daystarsearcher

[daystarsearcher]

really fascinated by how betazoid-vulcan diplomacy would work as two supremely different telepathic species. the touch telepaths with an intense culture of repression and secrecy vs the most free wheeling shameless least secretive species in the galaxy that has a tradition of nude weddings. if a vulcan accidentally made skin-to-skin contact with a betazoid it would be the psychic equivalent of a flash bang going off.

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"Why can Odo perfectly imitate anything except a humanoid face, that doesn't make--" TRAUMA. The answer is TRAUMA. Huh, the person who was taught to shapeshift a humanoid form by being electrocuted by the man whose shape he was struggling to take, has trouble taking that shape? Something seems to be blocking him from fully taking on that form? This is the opposite of a mystery.

[daystarsearcher]

if you have a niche sport/job/hobby it’s your sacred duty to make the most specific incomprehensible AUs with the characters you like. no more coffeeshop aus no more college aus you have to put those guys in a microbial lab. your fave is a high school english teacher. that show is about bowling now sorry. THIS IS MANDATORY!!!

[daystarsearcher]

Julian's speech about how it will look like Bareil and sound like Bareil but won't be Bareil anymore because everything that made him who he is will be dead and Julian will have been the one who killed him—

Boy does THAT hit different after DBIP huh.

[daystarsearcher]

kinda crazy that quark's main job is like. supplier of porn for deep space nine. like of course he also owns a bar. but what he really does in his heart and soul to make ds9 home. is sell people porn programs he's personally designed.

[daystarsearcher]

Hey, I know it's a new year and things are pretty scary at the outset.

But I'm here to tell you, of all the things in this world that are gatekept, hope is one of them too.

Just because you're not hearing hopeful news doesn't mean it's not happening.

I have subscriptions to several specialized science magazines via institutional access, and I wake up every day to articles in my email like "We've just figured out how to catalyze the destruction of PFAS [forever chemicals] into harmless byproducts. Now we're just trying to take it to commercial scale." (Real story I read last month and sent to a friend who has deep anxiety about PFAS!!!).

For every big scary problem the mainstream news is capitalizing on through fearmongering, there are people behind the scenes, many of them scientists, working to ~~~ and succeeding at ~~~ solving them.

The news of the solutions are just often behind a paywall, whereas you're free to consume as many stories of tragedy, crisis, and impending doom as you want.

[daystarsearcher]

Y'all might remember my trans geek friend who is dealing with chronic illness and a lot of other challenging life stuff. We got her into a stable living situation, but unfortunately she still needs a few hundred bucks to survive right now. Please help if you can!

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This is the DREAM.

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I am once again thinking about making a tiny ceramic Redwall for pet mice. (Do I have pet mice? No, not for over a decade now. Am I going to get pet mice? Not unless Vice gets real cool about a lot of stuff real fast. ) I just think it would be really cute and fun to do...

So here's the proposal: two story structure, with the bottom layer intended to be buried in deep litter, and the upper floor at 'ground' level. Maybe a bell tower? Definitely a rose window. Possibly a removable roof; certainly an open back like a dollhouse. All of it would be glazed and sealed (basically, like any food-safe dish) so it could be sanitized and kept clean.

IF I was going to be doing this, I would need to first build a slab storage rack, so that I could make and keep all my slabs at the right moisture level while working. That would require a run to the hardware store, which is dangerous for my wallet.

Is there any reason for me to be doing this? No. But it would be VERY cute.

[daystarsearcher]

Things are bad right now.

As many of you know, way back in 2020 we weren’t sure if our business was gonna make it. Our factory was already on break for Lunar New Year–a month-long holiday for many businesses in the area–and with the announcement of COVID19, everything shut down indefinitely. We knew immediately we were in for a bad time. Despite our fears, our sales grew so far beyond anything we ever expected, to the point where we had to hire two employees just to keep up with demand! 

Unfortunately, even after our factory reopened, our problems were not over. Their quality drastically declined almost immediately, to the point that a significant amount of our  fabric would literally fall apart in transit between the factory and our office. Because of this, we discovered that our sales rep had no idea what she was doing and knew nothing about the factory she was representing, so when we told her the fabric was garbage her response was “👍 factory said it’s good!” At the beginning, only roughly 10% of our new product was defective and we were able to sell the affected items with a reasonable discount. By the end of our relationship with that factory, 40% of our midi skirts and 70% of our miniskirts were defective, some affected so severely that they practically fell apart when touched. And still, our rep said everything was fine and there were no problems and the fabric composition had not changed.

