#1.6 million people that you don't know

[misa-chan13]

My thought is why would you want to become president if you don't like most of the people you're governing like i understand why he is (no jail, money, scores to settle) but it seems dumb to want to be the leader of a country you don't even like the America he wants to lead doesn't exist and when it did he would have died really early of stupidity or one of his servants (really really thin use of that) killing his ass

imagine how much of a fucking horrible person you have to be that on the first day your elected into office the crisis calls of a Suicide Prevention Project Go Up 33%. The Trevor Project Received over 1,400 Call By Early Monday Afternoon. Most of those calls, if not all, are coming from children. Children scared of you and what you will do. Imagine how much power and how horrible you have to be to do that.

[boxturret]

One Tenth Scale Mata Nui

Mata Nui is a cool place, but did you ever feel that it was a bit...big for what it was?

The official maps put the island at 357 kio long, which if you take to be a stand in for kilometres¹, would make the island 357 kilometres long.

This lines up roughly with what we can see in the concept art: they say that Mata Nui is around the size of Denmark, the real measurement being 368km, and it matches with what we see in the Mata Nui Rising cgi video.

So that's all well and good, Mata Nui is 357km long, the GSR itself is 3300km tall, all hunky-dory, as long as you ignore some guy named Greggory yelling about how the robot is actually much bigger, but its fine to ignore him.

But now, actually consider what this means. Denmark is by no means a small country, it has a population of 6 million and would take hours to drive across by car on modern roads. Now that isn't an issue really, but in most media depicting the island its shown to be a place that can be traversed by foot or on animal back in a reasonable time frame.

But now let us look at this earlier map:

Initially the most interesting thing to me on this map was the 3rd measurement: the height of the Mangai volcano²

Now on the one hand, this was cool, now I know how tall to make the volcano, on the other hand... 23km seems pretty big.

It is. 23km is higher than Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the solar system, standing at only 21.9km. So that's pretty big. This made me start thinking about how far various things are apart and how long it would actually take and using some very VERY generous numbers I started plotting out how long it would take to actually get from place to place.

It wasn't very pretty. In the Mata Nui Online Game it would have taken Takua roughly 5 hours to walk from the beach to Ta-Koro, and another 18 to get to Onu-Koro using the highway. Now this would be fine in an epic like Lord of the Rings, but in Bionicle Mata Nui is consistently treated as a place people can pretty quickly get around on.

The Toa are running all over the place and bumping in to each other. Kopaka getting in to the Caldera at the top of the Mangai volcano isn't the equivalent of climbing 3 Mt Everests in a row, its just something he does [correction: It wasn't the caldera, but a lava pool half way up the mountain, so just 1.5 Mt Everests]. Takua travels all over the island in a pretty small amount of time, unless we're supposed to insert day long journeys in between every screen transition.

But then I noticed something. Something very interesting.

Now lets look at the two keys for the sizes on the released and the early map:

Seems pretty consistent, the sizes of the island are the same, a Toa is 1.6 bio on both (incidentally a real Toa figure is approximately 16cm tall), everything seems to match.

But then I counted the zeroes.

The old map has a kio being not 1000 bio, but 100!

You can even see it on the other version of the map.

Now this is incredibly interesting! This shrinks Mata Nui to 1/10th of its commonly accepted size! It goes from being the size of Denmark to being the size of the Isle of Man.

Which....really works a lot better! This turns Takua's trip from the beach from a 5 hour hike to a short half hour walk. This turns the cable car to Mt Ihu from a massive 70km mega structure to something that's dwarfed by real world constructions.

I don't think this is a mistake either, looking at the details of the map.

You have much finer details, such as these ice shelves collapsing in to small icebergs, whereas on the full sized map some of the larger chunks of ice are kilometres across.

One of the major things it includes are the mesas that can bee seen in many of the promotional renders set in Le-Wahi which are nowhere to be seen on the final map. At this 1/10 scale the plateaus seen would match up well with the massive mesas seen in monument valley in terms of size, but with the final size they would be absolutely massive (10 times as big if you can believe it!)

So suffice to say, I don't think this is just a case of a zero being dropped, it really seems to line up with the level of detail on this earlier map.

But what does this do to the GSR? I hear you cry, well it varies. Going by the earlier numbers it would simply be 1/10th the size, so 330km tall instead of 3300km, so still very large, but depending on the size relationship between the robot and the island it could be as "small" as 180km

The island in this picture is roughly the same size as normal, just covers more of the GSR. The final GSR's head is so proportionately tiny compared to its body that the Mata Nui island had to be very small to cover it. But in any case, a robot "only" 180km tall standing up is still going to tower over anything, its many times higher than airplanes fly, its taller than most clouds, really it would be quite consistent with this render:

So, in conclusion, an earlier concept of the island of Mata Nui has it being 1/10 of the size of the final, and that size seems to work better with what we see in various media from the time, and works better with the story.

Personally this is what I'll be going with in terms of the scale of the island going forward, as it really fits with my vision of the setting and works well with all the story and media from that time.

¹-I don't care about someone saying a bio is 4.375966487787¾ feet, feet aren't real and neither are you. ²-Mt Ihu is NOT the highest point on the island, the GSR isn't Pinocchio with a big pointy nose, this has never been reflected in any visual media.

thank you for reading/have a nice day

Update: I have made a companion post with many renders of George visiting places on the island to hopefully better illustrate the scale.

[onlycosmere]

Questioner: Do you have plans to self-produce your books into movies or TV shows? If Taylor Swift can do it, you can.

Questioner: Oh right, yeah, Taylor Swift. Let's point out, there's a little bit of a difference between a 45 million dollar Kickstarter and a 1.6 billion dollar tour. So, we've talked about this, and I've come to the conclusion that for right now I don't want to try it. There are a couple of reasons for this.

Reason number one is that I like my Kickstarters to have a ton of value in them, right? I always tell my team, I'm like, we have to be giving a lot of value to people on the stuff that they do with our crowdfunding or our Kickstarters. And that means that, of that 45 million dollars, we don't make a lot of that. We're putting most of that into the product, and into the shipping, and into the team, and into the company. And so, if we were to do a crowdfunded movie, we need like a 200 million dollar budget, 150 at the lowest, to do a film. And if I'm going to do that, I would want to be giving people a ton of value which means we'd probably have to raise 450 million, which is just a ridiculous amount to do on a crowdfunding, right? So that's number one.

Number two is, a lot of times, these sort of outsider projects don't work as well in Hollywood as you would hope they would. Taylor Swift was able to do a thing and put it directly in the theaters and whatnot, but what we want is a partner over a long period of time. I want someone like Universal, or Disney, or Warner Brothers, who has a long established reputation to buy in on the cosmere, and make things with me for twenty years, right? I don't want to just do one off, I want to build something over time and I feel like I need a really good partner in the industry to do that.

And you know, reason number three is, a fool and their money is soon parted. I've known too many people who think, yeah I can make a movie. And let's just say that there's a reason why The Room isn't that great, and it's because being good in one area doesn't mean you're good in another. I am really good at narrative. I'm getting good at screenplays, right? I'm getting to the point where I feel confident I could do the screenplays myself. But I can't direct, I can't cinematographize, I don't even know how to make that a verb, right? I can't do casting, I can't do all of these things that experts in their field, and yes, I could start hiring them, but I feel like, never having run a movie before, it would just be a disaster. So you would donate all this money, I would waste it all, because I wouldn't know what I'm doing, and this is how Kickstarters go bad real fast, right? I've only done these things when I know I can deliver, and I do not know I can deliver this for you.

