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#I happen to be very anti-capitalist
dreamlandiasims · 3 months
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hi, i'm not jewish and wouldn't want to speak over anyone, but from my perspective maybe removing plot points that could parallel blood libel and adding more that parallel the anti capitalist angle could be a good start.
removing the eternal youth angle and emphasizing how the power of the companies hinges on exploiting the working conditions of workers instead of experiments on them could be an option? also a character being a class traitor could potentially weaken parallels to power being "birth right" of the secret society imo. there's also always an option to demystify the conspiracy by showing that this current route sounds more interesting, but that the truth is just capitalism and even though it doesn't sounds as exciting it's still very scary.
Ok yeah this is pretty much what I’ve been thinking so far! Thank you for your input :)
As a start I’m planning to remake the Reddit pages and relevant dialogue from the last post to be more “agnos is a major corporation that’s trying to monopolize the market and they’re engaging in shady business practices to be at the forefront of tech and medicine development (at the expense of their workers/sub-companies).”
I think similarly, the focus on the alien tech could be more of a commentary on “how far are we willing to go in the name of science and advancement”, and I’ll definitely cut out the “eternal youth” aspect.
I’m hoping that this is enough to redirect the narrative that the story is establishing, but if anyone feels otherwise please let’s continue the conversation!
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gallawitchxx · 7 months
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hi gallabitches (fond),
i am feeling very sappy as kinktober is halfway over & i continue to sit it out this year due to health & work-load & brain blips. so i just wanted to name an emotional experience i'm having because maybe you're having it too?
things are changing around here. things have changed. interests, time, desires, energy levels, schedules, lives have changed. the bubble that was 2020-2022? 23? has burst for real. people have moved on. that is ok. this is ok. this is life. (woof!) but it's that last one that's been getting to me lately -- the people.
this fandom is so special & there's something really loving about the people that are drawn to this space. my god, the talented, warm, big-hearted, nurturing, genius, creative, expansive, vulnerable, perfectly made people that find their way here!! & all because we happen to love these two fucked-up, growing, frustrating, devoted, horny, idiot felons and soulmates so deeply we want to fucking scream about it on tumblr dot com. my best friends are here.
so yes, what's happened/is happening is sad. i am Sad about it! & also the people keep coming! there's been this new wave of incredible, talented, lovely people who have showed up to take the unhinged baton & do their own lap around the windy city. that is the cycle! it's delightful! my sweet fresh danny devitos, i love your work!! & the best news is i/you/we don't have to fucking go anywhere at all! we can write & make & scream & lose our goddamn minds over these fools for a lifetime. i'm certainly not done. just switching up the pace.
but if you're someone who's moved on or is moving on, go, go, go & may you let love lead you to your next soft place to land. thank you for being such a huge part of my life for the past few years. what we all created together is nothing short of a miracle. thank you. i love you. thank you. ALSO SHOW BACK UP ON MY DASH AT ANYTIME. STAY IN TOUCH. TELL ME YOU ARE SAFE. I AM WORRIED ABOUT YO--
i love this place. thank you to the pals who are feeding us so good this kinktober. community makes me emotional!!!!!!
bee xx
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noritaro · 1 year
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ppl say the once-ler could’ve avoided bankruptcy if he just replanted the trees or if he just waited another 20 years for them to grow after replanting them but i don’t think he could’ve cuz not only did he pollute the water but the soil most likely lacked the proper nutrients for the trees to actually regrow due to the pollution and the lack of life in the environment made it harder for the soil to gain back the nutrients it lost, or maybe they did mention that in the movie and i just have shitty memory
LITERALLY!!! HE QUITE LITERALLY DESTROYED THE ENVIRONMENT BEYOND CUTTING DOWN TREES
Also anon,, do not get me started on his shitty business practices cause they make me go insaaane- I have several complaints on how bad he is at leeching off the wallets of the working class.
Like in the movie we were shown that he couldve easily made thneeds without cutting them down, he just needs to grab the tufts, the only reason he did that is because his mother pressured him into doing it- the process was too slow to meet the demand of his product. You know what he could've done instead?? Read up on the law of supply and demand. Hell raising the price of the thneed, which is $3.98 btw, in order to meet the insanely high demands despite low supply IS THE OBVIOUS THING TO DO.
this cringefail capitalist runs a monopoly in the thneed business and not once does he stop and just think,,, jus t t h i n k
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angelsaxis · 1 year
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Feminists pushed for women to be able to work because being totally financially dependent on and beholden to One Singular Man was extremely dangerous and quite literally killing women.
Capitalism gets worse but being able have and keep your own money is ideal over being totally financially dependent on One Man.
People who are anti capitalist (in a general sense of the term) rightfully say that the conditions under which we work totally suck (and should change).
Misogynists see that the working conditions are awful (and they see other things happening), but rather than using that fact to push for improvements in the work place for women and people of other gender minorities, they launch back to deeply sexist and dangerous rhetoric that, beyond glorifying a past for women that never existed, doesn't even understand the basics of child and home care that SAHMs have to go through.
So now we have women who thoroughly believe that a) working sucks (theyre right in some ways) and b) the "solution" to this is for women to be SAHMs or housewives because "all you have to do" is cook and clean. They glorify the man having to go out and make all the money--money which they presume will be handed over to them if they so much as ask. Money that they don't have real access to, money that they believe will be their compensation for fulfilling an archaic gender roles successfully. Meaning if they don't perform to the man's standards, they lose the money.
All day. Every day. It's very clear that the women who say this often do not, themselves, have to do all the cooking and cleaning for other people, and the fact that they think this is simple and easy work shows they devalue the real labor that goes into being a SAHM/housewife. I've done cooking and cleaning for a household of five people and I will tell you it's awful.
But these traditionalists and hypergamists and whatever else they wanna call themselves are leading people into believing that ultimately, it's men that should be in control of everything. Women not having to work is somehow a good thing.
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yourtongzhihazel · 2 months
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sorry if this is a very idiotic question but how is the existence of private firms in China not antithetical to it being a socialist state. this is seriously in good faith I'm genuinely curious TT
This is a pretty common question, not just when it comes to China, but also to most socialist states, including the USSR at the time.
in short, the transformation of a country's mode of production takes a very long time. The development and maturation of capitalism took hundreds of years and had many stages: mercantilism, primitive accumulation, national competition, global expansion, and finally, imperialism (the highest stage of capitalism). Socialism will also take a long time to mature. Socialism is not a checklist of haves and have nots. Socialism isn't when collectives or cooperatives. Socialism isn't when no billionaires. Socialism most definitely is not when government does stuff or taxes on rich people.
The transition to socialism requires the development of productive forces. The goal of Reform and Opening Up (改革开放, GGKF) was to build up the productive forces which China lacked at the time. While China had a solid heavy industrial and agricultural base, it lacked in other areas. Additionally, thanks to the Sino-Soviet split, China was left largely isolated without much foreign trade. GGKF achieves this by opening the Chinese market to foreign capitalist investment. These foreign investors pour money into China to build factories, ports, infrastructure, assembly plants, etc., etc., in order to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor. The upside of this policy is the rapid accumulation of productive forces. The downside is intensifying internal contradictions (and if you ask my grandpa, the worst thing GGKF did was introducing liberals to China). Billionaires are a symptom of these intensifying internal contradictions.
