#78% of this current check :(( | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aces-and-angels · 3 months

Text

disclaimer: i do not vet/verify campaigns myself. please do your due diligence and double-check credible sources to see if a campaign is legitimate. (+ let me know if anything i've shared is from a known scam account). everyone listed below has reached out to me in some way + been vetted by one or more of the following (unless stated otherwise): @/nabulsi, @/el-shab-hussein, @/90-ghost, and/or @/ibtisams. follow them for the latest updates on vetted campaigns.

verifications are (and should be) done by qualified individuals. (read el-shab-hussein's post here). then check their 📌 for additional resources.

if you can, please consider donating to any of the gfm's listed 🖤

here are the stats as of 9/14:

key: 0-25% raised= red | 26-75% raised= orange | 76-100% raised= green (linked are the campaigns + verification sources + tumblr accounts of the families)

ruba's gogetfunding*: €175/€50,000.00 (amount needed for orange: 13K)

acct: @rubashabansblog verification source (no. 90) *= ruba's gfm is currently under review, meaning she is unable to access any of the donations that she's already collected/at risk of having her entire campaign suspended. please donate to her alt. campaign at gogetfunding

nader's gogetfunding*: €130/€30,000 (amount needed for orange: 7.8K)

acct: @nadergaza verification source (no. 153) *= nader's gfm is currently under review, meaning he is unable to access any of the donations that he's already collected/at risk of having his entire campaign suspended. please donate to her alt. campaign at gogetfunding

maha + family: £6,753/£81,000 (amount needed for orange: 21.06K)

acct: @mahaibrahim12 | @ahmedkhabil verification source (no. 163) *note: family has recently closed their og campaign in NOK due to the weakness of the currency. now has a new campaign in GBP. verification sources have yet to edit link listed to reflect this change

ahmed a. + family: €60,247/€75,000 (80%)

acct: @ahmednimer* | @ahmedabuyamin verification source *= account shadowbanned/suppressed

tahani + family: $19,370/$50,000 (amount needed for green: 38K)

acct: @tahanishorbaje2* | @tahanibaby verification source (no. 112) *= account deactivated

laila + family: €30,273/€45,000 (amount needed for green: 34.2K)

acct: @lailashaqoura verification source (no. 152)

mohammed + family: €28,947/€37,000 (78%)

acct: @hamzamahmed84 | @hmzamahamed3 verification source (no. 176)

sharif family: $10,023/$90,000 (amount needed for orange: 23.4K)

acct: @amnehsharif10 verification source (no. 140)

bilal + family: €105,870/€110,000 (96%)

acct: @bilal-salah0 | @ghazawi-00 verification source (no. 132)

mahmoud + family: €25,153/€37,000 (amount needed for green 28.12K)

acct: @hillesmahmoud verification source (no. 170)

dr. tamer al-deeb + family: €24,849/€40,000 (amount needed for green 30.4K)

acct: @tameraldeeb verification source (no. 191)

dr. mohammed al-deeb + family: €41,438/€55,000 (amount needed for green 41.8K)

acct: @mohammedaldeeb verification source (no. 212)

yazan + family: €4,147/€50,000 (amount needed for orange: 13K)

acct: @farahabusafia verification source (no. 180)

nada + family: €14,046/€16,000 (87%)

acct: @nadasaftawi | @halaelhissi verification source (no. 182)

abdelrahman + family: €18,614/€20,000 (93%)

acct: @anqer verification source

alanqer family: €60,035/€70,000 (85%)

acct: @mohammedalanqer verification source (no. 174)

yousef's family: $12,172/$50,000 (amount needed for orange: 13K)

acct: @06679799* verification source *= account deactivated

hani + family: $4,382/$50,000 (amount needed for orange: 13K)

acct: @haniibrahimsh* verification source (no. 228) *= account deactivated

ahmed + family: €17,090/€100,000 (amount needed for orange: 26K)

acct: @ahmed8311 verification source (no. 161)

amira + family: €29,776/€39,000 (76%)

acct: @amira-alanqar* | @amira-anqar* | @amira-world verification source *= account deactivated

samer + family: kr138,243/kr450,000 (amount needed for green: 342K)

acct: @sameraburass* | @samerpal verification source (no. 196) *= account deactivated

iman + family: £6,607/£60,000 (amount needed for orange: 15.6K) <-check; fundraiser no longer active

acct: @imanblogs verification source (no. 150)

nour + family: €22,250/€40,000 (amount needed for green: 30.4K)

acct: @noor-alanqar verification source

khalil + family: €2,465/€30,000 (amount needed for orange: 7.8K)

acct: @gazage1 verification source (no. 187) note: khalil's prev. accounts (@khalil95 | @khalil9999) were deactivated

suheir's family: $40,915 AUD/$70,000 AUD (amount needed for green: 53.2K)

acct: @haneenatya34 verification source (no. 71)

walaa + family: $12,447 CAD/$50,000 CAD (amount needed for orange: 13K)

acct: @ahmed79ss | @burningnightgiver verification source

sahar + family: €53,790/€85,000 (amount needed for green: 64.6K)

acct: @danashehab | @fahedshehab-new | @dodoshehab verification source (name: fahed shehab)

siraj + family: $78,647 CAD/$150,000 CAD (amount needed for green: 114K)

acct: @siraj-2024* | @siraj2024 | @amani93hasan verification source (no. 219) *= account deactivated

amal + family: €38,308/€50,000 (76%)

@amalashuor verification source (no. 175)

diya + family: $24,699 CAD/$90,000 CAD (amount needed for green: 68.4K)

@familydeea* verification source (no. 227) *= account shadowbanned/suppressed

ahmd iyd + family: £10,525/£150,000 (amount needed for orange: 39K) <- check; fundraiser no longer active

verification source (no. 116) account seen in post was deleted

dr. nasser mohamed + family: £7,342/£50,000 (amount needed for orange: 13K)

acct: @nassermohamd verification source

yahya + family: €5,171/€30,000 (amount needed for orange: 7.8K)

verification source account seen in post was deleted

safaa + family: €36,220/€90,000 (amount needed for green: 68.4K)

acct: @safaabed8 | @abedalazeiz verification source *multiple accounts have been suppressed/deactivated: @/safaabed @/safasalah | @/abed22 | @/abed221

alnabih family: €26,519/€30,000 (88%)

acct: @ahmedalnabeeh11 verification source (no. 218)

alostaz family: €23,205/€70,000 (amount needed for green 53.2K)

acct: @ahmed-alostaz* | @59382 | @momen-alostaz verification source (no. 125) *= account shadowbanned/supressed

albalawi family: €40,430/€85,000 (amount needed for green: 64.6K)

nesma + family: $130,930/$150,000 (87%)

acct: @nesmamomen verification source | verification source

hamza + family: €3,279/€21,000 (amount needed for orange: 5.46K)

acct: @hamzaahmed21 verification source (no. 226)

abuhamda family: $16,518/$50,000 (amount needed for green= 38K)

acct: @ahmad-family* | @ahmedhamda12* verification source (no. 137) *= account shadowbanned/supressed

---

below cut are links to other grassroot organizations that vet/verify gfms:

el-shab-hussein + nabulsi's google sheet

operation olive branch

about us: Operation Olive Branch is a volunteer-powered grassroots collective committed to the collective liberation of ALL peoples. We connect with and amplify families and mutuals and orgs in an effort to support their critical needs, which include but are not limited to their mutual aid requests. This global solidarity initiative is steered by a diverse core council of advocates from occupied Turtle Island which include Palestinian activists, the Jewish grandchild of a holocaust survivor, and everyone else in between.

gazafunds

about us: Gaza Funds is a project that connects people to crowdfunding campaigns for individuals and families from Gaza. We are a global team of (mostly) Arab and Palestinian engineers, students, writers, and academics working to help get exposure and traction to fundraisers created for people in Gaza, Palestine. We are not an organization or a charity. We do not create fundraisers and we do not collect money on behalf of them. Our work on this project is completely voluntary. We created this site as a way to give others quick access to these fundraisers for informational purposes only.

operation poppy flower (now also linked in oob's sheet)

mission statement: Our goal is to fulfill as many fundraising campaign goals as possible through crowdfunding. Please do not underestimate the power of crowdfunding: small amounts of money donated by large amounts of people. Collectively, we can all play a SIGNIFICANT role in securing the safety of our beloved brothers and sisters in Gaza.

operation watermelon

about me: Hello there! I'm the person behind Operation Watermelon. My family hails from Rameh and Nazareth, and like many Palestinians, we're spread out across the globe. Born and raised in the United States by my migrant parents, I've always felt a strong connection to my roots and a need to contribute to the cause back home. Combining my skills in 3D printing, design, and e-commerce seemed like the right way to make a difference. So, here we are. Operation Watermelon is my way of merging my passion with purpose, creating items that not only tell a story but also contribute to a cause close to my heart. It's about doing what we can, with what we have, wherever we are in the world. Thanks for being part of this journey.

project watermelon

instagram based account from google sheet: Project Watermelon has personally vetted each and every donation link on this sheet. We are the creators of the spreadsheet and are the ones who maintain it. We can only provide technical support for GFM and we do not set up GFM pages.

strawberry seeds collective

from google sheet: Each fundraiser listed has been vetted by one of our volunteers and/or another reliable source. 100% of the donations made to these fundraisers go to the family or human(s) that need them. All funds are intended to provide food, medicine, shelter, and/or evacuation funding. Each fundraiser represents hope, life, and peace for the humans they aim to support - so please take a look around, and thank you for making the world a little kinder. ♡

ottawa4palestine

from google sheet: Although our team at Ottawa4Palestine has carefully vetted every link on this sheet, we acknowledge that we are fallible and may occasionally overlook errors. If you notice any discrepancies, please don't hesitate to contact us. Ultimately you are responsible for your financial decisions and the recipients of your donations. While we have assessed and communicated with each family listed here, we cannot be held liable for your choice to contribute to the GoFundMe campaigns below.

camps breakerz crew

mission statement: Camps Breakerz was founded in 2004, with CB Crew supporting the children and youth living in Gaza. Camp Breakerz offers therapeutic dance as a trauma informed practice, teaching children the art of creative expression through movement. In light of the recent and ongoing aggression, CB Crew have decided to mount a community crowdfunding initiative to further serve our people during this time of crisis.

gofund(water)me(lons) | linktree

run by yahya aka thelastturtle on instagram.

flowersfromfalasteen | linktree

instagram-based account; bedaar organization; platform to share stories of people from palestine/help them build their fundraiser campaigns

the butterflyeffect project

about us: The Butterfly Effect Project believes in the power of ordinary people to create meaningful and positive change in the world. Each week we select two campaigns to amplify on our social media accounts, with daily posts sharing the story. We choose neglected campaigns that aren't receiving the attention and support they need. We have also created this list of verified campaigns for people to donate to and spread awareness for. We have a strong vetting process so that you can be certain your money is going to people who truly need it.

#will try to update this weekly #save #signal boost #🍉#not choices #donate if you can #spread the word regardless

153 notes · View notes

windvexer · 4 months

Note

Heyy! If it’s not too much of a hassle what are some divination tips for tarot? Sometimes it feels like I am really good and than other times it’s like ehh

Sure, I could use a break before I start crocheting again 😅

I want to emphasize that tarot is one of those things where people really build up personal beliefs around it, so the following is in no way universal. It's all just what I currently feel and believe, heavily influenced by my beliefs as a spirit-working witch.