So, for the mean time, I'm going to keep trying to use the standard mechanisms. I feel like, you know like, this year we got frighteningly close. Well, frightening is the wrong term. The frightening part is it didn't work out. But we got really, really close. I saw people on stage, in mistcloaks, acting and reading my lines, okay? Yeah. And then it all fell apart, and it's all dead, right? We got really close, but we're getting closer and closer. And Hollywood is really interested in the Cosmere. They recognize the value of my stories. They've been, for years, saying, we know this is going to come, break out, and it's going to be big someday. But it's all about figuring out how to make it work, and beyond that, Hollywood is kind of on fire right now. And so we're waiting for it to, for someone to put it out. So, regardless, the answer is, I've considered it, and I've discarded it for those reasons, but it's still possibly on the table. It is something that, you know, the awareness of the possibility is in the back of my mind, okay?

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Okay, I've Read Worm: A Retrospective Part 4: Let's Give Wildbow Some Fucking Well-Earned Praise

So, I've had a decent number of harsh words for Wildbow over the course of my liveblog, and also over on my main blog. Overall, most of them are about his WoGs or Ward, rather than Worm itself. I've also commented I don't think I'd enjoy talking to him (not that he's likely to ever reach out, but you know). But I've had some complaints about Worm too.

But the thing is, I did read Worm. I read the whole thing. A desire to write fanfic would not have kept me going through all 30 chapters if I hated it. Or even if I just thought it was like, mediocre. It's 1.6 Million words. I am not that kind of masochist.

Life is short, Worm is long, if I wasn't enjoying it, I'd have left a long time ago. So I did enjoy it.

And the thing is, even if I never pick up his other works (and I do intend to try some), I am no doubt going to have more harsh words for Wildbow in the future. And I have no doubt that even if I love say, Pact or Pale or Claw or Seek or... I dunno, his next Web Serial after Seek called *throws a dart at a wall* Iota, I'm sure I'll have harsh words. I can't think of a single creator of anything that I don't have at least some issues with something they put out.

And to be fair, even most people who fully like Worm and Ward tend to have some harsh words for him now and then, or at least negative ones.

BUT, I liked Worm. And so, I think it's fair to really sit down and give him some unalloyed, unambiguous praise.

The Pace of Output: This is probably low-hanging fruit, but it is genuinely impressive that Wildbow wrote Worm as quickly as he did, sticking to a schedule as consistently as he did. I am in awe. I think even if I didn't have to work at all, and was able to write all the time, I wouldn't even be able to match half of what he did in the same amount of time, in terms of output. Wildbow accomplished something that is genuinely amazing here.

The Shards, Entities and Powers: Shard mechanics are not my favorite thing about Worm. But the whole thing really does come together well. It's a pretty cohesive, pretty well directed power system to tell the story he wanted to tell. I don't consume much cape fiction, so I don't know what stuff beyond Marvel and DC are really like in terms of how powers work and how they all fit and service the story, but for Worm, the Shards work to tell the story he wants to tell, really well. I read and write mostly fantasy and sci-fi, and spend a lot of time in worldbuilding spaces dedicated to both, or have at least, and a lot of would be writers fall into the trap of trying to overdevelop the magic system or the rules for whatever crazy supertech their story has without really stopping to figure out how it fits for the story they want. That's generally not a great approach if the intent is to have a story, and not just a cool setting or a fun magic concept. Wildbow created a pretty cool system, and then managed to avoid the common trap of getting so attached to the power system and it's rules that it interfered with telling the story he wanted to tell. Instead, he built and bent the system with his story as the driving purpose, and kept it all cohesively working within that framework.

The Interludes: The Interludes are without a doubt some of the best shit in Worm, overall. The way he is able to convey so much about these characters in these cutaway scenes and expand the world and advance the story and develop ongoing themes and narratives? Nearly every Interlude is doing like, 4 things at once, I swear to got, and the way he juggles that all together is awesome, and the end result is great. I will never go back and reread all of Worm from start to finish. But I will sure as shit go back and read some of the interludes just for the sheer fun of it. The way these cutaways manage to get you inside the head of these people, see their perspective is really good, takes real skill to make you go 'I really kinda see Saint's POV here' for his Interlude, for instance. Really good.

Amy Dallon: So like, I think it's clear I love Amy. She's fascinating. I have big feelings about her, and she's a divisive as fuck character. But Amy Dallon is the most fascinating character in Worm for me personally and she's genuinely one of the most fascinating characters in anything I've read. I'll have more to say about Amy if I manage to get a version of that Amy retrospective I'm happy with written, but unironically? Wildbow, thank you for writing Amy Dallon. I bitch about how much she's taken over my brain, but Amy is such a fascinating, interesting, enjoyable and engrossing character that she has been a net positive for me. Reading Worm and reading about her has enriched my life. Thank you. You did a damn good job with her in Worm, Wildbow.

Taylor Hebert: As I said back in Part 1 of this retrospective, I was worried I'd find Taylor insufferable. Her capacity for self-rationalization should be an issue for me. It often can be in other characters. But Wildbow managed to write Taylor amazingly. He created a character who is multifaceted, multilayered, complex, nuanced and yet, pretty simple. She's intensely relatable, and yet, she is also deeply, deeply alien and abnormal. She does absolutely insane shit, and yet, when you're reading along with her POV, so much of what she does and thinks makes her seem like the only sane woman in the room. Even when you take a step back and realize what she does, she's very hard to not like. Even if you want to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her, you like her. She's great. She's an everywoman, she's no woman. She's clever and stupid and brilliant and unimaginative all at once. She is... She's Taylor Hebert. She's an antihero, a villain protagonist, a hero hero and... she's just some fucking girl.

Heroes/Villains: What I mean by this bulletpoint is - villain protagonists, making villainous characters sympathetic - that's easy enough to do. And making the 'official heroes' of a setting not really as great as they might seem is also fairly easy to do. But it is hard to pair the two together as well as Wildbow did. The Undersiders do a lot of bad things (I would disagree with people who say they're all *fundamentally* bad people - even Regent... ish, kinda sorta. He's so fucked up due to his background that calling him fundamentally bad is probably not really accurate. Though some people draw red lines around some of what he did, so that's more subjective. But like, the key thing is that he did that while *also* still making them pretty sympathetic without like... running protag-centered morality and still making them have done quite a bit of good (and a ton of bad) AND the handling of the heroes. Because it really does look a lot like he's doing a bit where the 'official heroes' are the real bad guys of the story between things like Armsmaster's shit and Interlude 2, but he also doesn't actually do that. And he executes it in a way that is really well done, without doing the thing where the narrative acts like someone is evil but like... the person isn't.

This isn't really an exhaustive list of 'everything Worm did well' or even 'Everything I liked about Worm', but it is stuff that Wildbow did really fucking well, that I really liked or am impressed with, and that he deserves unalloyed praise for.

There are reasons why I kept reading Worm, and those are some of the reasons.

(There could also be a point on how he manages the readers' information diet, but it's really hard to say for sure if it's something that I really liked because I came in so thoroughly spoiled. From what I can see, I think I would have liked it and given it the unalloyed praise normally, but it's impossible to say because I knew what 75% of these clues were ahead of time).

Mr. Bow - you did a lot of shit I don't like. But holy motherfucking shit, you did some goddamn amazing stuff too.

[alexanderwales]

Adapting Worth the Candle into a Pixar Movie

Worth the Candle is 1.6 million words and covers a lot of characters, themes, and events. The average Pixar movie is around 90 minutes.