So in 2022 we changed factories. We hired Ash to handle this since I was way too busy managing fulfillment to do the amount of research and communication necessary to find us a factory that met our criteria. Finding clothing factories that can make clothing over a size 2-3X is significantly more difficult than one that can’t because it often requires larger and more expensive machinery. But Ash did it: she got us set up with a new factory that has excellent certifications for both their labor practices and their methods for textile production, that delivers consistent, high quality sewing on well made fabric that can be printed without suffering loss in detail–and she was armored with the knowledge for what makes a quality garment so she could check them if they tried to screw us on quality. Their minimum orders were way higher than our previous factory’s, so we decided to focus on ordering more units of fewer designs. We ordered way too much our first round–some of those designs were in stock until the 2024 blowout sale! But it worked out, and slowly we had a warehouse full of stuff to sell.

Fast forward to 2024, business is slowing down between the economy being bad and what seemed to be a general skirt fatigue amongst our customers. We tried expanding into shirts, which would’ve been successful if our minimums were lower. In the late spring we realized we were in trouble if we didn’t make drastic changes and we ultimately decided to end in-house fulfillment and transfer to a third party fulfillment center that would support domestic shipping in Canada and eventually the UK, EU, and Australia. In order to make that transition affordable we drastically discounted everything and that sale was super successful! We were able to begin shipping from the fulfillment center with an almost clean slate, even if it did mean having to close the store for almost two months and thereby missing out on two very important months of sales.

Unfortunately, we were stupid. We continued to order new designs on an every other month schedule instead of switching to an every month schedule, forgetting that having a backstock in a variety of designs is what previously helped us float between orders and now we quite literally didn’t have enough inventory to match the sales we made for last year’s holiday sale.

That brings us to now.

We’re a little stuck. We have a round of skirts in production (yay!) but they won’t get here until February (boo!). To get back on that monthly cycle we would need to order the next round of skirts right now, but we can’t pay for production until that next round of skirts gets here; if the current sale goes well, it’s paying payroll, not production. We are currently in the very difficult, horrible situation of not having enough money for next month’s payroll unless we are somehow able to make significant sales with our very sparse inventory.

We’re scrappy and we do our best to adapt to disasters and I’m sure we’ll find a way to adapt to this one as well, it’ll just take us some time to get there. Basically we’re going to be okay eventually–hopefully later this year–but in the meantime if we seem frantic, now you know why. 

If you’re been considering trying out our viscose shirts but haven’t been able to justify paying full price, they’re on clearance PLUS half off right now! That’s $9-$15 for the viscose tops, and other tops on clearance are $20-$45. Some of the shirts we’re having a LOT of trouble selling are now priced below cost to help us recoup some of the money we spent making them.

Any amount of support helps right now. Sharing posts, telling your friends, buying a $9 shirt–all of it helps. If our clothing isn’t your thing, we also have a Patreon you can support for as little as $1 a month. https://www.patreon.com/mayakern

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a great rest of your day and that 2025 is a brighter, kinder year for us all.

[daystarsearcher]

[daystarsearcher]

growing up as an imaginative single child, I loved to play with Barbies. I loved creating elaborate drama-filled storylines for them and I could keep at it for hours. there was one problem. I had like 15 thrift store Barbies and no Kens. I only had one Barbie-sized male doll and it was a collectible Elvis Presley doll and he was my favorite doll. I always did the Elvis voice when I was playing him but he had no relation to Elvis Presley otherwise. anyway, he had some crazy days. trapped on a scary planet where he is the only man in the world and half of the women there hate him. in a massive car accident and stranded in the woods with a girlfriend who had broken her foot and a crazy ex girlfriend who had stalked them there. kidnapped by Athena (one of my Barbie sized dolls was Athena, like, the goddess) and held captive by her while trying to go home to his 7 situationships. all of this happening to a guy who looks and sounds exactly like Elvis but is otherwise the quintessential everyman.

[daystarsearcher]

honestly i think i’m the only person left on tumblr who gives a single shit about michi abney lmao

[daystarsearcher]

i need more time to make things right - (insp.)

[daystarsearcher]

do u ever get a comment on a fic thats just so sweet that ur like Maybe slaving over 24k of fanfiction was worth it for user SprinkleTrashcan2012 to leave a three paragraph comment

[daystarsearcher]

One of my very favourite things about Star Trek is the way it's like:

Last episode: an unflinching depiction of racism in 1950s America.

This episode: what if a ship was very very small?

and they're both amazing episodes.