Most of the actual tips are at the end. I hope this helps!

Structures and Methodology

Tarot can't "magically" come up with valid answers no matter how it's put into use. It's a hammer and a screw situation; sometimes, using the tool incorrectly is less than useless.

Not all tarot spreads are very useful. The type of spread can have a huge influence on success. Try setting aside 'one question per card' spreads and see if that helps improve consistency in your results.

Not all tarot meanings are very useful. Tarot card meanings evolve and change over time. Modern meanings tend to be much more heavily skewed towards topics of introspection and self-help. Try reading books about the history and interpretations of tarot cards themselves to expand your understanding of each card. I recommend The Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson for a strictly historical look.

Not all tarot questions are very useful. Learning how to phrase and frame questions, along with how to select a spread to place them in, are vital skills for the reader. Try focusing on strictly defined, open-ended questions.

Not every tarot deck is useful for every reader. It can come down to art and author meanings, but it can also come down to personal connection: a deck may work great for you for reading some types of questions, but fall flat on other types; or be more hit-or-miss. If you have multiple decks, try rotating between them or doing deck interviews to discover what types of questions they best address.

Memorizing the cards is not necessarily useful. It's not just that there are 78 cards, with 78 potential reversed meanings, each card in and of itself potentially having multiple meanings; it's also that depending on context, the core meaning can entirely change. Professional readers at events will pull out the guidebook and look up card meanings. There is no actual reason to try and memorize the cards unless you really just want to.

It's useful to have a map that helps navigate the cards. By adopting simple structures that paint large parts of the deck with broad meaning, interpretations can be easier to tackle. Another popular 'map' is the Fool's Journey.

You don't have to use the entire deck for every reading. Only using some parts of a deck to read is called reading with a restricted deck, and I really recommend practicing it as a way to develop a relationship with the deck structure. It can also be a very useful way to focus readings on one area of life (e.g., a new business venture reading may be read using only Wands and Pentacles).

That being said,

Check to see if cards are accidentally missing. Reading with a restricted deck is one thing, but I find my readings go weird if a card accidentally fell out and is lost.

You should take notes on your readings. I know it's a hassle, but the information you can glean and analyze from your own work is invaluable to figuring a lot of stuff out, like, what kinds of spreads work best for me? And what kinds of questions do I excel or fail at? Because next comes...

Energy and Individuality

Some questions are more draining or difficult to read than other questions. Here are my illustrated beliefs on the matter, explaining why some questions that seem straightforward can be nigh impossible to grasp. Try taking notes on the scope of the questions you can answer well.

Not all diviners are equally skilled at reading on all things. A diviner may have a special talent for certain types of questions (such as the outcomes of new ventures, or navigating the inner landscape), yet may fall flat when it comes to other questions (relationships or social intent, for example).

Any specific situation may have barriers to being read clearly. This is true even of mundane situations not expected to have magical influence. Sometimes, a certain situation, person, or concept will be shielded from view - and that can have nothing to do with the reader or querent.

Celestial timing may be a factor. Things like moon phase, time of year, or time of day can sometimes influence people's abilities to easily connect or easily interpret cards. Try paying attention to timing as part of note-taking and see if that's a factor.

Caffeine, drugs, alcohol, and rest can be a factor. Once I reach a certain level of fatigue (usually before bedtime) I can't read at all. Caffeine can sometimes also "close the veil" for me and limit me from being able to interpret readings. It might not be a factor for everyone, but it's something to pay attention to!

For practitioners, metaphysical workings can use up all available energy for divination. I find that my "pool" of magical energy feeds both my divination and my spellwork. Exhausting myself in one area (such as doing lots of energy work exercises) means I have exhausted myself in another area (no juice left for readings).

Witchcraft and Magic

Spells and wards can affect your ability to perform divination, sometimes in weird and unexpected ways. Go through spell notes to see if there is a chance prior, ongoing spells may be messing with your ability to read on certain questions. A big giveaway is when divination doesn't seem to work well specifically within a warded area, but this isn't a strict rule.

Prepare a place of reading, or reading cloth, enchanted to assist with finding answers. By consecrating and tending to such a place, such as a divinatory altar or divinatory reading mat, powers of far seeing, truth, and accuracy can be accumulated and much more easily raised. For those that have the space, a full divinatory altar can be an extraordinary tool. For such places, especially consider the power of symbols which open roads and gates.

Prepare a Charm of True Reading. Find, or develop, a small rhyme, charm, or prayer that calls on powers which support you and requests that your upcoming reading be clear and true. Repeat this before each reading, as desired.

Prepare an oil. A skin-safe carrier oil steeped with bay laurel, star anise, and lavender; or just bay leaf if the grocery store fails you, can be enchanted (especially under the full moon) to assist with opening the second sight and securing more accurate readings. Dab some on your forehead, ideally along with the Charm of True Reading.

Prepare a head covering. For some people, covering the head and/or partially blocking vision, can assist with entering divinatory headspace and with the receipt of visions and intuitive connections. As much as I like fancy things, I often end up using sunglasses and a hat. Being in a dark room might help as well, especially if you can get a candle in there.

Prepare incense. Here again bay laurel, star anise, and lavender can serve if you're able to powder and burn your own blends (remember to enchant them); but an enchanted stick of commercial incense will be fine (in any scent). Enchant the incense for the purpose of casting away doubt and influences that cause ill-sight, and to create an energetic haven where answers readily arrive to be interpreted by you, the reader.

Cast a circle. If you like to write your own rituals, especially focus on the concept of the circle being a liminal space between time that connects the worlds, almost like Grand Central Station where many threads of fate (and information) meet.

Consecrate your deck. Use any consecration ritual you like, but especially one that employs powers supportive of divination, true seeing, and psychism. This is almost certainly best done on a full moon. Consecrate your deck to be a tool which can peer into the threads of fate on your behalf, and then only reflect absolute truth back to you.

Enchant a tool to nurture and safeguard your decks. A lovely amethyst stone or clear quartz (or any variety of stone, bought or found), maybe one marked as special by putting it in a handy net, can be enchanted to be a protector of any deck it sits on. The value of this is to keep the deck enthroned in an additional layer of protection against untruth, but also to keep it bathed in energy related to divination and psychism. For those worried about decks getting magically "dirty," this is a good solution.

Also, cleansing decks sometimes is necessary, but it can be an easy operation. I find that spreading the entire deck face-down and mixing up all the cards in a big pile provides an adequate cleansing much of the time.

Spirit Work

Show your deck some love by providing it with offerings and a shrine, just as you would for an honored spirit. If the shrine isn't possible, an offering is excellent - maybe once weekly or monthly (depending on how often you use it), and even a small offering before each reading is useful. In my beliefs, this action goes far beyond making a deck happy with you - it can provide real, tangible effects on energy drain and the 'power' of your readings.

Petition gods, ancestors, or helper spirits. Beyond a Charm of True Reading, simply praying to helpful and benevolent powers to provide an assist can be really helpful. This is also an important way to develop a relationship with a guiding divinatory power. Speaking of which,

Get in good with a god or spirit who is associated with divination, psychism, etc. The Moon itself is a very solid choice. Apollo can see the future, and his buddy Bay Laurel (whom itself can be worked with as a divinatory spirit) can pack quite the punch. The dead are often said to be very good at helping with divination, but necromancy isn't for everyone. A witch who wants to become powerful in the ways of divination is wise to seek out helper spirits who are very good at this task.

Don't forget the gods and spirits of the thing you want to read on. If I wanted to know whether or not selling something online is worth the trouble, I might not just ask a far-seeing spirit to help me. I might also petition Hermes to grant me special insight into his domain. You can even use other spells you've cast (such as a prosperity spell) as a "foothold" into a certain area, but that's a whole topic in and of itself.

From time to time, a spirit may cause trouble. Divination can sometimes be interfered with by spirits who are upset with us. General offerings to appease offended spirits, or to make nice with the spiritual neighborhood around you, are well undertaken. They can be done even if you don't know that you've actually upset anyone.

#answered #divination #tarot #witchcraft #spirit work #tbl

140 notes · View notes

ladyloveandjustice · 8 months

Text

My Favorite New Manga and Graphic Novels I Read in 2023

It's time to take a look at the comics and manga I read this year! I read a whopping 78 manga and graphic novels in all. Here's a link to my Goodreads year in books (the manga is at the beginning, the novels start with Siren Queen) and my storygraph wrap up.

I also read 36 novels! If you want to see my favorites, check out my reviews here!

And finally, I've got the continuing manga series I've enjoyed this year here, so check that post out too!

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

This is a tale about a first-generation Vietnamese-American boy struggling with coming out to his mother. He connects with his mother through fairytales-- she uses them to express her journey as an immigrant, and he uses them to explore his queerness and identity as a Vietnamese kid growing up in America. It's an absolutely gorgeous book full of Trung Le Nguyen's signature stunning art. The fantastical, ethereal fairy tales are weaved beautifully into the lives of the characters. The book explores how fairy tales can form connection, can express culture, can tap deeply into something real and true, and can offer tragedy and catharsis. The protagonist uses fairy tales to write his own story, and the ending is lovely and moving.

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles by Mark Russell and Mike Feehan

You may know Mark Russell from his darker, socially aware re-imagining of the Flintstones, which made quite a splash on Tumblr with this post. Well, I had pleasure of meeting him at a local convention, and I finally got his comic re-imagining of Snagglepuss, also of Hanna-Barbera. He re-imagines the titular pink puma as a closeted gay playwright in the 50's dealing with McCarthyism. It's as wild as it sounds,but also really digs into the politics of the time, the struggle of standing against oppression and how art fights through suppression and censorship. It's tragic, hopeful, poignant and full of historical references. I enjoyed it ! Definitely be cautious if you're deeply disturbed by homophobia and suicide.

The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren

A story about a teenage boy, Yoshiki, who realizes that his best friend and crush Hikaru has died and been replaced by a strange eldritch being who is imitating him. But, missing his loved one and desperate to cling to any piece of him, Yoshiki decides to keep on having a relationship with this mysterious entity. This book's horror is visceral and sublime, especially the bizarre, creepy, beautiful body horror involving the being who replaced Hikaru. It's an exploration of anxieties involving grief, relationships, and sexuality that hits just right, and the atmosphere layered with dread is top notch. I love me some messed up relationships and unknowable queer monsters, and this book delivers.

Chainsaw Man, Look Back and Goodbye Eri by Tatsuki Fujimoto

Chainsaw Man needs no introduction, but I did end up really enjoying the story of the doggy-devil boy hunting other devils. It got so tragic and intense at the end, with lots of great surreal horror imagery and darkly funny moments. I'm impressed it went so hard, though the random powers that kept piling up made what was happening hard to follow at times, especially in fights. I'm also enjoying the current weird arc starring a class-A disaster girl and the demon sharing her body.

Look Back

I really do enjoy how Fuijimoto writes messy pre-teen/teenage girls. They ring so true. The manga follows the fraught friendship between two girls as they create manga, exploring the struggle of art mixing with real relationships, and how someone keeps creating after tragedy. It's a little hard to follow at times (especially since I have to differentiate the leads based on hairstyle), but it's a good read.

