oh you know it's all latestage capitalism but the thing is. how are you supposed to be a person inside of this. a person trying to be a better version of yourself.
oh, you started working young, which was kind of hard, but it's just the way stuff works sometimes. and it was 2008 and your family couldn't afford heat. but it's fine, you grow a spine and get used to the professional world and besides it was the suburbs we're talking about here, like, your life could have been actually hard, so what if your father lost his job and you can't afford to move or turn the lights back on. and once you start making money, it's good. you keep doing that. because now they're relying on you. so you have to do that.
oh you were in thousands of dollars of debt at 17 years old so that you could go to school, because you have to go to school if you want to get a "real" job. you even did it "right", you worked parttime and attended community college before you transferred to a public school. you were under so many merit scholarships.
which is fine. you pick yourself up and you say like, okay. i graduated college. i'm holding down a job. i'm doing the Adult Thing, which looks and acts like this, according to all the books i've read. you start with the shitty job and then you climb that corporate ladder.
but the shitty job doesn't cover rent and you stretch yourself too-thin so you get sick. good luck with that. the shitty job no longer pays for your meals. everyone asks why you don't just move, but there's nowhere to move to. and with what money are you going to be moving? and then the loans come back, because they were never going to forgive them, because you were 17 and trying to do the right thing, which was stupid. people are now saying you shouldn't have even gone to school.
which is fine. but because you have no other option, so you do the shitty job, and you apply every day for like 5 new ones, and despite the fact everyone says "there's no one who wants to work!" it's actually just that nobody is fucking hiring so you can either work for 13 dollars an hour in the shitty place you know (where at least you have a passingly friendly relationship with the manager) or you can start from scratch again with a different 13 dollars an hour without knowing how much abuse from the new job you'll be taking.
and if you quit you lose your insurance. if you quit you lose your housing. if you quit, you'll be another burnout kid. the lazy ones. these assholes, look at them!
and you come home to a family dinner and you hear from your father the same old thing. how he worked hard at his job and yes it sucked for a while but he was able to provide for the family and then the house and the dog and the rest of barbie's dream vacation. how the insurance did cover some of it. how you just really need to start speaking up more in manager conversations so they know you're a go-getter. you want to tell him - did you know we're actually doing more now hourly than any previous generation? - but you can't remember where you heard that statistic, and you're far too tired for the fucking argument. and then he starts in on his usual bit. where's the house? where's your kids? where's your ambition.
the same job the same money the same hours doesn't do it anymore. the same nose-to-the-grindstone now just shreds your face off. there's no such thing as upwards mobility, not really. and as far as you're aware, the money certainly is not trickling. you do the soulless stupid shit you signed up for because you fucking have to or else you literally risk your life (food, the apartment, the insurance), but it's not getting you anything. you download the stupid "save more" app and you budget and you do every right thing and then the price of eggs is 7 dollars and you say - oh great! another thing i have to fucking worry about now!
and you go to your stupid job and everyone in your father's generation just tells you to be better about being an adult. they have their homes and their savings account and their bailout and they say. well have you tried not drinking starbucks. well your generation just spends too much on clothing. well you might just be too addicted to travelling. and you - because you need the job - you bite your tongue and don't say i am being held prisoner and you're suggesting i stop pacing my cell if i don't like the scenery and you don't say what the fuck do you think i've been doing with my money and you don't say i haven't spent a cent on something nice in literally forever much less coffee you arrogant asshole. you open and close your bank app and check your loans and check your credit score and check fucking zillow and ziprecruiter and apartments.com just one time more. and still they give you that demeaning little grin and say - see, what you need is -
what you need is for your meds to stop being so fucking expensive. what you need is for the housing bubble to explode into dust. what you need is for billionaires to choke on their wealth. what you need is actual help. what you will get is more economic advice from people who are older-and-wiser.
and above you, almost in a glimmer, you can see the wedged smile of your debt getting toothier, wider.
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Pest Control
So if you've been looking at my posts lately you'll realize I've been fixating on Queen Danny. And I'm going to keep doing that. But let me grind up some new concepts to throw in.
You think that bugs can become ghosts? Other than singular ones like in Doctor's Disorders? Not really. They're not as obsessed or driven enough to be fully formed, and areas where they become even blobs via excess ecto would probably have a bunch of blob eaters or something balancing it out. So the singular ones in that episode would be much more rare in comparison.
And ghosts who control bugs don't count. We're talking about bugs being the ghosts.
But what about those mass insect killings? Pest control, or when a full apartment building lights on fire and there's enough ectoplasm around? You get a Hive.
Hives always prefer to work together, since even at their creation they are made up thousands or even millions of the creepy crawlies. They either form a body from tiny bodies or chose a majority that can represent it properly. So they can just meld and split without concern.
And in the bug and insect world, more often than not, the Queen is at the top. Pariah didn't count, he didn't even like the Hives. On the other limb, High Queen Phantom had created a clutch of her own.
Once she came into power, the Hives wish to fulfill her desires, as insect kingdom instincts demand and through newfound loyalty. They do so, to the detriment of everyone else.
