mrrp

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

The Stanley Parable ZINE – pre-orders are open!

we were trying day and night to finally announce that we're expecting a baby. they will be named the zine regardless of gender. oh, and also we're getting them a lot of pets: merchandise!

I made a small comics for it and mischievously post a small part of it knowing damn well it doesn't spoil anything hehe

our zine was made mostly by russian citizens with stanley shaped worm in their brain, and yk borders are closed, but here's the amazing news: organizers can deliver to other countries too! sadly, not everywhere, but you'll be able to support a project anyway buying it's digital version for 7$. you can ask here in the comment section what's possible for you depending on your location. а для россиян с лагучим впн, можно еще здесь

it's not all announcements for today, it's also the first year ⤵

I'm gonna be on artfight!

not only I have OCs, my version of narrator from TSP is also an available option, I'll appreciate if you go take a look at my page!

tonight russians carried one of the most brutal attacks with tons of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, killing several civilians and wounding dozens.

after the sleepless night, I'm just shaking right now at the realisation that my family and I could've died tonight because multiple missiles and drones were flying right above our house. hearing the sound of a drone approaching, I legit thought it was going to fucking hit our house, the explosions were EXTREMELY LOUD. and it's like this all the time.

when you leave the shelter in the morning, you try to get at least some sleep so you can carry on with your day. but for some, the day won't continue. they will have no dreams, no future to build. because RUSSIANS KILLED THEM. and throughout the day, you feel something inside you dying over and over again. this emptiness, born of the realisation of reality, consumes you.

I'm scared for my friends, for their families, and for all Ukrainians. I'm scared for my friend who is currently fighting in the war. I want justice for all of us and for my country. for all the civilians and military personnel who were tortured and killed, for all the POWs, for all those who were deported, for all the children who have been living in fear, for those who were killed, and for those who were forcibly taken into ruzzian "families". I just want to live happy. I want my people to live happy. but instead, we have to fight for our existence every single day. I want russia to burn for everything these terrorists have done. fuck all of them.

I'm eternally thankful to our defenders for me being alive today. I'm eternally thankful to our rescue workers.

I mean, we know the Narrator eventually leaves the Parable (or would've left if we hadn't stopped in the Epilogue) because he realizes his attachment to Stanley isn't really healthy.

Personally I am of the belief that Stanley is The Narrator's reassurance bucket. He created him for companionship, to have someone to talk a that wouldn't talk back. He starts neglecting the people in his life just to work on/spend time with Stanley. Probably gets a divorce about it. Stanley might've started as an empty vessel, much like a bucket, and even though the Narrator knows this he finds himself attached to him (maybe even In Love With Him, if you take Stanley's love of the bucket as romantic, which you don't *have to* but the game seems to support in some way).

However, Stanley isn't real. And the bucket, well, it is just a bucket. It can't correspond his feelings, not really. Stanley's love for it comes from a place of devastating loneliness, it isn't really healthy.

I think the game in the end is trying to teach us to let go. Things change. They come to an end. You can't stay stuck forever, you can't let your fantasies/your creative work/your nostalgia run your life.

It is such a shame that just as the Narrator finds the strength to let go, we drag him down again, because our own desire to keep the Parable going forever and the Settings Person's power is stronger.

There is a shipper in my heart who believes that Stanley and The Narrator are meant to be together forever in a fucked up antagonistic co-dependent endless narrative cycle, but if we take canon seriously, it would probably be for the best they split apart. Stanley wants his freedom. The Narrator wants his freedom. They can't be free as long as they're trapped with each other in the Parable, as long as the player will keep them trapped in the cycle.

(If we want them to be happy we need to turn off the game. Reject Settings' offer. Touch grass and let go.)

(Of course I'm not doing that though. I'm slurping up that fanfiction like it's the world's tastiest ramen. Men kissing? Brother sign me up. Let's keep this train going until the heat death of the universe.)

Anyway, yeah. That's my personal reading.

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this one is so unsettling. they even have a heartbeat sfx near the end!

killing the bucket brings this sad, but relieved (?) song

this one gives a very heavenly vibe to me