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screamting · 6 months ago

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Once again trapped in trying to figure out what Wayne Industries actually Does. "Everything!" yeah sure but they had to get there somehow. Amazon was an online bookstore at first there was a lot of very rapid growth between then and now.

Usually I hear that they started as a shipping business which makes sense when Gotham is 90% waterfront, but at some point they had to transition from just shipping other people's things to shipping things they made as well. I suppose if they started making their own transports for shipping (starting with their own steamboats and later trains and cars) that would make sense. Maybe in the industrial revolution they even bought their own steel mill upon getting tired of having fluctuating prices or a steel shortage and just deciding they were going to get their own damn steel and sell the extra instead. If they chose to manufacture higher quality steel instead of cheapest possible steel that's also laying the groundwork for them to be well liked by their customers. Not railroad barons but making the steel to lay the railroad and build the trains. It's the 1800s so they have a couple patented medicines by then as well that are.... not really medicine but no one has officially noticed yet. They ship their own chemicals out west for a good time.

In 1880s Alan Wayne makes the building that becomes Wayne Tower?? Which I think is much too early, but apparently we were building sky scrapers in 1888 so business must have been booming I fucking guess. This is also the man that has them go corporate.

Of course the railroads start to fall out with the growth of cars and car lobbying. They are still used along with boats for transport but with railroads not being built as much and not being maintained and the union wars, Wayne Industries has to make a pivot somewhere to stay in the race. The family can have a lot of personal money but the business itself is still going strong in Gotham even before Bruce takes over.

I guess if they're already in shipping, they're probably importing as well by then. They may have started with steamboats but then in WWI and WWII all steel factories started producing things for the war efforts, surely they made a couple big ships by then capable of crossing the Atlantic, if they weren't already in oceanic shipping by then. It lets them ride out the great depression because of government maritime subsidies that were a little out of control until the new deal kicked in. That would've also presumably kept WI employees working in the depression and cemented them harder in the city as smaller businesses closed around them.

The patented medicine starts shifting to actual generics that are a little less Heroic post 1918.

Maybe at around that point was when WI started manufacturing... sort of everything. You get your ships, and all the things on board that you need to run a ship. You get your ovens and stoves and big pots and your radar and hell your sailors can even buy their boots and uniforms from us.

When WWII ends they shift back to transporting other people's goods but also maybe more luxury vehicles as well. Cruise services. Some nicer kitchen installations. Kitchens on land even. Get a nice WI electric mixer. Get your waterfront boots. Get your generic ibuprofen.

At that point we're closer to Martha and Thomas' era and they're just... Along for the ride I guess. Thomas is a figurehead CEO. He's off doing medical school and mostly just shows up for formalities, while Martha works in the Wayne Foundation (either the only thing Thomas really made or opened in the 60s to try and get Gotham really booming) as a charity liason. They're still not really celebrities as much as a charismatic couple in high circles. WI doesn't need them to function. It's basically just funding them as they do their own things.

And then the murders happen

And then Bruce, over eighteen, shows up having inherited the figurehead CEO title and his entire family's controlling stock in WI, and announces they're going to be doing things his way now.

The CEO/Board of directors is supposed to do things in the best interest of their stock holders.

If Bruce is the controlling stock holder, they do what he says his best interest is.

#trying to sort of talk it out to myself #wayne enterprises #wayne industries #bruce wayne

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alittlepudge-neverhurtnobody · 1 month ago

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kinktober #1

Transformation 🔀 / Farmer's Market 🌽

Ethan jolts awake on the couch in his apartment with no memory of returning. For a single, perfect second, nothing hurts, and then his human sensations rush back one by one: his back is killing him. There’s an awful crick in his neck on the right side. His head pounds, and his throbbing stomach churns like a washing machine. He stifles a belch and carefully lays back for a few moments longer. Fuck. What did he eat last night?

There’s not even the barest hint of warmth to the sky through the window. He gingerly swivels his neck until he can catch the microwave’s green LED display: 4:27 am. His alarm is going to go off just minutes from now, but he’s not sure he’ll be able to even haul himself upright for another hour at least. All of his systems have diverted power to his throbbing stomach, and he needs those systems to get the cafe up and running.

Except his alarm is across the room at his bedside, and when it shrieks to herald the morning he curses his past self for not being able to collapse like ten feet to the right. Can’t trust anyone these days, not even your own subconscious.

He stumbles across the room and smacks the snooze button, lies down carefully on his back with a pillow behind his neck and sleeps for nine more halcyon minutes before he has to get up for real.

He sits up slow, stifling a gag and then a series of progressively uncomfortable belches that make even him, a connoisseur of all things supernaturally gross, wince with disgust. The old ladies in town are always asking how a nice boy like him hasn’t settled down with anyone. He belches again, a deep rumble that makes him groan and press an arm to his stomach. Yeah, he’s a prize, all right.

He showers with the lights off, and even if he can’t see the water turn rusty as it streams down his distended midsection, he sure can smell the sting of iron rising with the steam. Never thought he’d be at a point in his life where he could not only recognize the scent of his own blood, but also associate it with relief.

The hot water soothes some of the aches in his protesting body, but his center of gravity is weighed down with what-the-fuck-ever he gorged on last night, and he’s so stuffed that he can’t draw a full breath. Jesus. Sad state of affairs when a man can’t take a shower without getting winded.