How would you stuff one into the other?

The first answer is that you wouldn't, obviously. But that's boring, so I'm going to try to game out how I would attempt it, if I had to, mostly as a writing exercise that involves stretching the planning/plotting muscles. This post will spoil most of the story, in the same way an adaptation would, while also missing like 99% of what actually happens in the story.

We start with a scene of Juniper playing some tabletop game with his friends. His friend Arthur is introduced. This is a short scene, maybe of their first game together, and then we immediately go into montage, showing the character sheets stacking up, the book collection growing, the endless campaign notes, all that visual story-telling passage-of-time goodness. Some of the other players rotate, but Juniper is always there at the head of the table, behind an increasingly tattered screen, and Arthur is always by his side.

Then we have another scene where someone wants to start without Arthur, and Juniper says "no, no, he'll be here, he's never late", and he gets a phone call, and we see his eyes widen, and then we go to another montage of time passing, this one showing the world darkened, the same game table, the seats slowly emptying as more and more people drop out, until it's just Juniper alone. We see behind his screen, images that evoke his pain and anger, plans for a game that no one wants to play, and Arthur's empty chair beside him.

I think for pacing reasons you probably have to draw out the next bits, but Juniper walks home alone in the rain, feeling worse and worse, maybe with some portents of what's to come around him, until eventually he finds himself in the fantasy world.

We're now five to ten minutes in, depending on just how fast we've been going. (This is close to being the beginning of Up, I am aware of that and absolutely fine with cribbing from one of the greatest movie openings of all time for this exercise.)

Juniper quickly meets Amaryllis, she's in trouble, we probably use a different exclusion zone from in the book, there are monsters to fight, they fight those monsters in an action scene, hardly pausing for breath. Juniper recognizes the monsters, they're from one of his campaigns, and if we don't trust the audience, we can have him say that or directly flashback, but presumably this was something from the montage. Eventually the fighting ends, Amaryllis introduces herself, and Juniper is just obsessed with her name, because that's the name of one of Arthur's longest-running characters.

After that, our first act is them getting out of the exclusion zone, past the monsters. Juniper proves himself at least once by knowing things that he shouldn't, domain expertise, how to defeat the evil things. We get the story of how Uther, the lost king, went away and never came back, and Juniper becomes determined to find him. Amaryllis does too, mostly because her country is in dire straits. They meet up with Fenn, a half-elf who provides comic relief. The end of the first act comes when they're in relative safety, in Anglecynn, with Amaryllis in disguise, hiding from her relatives.

Most of the second act is a single adventure, like we're highly truncating a million words of bumbling around the world into maybe thirty minutes of runtime. My copy of Save the Cat suggests that on the beat sheet this is where "Fun and Games" portion comes in, so we have Juniper use his foreknowledge to understand the layout of the castle, the nature of the magic, etc. to prove his worth. We're going for a "false high point" here, in Save the Cat terms. They've got the gang together! They're doing adventure stuff! It goes off without a hitch! Any seeming setbacks were all part of the plan! Fenn gets a cool magic hat!

And then whatever MacGuffin they've stolen points them in one single spot: Fel Seed. Of all the dark and scary things that were on Juniper's DM screen in that opening montage, this is the darkest and scariest of them all. Juniper has to explain that he ... well, he made some things. Not monsters that were set up to be knocked down, not a castle that was meant for a heist, not a cool hat, something that was evil, something that was not meant to be beaten. Rocks fall, everyone dies.

But they go ahead anyway, pressing forward after, maybe, a speech by Amaryllis about doing the necessary thing, not just stopping because it all feels lost and hopeless.

So they go, and they fight, and they lose, and all hope seems lost, until Juniper throws down his sword and gives his own speech, about how this isn't what it's supposed to be, how his friendship at the table was about creating a story together, about setting up a villain to be knocked down, and then Fel Seed looks at the sword that's been cast aside, and says that it's not enough, that if you want to win you have to fight. So Juniper fights and wins.

And then Juniper finds Arthur, who is middle-aged and a fearsome warrior, and we do a highly abbreviated Long Stairs thing, Arthur trying to escape this world and its cycles, pushing on forward in spite of Juniper's objections. I would really want to have another montage similar to the opening ones, where Arthur describes what life was like, how the adventures ground him down, how it felt like he was being urged forward all the time, pushed when he felt like standing still. Like there was some Juniper up above who wanted to keep playing, who wouldn't let go.

I do think this comes off more deathist than in the original. Uther's not trying to escape life, he's trying to escape narrative, or more than that, to escape his life as an object of worship. This is definitely an execution problem, especially because we have like ... maybe 20 minutes to spend on this. I think it's doable though, especially with flashback, a long sequence showing Uther's life.

And then Uther is gone, and all the hopes of restoring the kingdom to its former glory with him, and Amaryllis slumps down, because this was her shot at fixing the fractious fighting. But Juniper offers her his hand, because he's at peace now, and he's going to do what he feels like he's always done best: build things, side by side, with her.

(And then we imply that this goes better than we naively think it should, maybe because of Juniper's detailed knowledge of the world, or his superior ability to adventure.)

Alright, I think that's it.

There are some obvious issues. Runtime is probably fine, but I did not actually fill out my Blake Snyder Beat Sheet, so there would be a lot of work to turn this into an actual script ... which I might do just because I told myself that this would be the year that I write a movie script.

Also, I cut your favorite part and hacked away at some of the themes you liked. Sorry about that. There's no Bethel, no Raven, no Maddie, no Grak ... though I actually do like the idea of a Grak that is more beard than anything else, a quirky side character that's mostly silent, since it does seem like we'd want to fill out the team in the second act. This is disrespectful to the vision of Grak as a character, which I find funny. But the list of things that are getting removed is very very long, I acknowledge this, and there are entire themes, mechanics, etc. that are being slashed.

And of the things that aren't getting slashed, some of them are getting sanded down. You cannot depict Fel Seed as he is in the books in a big budget animated movie, because if you did, the movie would not make its money back. You can't have a scene where your protagonist ejaculates into an elf's mouth. Sorry, just not possible with standards and practices, in a world where this was even remotely possible to get made. The very inclusion of a "handjob police" joke in the book would probably preclude this movie from ever getting made, even if that was nowhere in the script, to say nothing of the other elements.

Still, I think this is sort of what you would need to do for this extreme of an adaptation. I think that as a movie this could work. I also think it would be highly dependent on execution, as most things are, finding an art style that works, hitting all the beats correctly, making sure the writing is very very polished and that we have continuity going forward and backward, callbacks and call forwards and brick jokes.

At least as a quick half-hour exercise, I think I am happy with the plan as outlined here. This was not created for purpose, just because I thought it would be interesting. If you're trying to rescue a core story that can be told in 90 minutes, pulled from a sprawling web serial, I think this is how you do it.

[chewingbatmanlikeasqueakytoy]

Okay this is actually a partial reply to another post

but my reply got so long i think tumblr literally cant cope LMAO so (context the Amity park perception filter thread with @kaidatheghostdragon which i will edit a link into after posting (X) Edit: the context link is now attached)

Honestly they might not CRASH crash the economy but I honestly think they could do some serious damage. At the very least if Amity is going to start essentially printing USD with these cards to get infrastructure and the like set up the inflation within the town is going to go crazy and they might just need a new currency. I think it's also determined by how LARGE you consider Amity to be. As I've always seen it described as a small town I've always envisioned it to have a population of around 10,000 people. AS IT TURNS OUT the wiki describes it as 'Amity Park is depicted as a moderately large urban city, reminiscent of Chicago, San Francisco, and/or Philadelphia' WHICH IS WAY LARGER THAN I IMAGINED. I don't know SHIT about American cities or their layouts apart from the fact that Everything Is Squares and also apparently the junctions are death(? Apparently America doesn't have roundabouts??? Bro??? I don't know if that was a Simpsons gag but I think about it maybe half as often as I use roundabouts), BUT the point is that google says those cities are somewhere around 800,000 to 2.6 million.