China is in a nascent, primitive form of socialism: it has a dictatorship of the proletariat lead by a proletarian party. The party derives its power from the people (who make up the vast vast majority of the party). Between 2003 and 2011, the PRC executed 14 billionaires. The anti-corruption campaign also continues to rack up billionaire heads. Corrupt officials who get extremely wealthy from bribes, too, get executed. When Jack Ma tried to step out of line, his company was seized and broken up (ANT group). The state consistently puts its boots on the necks of the bourgeoisie. At the same time, Chinese worker safety, labor rights, wages, overtime, state intervention, etc. are increasing. This stands in contrast to the dictatorships of the bourgeoisie in the west, most notably america. In the usa, the billionaires control the state and thus can get away with anything they want, and not a single one will face tangible punishment, let alone get executed.
As geopolitics shift, material conditions improve, and internal contradictions are resolved, GGKF will be rolled back as China progresses on its construction of socialism. This is beginning to happen. Since the international bourgeoisie have finally realized that China never intended to liberalize and is still, in fact, a socialist state, The DOTBs that they run are working day and night to slander, sanction, and vilify the PRC. The international institutions, which China had to join in order to effect GGKF, will slowly turn against China, using any excuse to try and squeeze them. But it is largely too late. Using the fruits of GGKF, China has eliminated extreme poverty entirely, resolving one internal contradiction. Its productive forces are good enough that it can begin to carry itself without much western IP and capital. I expect the PRC to further crack down on the excesses of GGKF; indeed, several markets have been entirely eliminated via nationalization already.
Here's some nice trivia! mcdicks in China is 50% state owned and its workforce is entirely unionized! Cool huh? In exchange for access to China's massive market, in their never-ending pursuit for higher and higher profit, the bourgeoisie is willing to partially fund the largest currently-existing socialist state. "The capitalists will sell us the rope", as is often said.
Red Sails wrote a great article addressing this question, if you'd like to give it a read.
SN: AZ36
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lady-griffin · 1 year
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It was very weird for me to go from Tumblr where I’ve been seeing a lot of good, supportive, and informative takes about the Writers’ Strike – where even the one or two posts I’ve seen being critical, still had a nuanced and sympathetic view.
To go to a community post on YouTube, where I saw some truly god awful, spiteful, uninformed, and just overall condescending takes on the subject.
And basically I was forced to remember that anti-union is not an uncommon stance at all, even by those who shouldn’t be anti-union in the slightest. Also, there are these dominanting ideas in our culture and society like - 
‘Someone else has it worse than you, so shut up’
‘You’re not owed a job that pays you well’
‘You should be thankful for what you have and work harder to get a “better” and even different job if you want more, rather than just demanding it.’
‘You don’t deserve that (and by that, they mean things like dignity, respect, or any kind of good paying job)
And I’m just like...
Wow, you guys really drank up that capitalistic Kool-Aid, didn’t you?
There’s just so many things to unpack and criticize, but I can’t help but focus on this somewhat ambiguous idea of ‘it’s wrong for writers to do this, when other workers, like teachers and nursers are being treated unfairly today.’
Do you think you can only care about one thing?
Do you think only some workers deserve to be treated fairly and earn a living wage?
Do you think there’s only x amount of strikes that can happen in a given year?
Or that there’s a limit to how many unions can exist?
Do you think that writers receiving protections or more that what they are currently being given will somehow impact how teachers and nurses are being paid or treated?
It’s weird and beyond stupid that you’re bringing up other workers being treated unfairly as a reason for why this strike is bad.
Also, I’m not sure what you think the WGA can exactly do for nurses or teachers.
I’m still honestly very annoyed and even angry about this one stupid comment I saw - “Just use ChatGPT”
And yeah... 
I forgot how strong and stupid anti-union rhetoric can be, as well as annoyingly pervasive. 
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mariacallous · 5 months
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The great fault of the global left is not that it supports Hamas. For how could Western left-wing movements or left-inclining charities or academic bodies truly support Hamas if they were serious about their politics?
No one outside the most reactionary quarters of Islam shares Hamas’s aim of forcing the peoples of the world to accept “the sovereignty of Islam” or face “carnage, displacement and terror” if they refuse.  You cannot be a progressive and campaign for a state that executes gay men. An American left, which includes in its ranks the Queers for Palestine campaign group, cannot seriously endorse lethal homophobia in its own country.  They will turn a blind eye in Palestine, as we shall see, but not in New York or Chicago.
Finally, no left organisation proudly honours the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the fascist tradition that Hamas embraces with such sinister gusto, although in a sign of a decay that has been building on the left for more than a generation, many will promulgate left-wing conspiracy theories which are as insane as their fascist counterparts.
No, the problem with the global left is that it is not serious about politics. It “fellow travels” with radical Islam rather than supports it. The concept of “fellow travelling,” with its suggestions of tourism, dilettantism, and privilege, is well worth reviving. The phrase comes from the Bolsheviks. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 they looked with appreciation on Westerners who supported them without ever endorsing communism. Artists, writers, and academics who were disgusted with the West, often for good reason, I should add, were quite happy to justify Soviet communism and cover up its crimes without ever becoming communists themselves.
Leon Trotsky put it best when he said of fellow travellers that the question was always “how far would they go”? As long as they did not have live under the control of communists in the 1920s or the control of Islamists in the 2020s, the answer appears to be: a very long way indeed
W.H. Auden said, as he looked back with some contempt on his fellow travelling past, if Britain or the United States or any country he and his friends knew were taken over by a “successful communist revolution with the same phenomena of terror, purges, censorship etc., we would have screamed our heads off”. But as communism happened in backward Russia “a semi-barbarous country which had experienced neither the Renaissance nor the Enlightenment”, they could ignore its crimes in the interests of seeing the capitalist enemy defeated.
You see the same pattern of lies and indulgence in the case of Hamas. Journalists  have produced a multitude of examples of fellow travelling since 7 October but let one meeting of the Oakland City Council in the Bay area of San Francisco speak for them all.
A council member wanted the council to pass a motion that condemned the killings and hostage-taking by Hamas, who, in case we forget, prompted the war that has devastated Gaza, by massacring Israeli civilians. The motion got nowhere
According to one speaker Hamas did not massacre anyone, a modern variant of Holocaust denial that is becoming endemic. “There have not been beheadings of babies and rapings,” a woman said at the meeting. “Israel murdered their own people on October 7.”  Another woman said that calling Hamas a terrorist organization is “ridiculous, racist and plays into the genocidal propaganda that is flooding our media.” Hamas was the “armed wing of the unified Palestinian resistance” , said a third who clearly had no knowledge of the civil war between Hamas and Fatah.
“To condemn Hamas was very anti-Arab racist” cried a fourth. The meeting returned to modern Holocaust denial as a new speaker said the Israeli Defence Forces had murdered their own people and it was “bald propaganda” to suggest otherwise. A man intervened to shout that “to hear them complain about Hamas violence is like listening to a wifebeater complain when his wife finally stands up and fights back”.  
Anyone who contradicted him was a “white supremacist.”
Of course they were.
Now if theocrats were to establish an Islamist tyranny in the Bay area, I am sure every single speaker would scream their heads off, as Auden predicted. They can turn into fellow travellers as there is no more of a prospect of theocracy threatening them than there was of communism threatening readers of the left-wing press in the UK and US in the 1930s.
