new codes of space, spatializing the bodily city in new ways that snap the normative movements of the violent force. Since the white body’s power comes precisely from its self-removal from City Everywhere and its racializing dynamics, it is poets with white bodies that must join the chorus of antiracist poetry by poets with racialized bodies to break the horrible solidity of City Everywhere and its divisive architecture. When poets existing in the privileged category of whiteness recognize that the constitution of their body is precisely the power of the city, when white poets call forth the violence of their oversight that captures while paving over complex temporalities with more white ground, then and only then will a poetry of radically subversive equality be existent. Then there will be a poetry that is not all one, that is not held together by misunderstood pursuits of homogeneous unity and uniformity, but rather a poetry formed of infinite differences in which the meaning of each difference changes every time it is spoken. Poetry distorts the path from sign to signifier, from the thing to what the thing is meant by. When poetry consumes City Everywhere, eating up its tracks and blinding the power of its sight, then black will not mean what black means, indigenous will not refer to that, white will not mean what we all know it does now. There will be difference untied from its singular orbit, unscratched from the hackneyed tracks.

                       [insert poem]

           // you //

// Notes //        Citations in the order they appear in the text:

James Nixon, ‘Ars Poetica #5’, from Rimbaud’s Lost Manuscript, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Goldsmiths (2018).

A. K. Blakemore, ‘nymphs’, in Fondue (London: Offord Road Books, 2018), p. 23.

Danez Smith, ‘every day is a funeral & a miracle’, in Don’t Call Us Dead (London: Chatto & Windus, 2018), p. 66.

Jericho Brown, ‘The Interrogation’, in The New Testament (London: Picador, 2018), p. 12.

Jackie Wang, ‘THE DEATH THAT IS NOT A DEATH BUT IS THE BIRTH OF EVERYTHING POSSIBLE’, in Carceral Capitalism (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2018), p. 313.

Rachael Allen, ‘Apostles Burning’, in Kingdomland (London: Faber & Faber, 2019), p. 70.

Amy De’Ath, ‘Holey’, in Lower Parallel (Brighton: Barque Press, 2014), p. 21.

Jasmine Gibson, ‘Hollow Delta’, in Don’t Let Them See Me Like This (New York: Nightboat Books, 2018), p. 80.

Fuck Parade, ‘Wank Against Capitalism’, photograph taken by E. C. Mason at LARC (London Action Resource Centre, Whitechapel), November 2018.

Oliver Jones, ‘tug on the sleeve’, in Chronic Youth (London: Eyewear Publishing, 2016), p. 27.

The ideas developed in this essay are taken principally from the following texts:

Neferti Tadiar, ‘City Everywhere’, in Theory, Culture & Society 2016, Vol. 33(7–8), pp. 57–83.

Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory to Visuality (London and Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

Jacqueline Goldsby, A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Macarena Gómez-Barris, The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017).

Sam Ladkin, ‘The “Onanism of Poetry”: walt whitman, rob halpern and the deconstruction of masturbation’, in Angelaki, Journal of Theoretical Humanities, Vol. 2, Issue 4, 2015. pp. 131-156.

Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (editors), Futures of Black Radicalism (London: Verso, 2017).

Michelle Wright, Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).

William Rasch, Sovereignty and its Discontents: on the Primacy of Conflict and the Structure of the Political (London: Birkbeck Law, 2004).

~ 

Text: Elliot C. Mason

Published 3/11/19

#Elliot C. Mason #essay #essays #race and poetry #contemporary poetry

[thoughtserver]

Post appointment

I thought about this for way too long. About meeting you. Apparently, you're the person who is supposed to be the one who's able to help me.

The doctor had prescribed me anti psychotics and some anti depressants. The thing is with medication, once you stop taking them you relapse into withdrawals syndrome.

You know? Like ecstasy.

Once you take it, you'd go into depression. Post ecstasy syndrome.

It boosts you with this false serotonin high and once the natural serotonin is gone, you're left with feeling depraved of the love you've always wanted. That high is addictive, hence the name itself being vey well blissful and sweet.

Eventually when our body is strong enough, it then starts to build the serotonin needed to feed us.

So there's absolutely the same chemical structure in those pills.