After almost forty years of this, Ethan’s at least amassed a fair amount of clothes that look professional enough without also exacerbating his various aches, pains, and post-shift bulges, not to mention the few — okay, twenty — pounds he’s put on lately. He throws on a loose t-shirt and a looser flannel over it, unbuttoned, and the biggest pair of jeans he owns, also unbuttoned. It takes him longer to put on socks and boots than it did to shower, and afterward he has to sit there panting for a few minutes with his head as between his knees as he can get it.

He ties up his damp hair, throws back half a dozen ibuprofen and chases it with a palmful of antacids, then eases down the stairs to the cafe. Out of habit he checks the mirror at the base of the stairs for any rogue smears of blood or viscera on his face and immediately he wishes he hadn’t. Oh, he’s clean, all right, but he looks like something the dog dragged in.

He gets the coffee going, starts his prep routine, and sticks a slice of each of yesterday’s cakes onto the warmer for Vanessa. After five minutes on his feet, he has to take a breather against the industrial fridge. Great. This is gonna be a long one.

When the coffee’s done, he rips open two ginger tea bags and pours his coffee in over them. Not exactly a winning combination but it’s the most efficient if he wants to feel both awake and functional. He gulps it down as fast as he can, takes exactly three minutes to sit on the floor in the deep freezer and try to marshal himself into some kind of order, and then hobbles to the front door to turn the OPEN sign around at six on the nose.

And predictably, at six-fifteen, Vanessa appears on one of the front bar stools like a specter in layers upon layers of draping black, her familiar cloud of ozone and plum wafting back to him in the kitchen like some ancient pagan essence. Her slim black bicycle is looped to the rack outside the window, secure under a deceptively robust lock that no teen yahoo has yet managed to crack. He asked her how she managed that once, years ago, and she just smiled and said it was a very old spell. He didn’t believe her then, but he does now.

“Good morning,” she calls, and Ethan catches a belch in his fist and pokes his head out to say hello.

Her eyes widen slightly when she sees him, and he half-heartedly tells himself that it’s probably not personal. Anyone would react that way to seeing the bags he’s packing under his eyes.

“Morning,” he says gruffly, sweeping his flyaways back from his face. “Your cake’s coming in a second. Moving a little slow this morning.”

“I can see that,” says Vanessa, ever tactful. “Rough night with your dog?”

He scowls at her, and she smiles beatifically. He’s hated the euphemism since he was growing up; it’s one thing for everyone to talk around it the way they do, but he’d rather they’d just say it outright than dress it up in cutesy language. Vanessa, on the other hand, finds it charming.

“Just for that, you’re getting coconut,” he says, turning back to the kitchen and pressing a hand to his gut when he’s sure he’s out of her sight line. Vanessa doesn’t protest, because she can see the future and knows he’ll give her devil’s food anyway.

Other early-morning regulars trickle in, and Ethan slogs through rote orders while Vanessa sips her first mug of coffee, black except for a touch of cream. He already has a to-go cup set out for the latte she’ll order before she leaves for the morgue.

He slugs another mug of ginger coffee, though it does little to help the glut in his stomach. It used to baffle him, how Vanessa kept that little figure when all she eats is cake and coffee with cream. Now he thinks maybe it’s not so much what he’s eating as it is that he’s running around the neighborhood stuffing himself multiple nights a month and stretching out his appetite for the rest of it.

Christ. At least it’s getting a little easier to breathe.

His headache has subsided a bit by the time Vanessa finishes her cake, though his bloat hasn’t. His stomach is still roiling unhappily, and each time he bumps it against the counter, he swallows down a groan. It’s barely been an hour, and all he can think about is how much he wants to lie down. Cesar will be in at eleven; maybe he’ll let him handle things for a while and take an hour for himself.

“Do me a favor and eat some damn vegetables for lunch,” he says as he switches out Vanessa’s plate and fork for the check. “Or I’m gonna resort to hiding them in the cake so I don’t have to drive you to the hospital for scurvy.”

It’s an old threat, but the morning wouldn’t feel complete without it. Vanessa dabs at her lips with a napkin, her eyes bright with mischief. “Your concern moves me deeply, Mr Chandler.”

“Latte’ll be — urrp — right out,” he manages, and he immediately goes red when he fails to stifle the belch that spills out of him.

For her part, Vanessa goes red too. The mischief in her eyes gets crowded out as her pupils dilate.

“’Scuse me,” he mumbles, and he ducks back into the kitchen before he can do any more damage. He makes her latte with his pulse flooding his ears, embarrassment worming through his already overstuffed stomach, and under the grumble of the espresso maker and the scream of the steamer, he tries to prod out any remaining belches with his free hand before he has to face her again.

He tries not to look her in the eye when he goes back out with her latte, but of course Vanessa is staring right at him, her half-distant gaze beveled to too fine a point. He grimaces and slides the latte toward her, mumbling something about how he’d said it was a rough night, and he’s about to sidle around her to check on someone else and make his escape when she grabs his forearm.

Her hand is cold against his bare skin, her round black nails sharp, and he blinks at her, uncomfortably aware that he must look like a wild animal caught in headlights. Vanessa’s pale eyes blink back, her wide pupils making her look even more like a creature from beyond the veil.