Goodbye Eri

Probably my least favorite of the three, but it's a fun read- a weird ride that examines the thin line between fiction and reality in art and makes good use of Fujimoto's cinephile background and signature gaslight gatekeep girlboss characters.

Is Love the Answer? by Uta Isaki

The story follows a teenage girl, Chika, who has always struggled with not being attracted to anyone. When Chika enters college, she meets queer people all across the spectrum of asexuality, and starts exploring her own identity. As an ace, this is the best story about asexuality that I've read. It was a nuanced look at asexuality and queerness and all the variations. Chika's journey and how she found her community was moving and poignant. It's a honest, moving look at relationships and identity, and how complicated and hard to define both of those things can be. I loved the moments of Chika imagining herself as an alien to explore and cope, and how she bonded with people through magical girl shows and other geekery. My favorite new manga of the year, it really connected with me!

The Girl that Can’t Get a Girlfriend by Mieri Hiranishi

Oh girl, I've been there. This is a fun autobiographical comic about a butch4butch lesbian's struggles finding a partner in a word that favors butch/femme, and it's just an honest look at the messiness of loneliness and relationships. I also appreciate that crushing on Haruka in Sailor Moon and becoming a HaruMichi stan was the beginning the author's queer awakening because uh...same! She has taste, and is truly relatable.

Qualia the Purple: The Complete Manga Collection by Hisamitsu Ueo and Shirou Tsunashima

See my review of the light novel here for my general thoughts on the story, since it's adapted pretty faithfully. I do think the manga is overall the best experience though, because the illustrations break up the detailed explanations of quantum mechanics a bit, and it includes a bit of extra content that fleshes things out, especially withthe ending.

The Single Life: 60 year old lesbian who is single and living alone by Akiko Morishima

Just like it says on the tin, this focuses on a 60-year-old single lesbian. And definitely the shortest thing on here, since only one 30 page chapter is out. It's a grounded story about a woman looking back on her journey to finding her identity, touching on sexism in the workplace and other challenges. It paints a portrait of a proudly gay elder who's still perfectly content being single and feels fulfilled by the life she had rather than regretting past relationships. I definitely want to see more.

Daemons of the Shadow Realm by Hiromu Arakawa

Arakawa's latest, the story is about a boy who lives in a small village with his little sister is imprisoned and has to carry out a mysterious duty...but then the village is attacked, supernatural daemons awaken, and everything he knows might be wrong. I'm enjoying this fun romp so far! It delivers an really nice plot twist right out the gate (and an excellent subversion of the usual shonen "must-protect-my-saintly-sister" narratives). It boasts Arakawa's usual fun cast and interesting world (and cool ladies). There's some slight tone and pacing issues in the first part- there's so much time spent explaining mechanics the lead doesn't really get to react to his life turning upside down. But it starts smoothing out by the second volume. I'm excited to see what's next!

Superman: Space Age by Mark Russell and Michael Allred

This is a retelling of Superman set throughout the late fifties to early eighties that has Superman interact with the political and social upheaval of the time and question his own role in things. It explored the Superman mythos through a lot of cool new angles, and has a good Lois (why yes she would break Watergate) which is how I always measure a Superman adaptation. My one complaint is, while I liked some of the things it did with Batman, the ending with the Joker was pretty weak. The ending of the overall comic will also be bizarre for anyone not uses to how weird comics can get, but I think I dug it.

#DRCL by Shin'ichi Sakamoto

A manga retelling of Dracula that focuses on Mina as the protagonist and imagines the characters at an English prep school. It adds a lot of diversity to the characters and has exquisite, evocative art. I'm curious where it will go and what it intends to do with all it's changes (especially Lucy), because right now it's mostly vibes and creepiness and the direction isn't clear.

131 notes · View notes

phantasma-studio · 8 months

Text

Our Phantom of the Opera Tarot deck in the making...

Currently creating: Phantom of the Opera Tarot deck, with our first card: The King of Wands!

The Phantom has a special place in our hearts, our workshop is named after the story and for many years the books, movies and musicals have been a great love of ours. That will never cease.

For a great number of years we have been producing artwork based on the beautiful story and it made complete sense for us to pick this up again. And in a rather special form; the creation of a Phantom of the Opera Tarot deck, later we will also add a Phantom Oracle deck. For us the mystical feeling of a Tarot deck is perfect for this story. We would like to point out that we feel Tarot is not so much for telling the future, but a beautiful tool to look at situations from a different angle and a kind adviser. It can be used as a beautiful way of helping yourself. Our game will be more friendly than harsh.

We are taking into consideration the book by Gaston Leroux, but also the by ‘phans’ really appreciated novel by Susan Kay, “Phantom” a prequel about Erik’s life. A number of films, among which the 1925 Phantom of the Opera film with Lon Chaney and last but certainly not least; the famous musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

We conducted several studies in the world of Tarot (after being interested for many years) to be able to make a game full of symbolism so it will be a joy to work with for experienced tarot readers. But we are also thinking of beginners; there will a clear booklet with explanation and easy little methods to enjoy tarot. If you are a collector of everything Phantom and don’t feel like anything Tarot, the cards themselves are little pieces of art that you are sure to enjoy.

We hope to release this game this year (2024), but keep in mind it is 78 cards with some bonus cards, a beautiful box, a booklet and extra’s. Since we are putting our very heart and soul into this, most watercolours take a week, two weeks or sometimes more. We will post here regularly where we are. As soon as it is possible to pre-order we will post that too. Keep an eye on our website , we are still in the process of building and we will also open a webshop in the near future, see link below :)

For those interested, we have several updates a week on our Facebook & Instagram accounts, see links below :)

137 notes · View notes

kaile-hultner · 1 month

Text

GoFundMe Update, 8/12/2024

Hey y'all! it's been about a week since the last GoFundMe update. We've hit a pretty predictable slow period in this fundraiser, a kind of doldrums, but I also got super busy over the last seven days, so it's all good there. So what's been going on in the past week?

To start with, as I mentioned last week I'm down to just one installment loan. This in itself has already made a massive difference just even in terms of how I'm feeling. It no longer feels like I'm being crushed by this massive weight on my shoulders or chest. I know I've mentioned this a lot, but it's such a weird feeling after experiencing the opposite for most of my adult life.

With that, things are already starting to change rapidly: my credit score has gone up 23 points in a week and a half, for example. I hate that this is even something we should have to pay attention to, but I can't help but feel relieved when number go up instead of down. The number of phone calls I'm getting per day, in the evenings, on the weekends - all the debt collection calls - has dropped dramatically. Now it's mostly just spam and companies trying to get me to take out more loans with them. I've experienced a burst of creative energy that has gotten me back in the game-playing-and-reviewing saddle - I just wrote a piece about "A Short Hike" as a donor request fulfillment exercise. (You can check that out here.) I was able to get through an entire weekend of work at my side-gig with no issues or delays—something I haven't been able to say for a few months. And when I finished that work? You'll never believe it, but I didn't feel stressed out or exhausted! I felt normal!

This doesn't automatically catapult me into 24/7 comfortable living, and now I really have to focus on the hard and dirty work of living within my means, building a budget and being an adult when it comes to daily choices, but I always knew that. This GFM has never been the magic bullet that would solve all of my problems - and I've never wanted it to be. However, it's helped assuage such a significant portion of my problems that I can focus on other things for once, and navigating that for the first time has been a pretty significant experience! This comes after months of having to transfer my paycheck from my bank to my Apple Pay account and a litany of other sketchy shit just to make sure it didn't all get swallowed up by various debt repayments and years of sometimes paying rent in parts instead of all at once. With most of that gone and cleared out, I no longer have to do all that! I don't feel like I'm constantly between a rock and a hard place, and that's… honestly pretty significant.

So what's next? Why am I still moving forward with the GFM towards $8000 and eventually $10000+?

Well, as I've said in prior updates, it's still pretty unbelievable that we reached $6500+ and I genuinely have no expectations about getting even a cent more. If nobody else donates, I think I would be pretty pleased with what this GFM was able to accomplish. But I don't think I'm totally out of the woods yet. Thanks to your help, I've upgraded from "basically completely underwater" to "balancing precariously on the edge of the dock," and there's a WORLD of difference between those two states. But that doesn't mean I don't ever again have to worry about the possibility of almost drowning.

Goal 4 would help me pay off my remaining installment loan, and with that close the book on that chapter of my life altogether. I've got these two annoying (paid monthly) loans in the background, but paying $40 and $78 a month respectively for them isn't really all that bad. It's not moving the needle the way these installment loans (paid every two weeks on my payday) were. I'd like to get rid of this final installment loan pretty quickly if possible. I'm currently just a bit under $1400 away from that goal, and I think it's pretty attainable.

Goal 5, $10,000, and Goal 6, $10,000+, are maybe my vaguest goals, so I want to flesh those out a bit. For those goals, I'm thinking of my long-term future more than anything immediate. If I can get anything past $8K, great! That will be money I put into a savings account and start adding to on my own. The reason I'm putting these goals at the end of this GFM is because in a little bit less than a year, I'm looking at the end of a pretty long arrangement I've had at the place I'm living, and the situation is that either rent is going to raise pretty significantly or (more likely) I'm going to be finding a new place to live. Having some money in savings is going to help me out with this in two ways: first, being able to pay a deposit on an apartment or absorb some of the cost of raised rent. Second, being able to put down a down payment on a car. My (smaller) worry is that, even with the radical erasure of my most immediate and crushing debts that this GFM has already afforded me, I may not have enough time to save this kind of money on my own, and/or that my credit score won't heal fast enough to qualify me for cheaper car payments, apartment deposits that aren't an arm and a leg, and so on. For context, I live in Oklahoma, which has a relatively cheap cost of living, but it's practically impossible to get around without a car as OKC's transit system is bootycheeks.

Finally (and least importantly), I promised when I set this GFM up that it would be the last time I asked for money from the Internet for this or any reason, outside of like a medical emergency. I set $10k up as a moonshot goal, something I didn't think it was possible to achieve - and yet here it is, barely $3400 away. If we make it to the end, that's gonna feel like a wild achievement! I'd finally be able to rest easy.

Here's a bad car metaphor I just thought of: you know how when you jump a car, you don't just plug up the jumper cables from one car to another and call it good when the car in need of jumping starts? You have to give it a little bit of extra juice in order for the car to restart its own charging capacity? That's kind of what this GFM is. I'm the car being jumped. The fundraiser is the other car revving its engine and giving me a bit of extra juice after I was able to start my own engine again.

See? told you it was bad.

Anyway, as always, I cannot thank those of you who have already donated enough. None of this would be possible if it wasn't for you, and my inbox is always open if you want to suggest cursed internet artifacts for me to look at. Someone suggested the entire series of Eyewitness children's science documentaries to me. I have no clue if I'll be able to find them. I've been vibing on the theme song for days tho. The only thing I would ask of you at this point is to share this GFM on social media, maybe link back to this update directly, and let's see if we can't find some extra wind for these sails to get us closer to that final goal. If you can't donate, please don't feel pressured to donate! Just reblogging it is more than enough help.

youtube

#crowdfunding #mutual aid #financial aid #Youtube

26 notes · View notes

syaolaurant · 3 months

Text

Dota 2 Watercolor Tarot deck [work in progress]

Just want to share with you guys my Tarot deck inspired by Dota 2. It's a work in progress and done with 100% watercolors. I've just finished 8/78 cards, and they are currently not in order. I will be working through all the major arcana then the minor.