Web.md will only talk about the short-term side effects, but all addicts are too familiar with withdrawals, the downers after the uppers. What goes up will eventually come down. It's gravity, it's polarity. It's natural.

I don't fear about the temptations of recreational drug use anymore. I don't find the thrills thrilling enough. I found it as a way to escape. But now I find escapism in music. There is a natural high when you flow into things.

Music is so important to remind us to flow into the joy, the sex is different when you have music turned on, tuned in and it can remind us of when we are lonely and sad. All of that natural human emotion and how beautifully bittersweet it all is.

It allows us to feel the moment you're experiencing.

And suddenly the pills are talking to me.

So maybe I do fear the medication. I fear that I might get force fed, by my own thoughts.

I didn't have to buy them.. But I did. Isn't it hilarious that I am betting the odds against myself? From consuming illegal drugs to legal drugs. What bullshit.

I surrender myself to judgement for all that I have gone through. Perhaps, I truly am a sadistic bitch.

I fear that my therapist is a cop in disguise, or a missionary wanting to convert me. Do I like it that someone is passionate about wanting to help me become better? Isn't it enough that I know that I do want to get better? Do I believe that this person is not money motivated? Am I really battling my addictions? Or am I just recovering trauma?

Fuck.

How am I going to get myself out of this one...

I had a sudden realization that to conform in this capitalist society is costly. Not that I've been living under a rock, but more like I wasn't connected to the Mason society reality.

If I had insurance, I'm not sure if they would cover my counselling sessions and these goddamned pills.

The more you want to conform, the more hurdles you encounter as you walk into the monstrosity that the collective unconscious has agreed to call life.

Tonight, I'm asking God why are my obstacles so huge. Does he really think I've the strength? Who the fuck thought that is a sadistic little bitch. I really am fucking myself.

I've been working hard to better myself for the past eight months. Been able to hold down a job during a pandemic too. I thought to myself, I was very lucky ever since I decided to clean up my act.

It's the best decision of my life.

But I had a panic attack at home and I got a really bad episode. I couldn't breathe and I was crying. I was scared shook out of my bones. I thought that someone was going to kill me in my own home. Is my home even mine?

What is a home if you don't feel safe in it?

I was delusional. And again I found myself battling to figure out what is false and what is real.

And that's when I decided to call you.

[bo-sin-limite]

The Marketing serpent

Dr. Kaufmann: As Head of Innovation and Agile Project Development, it’s my job to make sure our business has a future.

Bo: As in making money? Future money?

Dr. Kaufmann: Profitability is just the tip of the iceberg. Really it’s about providing a service that will still be required in the future, and providing it in a better way than others. “Today’s future” is about making the business more digital and more sustainable.

Bo: I have been listening to companies talk about sustainability for decades, but everywhere I go I see the worst of human impact - if anything it’s accelerating. Every great landscape and every cool species comes with a bitter flavor - everything beautiful has a little disclaimer on it saying “enjoy it now, because it will be extinct in 30 years”. Have you watched Planet Earth?

Dr. Kaufmann: I love that show - it really helps me switch off after a full day at the office.

Bo: I love it too - but actually it’s a tragedy! They have to send their teams to the most remote places of the earth for months, just to find what remains of the natural world...THE WILD USED TO BE EVERYWHERE with a view islands of human civilization in between. And now it’s reversed: every place we found useful has been transformed to serve humanity, except for a few tiny corners termed “Nature reserves” - it’s insane!

Adam and Eve got kicked out of paradise for eating a single apple from the tree of wisdom...today that wisdom is long gone: The whole forest got chopped down to grow palm oil, so our Adams and Eves can eat potato chips while watching television.  

Millions of years of evolution run into the ground in a few decades? It’s fucking crazy - and all in the name of growth, of making more than last year? I dare you to watch Terra and talk about the need for a higher GDP!

Dr. Kaufmann: Everybody knows the craze has to end, the hard question is how to end it. That’s why all the children are demanding change and the grown-ups ignore it. Because the adults can’t figure out how to build a new system. For our entire lives we have been taught to think that material wealth, production, consumption - that this defines us not just as a group, but even comparatively versus other individuals. You are what you consume. Not surprising all we do is buy stuff. How do you change that mindset? You can’t just forbid humans to exist, you can’t tell them to stop engaging in any kind of economic activitiy.