A serious left would have plenty to complain about. Consider the Israeli position after the breakdown of the ceasefire. The Israeli state is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, a catastrophe of a prime minister, who left his people exposed to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. His war aims are contradictory: you cannot both wipe out Hamas and free the hostages.
Worst of all, the Israeli defence forces are to move to the southern Gaza strip where two million Palestinians are crammed. Just war doctrine holds that a military action must have a reasonable chance of success if the suffering is to be permitted. How, reasonably, can the Israeli army expect to find guerilla fighters hiding in a terrified population?  According to leaks in the Israeli media, Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of state, was warning the Israeli government that, “You can’t operate in southern Gaza in the way you did in the north. There are two million Palestinians there.” But he was ignored.  A radical movement worth having would surely be putting pressure on the Biden administration to force Israel to listen to its concerns.
The radical movement we have will not engage in practical politics because compromise is anathema to it. Any honest account of the war would have to admit that Israel has the right to defend itself against attack. It is just that the military position it finds itself in now may well make its war aims impossible and therefore immoral.
You can see why practical politics has no appeal. Where is the violent satisfaction in sober analysis,  the drama in compromise? Where is the Manichean distinction between the absolute good of the Palestinians and the pure evil of Israel?  
Meanwhile, ever since the Israeli victory in the Six Day War of 1967, you have been able to say that Jewish settler sites on the West Bank were placed there deliberately to make a peace settlement impossible, and ensure that Israel controlled all the territory from “the river to the sea” forever.
A serious left might try to revive a two-state solution by building an international consensus that the settlements must go. Once again, however, that is too tame an aim. For the fellow traveller watching Palestine from a safe distance, satisfaction comes only by embracing Hamas’s call for the destruction of Israel. Some progressives try to dress up the urge to destroy by pretending that Jews and Palestinians will go on to live together in some happy-clappy, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state. But most must know they are advocating a war to the death. What makes their position so disreputable is that, if they thought about it calmly, they would know it would be a war that only Israel could win. It is the Israelis who have the nuclear weapons, after all.
The worst of the global left is dilettantish. It advocates a maximalist position which has a minimal chance of success - just for the thrill of it. David Caute, a historian of fellow travelling with Stalin and communism said that the endorsement of communism by fellow travelling intellectuals in the West “deepened the despair” of Soviet intellectuals. “In their darkest hours they heard themselves condemned by their own kind”.
The 2020s are not the 1930s. I am sure that, if I were a Palestinian in Gaza, my sole concern would be the removal of Israeli forces that threatened me and my family. I would either not care about demonstrations in the West or I would receive some comfort from the knowledge that people all over the world were protesting on my behalf.
Nevertheless, a kind of betrayal is still at work. By inflaming and amplifying the worst elements in Palestine the global left is giving comfort to the worst elements in Israel, which are equally determined to make a compromise impossible.
The New Statesman made that point well when it ran a piece by Celeste Marcus.   She came from the Zionist far right, and was taught doctrines that dehumanised Palestinians. She grew up and grew away from the prejudices of her childhood and became a liberal. But after she moved into her new world, she “recognised immediately that progressive leftists feel about Israelis the way radical Zionists feel about Palestinians: these are not real people.”
The result is that for all its power on the streets and in academia the global left is almost an irrelevance.
“To influence Israel,” she writes, “one must be willing to recognise it. Since leftist leaders cannot bother to do this, they cannot be of real use to Palestinians. This is a betrayal of their own cause.”
The dilettantism of fellow travelling always ends in betrayal and denial for the reason Auden gave: terror is always more tolerable when it happens far, far away.
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psychotrenny · 10 days
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Pretending like any communist country had no faults is just as bad as Europeans acting like their country has no faults, you can only battle corruption by calling it out and I have a feeling that if Israel was somehow communist you'd be defending them and somehow excusing what they're doing to the Palestinians much like how you're excusing what China is doing to the Uyghurs
Thank you for providing an example of exactly what I was talking about. Now China isn't perfect (and I never claimed it was) and if you want to criticise it's mistakes and wrongdoings there's plenty to talk about both past and present. Just off the top of my head you could talk about the reflexive anti-Sovietism leading to attacks on fellow revolutionaries (i.e. Vietnam) and support for misguided or even counter-revolutionary movements (CPK in Cambodia, UNITA in Angola) or the excessive concessions to foreign capitalists (i.e. Foxconn) in the name of economic development that allowed these firms to exploit and abuse Chinese citizens. But what you can't talk about is the "Uyghur Genocide" because it's not a fucking thing that's happening. It's completely fucking made up by reactionary dipshits as a part of the USA's strategic "pivot to Asia". Like it's not as though China has perfectly handled the issue of Islamic Fundamentalist violence in the territory (i.e. forbidding certain items of clothing is clearly an unnecessarily oppressive and likely counter-productive tactic) but their focus on countering terrorism by changing the material conditions that led to radicalisation in the first place put the Chinese above any part of "The West" in this regard. And whatever you want to say about China's policy towards Xinjiang it's sure as fuck not "genocide"
Anyway plenty of people do in fact claim that Israel is some sort of communist and on this blog I have always expressed the view that this position is complete bullshit; "Labour Zionism" is a fucking joke of an ideology that only functions as a tool for class collaborations with the Settler Bourgeoisie granting their Proletariat concessions in exchange for support in the super-exploitation of the Indigenous working class. Like you can't just say "Oh I'd bet you'd fall for this" when I very clearly haven't
My point isn't that "any communist country has no faults". My point is that Left Anti-Communists don't want a good faith discussion of these faults as is proven by their obsession with faults that aren't even fucking real. Just like you are doing right now in fact. If you want to criticise people for being too soft on communist regimes then please do so over things that are actually happening and not completely fabricated by the most rabidly reactionary US propagandists. Thanks 👍
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isolating this very important note. homelessness and prostitution are linked in more than one way.
first of all, homeless women and youth are seen by many men as unprotected game. not only are homeless women and youth at an insanely high risk of sexual abuse and assault, they also get „offered“ regularly by random men that they will pay them for sexual „favors“. a homeless woman i know said this happened to her almost daily when she was living on the streets, men even asking her to go to the nearest backalley for a blowjob. she always declined, she said thats the last bit of humanity she has left. but it says a lot about the mind of the male sex buyer. for example, both homeless youth (male or female) and homeless women get offered to stay with men if they have sex with them.
both homelessness and prostitution are linked to a high risk of rape and either already having substance issues when entering or developing them because of it, and having faced abuse prior to losing/escaping housing or entering the sex industry.
both are notoriously difficult to exit, and the longer youre in it, the more difficult it gets. and the more numb you become to the hardship, mistreatment, abuse and assault you face.
men enforce a constant stream of new prostitutes by abusing girls and women as their partners, family or caretakers which makes them leave home. living on the street, theres not many options to ensure your survival: stealing, begging, or… prostitution. and since youre unwashed and got nowhere to go, men will use your desperation to save money; to abuse you for as much as they pay for a meal and a drink.
both homelessness and prostitution have a high prevalence of mental illness. mental illness can make it difficult to hold down a regular job, which makes women land on the streets and/or enter prostitution because sex buyers dont give a shit about your mental state as long as youre sexually available.
you cant be anti-capitalist and pro-prostitution.
prostitution advocates would put homeless women in a brothel before judging male sex buyers who exploit them because „the issue is the unsafe work environment and lack of regulations, not prostitution itself“. i can see (and im sure this has happened before) prostitution advocates praising brothel owners for taking in homeless women, giving them housing and a job, and after all, the homeless woman consented, and who are we to judge how she deals with her situation, right?