A lot of time was spent on researching the lore and assigning which hero belongs to which arcana. Honestly, I've played Dota 2 for 10 years but I didn't really pay attention to the lore so it has been an exciting and educational journey for me.

I will post more artworks in the future when they're done. If you're interested in seeing the latest ones or my other works, please check out my instagram @syao.laurant

#dota 2 #dota 2 art #traditional art #watercolor #tarot art #dota 2 tarot #invoker #templar assassin #brood mother #wraith king #jakiro #davion #dragon knight #oracle #marci #nature prophet

26 notes · View notes

c1qfxugcgy0 · 1 year

Text

Quirks and features of the James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a ten billion dollar space telescope that weighs 14,000 pounds, is the size of a bus, and took decades to construct. It's been in the news recently, you might have heard about it.

The development, launch and deployment of the JWST were fraught with unexpected setbacks, terror and frights, 344 "single-point failures", any one of which that, if they failed during deployment, could doom the entire spacecraft to uselessness, since it orbits far out beyond where any current manned spacecraft could even attempt a repair job.

The fact that it came online as smoothly as it did was something of a surprise to the people in charge. Given the miracle of it making it to space at all, the press coverage of JWST has focused on the positives. But a stroll through the JWST user documentation by a curious reader reveals much that is interesting, or interestingly broken. Such as..

Fun and games with infrared

Specifically, the JWST is an infrared telescope, designed to collect light that's redder than red. The two dedicated imaging instruments are the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) collecting light from 0.6 micrometers to 5.0 micrometers and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) collecting light from 5.6 micrometers to 25.5 micrometers. (Though with significant light collected past 25.5 um by filter F2550W)

The wonderful thing about infrared astronomy is that everything emits blackbody radiation, and the hotter it is the more infrared it emits. The unfortunate thing about infrared astronomy is that everything emits blackbody radiation, including your telescope, and self-emission from your telescope can swamp the faint signal from astronomical sources. (Like building a camera out of glowsticks.)

The equilibrium temperature for an object in Earth orbit is about 300 Kelvin. (26C) Everything on the other side of the sunshield passively cools down to 40K, and MIRI is actively cooled by the cryocooler down to a chilly 6K (-267C, -449F) This extends MIRI's seeing range deeper into infrared.

But the mirror is still warm! At the far end, MIRI is significantly compromised by thermal self-emission: (Note log scale!)

This is more graphically illustrated by one of the MIRI commissioning images:

Check out that background glare!

(This is somewhat unfair: the calibration target here is a star, which emits comparatively little light in far-infrared. MIRI is really meant for nebulae and extra-galactic high-redshift objects)

("Why not actively cool the mirror?" Mechanical cryocoolers operate on the very limit of what heat engines are capable of. The MIRI cryocooler draws a fat 180 watts to move 78 milliwatts of heat. Previous infrared telescopes used a fixed amount of expendable coolant (liquid helium or solid hydrogen) to cool the entire instrument package... at the cost of a much smaller primary mirror and a telescope that flat out just stopped working when it ran out of coolant.)

There's something else you might notice about the above series of photographs...

Thanks a lot, Lord Rayleigh

John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh was a typical early physicist in that he has a great big pile of "discoveries" by virtue of being the first person to 1) notice something and 2) actually write it down. One of them is the fundamental theorem for the angular resolution of an optical system, the Rayleigh criterion. It is dead simple:

Resolution is roughly equal to 1.22 times the wavelength of the light you're looking at, divided by the diameter of the aperture. Bigger the opening at the front of light bucket, the higher the resolution. Smaller the wavelength of light, the higher the resolution.

(Fun fact: the former Arecibo radio observatory, once the largest single telescope in the world with a 305 meter wide dish, had about the same angular resolution in radio waves as the human eye does in visible light.)

You can imagine the effect this has on an infrared telescope. And sure enough, in the user documentation for the two imaging sensors, it states a pixel scale of 0.031 arcseconds for 0.6 to 2.3 micrometers light wavelength, 0.063 arcsec/px for 2.4-5.0 µm, and a squishy 0.11 arcsec/px for 5.6-25.5 µm.

But this is just how many pixels are on the detector. The resolution gets much worse at long wavelengths, as you can see in the commissioning image, where the extra pixels oversample a progressively vaguer blob. The Rayleigh criterion holds that the 6.5 meter wide JWST primary mirror should manage 0.206 arcsec at 5.32 µm, falling to 0.42 arcsec at 10.85 µm, 0.747 arcsec at 19.29 µm, and an unfortunate 1.014 arcsec at 26.2 µm. One wonders why the designers went to heroic lengths to cool MIRI down to 7 kelvin, instead of using that cryocooler mass and power budget for more detector surface area.

Knowing this, you can spot how the JWST's press team works around the limitations of the telescope. Like how a "look at how good our infrared telescope" commissioning photo happens to use the 7.7 µm mode:

Or how if you browse the photos on the webbtelescope.org site, you will see lots of NIRcam output in the "oooh, ah, new desktop background" category, but not so much MIRI.

(Another amusing detail of MIRI is that bright objects leave afterimages ("latents") on the sensor, so once a week they warm the sensor up to a tropical 20 kelvin before cooling it down again, a "MIRI anneal". You can see when anneals are performed, as well as what the telescope is looking at right now, by viewing the public schedule.)

But this is Webb operating right up to its full specifications. How about something that's actually broken?

NIRSpec my beloved

The Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument takes incoming light and runs it through a diffraction grating to produce a spectrum. When scientists say that the Sun is 0.77% oxygen, 0.29% carbon, etc, it's not because someone flew a spacecraft over to it and collected a bucket of solar plasma, it's because you can look at the absorption lines in the spectra to figure out its composition.

Spectrometry is also used to measure redshift, a close proxy to distance. When a press release says that a galaxy is "ten million lightyears away", it's not because NASA has a really long tape measure they haven't told anyone about, it's because a spectrometer measured how much cosmological redshift has moved a spectrum line. Naturally, it's not quite as easy as pointing a sensor at a object and getting back a single, unambiguous result. Distant objects are also dim objects, so the spectra will be noisy and chewed up by dust and other contamination its endured in the millions of years its traveled to arrive at our telescopes. Bleeding edge astronomy is thus the practice of designing statistical models to fit to noisy, fragmented data, and then arguing with other astronomers about r^2.

In any event, it's a handy thing to have on a telescope. Naturally, JWST has more than one. In fact every instrument has a spectroscopy mode. Besides the dedicated NIRISS and NIRSpec instruments, both NIRcam and MIRI include diffraction gratings in their filter wheels that smear out incoming light, like looking through a prism:

Pointing the JWST at an object is relatively expensive, since it requires rotating ("slewing") the entire darn spacecraft, and an amusingly complex alignment procedure with the fine guidance sensor and fine steering mirror. Considering how long it would take to shoot a hundred spectra with a conventional fixed slit rigidly mounted to the telescope frame, you can see the appeal of gathering a hundred spectra in a single exposure with "slitless" spectroscopy.

(Longtime space telescope nerds might hear the word "slewing" and involuntarily twitch, recalling that the reaction wheels and gyroscopes were a problem point on the Hubble, requiring several servicing missions, and also significantly affecting operations on the Kepler space telescope. Fortunately, JWST switched to a gyroscope type that has no moving parts, and used some mass budget to install six reaction wheels, up from Hubble's four, giving it three spares.)

You can also see the big downside in the image above, which is there's a hard tradeoff between how long a spectrum can be (and thus its resolution!) before it'll overlap its neighbors and be useless. Most of the slitless modes therefore have two gratings at two different angles, (GRISMR and GRISMC above) but wouldn't it great if you could just block out all that other light?

Thus, the Micro Shutter Array, as seen above. The best of both worlds! Capture many spectra at the same time, while blocking off light you don't want from contaminating the field, using a configurable array of nearly a quarter million microscopic, individually actuated moving shutters.

Lots and lots and lots of tiny little moving parts, installed in the guts of a spacecraft that's orbiting out past the Moon, impossible to access or replace.

Yeah, a bunch of them broke:

When it was handed over to NASA for installation into Webb in 2007, the MSA already had 150 shutters that no longer responded to opening commands in just one of the four submodules.

By the time JWST emerged from commissioning and was declared fully operational in 2022, 15,893 shutters, 7% of the total, had "failed closed." Hilariously, 904 of those failed during post-launch testing, and the authors of that paper note that, on average, if you tell 100 shutters to close, 4 of them will jam shut and no longer work.

This is unfortunate, but fairly easy to work around. What's worse are the shutters that are stuck open:

These permanently open shutters then compromise big chunks of the sensor. Commissioning testing jammed two more of them open, taking the total up to 22. You can imagine that if a few dozen more of these fail-open during routine operation then the entire microshutter array observation mode won't be much more useful than regular slitless spectrography.

And this, right here, sums up the essentially "interim" nature of JWST. After all, it was only supposed to cost $500 million and take a mere nine years from design to launch. All becomes clear in that light. Why give it a shutter array that falls apart in use? Why have the mirror exposed to space, where it gets hit with micrometeoroids? Why only design it to carry ten years worth of fuel? Because it was supposed to be half the price of Hubble!

The 90s was the era of "faster, better, cheaper". JWST was going to be an incremental improvement on a long series of previous infrared telescopes, and a stepping stone to the next one. It wasn't supposed to be an eternal monument to Science, and a financial black hole consuming NASA's entire budget.

So what went wrong?

We shouldn't have built one JWST.

Those 344 single points of failure. Any single one of them can end the mission. There's just one telescope, no backups, no trying again. Bureaucrats are harshly punished for failure, lightly rewarded for success. It's always easier to wait, do more tests, delay the schedule a bit more at a hint of trouble. Engineers can get you to 90% reliable no problem, but getting to 99% reliable takes another decade and nine billion more dollars.

Our techne is just bad at producing flawless machines first try. For the price of one reliable JWST we could have put twenty into orbit... but the first five would have been embarrassing failures. Spars sticking in place, sunshields jamming, thrusters misfiring. To save the shame of $0.5 billion wasted, NASA happily spent $9.5 billion. Why not? Because money spent is invisible, but failure is painfully apparent.

A critical third party can draw unflattering parallels. The crowning achievement of NASA, the Moon Landing... required eleven Apollo launches and twenty Surveyor launches before a single man set foot on lunar regolith! Quite a few of those spacecraft pancaked into the Moon and exploded on the launchpad before we figured out this "space" thing. Three men died! But NASA was on a hard deadline, with a fixed budget, and the only way to get a home run is to take a lot of swings at the ball.

Another comparison is the Space Launch System, NASA's attempt to make the Saturn V again. So far $27 billion has been lit on fire to put exactly one test load into orbit, with the primary contractor now desperate to get out of its contact. Slow, careful, incremental development has completely failed to produce a working launch system.

Meanwhile, SpaceX produced a series of public, embarrassing failures... resulting in the world's only reusable launch system, and as a result has put far more mass into orbit than any country in the world.

The only way to develop a flight system is flight tests.

Space telescope deploy mechanisms meant to work in zero gravity can't be tested on the ground.

They can only be tested in space.

NASA administrators who didn't work during Apollo are too stupid to understand this. Fire them all!

These geriatrics have happily sacrificed science in order to play it safe and secure their own easy retirement. Do we want 15 risky JWST telescopes by 2010, or do we want one reliable one by 2022? The answer is obvious!

