quarkcore

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got a new maths for you all. it's called tax math and it's when you get a pay rise or think about how much you would make it you get a pay rise and instead of thinking about how much more money you'll make, you mentally add up how much more tax you would pay and therefore consider yourself worse off.

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Well, I meant to let you go, Hildy, but you know how it is. You never miss the water 'til the well runs dry.

His Girl Friday (1940), directed by Howard Hawks

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the introvert urge to say “no worries either way” when you’re actually worrying both ways plus a secret third way

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Calcite and lapis lazuli figurine of an ibex, Bactria (Afghanistan), 2nd-1st millennium BC

from The Yale University Art Gallery

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so true!

Whenever an artist who makes dark content gets outed as a sexual predator people will be like 'aha it was obvious something was up because their work was so dark and nasty' and whenever an artist who makes wholesome content gets outed as a sexual predator people will be like 'aha it was obvious something was up because their work was so aggressively wholesome' and it's like you know I think maybe you can't tell whether or not someone is a predator based on their artistic output.

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why do we all put these takes on tumblr.com when we could be getting a masters

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there's actual academic writing on this btw

https://www.colorado.edu/gendersarchive1998-2013/2008/06/15/latchkey-hero-masculinity-class-and-gothic-eric-kripkes-supernatural

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while I'm here I will say this: I think that looking at the Winchesters and saying 'if they were around in real life they'd be vigilantes' when discussing their class is a bit over literal. the question is where on a more thematic level son places them, and how they interact with class. so I think for me maybe what's more important is how their careers place them as outsiders to, but also protectors of, suburban middle class america.

beyond that it's important to recognise that spn's position on class and the way those themes are dealt with varies widely across the show, and even within seasons. like in the later seasons it's more or less thrown out the window from what I can see, while in s1-5 it's a pretty key aspect of the show. so I think asking what class the Winchesters are part of throughout spn is probably the wrong approach, and it would be better so assess how spn approaches class at different stages than to have a definitive take

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https://laespada.livejournal.com/1127.html

oh lol I found the OG Winchester class discourse and it is indeed over a decade old. read it and weep!

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that said I have no intention of trying to classify fictional monster hunters according to like. Victorian class roles lol.

ok I just saw someone call the Winchesters petty bourgeoisie and that's too fucking much lol

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I don't know if pretending to be an FBI agent is a small business, lads, I'm gonna be honest

ok I just saw someone call the Winchesters petty bourgeoisie and that's too fucking much lol

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ok I just saw someone call the Winchesters petty bourgeoisie and that's too fucking much lol

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on that note the decision for cas, our main angel being like some weird little man in a business suit tenchcoat combo, and heaven being corporate as hell is 100% deliberate like it's all about class babes

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I’m bored, so I am going to add to this spn class discourse with the following:

It is absolutely true that the Winchesters grew up poor. Nobody is disputing that. We don’t see a lot of them struggling with it in the show - throwaway lines about having to hustle to eat, occasionally sleeping in the Impala (though we do most often see them in motels before the bunker), etc. - but as someone pointed out, as a struggle, it’s not a primary focus.

I know people are pointing out that Kripke said that the brothers are blue collar and hunting is their “job”, but really, that’s not exactly correct if we want to be accurate here. For starters, they don’t get paid, so it’s not a job. It’s vigilante shit. They’re self-appointed (or Chuck-appointed, if you want to get into the whole, Chuck-was-writing-a-story-the-whole-time bit, which I’d say Is worthwhile to point out) supernatural law enforcers, essentially. But they’re not actual, paid law enforcement. So it’s not actually a job. Also, Kripke can be wrong. He was certainly wrong about male sexual assault being funny, so.

“Black collar” does seem to be a term, though it appears to be more colloquial in nature and doesn’t have as many references as white or blue collar. It seems to refer to “unreported employment”, or illegal work done without reporting to the government for tax payment. And Sam and Dean definitely aren’t paying taxes.

However, as we learn at the end of the show, Charlie gave them some hacked credit card that always works. It’s always good. They don’t have to hustle anymore, they can just use the card and they have unlimited cash. So they aren’t paying taxes, their pockets are bottomless…it’s a billionaire’s wet dream. Until their luck gets fucked up, they are doing just fine financially. More than fine. Someone did point out that having a blue collar job does not equal poor, same as a white collar job does not equal rich; it’s the nature of the work that gets the designation. Secretarial work is white collar work. That doesn’t mean the secretary is loaded. A lot goes into a person’s financial situation in relation to so many things. So, to the person who said they’re an economist and pronounced Sam and Dean as blue collar: it sounds a lot like you’re equating being blue collar with being poor, buddy.

So, I mean…if Sam and Dean aren’t getting paid, and they aren’t paying taxes, and they don’t report any earnings to the government because they don’t have any, and the job they have isn’t actual law enforcement, and the way they get money by the end of the show isn’t by hustling, card games, or odd jobs but instead by a hacked credit card with unlimited money…it really isn’t wholly accurate to call them blue collar. It’s obviously not some huge crime to call them blue collar offhandedly, but I do think the black collar moniker fits much better. They are making money through illicit means, and are performing a job that doesn’t exist as a paid position, and are doing it under the cloak of darkness because as we know from the show, when what they do is discovered by the general population, they get arrested…for crimes. Including credit card fraud, which is - you guessed it - generally considered a white collar crime.

Also, because this came up for some reason: sure, I bet Dean has eaten women out. I don’t see what that has to do with money, but I will say that eating a woman out doesn’t make someone a feminist, either. So. Yeah.

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i don't really want to see this retconning of neil gaiman's writing where people are re-analyzing stories like "look...you can see the message under the surface...showing how he was actually abusive IRL...it's all there..."

idk maybe we should just listen to people when they speak up and say they were abused and try to foster a culture of respecting victims and actually enforcing justice against perpetrators instead of doing this weird fucking da vinci code-esque picking apart of his stories. stories which everyone was fine with for decades!! because we understand that the content that people write and produce does not have a 1 to 1 correlation with their real world actions!!!

i fully support people who cannot engage with his work anymore and i do think that because he's a still-living person it's imperative to not give this guy another cent, but we cannot pretend that everyone was just "too dumb" to see the secret clues and turn this into another case of "what you write is what you endorse." plenty of dogshit people write good stories. plenty of good people write dark stories. that's all.

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Whenever an artist who makes dark content gets outed as a sexual predator people will be like 'aha it was obvious something was up because their work was so dark and nasty' and whenever an artist who makes wholesome content gets outed as a sexual predator people will be like 'aha it was obvious something was up because their work was so aggressively wholesome' and it's like you know I think maybe you can't tell whether or not someone is a predator based on their artistic output.