“I have something that could help,” she says, her grip relaxing infinitesimally. “A tincture. Not with me, but I could come back on my lunch hour.”

“Oh,” he says, squirming, “no, that’s all right, don’t go out of your way. I’ll be fine. Just overdid it last night.” He palms his stomach sheepishly, and Vanessa’s nails flash against the skin of his wrist as her grasp tightens again. “Really, Vanessa. I’ll live, I swear.”

“Well, that may be,” she intones, retracting her hand and tucking it primly into her lap. “But you don’t have to suffer.”

He scuffs out a laugh. “You tell that to the universe, Miss Ives, or to God or whatever deity you’ve got on the horn this week. Doesn’t make much difference to me who it is, but I’ve got a bone to pick with them.”

She watches him for a long, pointed moment before gathering her things and wrapping her hands around her latte instead of his tender flesh. “I’ll let them know,” she says dryly, and then she’s gone, bicycle lock coming apart easily under her black manicure.

He holds out until Cesar shows up, a little earlier than scheduled because he’s still trying to impress Ethan, and then he begs off for an early lunch and goes upstairs to nap. He dreams fitfully of Vanessa’s black nails, of the rich blackness of overturned earth and of fresh blood singing across his tongue. When he wakes up, he doesn’t feel sick so much as just heavy.

There’s a plastic takeout bag looped around his doorknob when he steps out to head back downstairs, supplementary doses of ibuprofen and antacids coursing through his system, and for a moment his gag reflex kicks. Did he order food in his sleep? He’s probably beyond help if he’s gotten to that point, good Christ.

But no. Inside there’s a little tub like Vaseline or hair pomade comes in, nondescript black, no label. There’s a note taped to it, handwritten in long, spindly letters that adjoin and stumble against each other:

Cesar let me up. He is quite susceptible to psychic threats. Apply a teaspoon or two to each wrist before you go to sleep tonight. You can add some on the back of your neck as well to mitigate nausea. Repeat in the morning if necessary. It does contain turmeric so it will likely stain any fabric it touches. Use with care.

Feel better. No one else will remind me to eat vegetables.

P.S. I did not threaten Cesar. I simply asked if he would like to see what his future held if he didn’t let me up to your door. He declined.

And then Ethan’s laughing to himself on the tiny landing between his apartment and the diner, long past caring if the sound filters downstairs for anyone else to hear. He unscrews the cap and brings the tub to his nose: that’s turmeric, all right, and alcohol, aniseed, and something with a sweet burnt-sugar note he can’t quite place. He opens his door and tosses the bag onto his bed, then heads downstairs, shaking his head. Vanessa’s getting that cake for free tomorrow, that’s for sure.

#feedist kinktober #feedist kinktober 2024 #my writing #penny dreadful #chubby ethan #ethan x vanessa #my fic #cozy mystery au

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fashion4ducks · 1 year ago

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Translation: Houston is fucking wak.

Re zoning regulation reform: could you go into detail as what that would look like in terms of wiping the slate clean. I feel like it would be better to go the houston route and just be zoning free

You do not want to go the Houston route.

youtube

Houston may claim to be "zoning-free" - and to be fair, it doesn't have some of the more common regulations on land use, or density, or height restrictions (more on this in a minute) - but the reality is far more complicated and the status quo is not one that's friendly to the interests of working-class and poor residents, or to the possibility of sustainable urbanism.

The answer to NIMBYism isn't to abolish all regulations and let the free market rip, it's to surgically target zoning, planning, and litigation that is used against affordable housing, public/social housing, mass transit, clean energy, and walkable neighborhoods, and to replace it with new forms of regulation that encourage these forms of development.

So let's take take these categories in order.

Zoning

As I tell my Urban Studies students, zoning is both one of the most subtle and yet comprehensive ways in which the state shapes the urban environment - but historically it has been used almost exclusively in the interests of racism and classism. Reforming zoning requires going over the code with a fine-toothed comb to single out all the many ways in which zoning is used to make affordable housing impossible:

The most important one to tackle first is density zoning and building heights limitations. The former directly limits how many buildings you can have per unit of land (usually per acre), while the latter limits how big the buildings can be (expressed either as the number of stories or the number of feet, or as both). Closely associated with these zoning regulations are minimum lot size regulations (which regulate how much land each individual parcel of real estate has to cover, and thus how many how many housing units can be built in a given area), and lot coverage, setbacks, and minimum yard requirements (which limit how much square footage of a lot can be built on, and what kinds of structures you can build).

the other big one is use zoning. To begin with, we need to phase out "single use" zoning that designates certain areas as exclusively residential or commercial or industrial (a major factor that drives car-centric development, makes walkable neighborhoods impossible, and discourages the "insula" style apartment building that has been the core of urbanism since Ancient Rome) in favor of "mixed use" zoning that allows for neighborhoods that combine residential and commercial uses. Equally importantly, we need to eliminate single-family zoning and adopt zoning rules that allow for a mix of different kinds of housing (ADUs, duplexes and triplexes, rowhouses/terraced houses, apartment buildings).

finally, the most insidious zoning requirements are seemingly incidental regulations. For example, mandatory parking minimums not only prioitize car-dependent versus transit-oriented development but also eat up huge amounts of space per lot. The most nakedly classist is "unrelated persons" zoning, which is used to prevent poorer people from subdividing houses into apartments, which zaps young people who are looking to be roommates and older people looking to finance their retirements by running boarding houses or taking in lodgers, as well as landlords looking to convert houses from owner-occupied to rental properties.