For the money we wasted making Webb more reliable, we could have launched a space telescope far outside the disk of dust in the inner solar system, allowing it to see deeper into space than Webb ever could. ESA put an astrometry space telescope just outside Earth orbit, measuring angles between stellar objects, which is the only way to directly measure the distance to the stars. Great first step. The obvious next step is to send more of these telescopes out past Neptune's orbit, to capture better observations with a vastly larger baseline, something that can never be done by an Earthly observatory. Are there any plans to do this? No!

Space exploration is paralyzed by boomers, mired in the mental tarpit of the 1970s, where each gram to orbit is terribly expensive and must be counted on punched cards and summed with slide rules. Meanwhile, SpaceX Starship is on its way to orbit, and each one can carry sixteen JWSTs with room to spare!

The old paradigm is done. Telescopes don't need folding mirrors and exotic materials, they need to be mass produced. There is no excuse not to have a hundred more JWST-class telescopes lined up next to the Texas launch pad waiting for Starship to come online. But as far as I know not a single space mission even mentions it-- that's how afraid they are of risk!

The JWST, with its myriad of fragile components and its staggering price tag, stands as a monument not to our ingenuity but to our inability to let go of outdated ideals.

We must abandon the notion that space is a realm reserved for the flawless and the infallible. Instead, we should embrace the chaos, the unpredictability, the sheer messiness of exploration. Let us launch a thousand telescopes, each a patchwork of parts, each destined to fail in its own spectacular way. For it is only in this embrace of the ephemeral that we can find out what actually works!

Let the JWST be the last of its kind, a relic of a bygone era. The future is unwritten, and it is ours to fill with a symphony of failures, each note a step closer to the stars.

#james webb space telescope #jwst

278 notes · View notes

aphidclan-clangen · 5 months

Note

question for the creator :3 is it a good idea to log everything that happens for every moon before you draw? bc that's what I'm doing, and I'm wondering if its a thing you did? basically, how did you start?

Yes!! Definitely log everything that happens, especially when you’re starting off. Later on when you have a more fleshed out plot and characters in mind you can start throwing out prompts that don’t add anything and focusing more on the ones that do. (I’ll also get very out of character prompts sometimes, I just throw those out entirely and hold on tight to the prompts that are in character)

I would log 1. the main moon events, 2. as many relationship events as I can, 3. the cats’ statuses/thought bubbles/whatever the sentences on their profile are called, and 4. Patrol events ((don’t forget to check the statuses of dead cats and outsiders!!)

Here’s an example of my logs:

Everyone has a different way of coming up with a plot, either before the comic even starts or maybe the plot comes along on its own! I didn’t start AphidClan with a plot in mind, I was only drawing the daily events between the characters up until moon 6. Moon 6 onward is when I started building a plot and figuring out lore, worldbuilding, conflict, etc. I got a patrol that said Lilacpaw was murdered by a rogue, so I used that and went with a more murder mystery-esque plot

I would recommend playing ahead! Everyone has their own perfect number of how much to play ahead, I used to prefer it to be around 2-3 moons ahead of what I was drawing, to keep my workload small and spontaneous, but now that I have a much more plot-based story I prefer to play FAAAR more ahead than that so I have a more solid idea of the full story and how/when I want it to end. I’ve played up to moon 78 so far, and we’re currently on moon 20 in the comic

I started my comic very spontaneously with no future goal in mind. It took me a while to get to this place, where I now have a very plot-centered webcomic and a vague idea of how and when I want it to end. You very much make your own plot, and in a way, you make your own characters! The game gives you prompts that you can work with as inspiration for certain story events (like using the statuses “Stormkit wishes Sparkkit would play more quietly” and “Lilacpaw is worried about Stormkit” to create a plot event that adds more to Lilacpaw’s death) but most of the creative aspect you make yourself!

Hopefully that answers your question okay! Have fun creating! ^^

#aphidasks

40 notes · View notes

orion4ever · 8 months

Text

Come join our OLBA/OLNF Server!

We have

-Pro LGBTQ Values and a Strict No Discrimination Policy!

-Lovely Staff! I am the Co-Owner , I can vouch!

-We Have Question of the Day

-Occasional Art Competitions! One currently going on right now that you can still join!

-Lots of lovely members!

-A bunch of channels containing assets for a editor!

And much more!

13+ Only!

#olba #olnf #our life beginnings & always #our life now and forever #cove holden #derek suarez #baxter ward #qiu lin #tamarack baumann #discord server #orion4ever #gb patch #join now!#^^

43 notes · View notes

redfurrycat · 1 year

Text

🤠🐓Omegaverse Fic Recs🐓🤠

Check the Top Gun Masterlist post for the latest updated version. 💕

Alpha!Bradley / Omega!Jake

Ao3 Authors: Anonymous, Booklover03, Caliburn, Chillibeam, Cristinuke, Eclair_Fair98, Elizabethgee, Fuddlewuddle, Hockeyandfootballismyish, HoneyWhatever, Janie94, Kezzanza, Ladylanera, Lizbeth_e, Lovelybattle, McDanno50, Oopsiedaisiesbaby, Perishablealex, PleaseHellMe, PVB, ReformedTsundere, Renai_chan, SamHeartfilia, SerenaLight17, SissySpargo, Trizte, WaffleToaster.

Alpha!Jake / Omega!Bradley

Ao3 Authors: Barnes_Brain, Bbr1, Caitlin44, Chase_acow, Deuceofgears, Earthangel_44, FlowersOnMyMind, ForMaverick, Goosed, Happytree, LadyLanera, Multishippingtrashfire, Nightfuryy, Nixie_DeAngel, Thursday26, Vannral.

Alpha!Bradley / Alpha!Jake

Ao3 Authors: Anonymous, Chase_acow, Hngstercity, Janie94, Milestaller.

Alpha!Bradley / Beta!Jake

Ao3 Author: Emseebeans.

Omega!Bradley / Beta!Jake

Ao3 Author: Ginnydear.

Alpha!Bradley / Omega!Jake

In the Blink of an Eye by Janie94 {M}

It's been a few weeks since the dagger mission and the squad is hanging out at their favorite bar. Bradley is still trying to figure out how his feelings for Jake have changed in the past weeks when Jake gets harrassed by another Alpha and Bradley promptly loses his shit.

Life Still Goes On by Renai_chan

Got to Make It on My Own {E}

Jake and Bradley spend one night together under the heavy, heavy influence of alcohol. It does not go well. But it goes worse for Jake than it does for Bradley because he wakes up with a bonding bite and his new alpha nowhere to be found. When they're recalled for a special training detachment eight years later, Jake finds out that Bradley doesn't remember giving him the bite at all and Bradley finds out about it for the first time. It still does not go well.

This Time I Know It's for Real {E}

This takes place two years later when Jake and Bradley's bond has settled down and Jake's heats have turned regular again. Or so they think. On Bradley's first deployment away from Jake, Jake suddenly finds himself in the throes of an unexpected heat, and with Bradley halfway across the world, he has to again deal with it without his alpha. Except this time, he's already gotten used to having Bradley to help him through them, and not even Javy can suffice as a substitute anymore.

I Can't Get Over the Way You Love Me Like You Do {T}

Bradley reflects on being a dad and a husband.

Rulebreaker by Fuddlewuddle {E}

Jake doesn't sleep with Alphas as a rule. Bradley Bradshaw made him want to break that rule. An unscheduled, but well-timed heat, might help the Omega get that through the Alpha's thick skull of his.

The Highs and Lows of Having a Naval Aviator as Your Omega by hockeyandfootballismyish {T}

Bradley wasn’t quite sure when he started to refer to Hangman- no Jake as his omega. It may have been sometime after the Mission when his omega saved his life and simultaneously gaining his second kill to cement his title as one of the best currently or maybe it was when they hooked up for the first time and Bradley couldn’t help but stare in absolute awe at the man riding his knot and taking his pleasure as he pleased.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Eclair_Fair98 {E}

”There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. / There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. / You feel it, don't you?” — Rumi. Summer, ‘73: A month before she dies, Mabel Mitchell signs away her son’s future in Tom Kazansky's name. Fall, ‘78: An eighteen-year-old Pete Kazansky, is married, bonded, and expecting his first baby. Until one day, he isn’t. Summer, ‘83: Two people find their way back to each other, and on the path of healing and forgiveness, also find themselves. Or, A story spanning decades—about love, loss, and carving out an identity for yourself, in a world that doesn’t want you to have one.

Relax by lovelybattle {E}

Bradley was nervous, it was clear as day to anyone, but especially Jake. The way he fiddled with his hands, curling in on himself slightly, hunching his shoulders inwards. “I was- I saw something. The other day, online.” he said, voice quiet, words choppy, “apparently… sometimes, omegas fuck alphas.”

Let the Riptide Pull You Close by McDanno50 {E}

Hangman’s green eyes were the slightest bit unfocused and his usually styled blonde hair was mussed. He was also barefoot and wore threadbare sweatpants, the material loose enough to hang from his hips. He didn’t have a shirt on and all those golden muscles on display made it hard for Bradley to think. They've survived the impossible and now it's time to party. Except Hangman isn't answering anyone's texts and Rooster is most definitely not concerned. Phoenix orders him to check on the other alpha at his home, but Hangman has been keeping secrets...

You’re a Bad Habit… by HoneyWhatever {E}

You're a Bad Habit I Can't Shake Off (but I still want more)

They don't date, they are not even friends, what they have is similar to a bad habit you want to quit. And now they have to figure out how to be parents together.

In Need of Some Life-Affirming Touches

They don't date, they are not even friends, what they have is similar to a bad habit you want to quit. Now, in the face of uncertainty, boy do they love getting high on each other.

i’m so in love with loving you, that's all I do by hockeyandfootballismyish {M}

Jake Seresin has never had an easy life. From being his father’s punching bag after his mother died to bouncing around in the foster care system until eventually his foster father took it upon himself to mate him because after all, who would want a troublesome omega? Much less one who was pregnant. Or that’s what Jake thought until he met Bradley Bradshaw.

I Am Yours by Booklover03 {_}

Being an Omega with a mating bite and a half-finished mating bond without his Alpha in sight is hard. Hiding the fact that he’s a mated Omega is even harder. What happens when years later he meets his Alpha again? Especially when the other man doesn’t seem to acknowledge the bite mark he left on the Omega years prior.

You Got Me Walking' Side To Side by PleaseHellMe {E}

"You're burning up. Are you feeling sick?" he asked and noticed how sweat had started to bead against Bradley's hairline, making the bronze curls stick against his skin. When Bradley didn't answer, Jake cradled his cheek and tapped it lightly to gain the Alpha's attention. Bradley blinked his eyes open. It happened so slowly like they felt impossibly heavy to open. The barely opened eyes revealed blown-out pupils that had swallowed the beautiful hazel irises, which were one of Jake's favorite things about him. "Are you going into a rut Darlin’? Is that what's going on?"

Make someone happy by WaffleToaster {T}

Bradley Bradshaw feels like he has misjudged Jake Seresin when he finally gets to know him better after the mission and quickly comes to realise Jake is actually quite different from the Hangman persona he knew up until now. Much to his and everyone's surprise they actually get along with each other, they still bicker but that's to be expected when you're both of the same dominant type. But it's when Bradley starts feeling something more that he starts doubting the situation. The thing they called 'the tug' only happened between you and your soulmate. But that couldn't be correct, because two alphas couldn't feel 'the tug' for each other, right?