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ftmtftm · 3 months
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I've been scrolling through your blog, and I saw your post about discussing the racialized nature of gender. As someone who has several transmasc POC friends, and someone who's a nonbinary POC themself, I wanted to give my 2 cents.
It's important to understand that "woman" in the "man vs woman" gender binary is a colonialist, white supremacist construct, especially in Western countries where you are the numerical minority. My trans friends aren't on T, they haven't gotten top surgery, we are all quite young. But they all have numerous stories about being addressed as "sir" which brings them euphoria but as one person said, while we were making fun of the amount of white people in our club, "Due to my race and skin color, I get masculinized."
And again I'd like to emphasize, that since we're young, none of us really have medically transitioned due to financial and familial barriers. Their hair is long, our binders we definitely have notable chests, and even if they dress masculine, it's notable that no one in our communities would ever gender us properly. It's often white people calling them "sir." Again, I think this reflects how gender performances in mainstream queer communities are deeply White. Like, trans boys talk about having haircuts, but only one of my friends has that wavier, more manageable hair that will help them pass. When you've got curly/kinky hair, the standards are different. For a white person, what's the difference between a "girl" Afro and a boy "Afro"? White cis people have a harder time identifying us, and literally talk to any black girl, and they'll tell you about being mocked, dehumanized, and called "manly".
I don't have much else to say. These are just my personal experiences. But if you want to be an ally to POC in the queer community, this is why it's so fucking important to bring in colonialism/imperialism/white supremacy into discussions of queer liberation. My biggest gripe with ignorant white queers is when they ignore their white privilege, and act like "cishets" (AKA the patriarchal system regulating sexuality and gender) is the only enemy. Because cishet POC deal with plenty of shit with being infantilized, masculinized, feminized, seen as brutish & dangerous, the list goes on. Doberbutts had a post saying, "Believe me, your family's going to care more about me being black than my queerness." towards his white partners. Acknowledging and creating a framework that centers these intersections of queerness and race into your beliefs is true allyship. This is why if you're not anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, ACAB...I do not think you care for queer liberation. None of us are free until all of us are free.
Please don't view this post as an attack. But this is my perspective, and I thought you'd be receptive to me sharing my lived experiences.
Oh I absolutely don't view this ask as an attack, and I really appreciate you bringing these things up because you're right! Like, just very plainly: You are right and your and your friends lived experiences are extremely important to the conversation on the racialized aspects of gender.
It gets me thinking about where Misogynoir and the social White Fear of Black manhood intersect for Black trans men in particular. Because Black women and Women of Color in general are masculinized by White gender standards and the ways in which Black trans masculine people are gendered in alignment with their identity is absolutely not always done with gender affirming intent. In fact, it's often actually done with racist intent or is fueled by racist bias when it's coming from White people or even from non-Black POC.
That's kind of restating things you've said but differently, it's just such a topic worth highlighting explicitly since it's extremely relevant to the conversation that's been happening about Male Privilege here the last few days.
I do think I know exactly what @doberbutts post you're talking about and yeah. It's just truth. It's something Black queer people have been talking about for ages in both theory and in pop culture (my mind immediately goes to Kevin Abstract and "American Boyfriend") where Black queer/trans identity is both materially different from (neutral) and is treated differently from (negative) White queer/trans identity in multitudes of ways and those differences are worth sharing and exploring and talking about.
Genuinely, thank you for sharing! I try really hard not to lead these kinds of conversations outside of explicitly referencing back to non-White theorists because I don't particularly feel like it's my place to do so, but I will always provide a platform for them because they're extremely important conversations to be had.
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rooksamoris · 20 days
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💞 — 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒.
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💞 — in which you try to unionize the mostro lounge, but the boss, azul, just happens to be your boyfriend.
💞 — azul ashengrotto x reader
💞 — warnings: just a little suggestive, not explicit.
💞 — 1.6k words.
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“No, you guys—we need to fight for our rights. By any means necessary,” 
Jade and Floyd looked at you in amusement and annoyance, respectively. You could not be seriously trying to unionize the Mostro Lounge. Azul was probably the most pro-capitalist/anti-union guy on campus. He had justified roping you, his beloved, into working overtime with the excuse of “it's for the profit motive, sweetheart” and yet you still stupidly thought you could manage to unionize his establishment? It was cute.
The more sneaky of the twins laughed, politely hiding his grin behind his immaculately gloved hand, “And you plan to do this how?” he asked.
A blush of embarrassment trailed up your neck and to your ears. You had very little experience with grassroots organizing—which meant you were drawing a blank, “Uhm—I don’t know. We… uh… we should make demands and find a cool name for our union,”
“Unions schmunions—let's just not come to work,” whined Floyd.
You shook your head, “We need a union before we try going on strike… uhm, how about ‘Night Raven Labor Organization’? It rhymes and would look good on a flyer,” you suggested, placing your fist in your palm. You were embarrassingly desperate at this point. Your boyfriend was constantly tricking you into working sickeningly long hours for him, claiming it was fine since you guys were dating and he helped you pass alchemy—but still.
Jade was entertained, so he indulged in your theatrics, “Oh, that sounds wonderful. Do not worry yourself over the flyers, I… I will handle that,” he said, purposefully pausing just to watch the suspicion creep into your mind.
Before you could reject him, Floyd stood and lazily draped his arms over your shoulders, “You know, you’re gonna break Azul’s heart, being against him like this,” he said, a sudden toothy grin coming over his features at the thought of what chaos could come from your silly plan, “Standing against your ‘sweet Zuzu’ for the working class,” 
You frowned at him, “We–well, something needs to be done, even if it means his feelings are mildly hurt.”
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The plan was in motion. You had already gone ahead and spoken with the other employees at the lounge, and while most were apprehensive—fear of Azul was pretty common—some still believed that you could convince your boyfriend to be kinder to his workers. Jade had told you he made flyers, and you were heading over to the lounge to go check them out, and then meet up with the others for the meeting. 
But the moment you walked in, Floyd shoved you towards the office with a giddy grin, “Shrimpy’s in trouble…” he whispered.
You stiffened, “Huh? What do you mean? Floyd—”
“Azul wants to talk to you,” he told you, knocking on the office door before scurrying off, leaving you to gulp and adjust your necktie.
Azul opened the door with a suave grin, gently wrapping his arm around you, his hand lingering at the small of your back, “Ah, sweetheart,” he said, affectionately kissing your temple. He pulled you inside, shutting the door with his foot before guiding you towards one of the sofas in his office, “You’re looking as gorgeous as ever,” he added, pouring you a glass of fruit cordial before taking his seat across from you, his hands folded on his cane and his legs crossed.
You always hated how smooth he was, “Ahaha…” he laughed awkwardly, “Uhm… you wanted to talk?”
One of his brows raised, “Do I need an excuse to see my beloved?”
“O–Oh, no, of course not—I just mean—”
His laugh cut you off. Sevens, how you loved that laugh, “You’re so nervous…” he trailed off, his bluish-purple eyes tracing over the ceiling before making their way towards your eyes, a single brow raised.
You were nervous. Hell, this was the most bizarre experience ever. You were unionizing your boyfriend’s establishment—you spent the night in his dorm room, just for you to wake up the next day and have secret meetings with his employees. You were ashamed, but not enough to quit the union. Azul had been abusing his power for too long now. Your lips had parted to speak, but you were cut off when he slammed two papers on the coffee table.