So I would argue that the goal of reform should be not to eliminate zoning, but rather to establish model zoning codes that have been stripped of the historical legacies of racism and classism.

Planning

Similar to how zoning shouldn't be abolished but reformed, the correct approach to planning isn't to abolish planning departments wholesale, but to streamline the planning process - because the problem is that right now the planning process is too slow, which raises the costs of all kinds of development (we're focusing on housing right now, but the same holds true for clean energy projects), and it allows NIMBY groups to abuse the public hearings and environmental review process to block projects that are good for the environment and working-class and poor people but bad for affluent homeowners.

As those Ezra Klein interviews indicate, this is beginning to change due to a combination of reforms at both the state and federal level to speed up the CEQA and EPA environmental review process in a number of ways. For example, one change that's being made is to require planning agencies and environmental agencies to report on the environmental impact of not doing a project as well, to shift the discussion away from petty complaints about noise and traffic and "neighborhood character" (i.e, coded racism and classism) and towards real discussions of social and environmental justice.

At the same time, more is needed - especially to reform the public hearing process. While originally intended by Jane Jacobs and other activists in the 1970s as a democratic reform that would give local communities a voice in the planning process, "participatory planning" has become a way for special interests to exercise an unaccountable veto power over development. Because younger, poorer and more working class, and communities of color often don't have time to attend public hearing sessions during the workday, these meetings become dominated by older, whiter, and richer residents who claim to speak for the whole of the community.

Moreover, because community boards are appointed rather than elected and public hearings operate on a first-come-first-serve basis, an unrepresentative minority can create a false impression of community opposition by "stacking the mike" and dialing up their level of militancy and aggression in the face of elected officials and civil servants who want to avoid controversy. (It's a classic case of diffuse versus concentrated interests, something that I spend a lot of classroom time making sure that my students learn.)

Again, the point shouldn't be to eliminate public hearings and other forms of participatory planning, but to reform them so that they're more representative (shifting public hearings to weekends and allowing people to comment via Zoom and other online forums, conducting surveys of community opinion, using a progressive stack and requiring equal time between pro and anti speakers, etc.) and to streamline the review process for model projects in categories like affordable housing, clean energy, mass transit, etc.

Litigation

Alongside the main planning process, there is also a need to reform the litigation process around development. In addition to traditional tort lawsuits from property owners claiming damage to their property from development, a lot of planning and environemntal legislation allows for private groups to sue over a host of issues - whether the agency followed the correct procedures, whether it took into account concerns about this impact or that impact, and so forth.

As we saw with the case of Berkeley NIMBYs who used CEQA to block student housing projects over environmental impacts around "noise," this process can be used to either block projects outright, or even if the NIMBYs eventually lose in court, to draw out the process until projects fall apart due to lack of funding or the proponents simply lose their patience and give up.

This is why we're starting to see significant reforms to both state and federal legislation to streamline the litigation process. The categorical exemptions from review that I discussed above also have implications for litigation - you can't sue over reviews that didn't happen - but there are also efforts to speed up the litigation process through reducing what counts as "administrative record" or by putting a nine-month cap on court proceedings.

Again, this is an area where you have to be very surgical in your changes. Especially when the politics of the issue divide environmental groups and create odd coalitions between labor, business, climate change activists, and anti-regulation conservatives, you have to be careful that the changes you are making benefit affordable housing, clean energy, mass transit and the like, not oil pipelines and suburban sprawl.

#there is no rhyme or reason to how Houston developed as a city #speaking as a native #we ended up with two downtown areas okay #there's the loop which always has construction on it always by the Galleria RIGHT AT FUCKING HIDALGO!!!!#you have factories and industrial spaces right next to suburbia #sometimes as close as 10- 20 ft away #there are spaces where you have fucking cows because why not #just make sure that if you're visiting you bring ibuprofen and a solid library of audio material #traffic will take you forever accept your fate #and if you can avoid the loop between 7:00 and 10:00 a.m. and then 4 and 6:00 p.m.#good luck

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wumblr · 2 years ago

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vanilla production facts

it is an orchid

the flower blooms one day per year and must be manually pollinated. pollination causes the base of the flower to swell almost immediately, from there it takes weeks to develop into a seed pod

vanilla costs about $300/lb. this being the pulp of the fruit itself, the extract we are familiar with is dilute. second only to saffron for expense. the price also tends to fluctuate greatly depending on the abundance of any given year's crops

there are three strains of cultivated vanilla. cultivation dates as far back as the totonac people in the 12th century, who live in present day veracruz, on the eastern coast of mexico. the olmecs may have also used wild vanilla in cooking thousands of years earlier

vanilla was cultivated in european botanical gardens but not really used much for 300 years after the colombian invasion of mesoamerica until finally some idiot realized the melipona bee doesn't live there, which may not have even been the correct type of bee (possibly euglossine)

five years later (1841) a 12-year-old slave named edmond albius on the island of reunion figured out how to manually pollinate the flowers, which is an extremely delicate and difficult process. some french botanist claimed to have invented this process, and people believed him for over a century

the aroma doesn't develop until after the seed pod is harvested and processed. it must be sorted, graded, blanched, then alternately sweated and dried for 15-30 days. the blanching halts fermentation, which makes one wonder, what is a fermented vanilla seed pod like?