Heat Waves by elizabethgee {E}

"It's bad enough the temperatures are in the triple digits. Did he really have to go into heat on the hottest day of the fucking year too?" -- In which Jake goes into heat at the most inopportune time, and Bradley really tries to be a gentleman about it.

Let Me Face Hurricanes by Cristinuke {E}

Hangman and Rooster are caught and held captive by the enemy. This is always less than ideal, but then they learn their captors decide to take a different approach in interrogation, and they suddenly realize that escape is about to get a lot harder.

Misconceptions by SamHeartfilia {M}

Jake "Hangman" Seresin received an incomplete mating claim from one Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw a week after graduating from the Naval Academy. No one but his best friend know, and now that the uranium mission is over, things are looking up. His claim is completed and he's feeling like himself for the first time in years. Of course, everything starts change when his secrets come out. Secrets he was only just coming to terms with himself.

A Fever You Can't Sweat Out by perishablealex {E}

The itchiness had been working its way under his skin for the better part of the last hour, as he’d been sitting in a classroom for debrief on today’s training. This isn’t supposed to happen. Or: Jake goes into heat unexpectedly, and it's Rooster who shows up at his door and offers to help him through it.

All Over You by chillibeam, Renai_chan {E}

Due to outdated military rules, Jake needs an Alpha (evidenced by their scent on him) to keep flying. When the previous Alpha he had an arrangement with ships out, he asks the next best thing: Bradley. They're rivals, sure, but after the Mission, Bradley's proven himself to be a worthy candidate. It was supposed to be purely transactional--a favor for a favor--but when Jake realizes he might be leading Bradley on, he breaks it off and moves on to someone else. Except that Bradley doesn't want to.

Years of Salt and Sunshine by PVB {E}

His whole life, all Bradley Bradshaw has ever wanted is to join the Navy. But his mother kept him shielded from the darker side of the Navy - especially its conservative views of omegas. Bradley finds this out first hand at twenty-two years old, when he goes to a party at his new CO's office and meets his omega - Jake Seresin, Bradley's summer camp crush. Only it's Jake Prentiss now, with three small kids and another on the way, held captive not by laws but by the oppressive weight of his family, his duties, and the Navy's idea of a good omega.

I get under your skin (deep within, there's my territory) by kezzanza {E}

Jake is broken: when Bradley gets furious, Jake gets hard.

Takin' Care by ReformedTsundere {M}

A little domestic moment between Jake and Bradley amid the waves of Jake's heat.

collide. by SissySpargo {E}

rack this

jake and bradley play some pool, and the cue balls aren't the only things that get sunk as the night wears on.

heat

bradley goes into his rut. jake helps out.

aftermath

jake and bradley deal with the aftermath of their rut and heat.

Norman Fucking Rockwell by oopsiedaisiesbaby

And, Baby, Only Then {E}

“No,” Bradley shook his head, still grinning down at Jake in his arms, held up by Tom’s. “My baby.” “Okay, Baby Goose,” Tom agreed with a chuckle, an amused grin taking over his face. From that moment on, Bradley and Jake were inseparable.

There's Nothing to be Sorry About {T}

“I thought you wanted me to grovel?” Bradley teased. “Yes but no,” Jake whined, seconds away from hitting Bradley with a pillow. “I’m apologizing to you right now.” “Fine,” Bradley sighed, propping his cheek up on his hand so he could continue to smile down at Jake. “You go first.” Jake couldn’t believe fate had chosen this asshole for him.

The Contract by LadyLanera {M}

True Mates--might as well as be True Hell on Earth in Hangman's mind. His didn't want him. That was obvious. The funny thing about True Mates and the bonds that come with it, though, is that they always have a way of coming back to one another eventually. Could his father signing a contract be the way to Hangman's happily ever after--or will it be yet another Hell?

I WIll Follow You Into the Dark by lizbeth_e {E}

In a world where your secondary gender decides the fate of your status in society, Jake is stuck at the bottom of the barrel. Not only is he an Omega, but a male Omega, which is the most rare combination of genders, as well as the one with the least amount of power and status in the world. And now that Jake has turned 25, the age an unmarried and unbonded Omega must now legally find an Alpha to wed or have one chosen for them, Jake is forced to enter into an arranged marriage. Said Alpha ends up being one Bradley Bradshaw, head of the powerful Bradshaw House, connected to a long line of families in power, like the Kazansky House, which makes Jake feel literally and figuratively screwed. Because not only is Bradley sitting at the top of the food chain as an Alpha, and a male one at that, but he is also just about the most attractive living thing that Jake has ever seen, and he's not quite sure just how long he can ignore that. And in a society where Jake basically has no rights, he doesn't even know if he is truly allowed to ignore it, anyway. ...And maybe he doesn't really want to.

Struggle and Fight (Dark Forces in the Clear Moonlight) by caliburn {E}

Since 'The Mission', the Daggers have bonded as a pack - except Hangman who loiters and pines around the edges but won't allow himself the comfort he clearly craves. Bradley has fallen for the prickly, talented, Omega Aviator that saved him, but he can't get him to talk. He would woo him - if he could have him permission. Carole, Maverick and Iceman raised him right - he needs enthusiastic consent for anything other than a game of nine ball. Phoenix is tired of Bradley whining and decides to talk to Jake... but will she just make everything worse?

The mishap in medicine by WaffleToaster {E}

A mistake with his medication causes Jake’s body to show some interesting side effects. Or rather it’s mostly Bradley who finds it interesting while Jake has to suffer for it. Otherwise known as: the weird kinky get-together story of two idiots involving Jake’s pecs and Bradley’s growing obsession with them.

What You Need by trizte {E}

An unexpected heat exposes Jake’s true identity to Bradley.

Baby Bird Learns to Fly by SerenaLight17 {M}

"Baby Bird Learns to Fly" takes off in the aftermath of Jake's turbulent break-up, where an unexpected twist of fate grounds him, leaving him to grapple with life's uncertainties. In an unforeseen turn, two Navy legends become Jake's steadfast anchors, offering him stability and a surrogate family. Fast forward a couple of years, and Jake is summoned back to Top Gun for a covert mission that thrusts him into a world of high-stakes aerial maneuvers, fierce aviator rivalries, and unresolved emotions. Hangman, driven by an unwavering resolve to become the best aviator, finds himself rattled when face-to-face with the man who shattered his heart. Amidst the adrenaline-fueled skies and prideful aviators vying for supremacy, Jake is torn between protecting a long-held secret and the prospect of reopening old wounds.

Danger Zone Chronicles by SamFullbuster {M}

An alternate universe where Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw and Tom “Iceman” Kazinsky are serial killers who will stop at nothing to protect those they love. Featuring: Always a pilot Maverick and Photographer Jake who just wants to adopt a dog.

What Your Body’s Sayin’ To Mine by Anonymous {E}

Jake is having an issue on a night out, it’s a simple fix, he just has to go home first. Bradley offers him a ride, then offers him another. Jake takes both of them happily.

Take Me for Who I Am by Renai_chan {E}

Jake, the omega child of Lord Seresin of Austea, is all set to be married to Javy, his best friend who he's been betrothed to since before they were even born. On the day of the wedding, a mysterious man shows up and whisks Jake away to the castle. Jake later learns he is Prince Bradley, the Crown Prince of Miramonte, who intended to take Jake as his own.

Alpha!Jake / Omega!Bradley

Top Gun A/B/O by multishippingtrashfire

Heatstroke {E}

Rooster goes into heat and learns rivalry sometimes works as an amazing basis for a relationship.

Questions that Need Answers {T}

Hangman has to ask Maverick and Ice an important question. And then he has to ask Rooster an even more important question.

Jake to the Rescue by nightfuryy {_}

Bradley finds himself going into heat around a pushy alpha. He calls Jake for help. Fluff happens.

Aphrodite’s Revenge by LadyLanera {M}

Dagger Squad attends a dinner party as guests of honor… and all goes well (mostly) until a certain Captain mixed up his drinks. Thanks, Mavdad!

not a one time thing after all by ForMaverick {E}

A One Time Thing

“I’m fine. Stay the fuck where you are.” Bradley inches closer to the shower wall, the coolness of the wet tiles soothing against his burning skin. “Or better yet, leave.” “You don’t look so good—” “Fuck off.” Bradley closes his eyes again as another wave of pain and nausea sweeps through his body. “I’ll be fine, just leave me the fuck—” “Bradley.” That makes Bradley stop in mid-sentence. Jake using his first name is a rarity. ‘Rooster’ is familiar territory. A teasing ‘Bradshaw’ is not too uncommon either. Hell, sometimes that menace of a man will even drawl out the full ‘Lt. Bradley Bradshaw’ when he’s going for maximum asshattery. But just ‘Bradley’? That’s—that’s new. Bradley exhales shakily. “I’m asking this from the bottom of my heart and as politely as I possibly can right now: please fuck off.” “Are you—” Jake pauses. There’s a sharp inhale. “Dude, are you going into heat?”

maybe this, maybe that

Another moment of awkward silence follows. Jake shuffles a bit more, pursing his lips and looking thoughtful. “Hey, how about you come with me to my family’s vacation home for a few days?” he then says, the suggestion rushing out in a sudden burst of words. “There’s plenty of room, and we could hang out or—” He cuts himself off, giving a one-shouldered nonchalant shrug. “You know.” “Uh-huh, sure.” Bradley makes sure his voice could not possibly drip any more sarcasm. “So we’re going to, what, sit by the fireplace holding hands and sing kumbaya?” Jake rolls his eyes at the remark, then mutters, “You don’t have to be a dick about it.” Bradley stares at him, blinking in disbelief. “Wait, you were being serious?” Jake shrugs again. “I mean, you got someplace better to be?”

meet me in the woods tonight by Caitlin44 {E}

What followed was probably the most emotionally draining hour of Bradley's life since his mother's death. But in the end, the air was cleared between them, and he'd ended up curled into Mav's side, all parts of him once again connected to his surrogate father and his Pack, the connection between them all restored and open wide. He had laid there in almost wonder, exploring the connections he hadn't felt in over ten years, feeling the different links that led to the people he loved, that now formed a pack more extensive than the one he'd left.

Can't take my eyes off of you by FlowersOnMyMind {T}

An Alpha at the Hard Deck won't leave Rooster alone. Hangman steps in. Oh, and did I mention that Hangman is close to his rut?

Call it what you want by Happytree {_}

When ‘don't think just do’ is harder than it sounds. A story of fixing broken bonds, forgiveness, learning to love and flying as fast as you can. Mostly though, a story of Bradley and Jake.

The Octagon by Earthangel_44 {E}

Monday

“Unless you can’t mount me,” Bradley baits in a low voice, “unless you can’t fuck me like you think you can.” Bradley cups Jake through his sweats and squeezes. “Unless I need to find another alpha to fuck me and finish what you started.” AKA: Omega MMA fighter Bradley with Alpha Boxer Jake.

Tuesday

Bradley watches Jake fight for the first time since they’re together.

’til the storm breaks loose by vannral {E}

'”Do you want to stay?” Rooster asks, willing to meet him half-way since Jake can’t get a goddamn word out. Jake lifts his chin, his jaw clenched so hard he might crack his teeth into ground up glass.' In which Bradley’s going into heat, Jake checks up on him and they’re faced with just how much they mean to each other. (+snapshots of their life together afterwards.)