One was a flyer with a pig-like depiction of the bourgeoisie, dressed in a fancy suit and surrounded by money, and the second was the union demands which you were supposed to go over with the other employees today.
“Azul—I… I can explain—”
“How cute.” Azul gently tapped his foot as he watched your face fill with horror at being caught too early, “For a union organizer, you’re pretty disorganized. You trusted Jade with the flyers? The fact that you trusted Jade with anything is just hilarious,” he said, letting his cane lean against the sofa. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward.
“Listen, Azul…” you started, before he cut you off, with a mere raise of the hand. That bastard Jade—
He cleared his throat before picking up the page of demands, “‘We members of the Night Raven Labor Organization…’ did you come up with the name, love? It’s nice. It rhymes, seems you do pay attention to my marketing rambles. Anyways, ‘We members of the Night Raven Labor Organization are proposing a chance of bargaining before any attempts of protest or striking,’ ooh, look at you, threatening me. How adorable,” he said, grinning at your embarrassed face. 
You hid your face behind your hands, groaning softly as your face started to feel extremely hot. You peeked at your boyfriend through your fingers, seeing that smug smile on his face, “Azul… this was a last resort,” you tried to explain, but he only set the page down and stood up again.
It was not like you did anything wrong. He was overworking his employees—he’s lucky you did not go Karl Marx on the guy and encourage the workers to arm themselves against him. When you met his eyes again, he was standing in front of you, gazing down at your seated form with a neutral expression. 
He was thinking of how to proceed. On one hand, you were the love of his life, and on the other hand, you were working against him. When he first heard of it, he was hurt, but after some reflection, he knew he could make you give up on this.
With a gloved hand, Azul traced over your face, enjoying the way you looked when you sat in front of him, gazing up as he stood. His hand cupped your jaw, thumb lazily tracing over your bottom lip. His pale skin was covered with a little blush over how your breath hitched, “You wouldn’t want to hurt me, would you?” he asked, leaning closer.
You shook your head as much as you could while in his grasp, “No, Azul… it's just—well, uhm, you know,” he stammered.
He played up a soft frown on his lips, and he felt your eyes trail to the beauty mark beneath his lip, “But, angel… when I saw that you were unionizing behind my back,” he paused, and sighed, brows furrowing slightly. He played you like a fiddle, “I was just so hurt,” he confessed. In reality, Azul did not care enough to be brokenhearted over your union attempts.
“I’m sorry, Azul,” you told him, and you were about to protest again, but he shook his head.
“If you had concerns, you could have just told me,” You bit your tongue, despite how you wanted to tell him that you had tried to complain to him and he put the profit motive above everything else. Instead, you just pouted and nodded to his words. You couldn’t help it. All you wanted to do now was kiss him since he got so close.
Azul’s hand remained on your face as he glanced back at the flyer, “And a fat rich man, angel? Really?”
“I didn’t make the flyers,” you blurted.
His gaze softened. He had you right where he wanted you, nodding to your words to make you relax before he leaned down and kissed your head. And then he bent down a bit to meet your lips, kissing you like you wanted. Azul’s hand slipped from your jaw to your shoulder, while his other hand rested at the backrest of the sofa so that he could lean down. 
Your hands immediately darted to grab him closer, tugging on his uniform blazer as your lips parted for breath, “Azul….”
He was blushing too, lips parted as he panted to catch his breath, “I thought I was an evil capitalist—what happened to your union?” he asked, teasing you.
Your brows furrowed softly and just pulled him in again, capturing his lips once again and groaning against his lips as you took the chance to take control, pulling him down on the sofa with you.
Azul’s eyes widened in surprise, his hat slipping off and his glasses nearly joining if he hadn’t held them up in time.
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You showed up to the union meeting late, with your clothes all disheveled and your hair a mess.
“My, my,” chuckled Jade, as he took in your appearance with his piercing eyes. He knew that this would all end up like this, with you being too quick to bend to the will of his boss, and his boss being manipulative enough to get you to forget about your ambitious goals.
Floyd frowned, “Does this mean we’re not getting guns to threaten the capitalist class??”
Sevens, what a major fail.
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kayas-kosmos · 10 months
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Because of what's happening on Twitter...
I've made a little diagram to demonstrate why billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are bad for society.
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"If we view society as a body, every sector is like a different organ within the body that serves a function and works in harmony with other organs to maintain balance. Every part of the body is important for the whole thing to function."
"The ultra-wealthy want you to believe they are the beating heart and thinking mind of the society – they are the innovators who create our jobs and their brilliance drives society forward. They deserve to be at the top of society because they have earned that. Without them, the body won’t function because they are the most important part."
"In reality, they are more like a malignant tumour, sucking all of the blood (resources) away from everything else (people and the planet) to fuel its own infinite growth, depriving the rest of the body and slowly killing it. Workers create all of the innovation and keep things running, the ultra-wealthy take all the credit."
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This is a public domain image so feel free to pinch it for whatever.
Elon Musk has put the careers of thousands of small business owners who depend on Twitter (myself included) in jeopardy by completely running it into the ground. Before this, Mark Zuckerberg had already been doing the same when he started pursuing Metaverse, making Instagram and Facebook much more unusable for artists. Do I really need to go into other examples of CEOs and very normalised practise of wage theft?
Meanwhile, the UK currently has the richest Prime Minister in its history. What is this man doing with this wealth? Continuing the Tory legacy of austerity in order to line his pockets and the pockets of his crony friends. This has resulted in a devastating cost of living crisis that continues to ravage the country as people's energy bills skyrocket out of control.
My diagram is pretty basic and lacks nuance, there's definitely more I could elaborate on with this comparison but I really don't have time. I just want people to get the basic point of how billionaires view themselves vs what function they actually serve. I'm also not here to debate whether some organs are more important than others since I'm not a doctor, that's not really the point here. And no, I don't care if people think I'm being harsh by comparing billionaires to a tumour. If they don't want to be compared to one they should stop acting like one. Jeff Bezos could end world hunger right now and chooses not to.
Also, I know a lot of people are going to come at me with the argument that billionaires give away massive amounts of money. First off, people like Jeff Bezos only give large sums of money to charity a.) for the sake of improving their public image and b.) because giving to charity allows them to write it off in their taxes. Also, charities in of themselves have a lot of problems, but that's a blog post for another day. Mutual Aid is a better way to help people directly. Really, the ultra wealthy need to be taxed, of course they do everything within their power to avoid taxes.
Also:
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"Earning a lot of money" and "holding onto a lot of money" are two different things. You cannot be a multi-millionaire unless you hold onto that money. If you give away massive chunks of it to enrich society, you cease to be a billionaire.
Oh and this is worth a watch, too.
Furthermore:
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Also before the inevitable great man comments:
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Being a billionaire is a moral failing. Nobody needs that much money.
[Slight edit here - I made the assertion that a billionaire could not spend all of their money in their lifetime, but as someone in the comments pointed out it's very easy for them to completely waste billions in no time. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have shown that].
Anyway, if you would like to see more anti-Capitalist art from me, I am currently working on a webcomic called "Flowerpunk" - a story about a group of anarchists who are trying to save the city of Wyrdon from a supernatural plague known as "the rot." The comic heavily discusses disaster Capitalism and how the rich will use mass death and destruction as an opportunity to further line their pockets.