Bo: I am not. It’s just that the current levels or production are not sustainable. It’s like we are cutting meat from our legs to put it on our barbecue. I just can’t believe how the industry is doing this. It’s like they don’t care they are destroying the planet.  

Dr. Kaufmann. I for one am always stunned how consumers raise their hands in innocence and point at the industry. “I just chose the product, bought it, used it and threw it away. But these other guys, the producers, they are evil, because they made money of it! I didn’t know this was bad for the environment.”

When you think about it, companies don’t really choose what to produce. They just guess what people want and then make whatever people buy.

It’s that people buy all this stuff they don’t need. How did people get so addicted to stuff?

Bo: The capitalist agenda - turning people into consumption zombies...

Dr. Kaufmann: Well like all of humanity’s most horrible creations, initially capitalism was a pretty good idea: a genius system of facilitating cooperation in large groups. Instead of everybody just trying to hold their own and solve problems DIY-style, individuals would specialize and trade with other specialists. The heyday of capitalism really came about as production techniques became more sophisticated - suddenly you could produce almost everything faster and cheaper using big machines. This didn’t make production more fun, but it did make many formerly exclusive luxury products affordable enough for most people. And that was actually a good thing - reducing inequality.

So rather then some government planning bureau deciding what’s what, you got this thing Adam Smith called the invisible hand:

The entire economy would arrange itself to help the people, to make what they want. Notwithstanding the accumulation of ownership, now each purchase became a political vote in a democratic control of the production assets.

Bo: But then the capitalist system was highjacked by its own success: They just got so good at producing things, they were suddenly in a position to make more than what was needed. And you would think “Mission accomplished, we did it”. Why not stop there?

Dr. Kaufmann: The system developed a will of its own and became self-perpetuating. The main driver of low cost per unit is producing at scale - and this became its predicament: It’s called a “winner takes all”-market. In capitalism the lowest-price producer gets to sell all of his units, before the next-cheapest competitor gets to sell a single unit.

In order to be cheaper than competitors, you have to produce more units. So the thing grows on itself - like cancer.

Bo: But what’s the point of producing more than people need?

Dr. Kaufmann: Even at overproduction, due to the aforementioned cost-dilemma, reducing the volume was no option - instead producers found another solution. What you would call overproduction, economist called a “lack of demand”. In a legendary 180° twist of the system’s original idea, the solution was to “produce demand” - they just had to convince more people to buy more stuff...

It’s not like producers had aimed for this, but their role changed from being faithful servants of peoples’ wants into meddling hypnotic influencers. Enter “Marketing” - this really is capitalism’s original sin. Or to come back to your analogy on the Garden of Eden -

Marketing is the serpent, "a deceptive creature or trickster, who promotes as good what God had forbidden and shows particular cunning in its deception.”

Bo: So its not a natural human urge for more? You are saying we are driven by some fancy commercials?

Dr. Kaufmann: Just look at cars - a machine that delivers freedom of movement? Great fucking invention! Should humans build them - FUCK YES. But take a look at the trajectory: From just the ultrawealthy people having a car in its first days, the producers were able to reduce cost so much that most households could afford one...bringing mobility to all and delivering freedom. Good so far? Okay, so today your household “needs” several cars...because taking a 5 minute detour to carpool with your colleague seems too inconvenient. Or you should buy one at double the price - to show people you can afford it. They even convince people to buy a new car every 3 years, although the product lasts 20 years without any loss of performance - and really the benefit of a car (mobility) has not fundamentally improved in decades. They don’t even pretend it’s better, by now they just tell you to want it, because it’s “new”. Same thing with perfumes, or sports shoes, i-phones and jackets. The products you buy and the reasons you buy them have transcended the original need that the products were invented for.

Bo: So now we are back to victimizing the poor consumers being forced to take all this stuff that companies are shoving down their throat? The consumers are at the very least co-dependent addicts of this whole demise. They care, but only until caring collides with the convenience, cost or quality they have come to expect. That is why they believe the consumer brands’ simplistic little corporate responsibility stories. They want the easy way out, they want to believe them.