I will love you, dear, forever by FlowersOnMyMind {E}

"Do you have someone to take care of you?" Jake asks. "Are you offering, Seresin?" "Are you asking, Bradshaw?" Or Jake and Bradley help each other through their ruts and heats. Jake pines.

Untrammelled by deuceofgears {E}

In which Rooster only wants to cook on his leave and maybe go on vacation, but there's the small matter of Jake, his impending rut, and Rooster's ability to resist the said rut. Or, Rooster finds out that Jake might be an excellent test case for his maybe-probably-barely there kink.

Shake it off by Happytree {E}

“This is the bit that’s going to piss you off,” Jake warned, “so think of tonight as an apology and a final hurrah okay Roo.” “What the hell did Mav dare you?” Jake took a deep breath as he looked him in the eyes, “No sex for two weeks.” “That asshole!”

A Perch Built for Two by chase_acow {E}

Rooster is well known for keeping his own company, but between Maverick's reemergence and the suicide mission, Hangman manages to weasel his way into Bradley's attention. He's never let an alpha so close to him before, but Hangman might be the best choice - experienced and unlikely to ask for more than Bradley was willing to give. Unfortunately for him, it's Bradley who wants more, and he has no idea how to ask for it.

A Matter of Convenience by bbr1 {E}

From above, clear as a bell, Jake laughs and says, “Baby, you couldn't pay me back in a million years what you owe me.”

Right now I wish you were here with me by FlowersOnMyMind {T}

He doesn't miss his husband's thick, Texan drawl or his stupid smirk. He definitely doesn't miss the Alpha's scent of campfire, leather, and the grass after it rains. He doesn't miss tripping over Jake cowboy boots in the entryway of their home. He doesn't miss seeing Jake's Stetson hat hanging on the hook by the front door. Or the way he teases Bradley, trying to get a rise out of him. He doesn't- He misses Jake so much it hurts. Or Jake is sent across the world for a mission that takes much longer than they thought. He and Bradley don't handle it well.

3 months (12 years and 3 months) by goosed {E}

Bradley and Jake meet and spend a decade in each others lives. From strangers to reluctant friends, to lovers and back to strangers again. Or, The When Harry Met Sally AU

Wildcard by Thursday26 {E}

They have survived a mission that needed three miracles. How bad can one long weekend meeting the family be?

Beyond the Mountains by Barnes_Brain {E}

When Jake Seresin rode onto Kazansky’s Stables and Training, he wanted to do the same as every other alpha sent into the town. Keep his head down, find a job, build a semblance of a life until he’s told he can return to the mountains he was raised. He wasn’t expecting to find an old friend, a new mentor, or Bradley Kazansky. Bradley Kazansky hates everything. He hates that he’s moving back to Glacier View. He hates his designation. He hates that he’s not even good enough for his dad. So why should he care if the new blond from the mysterious mountains isn’t interested? He doesn’t want a mate no matter who it is.

Who Helps the Helper? by Nixie_DeAngel {M}

Post Mission, Bradley goes into a sudden heat and Jake helps him through it. But who helps Jake deal with the guilt of assisting his ex-boyfriend, his former omega, through something that is meant to be shared with someone an omega deems worthy?

Alpha!Bradley / Alpha!Jake

One and Only by hngstercity {E}

“C’mon, Bradley.” Oh, now he’s using his real name? Fuck him. “You haven’t had anyone after him.” “I did. You know I did, Maverick. You’re the nosiest Alpha I know, and I know you know any time I’ve slept with someone. You can’t keep your fucking nose out of my business.” And he means it literally, because anytime Bradley had someone over, the next day Pete would always inflate his nostrils to process every single scent that came out of Bradley. Including his hormones, including Jake’s missing ones. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. You haven’t had anyone you loved after him. You haven’t mated. If I asked you to talk to me about love, would you tell me about someone that isn’t him?” No. And that’s the fucking problem. - Jake is back in town, and Bradley is forced to face him, their past and their future.

Yes, Alpha by chase_acow {E}

“I’m not looking to get bitched, Bradshaw,” Jake drawled, tipping his head back to kill the rest of his bottle. “So, whatever little fantasy you’ve got going on in that little hamster wheel of yours, get over it.” “But, you-” Bradley stuttered to a stop, twisting around to plant his elbow on the bar so he could study Jake better. The man was handsome as ever, with his sharp jaw and long torso leading down to his low-slung pants. “You like it. You like . . . taking it.” “I do,” Jake agreed, sliding his empty bottle onto the counter and then pulling Bradley’s fresh one from his numb fingers to take a drink. “I also like being me. Christ, Rooster, look at me. Why would I change anything about this perfection?”

My Whole Existence Is Flawed by Anonymous {E}

Hangman is an alpha who loves to take it up the ass, no matter how it hurts, he still craves it and how it makes him feel, and craves being treated like an omega. Bonus points for descriptions of how his body differs from an omega and how he works around that, ex. training his hole to take a knot even though he'd be in excruciating pain (but loving it!), filling himself up with lube to simulate slick, etc.

good wood by milestaller {E}

Jake follows his nose and finds Bradley. Things sort of escalate from there.

I'll Be Right Here With You by Janie94 {E}

After Hangman has saved Rooster and Maverick from the fifth gen plane and they land back on the tarmac, Rooster goes into an unexpected rut. The last person he should want in this moment is another Alpha, least of all Hangman.

Alpha!Bradley / Beta!Jake

Next Size Up by emseebeans {E}

After much needling and cajoling from Jake, Bradley agrees to knot him for the first time.

Omega!Bradley / Beta!Jake

secrets I keep to keep you by ginnydear {E}

(Omega with Beta characteristics!Bradley/Beta with Omega characteristics!Jake)

They've now been on several dates that always end the same - a kiss that starts to get heated before Bradley pulls away and wishes Jake a good night. - or, bradley and jake, figuring out their dynamic.

#Omegaverse Recs List #hangster #sereshaw #hangaroo #bradley rooster bradshaw x jake hangman seresin #bradley rooster bradshaw #jake hangman seresin #🐈red🐈furry🐈cat🐈tag🐈

108 notes · View notes

betterbemeta · 11 months

Text

A bit ago youtube served me this video by the wall street journal about how difficult it is for meal kit companies to stay afloat

This may be a surprise to people because if you show any interest in 'food' you're probably getting dozens of ads from meal kit companies every day. But what shocked me about the video was not really what it reported; it was what it depicted by omission, or without self-awareness.

Meal kits are NOT cheaper than groceries. This is the one thing it said outright that I think people need to hear. The marketing is manipulation based on short-term discounts that will not be sustained for any length of subscription. Economies of scale are what make stuff cheap and while the largest meal kit companies can come closest, none are anywhere near a successful grocery chain's scale.

HelloFresh has a whopping 78 percent of the market shares in the meal kit business. This is presented as a neutral fact but it displays the truth that the 'competition' between corporations is a sham: once the market giant achieves sufficient size, nothing else can catch up and only tiny niches where certain privileged consumers will want to buy an 'alternative' at great expense can coexist.

Many services have pivoted from offering meal kits with ingredients to offering fully prepared meals because people who would want to buy a meal kit aren't being daunted by the 'time to go to the store' or 'knowledge of ingredients to buy' or 'portioning ingredients' or 'reading directions.' What this implies, that the video doesn't state outright, is that average people who are lured into subscribing to food delivery services need food NOW, the ACCESS TO THE FOOD is the decision-maker, not 'convenience cooking.'

this dovetails into another video I recently watched, about the disappearance of cheap food in the USA.

(uh, ignore the watch percentage bar, I went back to it to check statistics it cites.)

the issue here being that the growing dominance of car-based transportation in the USA added a giant expense to the average person's budget, supported 'affordable' housing moving farther and farther away from centralized areas where eateries that could cheaply prepare food people depended on. So people actually didn't spend less money on food in the past, they spent more... but they had more budget for food because they spent less or even nothing on gas and housing in general was also much, much cheaper. Even adjusted for inflation.

Anyway. the reason why I am bringing that second video up. is that the first one dodges the obvious conclusion. It presents the evidence. But then doesn't ask why? Why are people so desperate to sign up for something that's cheaper than groceries, that takes less time than groceries? Why is there a market for mass appeal, because to sustain revenue you need a TON of people signing up for the discounted trial, to make up for so few long-term subscribers?? Why are people looking for an alternative to our current cheapest available options, maybe cheaper than almost any point in human history? Even with disgusting price hikes?

It is because people cannot afford the price of food with how much other things reap from their budget, or the time to prepare food they can afford. Things are much worse than the forward face of our culture depicts, and even industries that pop up to exploit the needy are grubbing for pennies

81 notes · View notes

avasotieevee · 1 year

Text

Happy 10th Birthday to the Dangthatsalongname Channel!

This drawing took forever to finish but it’s done now. I loved going back into the past and re-watching old videos and watching some for the first time. Some of my favourite episodes has to be the Fairytale Fallout bloopers for both seasons and the first episode of Funcraft!

The fan art has all the Minecraft series that are currently on YouTube and some that were streamed on Twitch/YouTube + on other people’s channels (I hope I haven’t missed any others because counting and checking took a long time. I did miss the first Harmony Hallow UHC, Staxel SMP and the first Diversity series but we don’t need to mention it :D). Which series was your favourite? (btw MM stands for Mystery Man from One Life S1)

List of Minecraft Series (75 in total not including Pirates SMP (78 including the ones I missed stated above)):

Harmony Hallow (S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, UHC 2, UHC 3)

Friday the Thirteenth (Second Episode)

Legacy SMP

Halloween Ville

Nether VS & Caves and Cliffs VS

Kingdomcraft

Minecraft Monday (We don’t talk about it)

Base Invaders

Wondercraft

Outsiders SMP

Minecraft Dropper

Factions

Factions 101

Factions Elemental Realms

SMP Earth

The Cube (S4)

Modded Earth

Area Unknown

Fairytale Fallout (S1, S2, SMP)

Castaway

Dangcraft

Empires SMP (S1, S2)

Rats SMP

X Life SMP

Afterlife SMP

New Life SMP

The Cube UHC (S19, S20, S21, +)

SimsCraft

Sim u Kraft

Pillagercraft

Hardcore Minecraft 1.16

One Life SMP (S1, S2, S3)

Adventure Craft

Funcraft

Trollcraft

Crazycraft

Craziercraft

Deathswap (S1, S2)

The Deep End

Pixelmon XO

Pixelmon Origins

Pixelmon World!

Pixelmon

Skyblocks

Cutecraft (S1, S2)

Origins SMP

Witchcraft SMP

Summer Camp SMP

3rd Life/Last Life/Double Life/Limited Life SMP

Dangthatsalongcraft

Arcadia

Troll pack 2

Chamber of Iris

Diversity

#scott smajor #scott smajor fanart #smajor1995 #smajor fanart #dangthatsalongname #mcyt fanart #first post #art #AvasotiEevee

131 notes · View notes

luckyshotwrites · 5 months

Text

Ch. 102 // How Do You Feel? // Day 78

Contents (Warnings): Sum up what's left (Angst, character and monster info as always). Read full chapter on A03

Wordcount: 2,000+

Song I correlate to this Chapter: definitely not Mariah Carey's all I want for Christmas is you.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

(Dec. 20th, Tuesday)

Lynette

It had been nearly two weeks since the incident.