Honestly I think those are weird numbers because those are enough of a range to not be at all considered the same size imo but we'll take Philadelphia as our base bc that's the one in the middle at 1.5 million. In "Amity Park's" population statistics (X) if you take everyone from 20-44 (we're pretending people under 20 can't get one bc apparently 13 year olds can get them with special permissions and that fills me with a special kind of anguish to have learned) but if you take everyone from 20-44 that population totals something like 613,028.

We'll give an error margin of 10% to account for people who are auto disqualified for whatever reason and between that error margin and the people I'm ignoring I think it's realistic to assume you could get 551,726 people credit cards. Unlimited ones? maybe not. But look me in the eyes and tell me if Sam Manson was told 'We can fix the public infrastructure that's damaging the environment and cause serious damage to predatory lending companies' She would not use her families wealth to be backing people as some kind of collateral/co-signer to get OBSCENLEY high credit cards SO FAST. That's to say nothing of if Tucker and the Other Nerds decide it's actually completely fine for them to hack into these companies and auto approve all these credit cards. Like the towns in dire straights so why not? It's unfortunately a pretty human tendency to see the people you care about in trouble and decide you're willing to throw literally anyone and everyone under the bus so I can see him/them doing it.

So. 551,726 people, with theoretically unlimited money to spend. CONSERVATIVELY if they racked up $500,000 USD on each card, the amount of money spent by Amity would end up being $275,863,000,000 or $275.8 BILLION Now the GDP of the USA is $25.44 Trillion, which looks like $25,440,000,000,000 so it's not a LOT in the grand scheme of things but it is just over 1%, I'm not going to pretend I know what that does economically to the entire USA but consider that Beer sales in the USA accounted for $106 billion in 2022, and that amity would potentially be generating nearly three times that. (X) I have just gone on a fucking TANGENT about the economy in this silly fun times thread of ours so I apologise I will try and sum up very quickly why I think they could spend so much so quickly. Philadelphia has a total of 37 hospitals. They built a new one sometime around 2021 to the tune of $1.6 billion (X) If Amity built a new hospital for liminality care and a few new ones Just Because They Realised They Can, say they build ten new hospitals, which is a VERY LARGE amount of new hospitals to build on workforce Alone, but they probably have tireless ghost workers who are probably obsessed with construction and regular living workers who want to be paid in the times before everyone had acclimated to the ghosts properly. Split among 551,726 people that's actually a fairly reasonable $28,999.90, which, hilariously, is actually just in and around the average limit to credit cards. So they wouldn't even need Sam or Tucker to mess with credit cards yet (X) Averages typically suck as a way of measuring stuff but this isn't a Real Life Government Project so I'm willing to call that acceptable. So if it's only $30k for ten hospitals why the hell am I citing a fat $500k each? Luxury Shit. A few luxury cars and some big name watches and you've blown through that $500k no problem. That's to say nothing of all the REST of the infrastructure that needs fixing - the roads, the schools, the libraries, the replacement materials for the transport system - hell building the APDC is going to probably be another billion dollar project if they want two portals large enough to get what is probably multilane traffic through in regards to transport. Sure the cars won't be useful for long maybe but that's just one example. Jewellery, coats - hell designer shoes and collector nonsense can go for STUPID amounts and as people who are desperate to outpace their neighbours in Cool Stuff They Own realise that their neighbours are capable of getting all the same crap they are? people are either going to stop caring or they're going to start buying some Really Obscure Shit. For the others who just wanted to buy pretty things? There's literally no reason to stop. Amity might have to limit the amount of crap people can get shipped in per week/impose serious shipping tariffs just to make sure the new FTL supply chain doesn't collapse because people are determined to get their new Cashmere and Mohair coats with Gold Embroidery or what the hell ever on next day delivery. Honestly in this scenario the cards over time thing probably doesn't matter because I'm pretty sure the Amity expenditure would DESTROY the lending company, which might then actually be the thing to get Amity rediscovered or maybe they space all these buildings out over time so they keep living the sweet life.

[shelbgrey]

hello hope ur doing well! could i possibly request writing prompt 1.6 with rusty asking danny if two people can be happy together forever bc rusty wants to ask his gf/reader to marry him ? i think it would be super cute ^.^ thank you!

Short story: The Big Question (Rusty Ryan)

Paring: Rusty Ryan x Ocean!Reader X Brother!Danny Ocean

Summary: Rusty wants to pop the big question, but part of him fears he still isn't right for her. He goes to Danny for some advice.

Prompt: 1.6) “I need to know if it's possible that two people can stay happy together forever.” - “in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are”

MasterList ML2

Rusty sat the bar bouncing his knee up and down nervously as he sipped his scotch. The more the thought about this life changing decisions, the more nervous he got. Danny knew where he would be hiding and went looking for him.

“figured I find you here” Danny took the seat next to Rusty. “what's eating you?”

Rusty tilted his head back and downed the rest of the drink before setting the glass down. The suddenly asks, “when did you know you wanted to marry Tess?”

Danny raised an eyebrow, not expecting thst questions and honesty he didn't know how to awnser right off the bat. The guy could be perfect match, but what man can honestly awnser that question right off the bat. Danny shrugged. “I don't know... I guess I just knew” Danny paused and nodded. “no, I knew with outta dought she was the one...of course it wasn't easy with her, but then again I wasn't either”

Rusty sighed and dug somthing out of his pocket then set it on the bar counter without a word. Danny looked down and it was a small, red velvet box. “oh, you bought a ring?”

“yeah...” Rusty said, letting out a airy chuckle.

“and your gonna ask her...”

“yep” Rusty quickly respond, popping the 'P' at the end. He fiddled with the box, not mentioning he's been carrying it in his pocket for a month and a half almost. He opened the box and showed Danny the beautiful ring. It wasn't overy extravagant, just how she liked it.

“pretty ring... You did a lot better than I did the first time around” Danny said, drinking the Scotch that was brought over to him by the bar tender.

“ya know, this is the first honest thing I ever bought? I don't know man, I couldn't bring myself to by it with the money we stole”

Danny chuckled. “hey, we worked hard for that money” Danny thought for a moment, wrinkled his eyebrows together in confusion as he turned his head back to Rusty. “okay... If you didn't use the money from the heist, where did you get it?”

“grandma's inharatens... That old bat still takin' care of me even when she's dead... Spent every last penny”

Danny picked up the box, looking at the Dimond ring. Not in a million year would he have expected Rusty to buy a ring, let alone buy a ring for his little sister. Looking back now Danny could see the signs he didn't see back then, at first he thought y/n just had a little crush and before he knew it Rusty and y/n pick him up from prison and tell him they are dating.

To this day the team doesn't know how it happened, it's kind of a inside joke now and if anybody asks the stories get more and more ridiculous. Then y/n and Rusty settled with just calling it 'the incident'.

Rusty took a deep breath “I need to know if it's possible that two people can stay happy together forever.”