A consumer perspective in which sustainability is not a must, but one criteria out of many, where preserving the world is a nice-to-have - this is where we are raping earth, this is where we butcher natural life, this is where sell out our existence for a bunch of one-way plastics.

We don’t have to be superheroes, we don’t have to save the world. All we have to do is not destroy it ourselves.

#marketing #capitalism #original sin #unsustainable #consumers #trick #conned #suicide #end of the world #deceptive #growth #gdp

[aposematicariel-blog]

Explanation of my social media performance art piece

I am beginning the delve into my first and perhaps only performance art piece. Social media is a constant in my life, and in the lives of virtually everyone in the younger generations here in 2017. If we look at millenials, social media has literally always been in their lives. So, what better way to get my message across than to use these apps as my platform for this project - besides; social media is the key ingredient in what this is all about.

To explain a little about myself in relation to this project: I am female, I am a model, and I suffer from extreme self-loathing (amongst other things). I want, if nothing else, to take the blinders off of even just one girl (though of course this can apply to boys as well). I want to help her avoid the self-hatred that capitalism is selling us every second of every day. I want her to learn to love herself like I cannot.

What do you do the first thing you wake up? Is it check your phone notifications, probably including instagram? BAM. You are already in the world of capitalism, consumerism, and an endless brainwashing that is selling you fake lives and impossible ideals. Capitalism has long preyed on women to make a profit off of creating insecurities - we have long been sold an idea of what our bodies, faces, hair, and god knows what else should look like. But with the addition of Instagram, I fear that this brainwashing has reached a new and terrifying level.

We are constantly viewing images of: a) what is trending now, what the fucking Hadids/Kardashians are wearing, what brands you should be buying, endless luxuries and clothes and products you will never be able to afford b) images of perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect bodies - bodies that are skinny in just the right way or bodies that have massive asses/tits or a whole array of bodies that no matter what they look like won't look like yours because they AREN’T your body…basically perfect everything, and without you even noticing your self-esteem is dropping and dropping as you scroll down and down c) RICH fantasy lives of wealth, glamour, luxury and mainly HAPPINESS - you see this and you wish your life were like the one you are viewing, that you were having as much fun as the people you are looking at, living in a never-ending vacation…may we all be buried in the sand of the endless beach pics

What you aren’t thinking about as you scroll is that these are all people selling an image of themselves (or literally companies selling their product with your mental health as casualty). This isn’t reality. This is a web of lies that is shown to you, carefully currated so that you only the image they want you to see. You don’t know if the person you are viewing is happy in their life or what they are doing in literally every moment of their life besides the one second captured in the image that is posted. You are drowning in a never-ending sea of faked perfection. (Granted, some people are selling a different sort of idea of themselves but we will get into that later. There is nothing on Instagram that isn't for sale). You open your phone and you are immediately lost in ideals that are driven by an algorithm of MONEY.

So what does this all mean for our youth and our planet? Well, we can start with “fast fashion”. Sure, some high fashion designers may be using eco-friendly methods of production, but the companies that are copying their next trends aren’t. We live in a world where the greatest polluter is clothes. We consume and consume, because the next trend is always there ready to grab at our insecurities. How much money do you think women spend monthly on beauty and fashion? Let’s think about how many make up tutorials there are out there. A fuck ton no? Let’s think about the expectiations to have perfect hair in some places and be perfectly hairless in other places (again, will get into the alternative sales of trends like armpit hair later). While we are drowning in a sea of insecurities and material desires that are being force-fed to us, our planet is drowning in the sea of clothing waste from our “single use” outfits. After I am done with this phase of the project, I will go through a period showing how I shop only vintage and thrift thus keeping clothes out of landfills as well as stopping consuming. Besides fashion, the other (probably even pricier) bill is make up and beauty products. $50 on a face cream isn’t even a splurge in our beauty obsessed world. Women aren’t allowed to age, only men right? So better we pay the price in our eternal search for the fountain of youth. However again, besides the toll on our mental health there is a toll on the planet - wonderful chemicals and plastic casings and animal testing and more!

