ANTI-CAPITALIST AFFIRMATIONS

Marilyn Monroe

WE HAVE A TANK!!!

I feel really uncomfortable in media when the Earth is just left behind. Interstellar, Elysium, Starfield, Lost in Space, Wall-E (which is kind of an exception) all just pretend this planet has the potential to lose all meaning for us. This place is full of history and life and culture and plants and animals. But as soon as we have the ability to leave, as soon as our tiny speck of green and blue in the universe coughs a little bit we leave it to become a planet of dust. There's not even an attempt to save anything that makes this place special. The animals and plants, who are our neighbours and roommates? They can all go extinct, who cares, as long as we survive. The buildings, the paintings, the architecture and art? It's all meaningless rubble, as long as we survive. I can't tell if everyone really thinks this planet is nothing to us except a place to infest, or it's just an unfortunate pattern in science fiction. I've never seen the movie but I watched the ending scene of Don't Look Up with Leonardo DiCaprio. What a beautiful scene, I watch it a lot. This planet is everything.

Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 32 - Sunk Cost Fallacy

Snippet:

A tiny tremor—a temblor—rattles the dishes on the table.

Vi is hit by a different quake. As if the floor, the walls, the balcony are falling away. Everything, except Silco's words. Throughout the night, they've strobed at the back of her mind.

Vander, saying the same things. Vander, warning her. Vander, and Blut.

Blut.

Vi's mind, struggling against the epiphany, bursts at the seams. Memories burst too: a red tide gone blue. She'd spent all this time fixated on him. The man who's ruined her sister, and her life. The man whose accent—when it lapses from sterling correctness—bares the serrated edges of the Lanes. Whose voice—when it's not spouting convoluted spiels—becomes soothing as a bedtime story. Whose eyes—red and blue—are a mirror reflecting more than her hatred back to her, but the safety of a simpler palette.

"You," Vi chokes. "I know you."

"What?"

Vi's lungs seize. Gods, she'd been so stupid. She'd had the puzzle sitting right in front of her, and hadn't seen it. Because she couldn't accept what it meant.

The man who's taken everything from her, the man she's hated for seven long years, the man she's determined to hate until her dying breath:

They're the same.

She remembers him—Blut—tossing her to the ceiling to her gleeful shrieks. Sitting, crosslegged, with a comic book open in his lap, and reciting the dialogue in funny voices. Scooping her into his arms and carrying her into the Last Drop, humming a tune that's now embedded into her bones...

Silco's knuckles rap on the table. "What's gotten into you, girl?"

She wants to say, "Nothing." Except her throat is glued. So are her eyes.

This man. This murderer.

The stranger... and who he once was.

"It's you."

"Me?"

"Blut." She points a quavering finger. "The one Vander always talked about. God, why didn't I—?"

Silco's expression morphs from surprise, to understanding, to the smallest iota of apprehension. "What did he say about Blut?"

"He was Vander's childhood friend." Vi can barely squeeze the words out. Her heart is racing a mile a minute. "He was—the smartest guy Vander knew. And he—he was my friend, too. When Mom and I were staying at the Last Drop, Blut was there. He'd call me Pet, and tickle me, and make me laugh. In the evenings, we'd play in the cellar. Hide-and-seek. Sock puppets. Whack-a-mole. Sometimes, he'd read to me. The old comics from the trunk—"

Very quietly, Silco says, "Mavis and Mutthead."

"He'd put on a show. Like a vaudeville act. He'd do the funniest voices." She tries, and fails, to replicate the squeaky tone. "'Hoy, Mavvy! What'd the ceiling say to the wall?' 'Dunno, Mutthead. What?' 'Hold me up, I'm plastered!'" The laugh is a paroxysm. "Vander told me... he'd died on the Day of Ash. Killed during the blast on the Bridge. Nothing left but cinders."

Silco's jaw works, as if his tongue has burnt to cinders too. "Vander said that?"

"Every year." Her breath hitches. "I never forgot. But I never put it together. He—you—"

Silco's expression holds a shadowed emptiness. The shark-eye inverts: a trick of light. The blue blooms: bright as memory.

"It's a lie," he says.

AO3 - Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO

FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

More Fanfic + Tidbits

Tip Jar

Tagging List:

@the-blue-quetzalcoatl @frostybearpaws @klorophile @kothelina @hannibalcatharsis @tiredblueann @typewriteringalaxy @theillestofomens @erikadarleyensis @testsubject24601 @elviriel @inconspicuouspotatosack @heroinejinx @aliaa-j @zaunite-leo @silcodependent @karnaca78 @aeolid-funkt @me-and-my-hyperfixations @yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy @medic-simp @cthezaunite @evren-d @flower-of-zaun @villainsidechick @spoczkotszcz @realitycanbewhateveridesire @opheliawillowbrook @nogurlstoy @mj678 @revelisms @shahs1221 @gingersforeverbox @inkshine @silcosmoke @ravenkinnie @letters-to-rosie @lbulldesigns @slavicbeastie @constantfragmentation @danally20 @thatlonelyweeb @callmeanifan-blog @thekelpiekid @not-yet-the-wolf @beardedladyqueen @littledollll @gritzzlybear @catgoblinchelly @ohmygoodnesslesbians @aldana-brillantina @fanfic-addict5 @iamredby @calico-bc @misshave-it-all @testsubject24601 @niennaera

how to outline a story:

write a bullet point list of everything that happens

realize it doesn’t make sense

cry

start writing anyway

house of the dragon & religious imagery 🤝

sometimes i feel like writing is a grill and i am the meat.

Apparently, some companies now are labeling mass-produced crochet items with "machine crocheted" to justify selling an entire granny square vest for 14 bucks.

1. Machines cannot crochet.

2. Knitting machines, to my knowledge, cannot make granny squares.

3. Even if there was a machine that could crochet, 14 bucks for an entire fucking vest is still too low to be paying people a livable wage basically anywhere in the world.

4. It takes me, a very fast crocheter, about twenty minutes to make one granny square in a single color with five rows. Multi-color granny squares take more time. I'll say 30 minutes. Next time you see a granny square anything in a big box store, count one row of squares and multiply by 20 (for single color squares) or 30 (multicolor squares). Then consider that it's skilled labor which should have an hourly wage you can live on. Then look at the price tag. This is Victorian piece work poor shit going on.

A dress owned by Russian empress Aleksandra Fëdorovna Romanova, second half of the 1890s.

via x