I also like to do little anti-Capitalist doodles relating to this project, which I plan to make into posters at some point.
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Please consider donating a Ko-Fi also if you would like to help support this project. I am really struggling at the moment because I've basically lost a massive chunk of my client base due to this Twitter implosion and also because of the AI BS that has made it impossible for me to get any reach nowadays. The last year or so has been an absolute nightmare for my career because of all of this.
Thank you all for your continued support! Hopefully I can re-establish my audience here on Tumblr and wherever else I decide to go.
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borahaerhy · 9 months
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Regime - one || myg
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Summary: Everything is dull. Your job, your hobbies, your downtime: everything is just dull. That is, until your workplace is raided by the anti-capitalist organization run by the notorious Agust D.
Pairing: Ringleader!Yoongi x NewRecruit!Fem!Reader
Genre: Anti-Capitalist Gang au, Found Family, Smut, Angst
Series Warnings: anti-capitalism! mental illness, some gang violence, unaliving, smut, hella angst, drug/alcohol usage, very fowl language
Warnings: y/n uses all the self-defense, quite literally bites a chunk out of someone's hand, everyone has a gun, there are a few hostages, Yoongi kicks someone in the face, y/n very casually holds a gun to someone's head, references to y/n's childhood being... interesting (relatives' drug usage briefly mentioned), Yoongi's tries to manipulate y/n for like 2 seconds, y/n definitely has depression, someone gets murdered, Yoongi almost exclusively goes by Agust, References to Nick being hella shitty, what the fuck is going on with Kevin?
Wordcount: 3.2k
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It was odd. 
The parking lot of your job being completely empty had only happened on one other occasion that you could recall; that was because it was Easter, and everyone had gone home early. 
But today was different. It wasn’t a holiday, and there should have been plenty of work to get done; yet there was no one. Not a single car in the parking lot. As you drove past, you turned your attention to the side of the building, where security parked. You pulled into the space beside the empty car of one of your coworkers, Nick. 
But it’s ten minutes until shift change; first shift should still be here. Did Nick let them leave early for some reason? Aside from yours and Nick's, there was only one other car in the entire lot. A black SUV parked haphazardly beside Nick's car; and it was still running.
While all of this might scream “danger” to others that would have seen it, to you, while it was weird, that's all it was: weird. It’s a relatively small company; one where there were so few employees that they were all friends. Everyone knew everyone and they often all liked to fuck with one another, maybe this was just some kind of prank. 
While the company was small, it was also one that had no problem fucking over its employees when it comes to their paychecks; even whenever the company execs wanted to come in and check the place out, they certainly never would’ve listened to any complaints about pay. 
You cautiously walked up to the door and punched in the pin before you opened the door and stepped in. As you closed the door behind you, you realized that you walked into something you definitely wished you hadn’t. 
Tied up in the middle of the floor was the owner of the building, and the one who ran this branch of the company, Kevin, along with the guy supposed to work your shift with you, Nick. They were completely surrounded by men in black, all of them with guns pointed at the two men's heads. Kevin looked like he just got into a fight and lost; blood covering him, his nose crooked while Nick had a swollen lip. In front of them, there was just one man, but as soon as your eyes had adjusted to the dark building, all of them were looking at you. 
Seconds after you walked in, your arms were pinned behind your back and a hand covered your mouth. “Just make sure she doesn’t go anywhere for a second, I have to deal with this asshole before I talk to her,” 
While as a security officer, you hadn’t been formally trained in any kind of combat, you did grow up with uncles. A lot of them, and they would all get varying levels of high and various substances and decide that you needed to know how to defend yourself. 
So while the man that spoke, the one standing in front of Nick and Kevin kicks Nick in the chin - no doubt knocking out a few of his teeth - you stamped down on the foot of the man behind you and bit a chunk of flesh from his hand clean off. He screamed, letting go of you so you could turn around and knee him in the groin as one of your hands took the gun out of his side holster and held it to his head. 
You stood beside him, facing the group of people with one hand holding the gun to his head while the other was up, level with your head to show you weren't armed more than what they could see. You spit out the chunk of flesh that you still had in your mouth, mostly for dramatic effect, and slowly moved your free hand down to wipe the blood from your lips. 
Everyone was staring at you, even the boss was staring at you with a kind of intensity that would’ve been hard for anyone to withstand. “You can finish whatever you were doing, I’m not going anywhere, I just don’t really like people touching me,” Your hand was back up next to your head, but no one moved. All the men just looked back and forth between their boss and you, and Kevin and Nick both looked like they’d just been saved. 
The one that just kicked your coworker, the one you presumed to be the boss, started walking toward you. He moved slowly and carefully as he pulled each of the weapons he had on him, showed them to you carefully, before he threw them down on the ground. He pulled one last weapon from the inside of his boot, a small pocket knife, and threw it to the ground, too, as he stopped a few feet in front of you. 
“I’m unarmed, and so is he. I would appreciate it if you put the gun down,” He spoke calmly, eyebrows raised and hands up. While it was hard to think of where he’d be hiding a seventeenth weapon, you also wouldn’t put it past the man that just pulled sixteen weapons off his person to have a secret compartment in the bottom of his shoe. 
Your eyes narrowed as you looked at him, his face covered with a ski-mask like the rest of them, only his eyes visible to you; dark brown pools of honey that bore into you, but they weren’t as harsh or intimidating as you would’ve thought someone like him to be. They were soft, almost gentle as they moved back and forth between yours.
“You might not be, but they are,” You looked over at the men that surrounded your coworker and boss, his gaze following yours. 
“They’re not going to do anything, you’re not the target here; they are. Just put the gun down and we can talk,” You looked carefully at him, then at the people behind him, before you slowly raised the hand with a gun in it, before crouching down slightly and slid it across the ground, making sure it was well out of reach of anyone before you stood again. 
“Kay, come get Mars and clean him up for me, everyone else, don’t let them move a muscle,” He was facing his men as he spoke, but turned back to you once he’d finished. “You probably know this place better than I do, so I’ll let you lead the way,” You looked over to the door to one of the conference rooms briefly, before you looked back over to him, Kay already collection Mars from off the ground beside you. 
“That room there would work fine, I’ll meet you in there but I need to get my water out of my bag,” He looked you up and down skeptically, about to say something before you cut him off again. “It’s just to rinse your friends hand out of my mouth, I’ll leave the bottle out here,” He paused slightly, then nodded once, stepping toward the door you’d just referenced to. You moved slowly as you got your water from your bag, rinsing out your mouth thoroughly before you took one last gulp and swallowed it. You put the bottle back down and headed into the room. 
“You can have the chair, I’ll stand,” He gestured to the only chair in the room as he leaned against the table across from you. You crossed your arms and leaned against the door. 
“I’m good with standing,” He nodded briefly before he took his mask off, revealing his admittedly handsome face to you. 
“My name is Agust, I’m the leader of the group of people out there with your coworkers. We’re here because Kevin, the owner of this branch has been stealing from his employees to pad his own pockets-”
“And why’s Nick out there?” You asked, trying not to let your anger show too much, but your not sure how successful you were judging by the look on his face. 
“Nick’s here because when he pulled in, I had my guy out in the parking lot run his tags and we found him to be… a really shitty person, to put it mildly,” You swallowed thickly, feeling almost a sense of relief that your suspicions were right, and you weren’t just overthinking about him.  