Danny sighed and sat back in his chair, he thought about what he should say and shouldn't say. Then he thought about Tess and their past. “in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are”

“you and Tess got devorced once... What if that happens with me and y/n?” Rusty asked. “What if in the end my just not good for her?”

“well, you and y/n aren't me and Tess” Danny said matter of factly. “and falling down the 'I'm not good enough for her' hole is just pointless and suffocating”

Rusty went to open is mouth but Danny cut him off. “if you thought you weren't good enough you wouldn't have bought the damn ring” Rusty put his hands up in defense. “What if she says no?”

Danny snorted, that was the stupidest thing he's ever heard. “you both are glued to the hip... I think you'll be fine” Danny looked over at Rusty. “but if you do end up hurting her... I will kill you”

“I'm lucky I even got her, ya think I'm gonna screw that up?” Rusty smirked and shook his head. “no fucking way”

Rusty downed his drink. “you know what? Fuck it. I'm asking her tonight”

--------(1st pov)--------

“where are we going?” I asked as Rusty pulled me along the streets of Vegas. “you'll see” he smiled.

Rusty held my hand tight and pulled along untill we stop infront of the The Westgate Las Vegas Resort. He stoped infront of me and held both of my shoulders then looked up at the Westgate sign. “remember this place?”

I looked up at the building it was significant for a couple of reasons, one it's the place Elvis Presley preformed at for months, but also it was the place me and Rusty first met. “we met in this exact spot... Officially at least”

---(Flashback)---

Before they knew who each other were thay were just two people at a poker table. Y/n sat across from Rusty at the table, she was in red dress and a leather jacket. Covering her eyes was Elvis looking sunglasses so he couldn't see the thoughts in her eyes. She was cleaning everyone out except for rusty as the night went on each guy gave up with fire in their eyes and on a occasion sent a threat or two.

Rusty was impressed at how unbothrted she was. “rise you 400” she said. Even though there was no emotion in the way she said it, Rusty still thought it was the sweetest sound he ever heard.

“brave little thing, ain't ya?” Rusty smirked as he threw his poker chips in with hers. “brave, smart, whatever you want to call it” she responded.

“hmm...” Rusty smirked, he glanced at her then back down at his cards. A Royal flush was in his hands, he kept his poker face and waited with anticipation.

“straight flush” y/n smirked and set her cards down, she thought she had this in the bag. Rusty chuckled. “That's cute,” Rusty set his hand down, y/n's eyes bugged out and her heart dropped. “Royal Flush, I win Darlin'”

“Fuck” y/n groaned, her streek was broken and so was her bank. She rolled her eyes and threw about 1,000 dollars rolled up in a rubber band at Rusty. He smirked and put in his pocket, part of him felt bad for taking that much money from a lady.

“that was fun, you got skill” Rusty and y/n stood up at the same time and bumped into each other. His tall frame almost knocking her down. She grabed his waist out of instincted, not expecting to feel the sum of money she just lost. Rusty's hands fell to her hips to keep her steady. He could barely see her eyes behind the sunglasses and he wanted to see them so bad.

Y/n knew she had him distracted, she could tell just by looking into his eyes. Rusty smirked and looked down at her. “how about a drink? To make up for the poker losss”

Y/n chuckled sarcastically and shook her head. Rusty was enchanted by her, that laugh was the sweetest thing he's ever heard. He wanted to hear it again. Y/n smirked and slipped her hand into his jacket pocket with out him realizing it. “maybe next time” she smirked and walked past him, putting the money her leather jacket pocket.

As she left, Rusty stuck his hands in his pockets, his smile fell when he felt his pockets were now empty. “son of a bitch” he darted after.

He ran out of the poker room and saw her at the entrance of the Westgate. “hey!” he yelled after her, she looked over her shoulder and gave him a innocent smile and continued walking. Rusty ran after her, he moved around a bunch of people till eventually catching up with her at the entrance. Just as he grabed her shoulder he was on his back on the side walk outside of the building. He groaned as y/n walked past him, not giving up he quickly stood up and pushed her against the building.

“I think you have somthing of mine” Rusty said with a raised an eyebrow. Y/n rolled her eyes and kneed him in the crotch, not hard but enough to make him back away. She tried to make a run for it, but Rusty had her tackled to the ground. “I don't fight girls, but I will take what's mine”

Y/n quickly flipped them, she put her forearm into his neck, pinning him to the ground. “I can see why”

Rusty felt his skin heat up in frustration, he was about to push her off but he was scolded. “Rusty, what the hell?” it was Danny.

“Danny?” y/n looked suprised to her older brother. She pushed Rusty away, he let out an oof as she stood up.

“Danny?” Rusty groaned, standing up. Danny ignored rusty and turned to his sister. “What the hell are you doing? How many times do I have to tell you not to hastl poker games, to stay away from casinos”

Danny looked between Rusty and y/n, looking both confused and frustrated. “and why the hell are you two doing?”

“she started it” Rusty quickly said. Y/n rolled her eyes. “I lost 1000 to this jackass”

“a thousand?!” Danny did a double take, then to Rusty's suprise started scolding the girl. “see this is why you don't gamble, yes your good but you also don't know when to quit. Yeah you cleaned out the other idiots, but he comes along and you lose it all”

Y/n was about to say something, but Rusty cut her off. “wait a damn minute, how the hell do you two know each other”

“Rusty, this is my little sister Y/n... Y/n this is Rusty”

---(end Flashback)---

“we met here for the first time and even though you kicked my ass, I knew you were the one” he smirked. “and I don't care how fucking cheesy that sounds... I love you y/n Ocean”

His blue eyes stared into mine with nothing but love and admiration. He held her face in his hands and leaned down, kissing her softly then pulled away. “I love you too” I said softly.

“good because what I'm about to ask you is pretty big” his blue eyes stared into mine and he knelt to the ground with a red box in his hand. My heart pounded and I felt tears pricking my eyes. “Rusty...” I said softly, covering my mouth.

Rusty pulled the ring out. “What do ya say? Will you marry me?” I smiled big and immediately nodded. “Yes, you idiot. Of course I'll marry you”

Rusty eyes went wide, the biggest smile spreading across his face. Upon hearing my awnser, he nearly leapt up off the ground and practically tackled me with a tight hug, lifting me up into the air, and spinning me around in a circle.

He sat me down I slipped the ring on to my finger. “there, your stuck with me now” Rusty smirked.

“good” I smiled, I placed my hand on his jaw and kissed him lovingly. I had the man of my dreams and that's all that mattered.

[sapphic-agent]

Sorry in advance for how long and wordy this gets.

My Hero Academia is squandered by the less than mediocre writing of Horikoshi. I will give him credit only on his ideas and concepts as the premise of the series and the setting are likely the only reason any of us are still tuning in, that and spite.

The show is too quickly paced and surprisingly for a complaint about a shonen, it's too action packed it doesn't offer much up in the way of quiet moments allowing characters to breath properly outside of conflicts and so I don't really care much about the conflicts they are involved in, especially when the thematic relevance of said conflict got spoon fed to me moments before it started in a shoehorned scene or a flashback.

Hori introduces themes of Heroic corruption regularly but never actually shows any corrupt hero's, and those that are said to be corrupt show very quickly that they aren't, usually at the detriment of others.

A complete reboot is necessary, slowing down the pacing immensely to the point where this war arc we are on will take place once they have all left UA. Have major events of the story take place staggered across the three years of UA, include "filler" with dedicated episodes to every student of 1A with mini arcs exploring the more important side characters such as Todoroki, Tenya, Uraraka, Tsuyu and maybe even Momo.