And yet, we spend so so much on all these things to fit society’s standards, and somehow we are still left feeling imperfect. There is always something that could be improved upon, and always a product there for any new insecurity we develop. While the wage gap between women and men still is as shocking as ever for it being 2017, we are the ones paying a fortune just to stay “acceptable”.

To summarize: I will be creating a fake reality on Instagram where I will be selling the image of myself as a beautiful HAPPY girl with lots of money and all the latest designer/trending clothes, living the dream life of glamour and luxury. Girls (and boys) may end up feeling worse about themselves, or jealous, or unworthy, or an array of negative emotions upon viewing this fake life I will be displaying. While I hate to make anyone feel badly about themselves, in the end this is my whole point. Everything I will be “selling” will be a blatant LIE. And I will be documenting the entire thing real time, with longer explanations here on Tumblr, short uptates on Twitter, and brief explanations/reminders THAT IT IS A PERFORMANCE PIECE in my Instagram story. My goal isn’t to trick people; it is to have them read my bio and find all that I have to say behind each VERY FALSE post.

NOTES: -my next long post will be about the beauty pressures on women of color and models of color -I realize you may have questions so will open the ask me section (one of which may be “isn’t it hypocritical to be an anti-capitalist model?” which I will also be making a post on)

[darrenfranich]

RIP, Star Wars

Of course Star Wars isn’t dead, you say, it’s going to live forever, didn’t you read that Wired story? But, counterargument: Something can be dead and still be here. Peter Cushing died in 1994, and he was in as many films last year as Rachel McAdams. Alec Guinness died in 2000, but if you ask people "who is Obi-Wan Kenobi in real life,” I bet the majority of people over 22 won’t say “Ewan McGregor.” Jesus, look how long ago Jesus died, how many times you think he came up in conversation today? The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past. But that doesn’t mean it’s the future.

A lot of people think Star Wars is still alive, that this franchise still has a pulse. Look at The Force Awakens, all those young people swinging lightsabers, wow a desert planet AND an ice planet AND a forest planet, two billion dollars! Look at Rogue One, haha that droid was funny, one billion dollars! A new trilogy! A Han Solo trilogy! Bounty hunter spinoff! Trevorrow! Trevorrow!

Message to everyone who said they loved Rogue One: You can never complain again about...

....Hollywood endlessly developing franchises, remakes and reboots and sequels and spinoffs, take that complaint out of your arsenal, you saw Rogue One so you gave them the ammunition...

...the Hollywood studios’ utter disrespect for filmmakers as anything but traffic-cop content creators...

...young filmmakers’ utter lack of interest in any human behavior not previously observed in the fantasy films they enjoyed when they were children, why develop your dream project for seven years, your pal Colin got all the money for Jurassic Park 4 and Star Wars 9...

...modern fantasy’s dedication to the Chosen One narrative, yes Jyn was a Chosen One even if she wasn’t a Jedi, her dad was SO IMPORTANT and her foster dad was SO IMPORTANT and she inspired the Rebellion to become a Rebellion, if you think Rogue One is about “normal people” go watch an actual movie about normal people sometime, go watch I, Daniel Blake, and if you don’t want to see I, Daniel Blake that’s fine, but consider the possibility that you know very little about real people and movies...

...actors’ inability to find a good movie to demonstrate their talents because they’re too busy chasing relevancy convincing themselves there is some honor in spitshining greenscreen melodrama, did you see fucking see Boyega in Attack the Block, god damn that is a fucking star, how much of this next decade will be Star Wars and Pacific Rim and surely someone on his team would love to fit in one more, look at Jennifer Lawrence, she just signed up for another X-Men even though she stopped caring halfway through First Class, “But Jennifer” her people said, “Passengers, Jennifer, Passengers,” hey for real no judgements and I like Pacific Rim, and I believe in anything sight unseen, I believe in Pacific Rim 2, I mean look at Christian he’s great and he did Batman and maybe this is my Batman is the rallying cry of every actor who does these movies, nobody ever dares to consider this is their Terminator Salvation, now go back and watch Terminator Salvation and marvel at how similar it is to Rogue One, it might as well be Rogue One, fucking Terminator fucking Salvation even did the whole digital-actor thing six years early and it actually looked better because the Terminator isn’t supposed to be a person, but people used to care when humans didn’t look like humans..