“Yeah, that checks out,” You nodded, looking down at your feet as you let your arms fall, sliding them into your pockets. “So why are you here? Kevin likes to fuck over his employee’s, sure, that’s shitty, but what’s in it for you?” He looked you up and down again, as if trying to gauge whether or not you were worthy of knowing this information or not. 
“I’ll tell you, eventually, but I have a few questions of my own first,” He crossed his arms as he stood straighter. 
“Like?” 
“Your name, for starters,” You laughed slightly, extra air flying out of your nostrils as you smirked lightly and cocked your head to the side. 
“Ah, so I’m supposed to believe that you had someone run Nick’s plates but not mine?” It was his turn to smirk, his head falling slightly as he nodded. 
“Alright, Y/n. Let’s get really into it, then,” His demeanor changed, the once kind eyes now seemed to drop their facade, his face bore a cocky smirk and his overall presence was that of a leader. Someone calm and collected, even when his initial plan was swept off it’s feet; he still knew exactly what his next step would be. “Why are you pretending you don’t care about Kevin fucking over his employees?” 
Your own attitude changes slightly as he forces you out of your facade the same way you did his. Your shoulders dropped slightly as you felt all the color drain from your face. You cleared your throat a stood up a little straighter, trying to mimic his own attitude. “Because I’d like to know a little more about you and your organization; I already knew Kevin was a piece of shit, I don’t need you, or anyone else to tell me that,” 
His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked you up and down again. There was something about the way he was looking at you, as if he was trying to see into your mind, see what you were thinking. “Why would it matter who I am if I want to bring someone like him to justice?” You sighed as you changed your stance slightly as you tried to think of a way to explain. 
“It matters because all you’d have to do to get me on your side is tell me what Kevin’s done, how long he’s been doing it, and what you plan to do about it; and I’d probably agree with you based purely off my emotions rather than if I actually agree with you or not. But if I know who you are, what you and your group are capable of, and what you plan on doing in the future, I can judge you based on logic; wether you’re inherently shitty or not.” A knowling smile seeps across his features, an almost proud look as he listened to you speak. 
“And why would I want you to agree with me, princess?” You scoffed, although you were far from offended; knowing the game he was playing. 
“I’ve seen your face and I know that you’re the leader;  not to mention the chunk of DNA that belongs to your friend still wedged between my teeth, and how it got there. Either you have to find a way to get rid of me, or recruit me,” He looks impressed as he steps down from the table and takes a small step toward you. 
“Let me re-introduce myself. My name is Yoongi, and I’m the leader of an anticapitalist organization. We steal from the rich, especially the ones that make a game out of fucking their employees out of the money they worked hard for. I don’t want to get rid of you, as you put it, because that’d be a waste; but I don’t want to recruit you just because you took a chunk out of one of my best man’s hands - or because you took his gun from him like it was nothing, or because I know you have plenty reason to want to fuck over the same people that have fucked you and your family,” He paused, taking another small step toward you, now standing less than a foot away from you.
“I want to recruit you because you’re scared shitless right now,” His voice was much lower, a serious tone filling the space between you as the smirk was gone from his face. “You still don’t know if I have a weapon on me, or if I’m going to let you out of here alive, or if we’ve hurt any of your friends or coworkers. But here you stand, speaking to me as confidently as someone that knows they’re more powerful than me,” His eyes bore into yours as if he could see your entire life laid out on a platter with just one glance.
“So, Y/n,” He took a step back, arms crossed over his chest confidently as he looked at you almost sweetly. “You’re not who we were after, and I don’t find you to be a threat to us. So, you’re free to go, if you want. You don’t have to worry about us following you or keeping tabs on you; you can just go home, go on with your life and forget this ever happened.” He paused, looking you up and down. "Or,” He leaned back against the table, one leg crossed over the other. 
“You can come with us,” You stood silently for a moment, eyes only leaving Yoongi when he finished speaking. You pushed yourself from the door and took a few steps over to the window and looked out of it, taking in the world as you had been seeing it for the past several months, before you closed your eyes, drinking in the inky black that the cover that your eyelids provide. 
You’d noticed that everything looks different throughout different phases of my life; as if there are filters over your eyes that change the colors and shadows in accordance to how you’re feeling. Some memories are all cool-toned, some warm. Some memories look yellowed, like they’d been tea-stained while others seemed more vibrant and vivid than anything else you’d ever seen. 
For the past couple of months, everything’s been dull. The world’s almost been in grey-scale as you try to find a purpose; try to find something to do with yourself. Nothing looks or feels like it used to; but for the first time in months, you are scared. You’re terrified. You smile as you relish in the feeling, the first true, raw emotion you’d felt in months.  
When you open your eyes, there’s color in the world again. The trees dance in the wind with various shades of red and orange and brown; the sky beyond them littered with soft purple hues as the sun was already beginning to set into the autumn sky.
“What happens if I decide to go with you?” You turn to look at him as you finish speaking, a light smirk on his lips before he turns to face you. 
“You come back to our base with us, we show you around, show you the ropes, and figure out how you’d best assist us. Then, if you decide you want to leave, you can. If you still want to have your job here and go back to your home and just help us out on the weekends, you can. You can also live with us and work with us full-time; but no matter what, I’d be sending you home tonight. This is something you need to think over.” You nodded again, still trying to take everything in.
“And as far as Kevin goes, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” You shook your head and raised your hands, stopping him from saying anything further. 
“I don’t want to know anything about what he did,” Yoongi nodded as he looked at you almost empathetically. “But, I’ll uhm, I’ll go with you,” His facial expression softened lightly as he smiled at you. 
Your relief very quickly changed when he reached behind his back and pulled out yet another gun and out the barrel right next to your head and pulled the trigger, shooting through the wall behind you. The sound was deafening but you didn’t flinch, your eyes never leaving his as his smirk grew wider yet. 
“Wait here, Princess. I’ll come back to get you in a few minutes,” He pulled the mask back down over his face before he opened the door and stepped out, all eyes suddenly on him. “She had a real fucking mouth on her, didn’t she?” Yoongi sauntered back over to where his captives were tied up, gun casually swinging in his grasp as he walks. 
“Kept talking about her mom; something about her still being alive if only she’d gotten her benefits like she was supposed to,” He kneeled down in front of Kevin, using the barrel of the gun to point at him. “That sound familiar to you, Kev?” Kevin was shaking, eyes wide as they bounced back and forth between the gun and Agust, who was only smirking at the terrified face of his captive. 
“Cat got your tongue? Nick?” At his lack of response, Agust moved the gun from Kevin to Nick, the barrel now only inches from his head. “Do you know anything about that?” Nick shook his head wildly, eyes clenched shut as tears spilled out of them. 
It pissed him off how scared they acted. He had a gun to their heads and they just bawled like babies; as if they hadn’t done the same thing time and time again to others. Kevin took money away from people that needed it. Money that he definitely didn’t need; and in doing so, he took away not only financial stability, but the lives of the people that depended on that money.
And while Nick didn’t steal from the poor like Kevin did, that didn’t make him any less of a piece of shit. He’d been accused of many crimes in his life; including attempted manslaughter, statutory rape, and several different domestic violence charges, but he’d never been convicted of any of them. There was never even a trial, just complaints dropped the day after they were filed, along with several very large transactions coming out of his obscenely rich father’s bank account. 