Completely redo Aizawa to actually perform to his own standards, he should teach the students to work on their fundamental "quirkless" capabilities as he more than anyone should know how easy it is to beat someone who has had their quirk countered to make sure they won't die in a situation where their quirk is useless, instead of threatening to expell them for having a weak quirk or non versatile quirk.

This can be done easily by just inverting his test. Have elementary/middle schools let kids use their quirks in gym and PE to help them understand their quirks and use them safely and give genuine context for why teenagers are expected to be skilled with their quirks when public quirk use is illegal. And have his starting test be about who is the most capable without them, showing him to be an unorthodox instructor and less of a hypocrite as that genuinely ties into his fighting style.

Have Izuku be quirkless for either half or all of his first year at UA. Have All Might take notice of him but still teach at UA to scout out a proper successor. Have Izuku manage to get into UA and do well in it's entrance exam as someone quirkless.

Make quirkless people exist and actually matter. 20% of the human race are quirkless, that is a much larger number than people realise coming in at a wopping 1.6 billion would be quirkless out of 8.1 billion. That cannot just be the elderly like fannon suggests.

Have Izuku go from the quirkless wonder to user of OFA actually matter, have him being conflicted about it, have other quirkless people actually have opinions on it, have people discredit him for being Quirked all along, only pretending to be quirkless. If you have him inherit the quirk at all.

Have stain be quirkless and have that revelation chill the world, have him being rejected from heroics for being quirkless have Stain parallel Izuku in many ways.

I could go on and on and on and on about a million and one ideas that would make the show/manga better but I feel like I've made my point well enough that there is so much here untapped that Horikoshi has, but rushed his way past for the next action scene and ultimately squandered.

Agree that MHA does need a major rewrite. It had such great potential and introduced a lot of intricate concepts for an average shonen, only to squander it at every turn. Like someone super smart in one of my reblogs said, "the story has a lot of interesting ideas, the author just has nothing interesting to say about them." A series that was built upon discrimination, inequality, and prejudice has done nothing more in the end than prop up the privileged, bigoted kid over the MC he abused.

Talk a about disappointing

[blazer5402]

Have you ever hyperfixated on a single fandom? What about hyperfixating on a single fanfic. Because that's been me for nearly the past year.

Trailblazer's a Worm/Gundam crossover fanfic. It's 1.6 million words long, nearly as long as canon Worm is. I've read it twice in the past year, and am re-reading it again. It's living rent free in my head.

Trailblazer takes place in a Worm AU where Scion was killed 10 years ago in the Gold War (akin to canon's Gold Morning). While it draws on elements, themes, and characters from Gundam - mostly Gundam 00 and Iron Blooded Orphans to my knowledge (I'd only watched like 4 episodes of Witch From Mercury before reading Trailblazer), you don't really need any Gundam knowledge to read Trailblazer.

While the end of the world was averted with Scion's death, the world's still dying a slow collapse. The Endbringers are predicted to bring global trade to an end within a few short decades. The slow collapse of society is predicted to start soon after. Anti-Parahuman sentiment is on the rise. If the Endbringers don't end the world, humanity may end up ending it themselves.

One bitter, broken, bullied girl sees a world she isn't satisfied by and sets out to save it. She saves herself along the way.

I love Worm. I spent most of my high school years obsessing over it. But I can't read Worm anymore. Not all the way through. I know how it ends, and it's really not something I have in me to reread.

Trailblazer, on the other hand, is a fic I actually enjoy re-reading. It treads brighter where Worm canon goes darker, but that's not to say it's all sunshine and ponies. If Worm's grimdark, Trailblazer's... more hopepunk? noblebright? Whatever you want to call it.

Worm's the story of a girl who gives everything she has to save the world. By Worm's endgame, Taylor's barely a person. She's thrown her life into it, she's cut every tie in the name of it. She's alive, but she's not really living.

Trailblazer's the story of the same girl going in an orthogonal direction. Taylor's character arc in Trailblazer is about realizing that she wants to live. It's about overcoming her death seeker mindset from canon, and realizing that she doesn't just want to save the world, but that she wants to live in it too. It's like if canon Taylor went to therapy, and therapy actually worked.

Trailblazer's biggest theme is that the world might suck, but it can be better, even if you have to go out and make it better yourself. That even if the system is broken, good people can still do good things within a broken system.

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that Trailblazer is fucking fantastic. It's the best thing that's come out of the Worm fandom. It's complete at 1.7ish million words, just about as long as canon. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry. Go read it!

[sirendeepity]

I've seen a couple of videos on TikTok "explaining" how SJM is not-so-subtly stating her position on the Israel-Palestine situation through her Crescent City books, with the Bryce vs Asteri fight (I believe we all know who is supposed to represent who). And, despite how their discourse would make sense, to some extent, it still doesn't sit right with me. What's happening in Gaza right now is genocide. Not war, not self-defense. Genocide. The Palestinians have suffered systematic oppression for the past 75 years (and counting). It's not a story, or a parallel for a book. More than 30,000 innocent civilians of all genders and ages have died since October. There's no magic pot to bring them back, no "power of love" to fix this. So why the hell is she burying her voice in a fucking book? She has 1.6 MILLION followers on Instagram, and she's staying quiet. Willingly. Because the people (generalizing) who do read her books don't really give that much weight to the rumors that have been going around for quite some time now, or, anyway, they're not reading her books looking for that "deeper meaning", but rather a story to pass the time, a distraction from the outside world. For fun. A hobby, as reading is. While the people who don't read her books listen to those same rumors she's doing absolutely nothing to prove wrong. And they sure as hell are not going to read three books of 800+ pages just to "contextually" understand if she's a Zionist or if hers is one of the many voices screaming free Palestine (they would and ARE basing their assumptions on that one article of, what, 7 years ago now? Not to say anything on that cover reveal post that is still up and unedited on her public profile, despite quite literally everything.)

Sarah Janet Maas is a grown woman of almost 40 years now, with two kids (yes, it does matter) and 16 books under her name where ALL her heroes are fighting injustices, standing up for what is right, and using their voices against oppression. While she. is. not.

I'm sorry (not really), but if you want to do backflips just to prove yourself? that SJM is who you want her to be, then by all means, go ahead. But I refuse to give her a voice she is not using the way she should be, and I refuse to make excuses for her lack of actions. I'm disappointed.

This is not the time to hide between the pages of a book.

[brettdoesdiscourse]

There's so much to unpack here.

Let's knock out just the, "you most likely don't have BPD" thing.

Most likely based on what exactly?

It's estimated that at least 1.4%-1.6% of adult Americans have BPD. Although, researchers believe that number could be even higher. Assuming 1.4% of the adult American population have BPD, that itself is 3616200 people who have it.

That's not even counting how high the number might be. Anyone who is under 18 in America. And it's not even considering everyone else around the world.

Putting that aside, let's move onto the privilege comment.

It's ridiculously privileged to tell people to "just work" to make that money. And I don't know where you're from or what insurance you have, but most people are not going to get diagnosed with BPD for $75.

Even assuming it does cost $75, let's consider a few things.

People who are living literally paycheck to paycheck. At least 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. When every dollar has to go to something already, how are people meant to save? Being able to save money in itself is an incredibly privileged position.

People who live in areas that do not have mental health resources. In March of 2023 alone, 160 million Americans live in areas where they don't have enough mental health resources. Living in an area where mental health resources are available is an incredibly privileged position.