....and you can’t complain about the fact that Disney just fired the first good Star Wars directors since Irvin Kershner.

You can’t complain about any of this, because it’s your fault. It’s my fault. It’s us, the people who see these movies. I didn’t like Rogue One, but I saw it, god damn me. This thing I’m writing is whose fault it is.

No, this wasn’t LucasFilm’s fault, although of course LucasFilm is just another lame Silicon Valley company pretending to explore bold new ground while actually just maintaining their consumer base with a religious dedication to the sacred trademarked IP. And of course LucasFilm is no better than any Hollywood studio, sorry George, we all know Hollywood can be awful place but the studios you despised didn’t just make Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and now all the studios have become just like you, all they want is their own Star Wars, look in the mirror, see the face behind Darth Vader’s decapitated helmet, recognize yourself, time to build your museum in Los Angeles, see if you can defeat history by writing your own, 50 miles northwest and 40 miles southeast of your museum the Kathy Kennedys of Reagan and Nixon are trying to do the same thing.

And this isn’t Disney’s fault, because of course Disney doesn’t care about filmmakers. When has Disney ever cared about filmmakers? Why would you ever think that? Have you seen Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s movies, all that playful deconstruction? What makes you think Disney fucking wants to be deconstructed? Remember when Shrek came out and the nice twist at the end was that the beauty became a beast because actually LOOKS DON’T MATTER? Remember 17 years after Shrek when Disney released yet another movie about a beast who becomes a cute doofus because sure looks don’t matter but also HUBBA HUBBA? Quick, guess which made more, Shrek or Beauty and the Beast Except Now Nobody Can Sing? Disney is an engorged capitalist carcharodonic fun-monster, it moves ever onward devouring childhood and recycling its glittering defecation into some untold generation’s primal dreams, Disneyland’s great, I love it, but it’s not what you’d call a place that is open to bold new ideas, they just replaced the Twilight Zone ride with a Guardians of the Galaxy ride, I hear there was a controversy about that, either the term “controversy” has lost all meaning or nothing matters the way it’s supposed to.

What an age we live in. Directors are fired midway through production of their movie, and the charge is serious creative differences between the filmmakers and the producers and the studio. Wow, this is some serious Easy Riders Raging Bulls shit! Man, what were they working on? A bold political statement about our tattered society? A scathing dark comedy guaranteed to outrage everyone and thrill future generations? A boundary-bursting romance that promises to break down our preconceived notions of sexuality? A wild provocation from a fiercely independent creative spirit? What was this film that was too dangerous to be made, your grandchildren will ask you. Was that your generation’s Brazil? Your generation’s Dr. Strangelove? Another Brokeback Mountain? Something that can measure up to the sheer explosive power to Wertmuller’s Swept Away? WHAT WAS THIS WORK OF RADICAL CINEMA your granchildren will ask WHAT WAS IT THAT OFFENDED THE GATEKEEPERS SO?  

...it was tenth film in a franchise, or eleventh or thirteenth depending on if you count the animated film and the Ewok movies.

And it was a prequel about the most popular character in the franchise.

This is what we have creative differences about now. “Is the Han Solo movie going to be too funny????” I guess, or maybe “Is the Han Solo movie going to match up to Rogue One?”

Rogue One, LOL. They pushed out that director after production and nobody cared. They spent half the movie flying random places with random people for no motivation besides SAVE THE UNIVERSE and MY DAD!!!! and nobody cared. They spent the whole movie talking about how cool the Death Star was literally 39 years after the movie that already showed you how cool the Death Star was, and nobody cared. Felicity Jones nudged a satellite dish a few degrees left as the big climax and nobody cared, hahaha wow look they took stock footage of all those X-Wing pilots and made the stock footage look more modern-er than before, “Let’s see it again but now more modern-er!” seems to be the rallying cry of us all now, of audiences and of critics and of people everywhere who should want something new.