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Luo Binghe: Original Drafts Edition! Who and why?
“[…] in fact, in his original outline, Bing-gē hadn’t even had a romance plotline; he had been doomed to fade away, alone and unaging forever.”
— The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, Vol. 4 (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu)
The drafts version of Binghe! Not Bing-gē, nor Bing-mei, but a secret, third thing! (I’m partial to Bing-xióng (兄) myself, just for thematic cohesion. Bing-mei remains as he is: Shizun’s special glass-heart maiden.)
So! Who is this elusive, mythical Binghe we never got the chance to meet? What is he? How do I get to pick this one’s brains?
Why is he haunting me! What does he want! So much to think about.
Listen: I love my trash sons, both the racoon and wet dog variations, but I am curious about this handsome demon lord who did not bed thousands, and did not steal his shizun to lovingly coax him into a loving and respectful marriage. Alas, Airplane-bro, as is custom, has left me hanging.
The solitary quote above has been floating around my brainspace for months. Intermittently, I would look up at the sky and sigh a big sad dog sigh, and think of this lonely demon-man emperor who seems to be both perfectly representative of No-Shizunitis Suffering Binghe, and on the exact opposite end of the line. I have spent many a night trying to rearrange the blocks of both SVSSS and PIDW like a sad toddler with no plan but plenty of amorphous longing.
Thus, Bing-xiong. My beloved new toy.
We know he is left alone and unaging. This means that:
He does not marry even once. (Sorry, Other Bing Variants. This one came broken.)
He is not defeated, killed, or left to suffer his not-father’s fate of sulking under a mountain.
From 1) we can assume two more things! Xin Mo either gets fixed/doesn’t influence this Binghe the same way, or: Xin Mo is completely written off à la Airplane Retconning, making Binghe potentially even more individually powerful than his younger counterparts.
(Or he just. Takes people’s cultivation ad-infinitum. Interesting thought, but too straight-forward for my tastes. Airplane’s thoughts? Unknowable.)
From 2) we can also assume Binghe cannot die, is under the influence of the Protagonist Halo unto infinity, and will only be put out of his misery once the heat death of the universe deems it a worthwhile endeavour. Either that or the story ends, but. It tickles a miserable part of my brain pink to think Binghe will not be let off even then.
Anyway. Bing-xiong, of course, has the same source material to work off of. Up until the Abyss, and including it, the plotline should be if not the same, adjacent enough to be indistinguishable.
However. This means:
Bing-xiong never got coerced into sex by Qin Wanyue, thus not starting him on the path of sex-dependency/addiction, avoiding Bing-gē’s fate by virtue of the Butterfly Effect. (Read this post because it explains Bing-ge's whole thing better than a lot of things I've seen.)
Again, Xin Mo implications.
Alternate Universe Shenanigans make an appearance. (Shen Jiu’s fever and death was actually meant to happen, Bing-ge just got very, very unlucky and his Universe’s Yue Qingyuan very, very lucky. For a few years. Either that or there is a Shen Yuan for every Binghe! Again: sorry, Bing-ge. You need to find your own. Middle child issues…)
Once the drafts/original outline got lost, all bets are off and now the characters become real people, without narrative influence. This also has the very fucked up implication that Bing-ge is actually a result of exclusively external forces and would have never gone down that path if not forced onto it by Airplane’s unwitting hands. I do and do not love this version. Very Mo Ran-esque, if looked at from afar and squinting.
Other options I’m either too not-high to think, or too high to put together. (Cold medicine is insane?)
I am fascinated by this… Schrödinger’s Binghe. A jaded, lonely emperor left in the ashes of his world, gazing upon his own history and finding fucking nothing and no one. Metaphorically and, like, practically, if I’m understanding Airplane’s musings correctly. Isolated, cursed by his own blood in a completely new and fucked up way!
I need Airplane to speak with me for like, half an hour. This is paramount to my mental health, I’m losing my braincells by the hour.
What happened to this impervious, cocky, badass demon bastard lord to become so alone? How did it happen? Why did it not happen to the other two, or at least Bing-ge, who has had every horrible and shitty thing possible and impossible piled onto his head? What the fuck is up with Xin Mo? Why isn’t it eating away at Big Bro Luo? Or, worse: why is it eating away at him in such a way that instead of turning into a violent yet charismatic, horror-creature of a man, it turns him into the existential terror-fate I’ve contemplated and abhorred since I was seven?
Tianlang-jun as the final boss. Discovering Huan Hua Palace Master’s crimes, deceit and… stuff. Perhaps even uncovering Shen Jiu’s backstory.
Ooh! Worse! Or better? What if he finds out everything, after having followed Bing-gē’s path, and simply… gives up? A grown up Bing-ge, minus the marriage and surrogate-lover part(s).
(More unlikely than other options, but still there, I guess.)
Fucking insane of MXTX to do this to me, personally and specifically.
I can only speculate forever, I guess! Left… alone and pondering forever.
So. Not a Bing-ge, and not a Bing-mei. A Bing-xiong, if you will.
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