synthetic vanillin is derived from eugenol, from clove oil, and lignin, from any number of sources. the vast majority of synthetic vanilla is made from wood creosotes which occur as a product of lignin pyrolysis (fire). its major source is, like anything, the petrochemical industry, which requires heat to fractionally distill oil into several byproducts (kerosene, naphtha, gasoline, etc). which is to say, 85% of synthetic vanilla is made from the wood smoke of the oil industry. you might be inclined to ask "doesn't this pollute" which, if you recapture the smoke to sell its particulate creosotes to synthetic vanilla producers, no, i guess not really, or "why don't they use oil to heat the oil" because it is more profitable to sell the oil and burn wood to make it, obviously

it is difficult to tell the difference between natural and synthetic vanilla in baked goods, because the baking process burns off the distinctive notes, most of which differ by growing region (tahitian vanilla is floral, indonesian vanilla is smoky, mexican vanilla is woody or spicy, bourbon vanilla from reunion has an alcoholic richness)

price markup occurs not at the point of farming, but after the point of curing. there is no set price for green vanilla beans, but there is a set price for dried vanilla beans, after they have passed through several middlemen from farmer to broker to curing. after this point, they are marked up several more times before finally making it to grocery store shelves in the form of bottled extract

in 2017 a cyclone destroyed maybe 30-80% of madagascan vanilla crops, where possibly as much as 60-80% of the global supply of vanilla is grown. in the 5 years since then, the price has not recovered, but boy howdy, have the labels gotten more fancy in specifying when it's from madagascar, haven't they?

70% of madagascar lives below the poverty line, despite the island producing the majority of the world's supply of the second most expensive spice

by volume, the number of vanilla beans imported to the united states every year is nearly two for every single member of the population (~640m, for a ~330m population)

anyway stop pouring a whole bottle of it into a cup for a joke what the fuck is wrong with you people i hope to god that ibuprofen potion post was staged with some vaguely brown liquid. also the word vanilla etymologically derives from the latin vagina meaning sheath ok bye

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bettsfic · 8 months ago

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Hi!

I was wondering how do you elevate or better flesh out a very vague premise (e.g. A man falls in love with his boss). But there are many ways to take vague ideas like this and it’s hard to make it more.

there are really only two paths: the easy, long road; and the hard, fast road. on extremely rare occasion you may hit the jackpot and find an easy, fast road, but in my experience that is like winning the lottery.

the easy, long road:

you write the idea down somewhere. you let it incubate for a really long time. you have faith in the universe that all the pieces will begin to click into place until you go, "i've got it," and start writing.

i call that moment "ignition." when your vague "what am i even trying to write" idea clicks into "wait wait wait, i'm onto something here" and your brain starts churning out ideas for scenes and plot points.

there can be a lot of false starts, where you try to shoehorn your vague idea into another vague idea and see if they make a less vague idea, but sometimes that doesn't work. you may also start working on something else and realize you're unconsciously writing that vague idea you had 3 years ago. but overall it's a passive process. you have to wait for specificity to find you.

the hard, short road:

you write the idea down somewhere. you stare at it until you get a headache, and then you take some ibuprofen and stare at it some more. using the "ignition" metaphor, this is like your car not starting so you just keep turning the engine until it either starts or you flood it.

if you brute force your vague idea, you can potentially ruin it for yourself, but if you're motivated to take this path, i think your first step is to get out a notebook and start brainstorming. if the premise is "a man falls in love with his boss," write a list of industries where they might work. then circle a few of them and start researching those industries to see if you can find a nugget of information that clicks with your idea until you get some kind of conflict churning.

if you can't find anything, you make more lists. list out potential endings, plot points, inciting incidences. character traits and arcs. countries, cities. for every item of every list, make a list of possibilities. if this, then this and this. if that, then that and that. and you go on and on and on until you maybe have enough to get some words down.

an example:

my sister, a copywriter, started doing social media for a welding school. she told me she was learning a lot about welding and that i should write a story about a welding teacher. this school specifically is one of the best in the country, and my sister said something to the effect of, "people come from all over the country to live in this shithole town for six months. that seems like an interesting story."

in my A4 rhodia, on december 19, 2023, i wrote,

story of welding teacher at best welding school in the country

lonely ISTP casey affleck kinda guy (that was my sister's idea; she meant it in a derogatory way)

being taken care of by his grandmother?

all i had was "welder" kind of in the back of my head. fast forward to earlier this month, watching season 3 of the Bad Batch and having a lot of feelings about Crosshair's shakey hands (i've also developed a tremor in my hands).

and then i thought, a welder whose hands begin shaking. that's a conflict, that's an inciting incident. his whole career might be in jeopardy.

i wrote this paragraph:

He'd never admitted to his wife that he wanted kids. They didn’t have any, though, for the same reason he never became a farmer—he didn’t want to raise something just to see it slaughtered. Who knew what kind of war the country would cook up in eighteen years? Turn of the century, sending kids out to god knows where, just the right number of years from Vietnam that everyone would’ve forgotten it, the way that by Vietnam they’d forgotten Korea.

i managed to weave this general idea into the bigger plot of a novel i started a long time ago, and it reignited my interest in that project, and now i'm feeling really good that this 200k monstrosity i thought i would just throw away now might have some potential, more importantly some focus, all because of a vague idea i wrote down months ago.