It’s all so funny. What a laugh. This will make such fine subtext for 23 Jump Street. I blame myself, you should blame yourself, feel bad about this, we caused this. Take nothing seriously but our own complicity. And next year, whenever Han Solo Origins: A Star Wars Story directed by Phil Lord & Chris Miller & [insert scab here] opens in theaters, ask yourself: Do you have to see this movie? Consider advice from Jyn Erso. Isn’t this a rebellion? Are you ever going to rebel?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Sorry, seriously, not joking, I just remembered: That line didn’t make it into the movie. It was just in the marketing. Star Wars sells rebellion, but nobody involved with Star Wars – not the characters, not the filmmakers, not the audience – rebels against anything anymore.

[a-memoir-of-me-blog]

or is he just a reflection of us? vice versa?

i remember talking to my first love about this....trump is a catalyst and the people KNOW culture needs to change and we need to take action and responsibility in our hands instead of solely relying on the government. the government wants you to use it....just know how to be resourceful

Trump woke lol.

His smokescreens are genius.

He aggravating ppl because he's just making them reflect on themselves. And make them wanna educate themselves more when he says "I know this more than u". He understands humans. And as humans. We don't want someone to be better than us. So it forces us to look at the important stuff and rlly learn about it and how the system fucked us.

Trump is making everything ride up so then he can flip it and change it.

He's cutting off the hurtful parts. So we can focus on ourselves. And improve. And when we improve. We have more. We have more educated ppl. We have more innovators. We have more value that can be offered to places outside of us after we internally improve. And then ppl come here and realize. This is our true value. Humans in our country. Our potential. And how the potential here is so high. That places where it's low and they wanna seek it come to us and we balance out.

Example. Diffusion in cells

He's making America more self reliant.

I think that the most value is life itself. And that's why he's keeping it here. And why he wants to make more American things. Instead of outsourcing. Because if we outsource. We're cheating ourselves. Are we really owners of what we have? They own us. The ones who give us the things we want. Because of media. We are wasting!!!! We need to change the American mentality. Become more self reliant. Improve ourselves. Before we help anyone else. Because if we're low on life supply. Then why would we help other places that only suck out life we have here that we're already low on?

Trump is making the oppressed mad. So they can educate themselves and get to the same level. Realize things. And change the system that they're in. And we can't do that because we're stuck in the established. We're stuck in the capitalist mindset.

Trump is using his "money credibility" as a force to lure ppl out of the darkness.

He's putting on a show to get people involved and wake up.

Media is feeding us false value. False ideas. Encouraging us to spend money for what? Clothes? That were made as a profit maker for us? Kill someone else on the other side of the world? For what? To "look cool"? To feed our ego that was made by media?

My philosophy is this. And history and philosophy and books about humanities and our conditions as humans. Hamlet. Walden. Icarus. Etc.

We need to be more self reliant. We need to build an abundance of valuable producers. Not consumers. We need to build ourselves first. And THEN we can help others out.

We are our own ecosystem and economy and business. We must feed ourselves. We must be healthy. We must have life for ourselves and sustain it and not rely on anyone outside of us. Because. The food we eat. GMO's etc. not good for health. And what? So we can feed back into the healthcare system? That Monopoly money feeding industry off of the sick ppl of our own country? Again. Media attracts u to that shit.

And guess what. We're gonna die because of that. We're gonna die because imagine. One day. We have no access to water because someone is hogging it and then selling it. For what? What will that dollar do? Can they eat it? Oh. So they can buy some shit that is unnecessary. Literally just to feed their ego because "oh. This latest car or fashion will make *media washed ppl* praise me". How sad does that sound? You're just as washed as them.

But u know who has the true value? Someone who knows the value of life alone. Who sees the potential. There's so much potential in that one little garden. That one garden to feed yourself. That one garden that will sustain your basic necessities. Without the need for money. Money has no intrinsic value. Money cannot be eaten. Money cannot be drank. Money cannot sustain life. It can feed an ego that was created because we're brainwashed by media tho. And I guess that comes into play because as humans we love to have attention. We love to be seen as more than the next person. We love the praise. But you're getting the praise by killing one off? So what...you're gonna kill the world you're in. Kill the people you are living in the world with?

