#class commentary

[discountepiphanies]

being naive about the class system in 2026 is a privilege and we should talk about that more often

[monsters-demons-and-heralds-ohmy]

I adore fics where child Jayce and Viktor meet, they are adorable.

But considering the time when Viktor was a child (probably mostly pre Cassandra's vent system when the grey was terrible) and what just living in his neighborhood did to him (causing his illness)…

I just keep imagining a tiny Viktor trying to take Jayce to his home to play and they just... can't even get close. Because at that point Viktor is used to breathing in poison and Jayce's body recognizes it for what it is. (kinda like the Chembaron's meeting scene)

I keep imagining little Viktor just staring at Jayce confused like, "what's wrong?" Not even realizing what he's breathing will eventually kill him.

[mediamatinees]

Another Eat-the-Rich Film, "Parasite" is an Exploration of Class at Its Deadliest

The wait is (finally) over! My review of Bong Joon-Ho's materpiece, "Parasite" is now live!

Content Warning: Parasite contains depictions of severe class disparity, violence, grooming, and extreme manipulation. Viewer discretion is advised. Spoilers for Parasite ahead! In January of 2020, the English-centered film industry was put on blast for not giving foreign language films their proper flowers. Director Bong Joon-Ho, already celebrated by Hollywood and audiences alike for previous…

Another Eat-the-Rich Film, "Parasite" is an Exploration of Class at Its Deadliest

[howifeltabouthim]

They might be coated in money, but the money didn't rub off.

L. P. Hartley, from The Hireling

[gameshowtrainwreck]

"Going Postal" by Terry Pratchett

I just don't understand the outrage being directed to those who have expressed some degree of satisfaction from the news of that United Health Care CEO getting shot. Why would his death be any more outrageous or any more unacceptable from the slow, often painful deaths endured by those at the stroke of his pen?

Frankly, the victim got off lighter than what some movies use for plotlines. It's not something I woulda done, probably not even how I'd do it (a couple of ideas, but they're assumptions that would require stuff anyone privy to the investigation might have already ruled out and i feel as if i contribute enough to the problem of online content as it is anyway), but the ruling class experiencing the same kind of terror they've been okay with allowing everybody else to endure is not something that really moves the needle for me. Frankly, I hope they never catch the shooter and the perp becomes a folk hero for the 21st century. Hell, murder ballads about the shooting are already popping up online. This shooting is reviving folk music. Nobody but family weeps for the low-born criminals dead in the gutter, why are the rest of us low-born expected to weep for an industry who has killed more than the drug cartels? Nah. They spent a lot of money on a lot of politicians to fuck us all over. As ye have sown, so shall ye reap. If a paycheck depends on abstracting people into a line item on a ledger and people end up dying because of it, then you really should consider another line of work.

"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!" "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”

― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Sometimes there are people in this world who will make their best contributions to humanity on their departure. If you're afraid that might happen to you: (1) if you're letting shit get so bad in your interactions with others that somebody might take a swing at you that's probably something you should turn yourself in to the authorities over and try to plea bargain even though you can still get shanked in prison, and (2) lol why are you rich enough to work in health insurance and still fucking slumming it on tumblr? Get tae fuck with that scrub-league bullshit. Rich people are horrible fucking fanfic authors anyway, look at what's getting made in movies. (yes, golems speak by capitalizing every word of dialogue in the Discworld novels, it's something Sir Terry Pratchett did with his books and supernatural characters; Death is a character in them and speaks in small-caps without quotation marks. It's a little annoying personally, but Terry is such a good author you get used to it to the point where it feels wrong without it)

[daydrinking75]

"oh sure, beauty is terror. go on then. quiver before it. not like it will pay for your tuition. but wait, you dont have to, do you? so then beauty is a luxury given to those who can afford to live outside reality. that's not beauty; its delusion. and even if im wrong, to me, beauty is facing reality in spite of terror."

[ohhbee1]

Heavily inspired by @nathanielorion, here is ‘If Noah was a billionaire’

This is how it goes: The world rots. Violence hums in the soil like a live wire, leaking up through the soles of people’s shoes. Cities shiver with corruption, their rivers running metallic and foul. God looks down and His voice is a flood before the flood: I will drown it all. But you, Noah: you, I will save.

This is how it goes: Noah is rich. Not rich in goats or olive trees, instead in vaults and granaries and hidden cellars filled with gold. When God whispers, Build me a boat, Noah hears Build me a kingdom that floats. He hires his sons as labour, his daughters-in-law as servants, his brothers and cousins as thieves. Together they strip the markets clean, grain by grain, apple by apple, leaving families with hollow cupboards and empty palms.

God says, Two of each creature. Male and female. They will come to you.

And they do. The elephants arrive first, gray mountains with eyes like old sorrow. But Noah shakes his head. You’ll eat too much, he says, and bars the door.

Then the lions pad up, golden and hungry, their ribs like cage doors rattling in the wind. Noah feels the weight of their teeth in his mind. You’re dangerous, he says. You’ll eat me before the bread runs out.

The birds swirl in flocks, a storm of feathers and wings. They bow their beaks at his doorway. You can fly, Noah says. You don’t need me.

The pairs keep coming: striped, spotted, scaled, furred. Noah counts their hungers, their strangeness, their otherness. One by one he turns them away until the line dwindles to nothing. The ark, wide as a city block, yawns with empty cages.

This is how it goes: the rain begins. A drizzle first, then a roar. For forty days and forty nights the skies collapse, the seas swallow. Noah and his family sit dry inside their floating empire. They eat. They drink. They grow fat on what they stole. They laugh over the thunder.

Outside, the world drowns. The elephants sink heavy as stone. The lions thrash once, then vanish. The birds spiral higher, higher, until their wings collapse against the rain.

Months pass. The ark bumps against mountains. Noah has no raven to release and no dove to carry a leaf. The sky clears and there is silence.

This is how it goes: eventually the water sinks. Noah walks out onto dry ground. He breathes in emptiness. He has inherited a kingdom of dust. His covenant is with silence. His rainbow arcs across a sky with no eyes left to see it.

[hussyknee]

KJ Charles is screamingly funny about the upper classes but I think the absolute funniest scene I've read so far is in this Will Darling book (set in the 1920s).

[SPOILERS for Will Darling: The Sugared Game.]

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A gaggle of Woosterish trust fund babies accidentally burst into the climactic scene to gape in bewilderment at the bad guy who's cornered, desperate and brandishing a gun.

Tfw you encounter such an overmoneyed idiot that you nearly have a commiserating moment with the homicidal maniac trying to kill you.