#writing advice #prewriting #plotting #idea generation

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historia-vitae-magistras · 11 months ago

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some big brother Alfred comforting sad little brother. i imagine there's a great difference between how Alfred would comfort Matthew in colonial times vs the present. 'what's wrong? is there anything i can do? please don't be sad! I love you! do you need me to talk to Lord Father?' vs 'you look like shit. go take a fucking a shower while I make you some pancakes and then you're taking a fucking nap you dickhead. i love you. and comb your fucking hair'

When Matt's young, absolutely. Alfred is very sympathetic to his half-mad baby brother; his personality flaws are understandable and forgivable given that he was a castaway marooned from the French Empire and landed suddenly into Britishness. A lot of genuine distress on Alfred's part about the fact Matt's seeing shit and is often too anxious to eat. He puts Matt on his shoulder when the snow gets too deep and nudges him to eat more and spend more time closer to the fire. It's also pre-industrialization when Americans, as individualistic as they were back then, had a communalist streak. The mad and the various other types of issues are taken care of at home. A burden shared is a burden halved. It's nice to have a baby brother eager to snuggle and read, too, even if he is a little off his rocker from those dark things men do in the dark of the Northwoods.

Older... Older is a little different. It's not cute or sympathetic when Matt occasionally falls off the bandwagon when they're adults. He's peaceful; he's got no real issues by Alfred's metric. He's literally not doing anything useful most of the time, either. He won't meet NATO spending, can't get Quebec under control, and falls apart economically if the US so much looks at the border. There's no 'reason' Alfred can see to excuse Matt's unshowered, unfed, unrested state when he's in a funk. Society has changed, too. What was a healthy respect for individual responsibility is now the only metric by which one's merit is judged. A lot of "well, I don't get to go feral in the woods, or there are actually consequences. Get your shit together." He parrots a lot of bootstrap rhetoric. "Get it together, you have nothing to be upset about." "I'm the superpower, and I live my entire life on an acutely observed high wire act, and I handle that better than you handle having literally no responsibility." But then, when it's obvious, when he can see Matt's made an effort at least, or there's a 'reason' he's downright tender. Kind of goes back to that Calvinist thing of the "deserving needy."

But if Matt or anyone else ever pointed any of this out, Alfred would insist none was happening. Of course they love each other, of course Matt is the exception to his grumbling and that should be obvious. But all too often, unless Alfred is put directly in the path of apparent suffering in a way that doesn't feel burdensome, it can feel like just another task between him and the bottom of his to-do list. One that Matt is supposed to take care of himself because that's their deal. Sometimes it's a reset, though. Like, oh, Matt accidentally drove himself into the ground to keep up with Alfred's batshit lifestyle? That's a bit endearing, and making breakfast, tossing him some ibuprofen, and taking a day are spiritually human things Alfred needs as much as Matt does the physical rest.

#the ask box || probis pateo #alfred and matt || lonely boys with the longest borders

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collectorcookie · 1 year ago

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I AM HOME AGAIN. Ok so part two of trickstar dynamics: anzu edition. I already kinda made one but it was more about anzu's past sooo it doesn't count.

Anzu and subaru: THE BESTIEEESSS I LOVE THEM SO MUCH THEY ARE SO CUTE. When trickstar was still a very new unit subaru was like "man i wish we had our own uniforms. Wouldn't that be cool" (because at yumenosaki academy having your own uniforms instead of the standard ones provided by the academy meant that 1. you're hot shit aka important and popular enough to have a specific image and 2. you're hot shit enough aka rich enough to be able to afford your own costume). And then anzu is just like "My boy? Wants something?? My bestie? Wishes for uniforms??" And then she SINGLEHANDEDLY learns sewing from kuro in like a week and makes the trickstar uniforms. And subaru could cry from joy.

And much later subaru got some job where he has to wear a suit but he's never worn suits so he asks super model sena for help, and sena is like "well what kind of suit do you wanna wear" and after a long time of thinking, the only thing he came up with was a suit made specifically by anzu for him. That's all he wanted agshetekwhdghr. But anzu was pretty busy so he settled for a suit that was approved by her.

And when they ended up in the industry anzu made him the super sparkly outfit and i KNOW everyone hates that card because of the missions BUT that card has a special place in my heart because even after their early high school days, even after subaru won the ss and trickstar became super popular and anzu became a very important producer in ES (going as far as being a part of P. Association), subaru still adores and appreciates outfits made by her specifically asdffkslagdkfjw.

Also Pretty sure that anzu was one of the few characters where subaru dropped his happy-ultra-cheerful persona to open up to her, being all like "You know anzu, sometimes i feel like half of my emotions are straight up missing". Ouch. He doesn't do that often! If at all!! He trusts her enough to do that!!!!