And guess what. Sooner or later. YOUR future. YOUR actions that trickle down to next generations after the other. Will have a bad affect because of ur mindset and actions today.

Sooner or later the world will be dead and we killed it. Sooner or later, the ppl we once wanted to get praise from can no longer praise u because they're dying. The ppl u once wanted to trade GOODS with can no longer supply u anymore because WE took it all out by money. So guess what? Now you're dying. Now you're alone. And now you, the one who relied on everyone else to support YOUR HEARTBEAT, will die because you don't know how to keep ur water clean. U don't know how to feed yourself by having your own garden. You don't know how to travel anymore from place to place because u relied on someone else.

It's so ironic. We will kill ppl slowly by exploiting them and making them do stuff. So we can (example), get the labor from them and use it (cotton for example) and sell it for a profit....to get what??? There is no value in that shirt u sold. But there's a life on there that was taken because u were brainwashed into this society and think that money is better than life.

I want to make community gardens. Build wells in communities. Educate ppl on this. Have a better electricity system. Take the talents of others and give them something in return that will help them prosper in life. Ex: a house builder and a person who makes clothing. The house builder has a house. He's good. So what he'll do. Start making a house for the one making clothes (that cloth maker will make clothes for him) and then show the cloth maker how to continue it. And vice versa.

I want to show the world that money has no power over us. Media and the globalization that England started can end today!

We can live a prosperous life.

But as good things start to rise. We get greedy. Aka. Icarus. And we fall. And we die. We want more and more and more. And then we create our own downfall.

Watch. If we start being self reliant. If we start making community gardens. We will be told it's illegal. Soon we will be told that seeds are illegal. CHERISH the seeds. Because seeds grow into hope. Water the brain. Water the heart. Give life and life will give to u. Soon we will discover that the greedy one who doesn't want to change the world and improve it will get upset and scared because he's losing power. He will poison the soil. But guess what? Now you're gonna get ppl mad and they're gonna look at the person who u killed and look at their motives and analyze it. And be like "oh wow. They just killed someone who was trying to improve the world....". Then guess what? Now they're going to be attacked and killed and guess what? Now they have no power. Power over who? U killed everyone! And you're gonna soon die because u just let money buy everything for u and never learned to be self reliant. And now guess what. You're dead. We're all dead.

So what I wanna do. Teach the community to come together. Share the talent. Create things in collaboration. Not in exploration. Not for the sake of capitalism. Create so u can give back to the world and let life live on. If one can grow a tree, one can build a house. If one can grow a garden, one can sustain the health. If one can think up of ways to better electricity, then one can live in light. If one in the light can study in there, then one can think more and more and more. If one can make clothing, then one can be warm and survive and give back life.

Think about how you can give, so then you can continue this legacy. This heaven that was put on earth. Wake up the god in u. Wake up the good. Act in goodness. Let god work thru u. Think ahead of yourself. Think more for yourself. Think for others because that person will offer u more ok return.

Also I rlly agree with trumps policy to lower business taxes. Because it encourages more ppl with great ideas to do them because it's not so much and it's less risk. And it'll encourage ppl to invest more. So again. Production. Innovation. I want these businesses to not be for corporations. But more public projects. Like better electricity. Better agriculture. Better water technology. Etc

And raising taxes on stupid shit. Like clothes. Etc. will discourage ppl to buy them and be more conservative with their money and invest in more long term things. But that's the capitalist part of him. Other than that. From everything that I said above. Will happen when we stop buying so much shit like clothes and shoes and cars and unnecessary things. Creating less value. And ofc, in comparison of the dollar we have, we'll eventually run them out and it'll change society. And with the public projects and the less companies that feed the ego of humans, then our mindset will change and we will make America great again. But. I need to do more behavioral research. Will ppl addicted to smoking or addicted to having their ego stroked rlly be able to react in that way? Will they actually stop putting value into those things? "Value". A dollar with no intrinsic value. But then again it's cotton that's made by exploited ppl. So the money supply and circulation can def have an affect. So this rlly says. Do we have so much value in this dollar that we don't value our health (the buying of the cigs, etc) and our ego is so big we don't even care that we're killing our selves and someone else?

Life gives life to give life.