Assuming you have the money and professionals available to you, are any of those professionals qualified or willing to diagnose/treat BPD? BPD is still a highly stigmatized disorder and that is very prominent in the mental health field. Many professionals are not willing to deal with patients who have BPD or diagnose a patient with BPD. There's so much discrimination against BPD in the field.

Does this person have any trauma surrounding the mental health field or the medical industry in general? Tons of people have had extremely negative, even traumatizing experiences with medical settings. This can be even more increased if a person has BPD which can caused heightened paranoia. Seeking help can be an extremely daunting, even impossible thing, and I'd prefer to have someone self-diagnose rather than put themselves through a retraumatizing experience for....What exactly? What is actually changed by having an official diagnosis? What is the harm of someone self-diagnosing, even incorrectly?

[lambrinichampagne]

dream team (especially dream) will never catch a break. all these people will keep coming out about how they "had a bad experience" with them and it will be some weak shit blown out of proportion by twitter minions

first it was "oh dream covered up george and caiti's situation", then it was "why is he talking about it ? doesn't involve him"

then it was "dream stole my girl and im gonna tell my 1.6 million twt followers about it without talking to him first"

and now its "dream messaged me about my sons insane behaviour and im mad about it because my son can do no wrong"

and ofc we got people like sniff and aimsey yapping vaguely on the side..its white noise at this point.

when will we realise that all these people don't know how the world works? or the fact that they have the same communications skills as a 5 year old?

what do they want dream to do? reach out privately? or air all the business burn book style? jesus christ

The fact this ask is hours old but only got more and more relevant throughout the day... 🙃

I hate to give these cc's any slack, but they're not really moving that differently to the real world tbh.

You know how cliques exist in school? And people gossip and bitch about or within certain cliques? That never really goes away once we're adults, as much as we would like it to. You will probably come up against something similar in the work place.

How bad in a specific workplace will depend entirely on the culture of it. A good work place will have almost limited gossip and bitching.

But what you'll find is that the more discontent a workforce is, the nastier people get. This is normally towards the management, but it can also be towards people who just seem to be getting on better than you.

Dteam are extremely successful. A lot of these cc's are going to think that it's unfair or undeserved. So they will do what they can to tear them down to make themselves feel better. And it's gotten to a really, really toxic level where it is verging on harassment imo.

I feel so, so bad for Dteam, but I am also so proud. They're far from perfect, but they show such humility and grace whenever they are torn to shreds publicly by others. My heart is particularly broken for George and Dream right now, and I just hope they know that their kindness does not go unnoticed.

[kebriones]

Will they ever repair the school of arts in Athens? I read it was one of the first universities to be built in Greece, but now it looks like an abandoned building which is a shame how little the government values art 😔

WELL. Sorry anon you touched a sensitive subject and you're getting a rant.

Last year they fixed up our neoclassical building at the entrance, made it very ugly imo, and it has remained unused, closed and empty since then. They spent 1.6 MILLION euros to fix that thing. Do you know why? Because every journalist who wanted to write about the school's condition would come to the entrance, take a picture of the gray-ish, graffiti-covered neoclassical building, and use it in their article about how they've let THE school of fine arts be ugly and abandoned and so on. They fixed that only for show, which is a slap in the face to everyone who studies and works in the actual building.

We have incredibly little funding from the government. The building that houses the school is an ex-factory and as such requires very specialized types of repairs and upkeep. The old house on the left of the school as well as some storage buildings no visitor ever sees at the back are classified as "preservable" and therefore, like the now-renovated neoclassical ex-bank at the front, require very large amounts of money and time and studies to get fixed. I don't see that happening any time soon. Especially the house with the double staircase and all that, would have to be essentially rebuilt from scratch.

The actual building where the studios and everything is housed has so many practical problems. Some places like the underground cinema, the main auditorium and the exhibition hall are in fairly decent condition. The studios, not so much. We don't have money to fix clogged sinks, move or replace broken machinery, everything is always unimaginably filthy because they don't have enough cleaners, there are doors and windows that can't close, which results in pigeons and cats and dogs getting inside and shitting everywhere, the ceilings especially in the upper floor are falling apart from water pooling on the rooftop, making entire spots unusable because of the mold and constant dripping and the danger of stuff falling off the ceiling and injuring someone, everything floods the moment it rains, some of the bathrooms lack light and we don't even have soap or toilet paper most of the time. We don't have enough space for everyone to work in either, in the majority of the studios. But there is no funding. The school can't even afford to give simple cheap paper to the students, last year we were out of clay at the ceramics class for months. Every now and then they bring people to come paint over the graffiti at the entrance, as if that's the main problem of the school.

Also, it was actually one of the first universities to be made in Athens, but up until the 80s it was housed in the building of the polytechnic university on Patision street. It got moved to the ex-textile factory to have more space and a more modern environment, which I think was the right move. If it was functional and not so dirty and falling apart to the point of being actually dangerous, the factory itself is an incredible, gorgeous building, with the graffiti and the posters and everything. I just wish I didn't have to step around poop every time i had to go to class, or that I could actually use the sinks normally to wash my paintbrushes and my hands. Or idk have some cheap supplies available for free. I think they will come make actual improvements when someone dies or something. Two years ago after the floods that destroyed expensive equipment and stuff, their solution was to bring us sand bags to pile up on the entrances of the building to keep the water out whenever it rains.

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Insinuation 2.5 Live Reactions

(This is me, writing reactions as I read, because why the fuck not. They're not complete, mature thoughts taken after I sit back and evaluate what I've read. Consider them as such)

I mean, I can guess that 2.1 to 2.4 is about setting up the point where Taylor is willing to convince herself to join the villains, rob a bank, etc, and fine, fine, but I do feel like those four could have been 2? I mean, with 1.6 million words, you expect some filler, and technically even the filler builds out the world and the characters, etc, but still.

If you looked at Brockton Bay as a patchwork of stellar and squalor, upper class and lower class with no middle ground, then downtown was one of the nice areas.

Okay but that's... not how you can actually look at Brockton Bay? Even the Bay can't be quite that starkly stratified? The modern American economy couldn't function in a city that extremely divided economically. And sure, Brockton Bay sucks, but capitalism is still a thing there.

both Grue and Hellhound had lived in different cities prior to teaming up and setting roots in Brockton Bay.

But don't both of Grue's parents live in the Bay with his sister? Or is that just her being wrong?

Grue had poked fun at Regent rather than treat him like a leader,

People do poke at their leaders sometimes though, Taylor? Like, that's a whole genre of person, the kind of person who pokes fun at their leader and gets away with it for one reason or another.

  Information, it seemed, was a major factor when dealing with capes.

Puzzle Bosses atop Puzzle Bosses.

Which is, incidentally, why so many fanfics are capable of believably beating various baddies earlier, I imagine. Because all it really takes is getting the right knowledge a little easier.

As I thought on it, though, the notion that I might actually consider taking Tattletale up on her offer of a meeting nagged at me.  The more I thought on it, the scarier the idea got, and the more it seemed to make sense.

Careful Taylor. This will be the first rationalization of many...

If I got anything worth sharing, I could turn around and give it to Armsmaster so he could use it against them.  Just going by what Armsmaster had said about these guys and the scarcity of information on them, it would be a pretty major coup for the good guys.

Didn't you just get pissy about Armsy stealing credit from you?

Then again, she still thinks heroing is in her future and so I suppose this makes sense for her to think, since she has no other in to hand info over to a Hero/the PRT/etc

 That said, I suspected that when it came out that I was a hero and not a villain, they would count it as such regardless.