There's more to say but there's already another post that goes into more details about this (i will reblog it after this but how on earth can you link someone else's post on here)

Anzu and mao: you may have seen or noticed how mao is always like "omg no don't touch anzu that's sexual harrassment" to completely normal affection between friends and thought to yourself "The hell is wrong with this dude". And like, i can only speculate why he's like this but it's probably due to anzu's first experiences at yumenosaki. Poor girl got transferred into a school of boys committing crimes against each other, got kicked in the face (with koga's full body weight), fainted, got a concussion, went to the infirmary, got sexually harrassed by one of the teachers (seriuosly what the hell jin), then got followed around and pressured by a playboy (past kaoru was uhhh...something). Rei ended up finding her and just...hiding her in a cupboard. And later on rei finds mao and is like "hey you. I hid your girl in the cupboards" and mao's bewildered at this statement. And rei continues with "yeah you should probs go pick her up or something". Mao then goes and to his surprise, he actually finds her in the cupboards, terrified and exhausted.This is the context to this very lovely mao illustration:

(Mao's first 5* is literally "let's take ibuprofen together, producer" heeelllpp)

Mao ends up always walking her home after this by the way, to the point where he sometimes eats lunch with her family. (Sometimes the other trickstar memebrs walk her too but most often it's Mao) So yeah, that could be the reason why he's so sensitive anytime someone gets close to anzu. He's just really overprotective of her.

(I will entirely ignore all the more fanservicey stuff that occasionally happens between anzu and mao in the early stories because...it just...feels so ooc for mao. And completely unnecessary in general) however anzu is also very fond of mao, as we see in !-era ss, where anzu notices that mao is beating himself up for not being enough for trickstar and so she goes to his room to specifically cheer him up and reassure him when he wakes up

Anzu and hokuto: ooohhh my gooood, the scene where he goes to visit anzu in the infirmary after she got hurt and fainted and he. He just. He just feels so bad for her getting hurt and then starts this whole ass monologue about why he dragged her into this. This huge monologue where he just lets out all his anger at yumenosaki's state and hopes and dreams for the future and how she gave him hope but he burdened and expected too much of her right at the beginning. AND SHE WAS AWAKE THE WHOLE TIME WITHOUT HIM KNOWING. And his speech just motivates her to actually ally herself with trickstar because she wants things to change for the better too.

And then waaay later she faints again from exhausting herself too much and hokuto notices how much she has been doing, not just for trickstar but as a producer in general. And so to lighten her burdens and to prove to her that they have grown as a unit and do not need to rely on her the whole time, he revokes his rights to participate in the SS. Listen to me. I want you to understand that as a unit, trickstar established itself to prove that change is possible. The entire main storyline in ! is about them beating eichi's ass in DDD. And DDD is such a huge deal because it determines which unit is allowed to participate in SS as a representative. And SS is a huuuuge national tournament for idols sorta thing. So when hokuto goes to eichi being all like "hey mr. president, i revoke my rights to participate in the SS", eichi (who has been supporting trickstar ever since they beat him in DDD because SS is far more important than DDD) straight up grabs hokuto and screams at him something along the lines of "HOKUTO ARE YOU /SRS OR /J???? YOUR GIRL FAINTS ONCE AND THIS IS HOW YOU BEHAVE???!!! SHE'S NOT WITH YOU FOR ONE TIME AND YOU STEP DOWN, YOU FREAKING COWARD?? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW IMPORTANT OF AN EVENT SS IS". And hokuto, still very straight faced and expressionless, simply states "oh i'm not stepping down. I want trickstar to fight more live battles to rewin our rights to represent yumenosaki in SS. Both to prove to everyone that trickstar really is suited for this, and to prove for anzu that she doesn't need to always worry about us anymore." Do you have any idea how much i wanted to howl at the moon after reading that.

By the way this is also the context for this one wataru illustration who was also in the council room at the time:

(When you watch your boyfriend grab your bestie by the neck and your bestie says the most jawdropping shit you've ever heard)

Anzu and Makoto: this is actually a lot more of a relaxed and chill dynamic than i expected. Most of their early interactions are just makoto being "oh my god i'm so afraid of girls i have never talked to a girl in my entire life what even are girls" and then anzu would be like "but i am one?" and makoto's just "HOLY SHIT YOU'RE RIGHT". Anyways after makoto builds a little self esteem it looks like him and anzu just start sharing a braincell sometimes. Like that one moment in finder girl event story where mao is super worried that no one will help him, and the makoto anzu duo don't even talk to each other, they just exchange looks and think to themselves "this guy has no idea that everyone in yumenosaki would help him huh". Fun times.

#Sorry i was searching for a specific subaru post and ended up getting distracted and liking 50 subaru posts #enstars #ensemble stars #mao isara #makoto yuuki #subaru akehoshi #hokuto hidaka #Tumblr ended up giving me a warning that a text block cannot be more than 4000 characters i am crying how did this happen #trickstar #The anzu post ended up being longer than the original trickstar post. Absolute queen. Love her.#anzu enstars #lore rants

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wheelsgoroundincircles · 9 months ago

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Tim Richmond

Timothy Lee Richmond (June 7, 1955 – August 13, 1989) was an American race car driver from Ashland, Ohio. He competed in IndyCar racing before transferring to NASCAR's Winston Cup Series. Richmond was one of the first drivers to change from open wheel racing to NASCAR stock cars full-time, which later became an industry trend. He won the 1980 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year award and had 13 victories during eight NASCAR seasons.