After we were collected, given immediate care, exchanged our testimonies, and debriefed, we were allowed to go home.

Most of it was mashed together in my mind. I figured it was due to how fast everything happened. Working at the pizzeria is a testimony to that statement.

I knew there were mass casualties—most of the people in the basement were recovered, and Andras, along with Victoria, were in custody, most likely going to be put to death.

I didn't know the extent of the C.P.P.A.'s legal system and wanted to avoid asking Wicks. Despite claiming he was okay, I knew he wasn't.

Lately, he was antsy. He'd check on me every hour, and each time he did, he'd offer me sweets—far more than usual. His excuse was that he had to dispose of the ever-increasing keep-away-from-Lentils stash.

And before I left today, he made me promise three things.

"One, you won't go out with anyone, monster or not, unless Charletta, Mom, Dad, or I go with you."

It felt fair for now. I hadn't made any human friends.

"Two, IF anyone bothers you after you tell them to leave or you feel uneasy about them in any way. Use your knife."

I received it after finishing my training last week. I currently had it strapped to my belt, concealed behind my jacket at my back.

I was afraid to admit that even thinking about seriously stabbing someone scared me.

It'll get more manageable if I keep training with Garter. I assured myself.

"Three, if you get in a coworker-related trouble again at any point, you're quitting."

It was the only compromise I'd give him. It wasn't their fault. Neither Claudia nor Drake expected that to happen. I convinced him to agree, but I wasn't sure if I'd go back or not.

"Here's your pretzel," my sister said. She unconsciously hummed the current Christmas song on the speakers: ' All I want for Christmas is no copyright infringements.'

We were at the mall together, getting last-minute Christmas gifts for the family. All we had to do was wait for Wenna to arrive.

I still think dragging me along with them is a bad idea. I thought.

After what happened, Drake wasn't permitted to be around me for the next month. Because of the extreme stress of being constantly deprived of energy and drinking my blood back to back to back, he got addicted.

From what I understood, if a vampire was under pressure and continued to drink from the same person, their body deemed no other "resources" available, so it'd become possessive and protective over that "resource." That'd also mean they'd exclusively crave that being's blood.

So, Drake would be drinking animal blood for the next month to 'reset his palette.' This apparently happened to him with Elise, Viola's partner as well.

Wenna assured me she'd stay at Viola's house after she left the mall, so Drake wouldn't have exposure to my scent either.

It made giving him a birthday gift a little more complicated. I said in my head as I took a bite of the pretzel while we walked. Charletta happily tore into hers beside me.

We had yet to walk into any festively decorated storefronts, but seeing them made my smile come alive. Not that I hadn't been to the mall in a while—Wicks and I'd come here at least once a month since the rock climbing place we visited every week was next door.

The adorning wreaths and garlands in cahoots with the cinnamon and pine scents delighted me. I loved buying gifts for people, and this was the holiday with the biggest and best excuse to spend my money on it. I hadn't had a reason to use much of the money I'd made at the pizzeria.

This realization brought me back to what I should do. If I stayed, I planned on going back after Christmas.

After I finished my pretzel, I threw away the napkin, and Charletta tugged my arm.

"Hey, we should sit at those chairs you like." She slipped her phone back into her pocket.

Before she continued to drag me, we waited for the excited kids to run by to see Santa at the huge, well decorated, Christmas tree.

"I remember when you and Madre had to put up with me pulling Wicks to Santa." I chuckled as I plopped onto the chair, feeling the motionless massagers underneath me awaiting my money. I also noted the other person using one behind mine.

Charletta fell back on the one next to me and laughed, too: "That first time he was put on his lap. He was bawling and begging for Mom to get him."

I whimpered, "I still feel so bad. I thought you guys knew who Santa was!" I put a dollar into her chair and mine.

"We had a monster similar to Krampus back on Yexodele, but no Santa." She said with a shake of her head.

A monster similar to KRAMPUS? I would have asked further, if the other part of what she said didn't get my attention too. "On Yexodele?"

"We lived there before we came here." Charletta closed her eyes and relaxed back. "We should get a massage at one of the shops with Wenna."

"Then why did you..." It had been so long since it was mentioned to me, but I remembered what Drake said.

"I never saw it, though, Yexodele. I was born on Earth." [...] "There was a big war that broke out between the strongest nations, and now nearly all of it is uninhabitable."

"Oh, right." I sheepishly replied.

Despite Charletta's smile, her face contained freckles of concern. She asked, "have you been told about it?"

"Yeah, Drake told me some things about the war."

"It was crazy. I was thirteen when we came here." She bustled with laughter and waved her hand around, seemingly to avoid the topic. "You know how hard it was not to use any of my tricks in front of people and to be around people that looked like me."

I didn't press her. "I think it's similar to how I feel knowing about everything now." It was disorienting to see some people at the mall, knowing one could be a giant monster living here peacefully or, like Andras, not so much.

I followed her lead and shut my eyes, too. Beneath my eyelids, the images of what has happened so far, the good and the bad, fluttered about. It's been, what, a little over four months?

"Speaking of things you can't always see," Charletta nudged my arm with her elbow. "What's on your mind?"

I flinched as the massage chair got to my neck. I pulled away from it for a moment and sighed.

"What should I do?"

"About?"

"You know…" How could I explain it?

Charletta turned her attention to mean, leaning up in her chair. "What do you feel you should do?"

I shrugged and played with one of my curls. "I don't know. Claudia's nice, and Zilla's not bad. As long as she's not using me in some hair-brain scheme, she's fine. Lev is Lev, Drake... I don't blame him for what happened." It was all Andras. He abused us both and manipulated Drake. I'd attempt to treat him the same; even with the incident at the festival, he was the only one who acted friendly and genuine to me.

"And Alexander," my thoughts sank. There had been so many things dwelling under the surface of my mind. Yet Alexander's face stuck out the most. I had never seen him like that. He was always annoyed, unbothered, or hungry, never terrified.

"I-I never had someone look at me like that before." I kept vividly hearing his raspy, hard breathing and seeing his body shake and stammer in retreat. "He looked afraid of me when he's the scary opposing one-" I don't understand how Andras could derive satisfaction from it. It made me feel sick and overwhelmed with the need to chase him. I wanted to know why he ran away from me and refused to accept what I said.

"From what Wicks told me, things went down, and Alexander had other complicated feelings at the time," Charletta said calmly.

I didn't know Wicks talked to you about it. "That's why I was trying to get it through to him. He went back to help Wicks!"

"Knowing you, of course, you did," Charletta said as she paid the chairs for us this time when they ran out. "You shouldn't fret too much about that big softie. He'll be fine."

I did a double take and choked on my spit. I coughed, "wha-" I continued the fit for a little longer. "He's not a softie!"

Charletta pursed her lips together to hold back her giggles, then popped them when she got a handle over herself, "I did my own investigation during Thanksgiving because Wicks wouldn't stop complaining about him."

"Huh?" That's right. She sparred with Alexander during the party. "that's why you fought him?""

She tilted her head, "duh." She rested her hands behind her head momentarily before she realized the robotic massage went up to it. "I wanted to know if he was as stupid and rude as Wicks described. "

He's blunt and abrasive. I didn't know whether I'd call him dumb or not. Just not as receptive?

"I think he's pretty simple," she scoffed. "He's definitely quick with magic and a lot more trusting than I imagined." Charletta rested her head back, "even after I threatened him."

"Threatened?"

She brushed her wavy brown locks from her face. "What? You think I'm not a little peeved that he might not treat my little sister respectfully?" She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. "It worked out well."

"I guess."

"Do you think otherwise"

"I wouldn't fight someone for that reason," I muttered quietly.

Charletta flicked her hand from mine and pushed my chin up, "And there's your answer."

I didn't move from the position she put me in, "not to fight people?" I could have told you that.

Charletta tipped her finger off my chin. "You decide what you do." She put her hands flat over her chest. "I can say what I think is best, same as I'm sure everyone else has or can for you, but we aren't you."

She pointed at me. "You're going through everything, Lyn. You know what you can handle and what you can take. And if you don't know yet, you'll learn."

She's right. I was afraid to make this decision alone—why did I keep fighting with Wicks then? I don't want to give up, do I?

"It's your decision, not theirs," she said, teasingly poking me. "I know it can be tough, especially with Mom and Wicks always coddling you."

My smile wavered. I let my head fall, staring at my knees, going over the side grooves in my jeans with my fingers, "What if I fail again?"

"You don't fail if you try. You fail when you give up and stop trying entirely. If you leave or stay now and leave later, that doesn't mean utter defeat. You tried, and you can work elsewhere if it doesn't work out there." She leaned closer; our chair timers were up. "Like, does it make you a failure at rock climbing if you can't do a wall?"

I shook my head. "No. I'd do a different one until I get good enough to do the one I couldn't."

"Exactly, or you might never go back to that wall again. It might not be your style, fit your groove, or it'll change. So, you aren't a failure unless you stop entirely and deem yourself one."

I puckered and relaxed my lips, still brushing the seams of my pants, while in thought. I do plan on working more after the year. I want to get better at art so I can make silly animations.

My hands rested on my thighs. And if I do quit, I will still do what I can to make that dream a reality. I'll work anywhere else and keep saving.

I looked up at her. "Thank you."

"We're always here for you, Lyn. We'll support you no matter what," she popped up from her chair and offered me an arm up, too. "just don't drive us too crazy, okay? Unless you want Madre and Wicks to seal you away like a Rapunzel forever."

Wicks is already doing that, I thought as I took her offer. "I'd also like to make another thing clear." She brought me close and sharpened her gaze. "When you ask yourself what you want, don't think of the money as a way to pay us back."

"But,"

"We're here for each other. If things didn't work out between Ulysses and me, you all would be there, showering me with everything under the sun. It's no different from us to you, no matter what your brain tells you. Got it?"

"O-okay"

"Good." Charletta glanced at the chairs back to back with ours. "Are you going to hide there all day or give us hugs?"

"Sorry!" Wenna popped up from the chair.

My cheeks were red with embarrassment. People passed us during this conversation, sure, though none were listening. Knowing Wenna was there the whole time, my cheeks were hot.

"I didn't want to ruin your sisterly moment." Wenna came around the chairs to us.

"You're allowed to join them being our sister and all too."

Wenna squealed and grabbed me first in the hug, then Charletta. "Yeah, I am!" Because of Wenna's height to me, we were nearly cheek-to-cheek.

I glanced up at Charletta as she squeezed us back.

My mind was still wrecked, trembling when I thought of what had happened so far, but for some reason, whether it be my stupid determination or the feeling of wanting to prove myself, I wasn't keen on making a decision until after the holidays.

…

Hey, you, thank you so much for reading. I'm glad I put out a story that people can enjoy! I hope you continue to enjoy it as WE have a LOT more to go! YOU BETTER KEEP PROSPERING! (Nonnegotiable, as always~).

First Chapter Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Catch up, see some maps/art, or check the latest release dates down below ↓ ↓ ↓

What I’d do for a Livable Income Part 2 (Synopsis/Chapter - List)

#widfali #vore story #v/ore #v.0re #soft vore #vore writing #v.ore #v/0re #nonsexual vore story #nonsexual vore

11 notes · View notes