Hehehehe

Foreknowledge of how it goes leads to certain humor. Though, honestly, I wonder if anyone expected her not become a villain, when this was all that was out? Feels like it's pretty well hinted at, but maybe I just know what to look for.

The Central Library looked almost more like a museum or art gallery than anything else, with tall ceilings, pillars and massive pieces of artwork hung to frame the hallways between the major sections of the building. 

I honestly hate libraries that do this. Seems like a waste of money better spent being a fucking library. The central library in the city I went to Middle and High School in did this when they built a new location for the main branch. Absolute eyesore. Just be a library.

#KyliaEditorializes

It was fast enough that I couldn’t imagine Tattletale taking the time to check and double check every aspect of her message the way I had mine.

Knowing her (as I don't actually), she probably expected you'd ask for proof, or at least considered the possibility.

G R and me will meet you at the same spot we crossed paths last night, k? Don’t have to get gussied up if you catch my drift. Rest of us will be in casual wear.

Asking her to meet unmasked? I mean, I know you don't have nefarious intent, but is Taylor going to be that stupid?

it was hard to imagine her threatening me with one breath just a sentence after she’d offered to meet me in a way that made her totally vulnerable.

And you. While Outnumbering you.

I just had no idea what I would be getting into.

*looks back at the summary of Worm* You really, really don't

There was an outside possibility I could get killed, but somehow that didn’t concern me as much as it maybe should have.

Because you're borderline suicidal and desperately need like... well, I'd say therapy but even therapy wouldn't be enough right now. You need a lot of shit, really.

Startled, I looked up.  A middle aged woman in a red jacket stood just behind me.  As I met her eyes she asked, “Are you done?”  She gestured at the computer, where the screensaver was still scrolling.

I wonder if Taylor would have accepted if she hadn't been jostled like this? Certainly could be an interesting divergence moment, though where it gets taken remains open.

2.5 definitely feels like it fully needs to be here, which is good. Again, I'm not saying 2.1 and 2.3 and 2.4 are filler, but they did feel a little less... necessary. This? This one feels necessary.

[cowboyrainy]

Tuberculosis in Red Dead Redemption 2

In the beginning of the 20th century, Tuberculosis, also known as consumption, was the second leading cause of death, after Pneumonia. It caused 25% of all deaths, throughout the 1600-1800's Europe. The disease has been around since antiquity and has been discovered in 17,000 year old bison. 

On March 24 1882, German physician and microbiologist Robert Koch, identified and described the bacillus that causes tuberculosis. Today, March 24 is World Tuberculosis Day. Before this discovery, it was believed (commonly in New England) that the disease was caused by vampires or curses. 

During chapter 2, when you collect the depths from Thomas Downes, he'll cough on Arthur, transmitting tuberculosis. Tuberculosis takes a few months or even years to develop and to start showing symptoms, but in poor living and health conditions it can take only but a few weeks for symptoms to show. Active infection occurs more often in people with HIV/AIDS and people who smoke. Today a diagnosis of active TB is based on chest X-rays, microscopic examination and culture of body fluids. Common symptoms include, chronic cough, fever, cough with bloody mucus and weight loss. 

Living in the countryside in 1899 could certainly be unhygienic and put you at risk in many ways, especially when you live outside, like the Van Der Linde gang does. The first sign of Arthur's TB is often considered to be in chapter 4, Shady Belle, when he talks to Herr. Strauss about the depths. If you choose to rob a homestead with Javier in chapter 2, you can hear Arthur cough at the end as well, but since you can complete this Companion Activity before confronting Downes, the only way Arthur could have contracted the disease, is when Thomas Downes breaks up the fight between Arthur and Tommy during "Americans at rest", but it seems unlikely this is a TB cough, due to the short period from exposure to disease (Let me know your opinion :) )

In chapter 4 after "Revenge is a Dish Best Eaten" Arthur writes in his journal,

"Keep feeling sick but I'm sure it's nothing".

There are three stages of TB. Exposure, latent, and active disease. Exposure is simply when you are exposed to the bacteria. Latent is when the bacteria is in your body, but you don't feel sick. Latent can then develop into the disease, where you do feel sick. The symptoms can be mild for months. This means Arthur could experience coughs, fevers, night sweats, weight loss and feeling sick or weak, for a while without the bloody coughs and chest pains. I think one reason that his TB develops fast is, like mentioned earlier, poor living conditions, bad hygiene and stress. There was no cure for TB back then and the only thing the doctor can prescribe Arthur is rest and getting somewhere warm and dry, which is the exact opposite of what Arthur's been doing / is going to do.

In 2021, 10.6 million people were diagnosed with turberculosis and around 1.6 million passed away from it. It's the second deadliest infectious disease, after Covid-19.

Trivia

The doctor in rdr2 who treats Arthur, Joseph R. Barnes, is likely named after Joseph K. Barnes, a US physician and surgeon general, who served President Lincoln and Garfield. 

The doctor's appearance looks sort of similar to Robert Koch

TB was also known as "the romantic disease". Many romanticized the disease, finding the bed written, skinny people beautiful. Some also believed the fevers and toxemia from TB assisted the artistic talent, allegedly helping people to "see life more clearly" and "to act decisively". 

Hello! Thank you if you've read this far. I've been trying to make this blog my primary, but that's not really an option, so i might make my primary a bit more personal, so i can interact more with the community lol. I enjoyed writing this alot and hope someone else found this as interesting as i did. Might make a part 2 to this post, but i'll definitely keep posting "essay" or what ever you wanna call them, because they are great fun to research and write (my autistic brain is happy) . Have a great evening :)

Also! Here are some great videos about TB, the victorian view of illness and fashion, that i think you should watch :)

Sources:

[clarejgold]

Stuff

Here are the Tests

I don’t want this to sound like a complaint, but people could not stop telling us about their stuff. Every lab tech and pharmacist. Every community and social worker. I am not a medical professional and half of these things were just words that I didn’t understand, but my goodness were they happy about the stuff they’ve got. 

One way to look at that is to assume it’s because people wanted to let me know that donor money is well spent. There are probably donors out there who need and want that reassurance, perhaps because they’ve had bad experiences in the past or their unconscious bias is telling them they need to check up on any resources shared with poor people.

There is however one form of stuff that I was and remain interested in and that’s the multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) tests and the machine that uses them. Some readers of this will be well aware of the #TimeFor5 campaign to get the cost of these tests reduced to $5 per test from $15 per test, which is, depending on whom you ask, somewhere between a 300%-500% profit . 

These tests are the difference between following a treatment plan that will cure your TB and one that can ravage your body while the TB you have is still killing you. Over a million and half people needlessly die from TB every year solely because of lack of access to the right tests and medication. By ‘access’ I don’t mean transportation or the ability of a medical facility to handle the tests nor do I mean that not enough tests exist. The resources physically exist. They simply aren’t available to everyone who needs them because a pharmaceutical company decided that the poor people of the world were the right folks to squeeze knowing they don't have many voices to fight for them.

If you don’t know about it, it’s because most of your exposure, no pun intended, to TB as an illness probably comes from historical fiction and you, like many, think of TB as a disease of the past and/or something that affects only a small handful of people in tiny, isolated places. Let me point out that a ‘population’ of 1.6 million dead is far from small and that the vast majority of cases occur within a day’s transport of an international airport. 

The most recent successes in getting test and drug prices reduced have come from social pressure in the form of tweets, letters to representatives, and direct contact with the companies themselves to let them know that gross profiteering off the lives of vulnerable people is unacceptable. See the TBFighters for more information or look to Doctors without Borders or PIH .