Richmond achieved his top NASCAR season in 1986 when he finished third in points. He won seven races that season, more than any other driver on the tour. When he missed the season-opening Daytona 500 in February 1987, media reported that he had pneumonia. The infection most likely resulted from his compromised immune system, which was weakened by AIDS. Despite the state of his health, Richmond competed in eight races in 1987, winning two events and one pole position before his final race in August of that year. He attempted a comeback in 1988 before NASCAR banned him for testing positive for excessive over-the-counter drugs, ibuprofen and pseudoephedrine; NASCAR later announced it gave Richmond a new test and tested negative. Richmond filed a lawsuit against NASCAR after the organization insisted it wanted access to his entire medical record before it would reinstate him. After losing the lawsuit, Richmond withdrew from racing. NASCAR later stated its original test was a "bad test."

Richmond grew up in a wealthy family and lived a freewheeling lifestyle, earning him the nickname "Hollywood". In describing Richmond's influence in racing, Charlotte Motor Speedway president Humpy Wheeler said, "We've never had a race driver like Tim in stock car racing. He was almost a James Dean-like character." When Richmond was cast for a bit part in the 1983 movie Stroker Ace,[6]"He fell right in with the group working on the film," said director Hal Needham. Cole Trickle, the main character in the movie Days of Thunder, played by Tom Cruise, was loosely based on Richmond and his interaction with Harry Hyde and Rick Hendrick.

#Tim Richmond #stock car racing #racing #nascar #nascar cup #nascar cup series

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fishing-lesbian-catgirl · 2 years ago

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Need someone to make one of the “let’s take ibuprofen together” images of Asbestos and instead of “let’s take ibuprofen together” it’s just really condensed text that says

“If you or a loved one was diagnosed with Mesothelioma you may be entitled to financial compensation. Mesothelioma is a rare cancer linked to asbestos exposure. Exposure to asbestos in the Navy, shipyards, mills, heating, construction or the automotive industries may put you at risk. Please don't wait, call 1-800-99 LAW USA today for a free legal consultation and financial information packet. Mesothelioma patients call now! 1-800-99 LAW USA”

This is nothing

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aminocamino · 7 months ago

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Day 15 24 April - Belgrado to Atapuerco 31km and 479m

Couple of things I should mention. I discovered these roast almond dispensing machines , 1 € for a handful and I introduced Carrie to them. They are addictive and every time we saw a machine we would dispense some. Stopped it now though as they can ruin your appetite.

In addition yesterday Carrie developed a sharp hip pain - worrying obviously. When she took her pack off to suss it out and put ibuprofen gel on it she discovered the rucksack was sitting on the toggle of her top. So no major injury but we both have the ABA (all body ache).

This morning it must have been -1/1deg. There was frost on the ground and it didn’t begin to melt till 10am.

This is the old bridge going out of Belorado, a reminder of its past.

It was a beautiful cold morning - passed this marker on the way. Still a long long way to go! And the ruin is all thats left of the Monastery of Sant Felix de Oca.

The path out of Villafranca Montes de Oca was steep, very surprisingly. And the path then wound through lovely forestry track. Saw a man selling scallop shells he had painted himself and a very odd wood sculpture park. Some of the carvings were abit macabre…

The monument is Monumento de los Carlos and marks the shallow grave of 300 people who were executed in 1936. Very moving marker in a remote place.

The forestry track to San Juan de Ortega was beautiful to start but after 7km of the same scenery it was painful. We arrived at San Juan de Ortega - a stunning village with two cafes. We stopped for a drink at the first one - and to our delight we bumped into Nathan/Abi and 8 month old Fred. Hugs all round. Its good to meet up with your Camino family. They told us they had a bad experience with an Albergue owner in Belorado who was so mean they would not put the heating on. It was 1 degree last night. Poor Fred! Think they eventually forced him/her to turn it on.

Carrie and I loved San Juan de Ortega - definitely a place to stay overnight at.

The church of San Nicolas de Bari and the buildings attaching to it as well as the courtyard are stunning. Especially on a beautiful sunny day such as this one.

After San Juan it was another slog to get to Ages. We loved this village. It had a beautiful high street and some very old buildings - it wasn’t spoilt by industrial buildings. Definitely another one to stay in.

The 2km to Atapuerco felt like 15. We walked over 19 miles (not the 18 per the Camino planner I am using!) today and we felt it. Our Albergue was an interesting experience. Not our favourite - just felt grubby. And the showers were so tight! When I was hanging clothes out - I noticed a pair of bright red orange underpants… they followed me around because in the morning they were on the radiator right next to my jacket 😲. And a bloke keeps wondering around in his grey green underpants… reminds me and Carrie of hairy man!

Carrie took this one of me in front of my bed. We were both in top bunks unfortunately. Not sure why I am smiling as the place didn’t feel clean.

The one restaurant in the village was closed. But the bar was serving pizza, Carrie offered to share but I was starving. We had 19 miles to feed. Afterwards we sat in the sun in the middle of the village and chatted to Rebecca and Debbie - both lovely Canadian women we got on with really well.

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