So watching them sit here and sob when their lives were threatened, knowing fully that they’ve put others in this very situation with their greed and ignorance enraged him. August pressed the gun to Nick’s temple and pulled the trigger, blood spraying all over Kevin's face in the process. 
Kevin screamed, loud sobs filling the warehouse that only pissed him off more. “Shut up, would you?” The gun was back under Kevin’s chin, his sobs silencing almost instantly as the gun forced him to look up. “I’m not going to kill you,” He took his time pulling the gun away from Kevin, eventually putting it into the waistband of his jeans before he carefully stood, his gaze already on the door you were behind as his men pulled Kevin up and dragged him out to their car. “Not yet, anyway.” 
Taglist: @scuzmunkie @bangtan4everr @angrydonutzonkpickle @secfir @useryoonmin @idkjustlovingbts
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feathered-serpents · 23 days
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Ah Watcher moving to a streaming service. I have some DEEPLY mixed feelings on this.
On one hand, they've presented themselves as "anti-capitalist members of the leftist club" for essentially their entire careers. Going as far as to push anti-capitalist ideas front and center in MANY episodes of their shows. I absolutely understand how the audience they built by doing that is feeling betrayed by them doing a very very obvious financially motivated choice! It feels scummy! It feels like you've been lied to.
But I also understand that Watcher is a business.
Not only is Watcher a business, it is an independently run business, trying to make money solely off of YouTube advertisments, merch, and patreon. Given the production value of the stuff it makes, that's hard. Because the reality is it is INCREDIBLY hard to make money in this way, you are essentially scraping together as many pennies as you can through as many means as you can to try and keep everything afloat. That's for creators trying to support just themselves and a few members of their family. A whole company? Not sustainable. Not with what they make.
If they wanted to keep expanding, or maybe even wanted to stay afloat at all, their options were: Better monetize their content (streaming) or get bought out. And I think they COULD have gotten bought out, but we saw what happened to Rooster Teeth. Indies getting bought does NOT always end well and puts you under a lot of restrictions as you now need to appeal to your parent company, which could shut you down at any moment if you aren't proving profitable enough for them.
So... I get why Watcher did this. Do I think they approached it in the best way? Honestly, I'm not sure, they're leaving all their videos up, and they're still posting premieres to YouTube, so there won't be NO free content at all, but this will alienate a large part of their audience.
It's a complicated situation, but I don't think we should treat it as "corporate greed" on the same level as giants like Disney and HBO. It's hard to be indie in this world, and who knows if this gamble will even pay off. We're going to have to wait and see
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starry-bi-sky · 5 months
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I am of the DPxDC belief/headcanon that any variation of Danny who grew up poor in Gotham during his formative years before moving to Amity Park would not be friends with Sam without friction at first. It makes things more interesting and imo allows for more exploration of different themes plus character growth for Sam that she doesn't really go through in canon.
(this doesn't only apply to a DPDC au where Danny grew up in Gotham poor, but it was the first thing that I thought of where this might happen considering my Childhood Friends au.)
Now Sam's a compassionate girl, it's one of her defining character traits, but so is her hypocrisy and judgy-ness. She's the Not Like Other Girls' girl. This is in part of the show's narrative framing that makes her out like this, unfortunately though its still showing how she is as a character since its consistent enough to be part of her character description. There are also times where the show's depiction of her activism makes it look like she's performative about it. All of this makes her dynamic with a Danny who grew up poor in Gotham very interesting.
Anyways, Sam is aware of her privilege to an extent, but still has her blindspots - glaring ones, in some cases. Her self-righteous attitude would not go over well with a crime alley kid Danny. He'd like her, at first, but then she'd do something to make him mad - personally I think her judging people for not being vegan would annoy him the most, or at least would be the breaking point for him, because it was only recently that his family started actually being able to consistently put food on the table at all, good food nonetheless. And being vegan is expensive.
Any other behavior he noticed from her he'd slowly stop tolerating - her judging conventionally attractive girls and automatically assuming they're vapid and shallow for being feminine. Her anti-capitalist beliefs start coming off as superficial at worst, and Danny would eventually figure out that Sam either came from a family that was well off, or that she wasn't aware if her family was experiencing financial struggle.
He would still be friends with Tucker, but since Tucker imo is still friends with Sam, they'd still run into each other often enough to butt heads. Sam's got a nasty habit of refusing to take responsibility when she's wrong, but when Danny is arguing with her, and counterpointing her with stuff she can't retort back at without compromising her own beliefs, then forces her to start reflecting on herself. Especially when Tucker eventually starts siding with Danny and agreeing with him.
Does sam genuinely care about her beliefs and philosophies? Survey says yes. However that doesn't mean she's not ignorant, and she definitely is at times throughout the show (like when she released the purpleback gorilla thinking it 'wanted out of its enclosure' despite the fact that it was endangered and in an urban area) and I think it'd be a real fascinating dynamic between Danny and Sam to explore.
This isn't Sam hate btw, nor am I trying to make her out like "the worst person ever" bc she's not, i wanna make that explicitly clear. Sam Manson has a lot of positive traits about her but she also has an equal amount of negative traits that I think should be explored, she is not immune to the character development.
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yourtongzhihazel · 2 months
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There's a particular form of liberalism which represents perhaps the most useless and simultaneously most dangerous and ever growing political-economical niche: the radlib "socialist".
You've probably encountered these types. They carry the full baggage of liberalism but don't want to associate with them so they call themselves "socialist" and try to be "radical". They recognize what the bourgeois media says are lies, but believes what they say anyway, especially about other countries and doubly ao for socialist ones. When pushed on what they actually believe, they always hem and haw about being "anti-capitalist" or "democratic socialist" or some other or combination of a variation of liberalism.
Fundamentally, the radlib socialist is an anticommunist; a liberal (but i repeat myself). They are as close to socialist as a box-standard neoliberal is. These types materially benefit from the exploitation of the rest of the world, but simply want a bigger share of the super profits pie. They exist to redirect revolutionary potential away from organization, agitation, or education and towards bourgeois means, e.g., electorialism, parades, and empty declarations and platitudes. Their liberalism tells them that the individual is above all so they demand individual action and when individual action cannot resolve the problem, it is declared "too complex" or simply a facet of life and they capitulate.
Capitulation happens constantly to liberals and they will consistently justify it with their immaterial ideology. If a proposed solution even vaguely "violates" the "universal rights and freedoms" proposed by liberalism, liberals will refuse to associate it even if materially, the solution would provide significant material improvement over the status quo. Despite claiming otherwise, they will still default to "individual failure" as an explanation for social ills. Liberalism demands perfection after all, it is an ideology built in the perfect, abstract workd. Mistakes are not meant to be studied and avoided, but as total condemnations of entire movements. The same apply to material necessities and conditions. Inaction is seen as neutral, rather than the tacit endorsement of imperialist that it actually is. Not acting against the status quo is seen as a nonviolent act, rather than the preservation of the very violent acts needed to maintain it.
Materially, radlibs have the luxury to default to the status quo. They benefit from imperial super profits. They do not need to worry about foreign intervention, espionage, invasion, exploitation, or literal wars. They sit in their gilded thrones and dispense the harshest criticisms towards peoples and countries desperately trying not to die under the weight if imperialism.
The radlib is useless but dangerous. They masquerade as a comrade and slither into your midsts. They run bourgeois defenses, knowingly or not, and redirect energy away from actual solutions and towards indifference. Identify it. Combat it.
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