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rebeccathenaturalist · 2 months ago

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Are Cowbirds Invasive?

(Originally published on my website at https://rebeccalexa.com/are-cowbirds-invasive/)

When discussing invasive species, we often think of species that evolved far away on other continents. Here in the United States, thousands of non-native species have been brought here since the dawn of colonization; while not all became established, a significant number have since become aggressively integrated into local habitats, much to the detriment of native species they displace or otherwise harm. But sometimes a species will simply encroach upon an ecosystem adjacent to its native home, and then spreads from there, having the same negative impact as other relatively new arrivals. Which begs the question: are birds on the move like barred owls (Strix varia) and cowbirds invasive?

I want to especially look at the brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater). Like the barred owl, these chunky songbirds have expanded their range in North America in recent decades due to the extensive damage we’ve done to habitats across the continent. Both were particularly affected by the destruction of the Great Plains. Settlers tore up the ancient grasslands with plows, suppressed fires that had kept forests from encroaching, and started a trend of afforestation–planting trees where they aren’t supposed to be–that continues today. In the latter half of the 19th century, the plains bison (Bison bison bison) was slaughtered almost to extinction to make money off the sale of their remains, and to disempower indigenous communities throughout the region who were reliant on this keystone species for their very existence.

The owls hopscotched across the growing number of tree plantations that dotted first settlements, then towns, then sprawling suburbs and cities, and thus were able to reach all the way to the west coast, where they have put serious competitive pressure on the northern spotted owl. The cowbirds, on the other hand, became refugees as all but the last few hundred bison disappeared from the landscape. They instead turned to domestic livestock like cattle for their survival.

(Read the rest under the cut.)

Same Habits, Different Hosts

Brown-headed cowbirds are unusual in that they evolved to migrate with the bison, rather than waiting for new herds to arrive. The birds feed on insects stirred up by the herd’s hooves, along with seeds of grasses and other plants along the way. Cowbirds perching on the backs of these enormous mammals would have been a common sight prior to the bison’s near-extermination, and today they may still be seen watching for prey from on top of cattle, horses and other domestic livestock.

Because cowbirds have spent thousands of years migrating with their bison hosts, they couldn’t afford to settle in one place for months at a time to raise a nest of chicks, particularly as spring and summer would be prime time for finding insects to eat. It might be weeks or even months before a herd would return to a given area, and without the help of the bison the cowbirds would have had a difficult time finding enough insects on their own, let alone for a hungry nest of babies.

So the cowbirds evolved a rather controversial strategy: brood parasitism. Instead of building their own nest, they find someone else’s and leave a few eggs there for the unwitting owners to raise. Some people anthropomorphize the cowbirds as being “bad”, “lazy”, “evil”, and so forth. And, of course, it’s easy to call cowbirds invasive, too, since they literally invade the nests of other animals.

But nature is amoral; there are no inherently good or evil animals. While we may project our distaste for the cowbirds’ practices onto their value as a species, brood parasitism is simply one of a plethora of strategies animals have evolved in order to pass their genes on to the next generation. If it gets the job done, then it is an evolutionary success. Like the mate cannibalism of some mantids and spiders or animal infanticide practiced by male lions, baboons, and dolphins, brood parasitism may be vicious by our standards, but it is a legitimate survival tactic in the sometimes-cutthroat world of nature.

Are Cowbirds Invasive?

We can certainly call cowbirds invasive when they hop into a nest they didn’t build just to drop off an egg. But are they invasive on a more widespread level? Arguably yes. Not all invasive species were physically transported by humans, but the impact is the same: they have a deleterious effect on one or more other species in their habitat. And unlike coyotes, which only spread to new horizons when their competitors were extirpated by human hunters, brown-headed cowbirds are not filling a niche that was previously taken by another species. they are, instead, an often-unwanted addition to local ecology.

In addition to tearing up the Great Plains and then planting trees there, we also cut down massive numbers of trees in historically forested areas across the continent, leaving patches of fields in which cattle and other livestock graze. This has led to the spread of the cowbird beyond its normal range in the prairies. Other bird species that evolved alongside the cowbirds have developed ways to respond to brood parasitism, from throwing cowbird eggs out of the nest, to building a new nest entirely.

A young cowbird sits in a sparrow’s nest. Note the sparrow egg in the lower left corner that has been pushed out of the nest.

But birds in the cowbird’s expanded territory aren’t always so savvy. That includes species that have seen declining numbers in recent decades due to habitat loss, lead and other toxins, and predation by another invasive species, the domestic cat (Felis catus). Since cowbirds and their chicks will both remove their hosts’ eggs from a parasitized nest, and cowbird chicks may toss their host’s young out or steal all their food, this means fewer numbers of the host species being successfully hatched and fledged. All of which means cowbirds are becoming a serious conservation concern.

That being said, we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss an entire species by calling all cowbirds invasive. Within their native range in the Great Plains, they are an important part of local ecology. And–unlike certain members of our own species–they are not intentionally cruel animals that want to see other living beings suffer. They are simply doing what their ancestors have done for thousands upon thousands of years, and unlike humans they have no capacity to consider the impact on their hosts.

One last note: if you are tempted to remove cowbird eggs from a nest, please don’t. First, it’s an activity best carried out by professionals who have a better sense of what nests should be attended to and when. Moreover, egg removal can not only cause the host birds to abandon their nest and their own eggs, but cowbirds are more likely to attack hosts who remove the offending eggs, and you could be setting the nesting pair up for retaliation from the cowbirds. And brown-headed cowbirds, like almost all native birds in the United States, are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which makes it a federal offense to disturb or harm the birds themselves, as well as their eggs or nests. If you are in an area where cowbirds are considered to be invasive, and you are concerned about another species’ nests, contact your state wildlife department or the closest Audubon Society (some of these societies have changed their names in recent years, but fulfills the same roles as before.)

Did you enjoy this post? Consider taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes or hiring me for a guided nature tour, checking out my other articles, or picking up a paperback or ebook I’ve written! You can even buy me a coffee here!

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finishinglinepress · 1 year ago

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NEW FROM FINISHING LINE PRESS: Room Tone by Vanessa H. Smith

On SALE now! Pre-order Price Guarantee: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/room-tone-by-vanessa-h-smith/

Vanessa Hedwig Smith is a painter, filmmaker, and writer who has lived and worked in India, Nepal, England, and the US. Her series of 94 short films, The Art of Impermanence was exhibited at a satellite Venice Biennale show. She has worked on feature length documentaries, shorts, PSAs, music videos, outdoor installations, murals, and other design projects. Smith is most proud of a BBC Correspondent piece she produced, which was instrumental in helping free a 14-year old girl from prison, which helped changed Nepalese law, and which won the Amnesty International Media 2000 Award. Smith is a co-founder of the mental health series– Let’s Talk. She holds a BA from Stanford in Urban Design, and an MA from Columbia University in Anthropology. Her work has been published in The Search for Reality, #Poetry Apocalypse, Tiny Seeds Literary Journal, Chronogram, Topical Poetry, On the Seawall, and Silent Auctions Magazine, She is at work on a full-length book of portraits.

Her work can be seen at http://vanessahsmithpictures.com

PRAISE FOR Room Tone by Vanessa H. Smith

The “dailyness” in a Vanessa Smith poem is never dull, and never what’s expected. Her west-coast swagger is reminiscent of early Joni Mitchell — “my face, like an interview, / tells the most important / stories first.” Her “uploaded anguish,” is that of a speaker who “wipes daily dabs of lipstick on the car carpet,” saturating the space, making a hole in its place. She sees that a “rolling wave held something back in response to the sand…” and finds a tragedy there. The daughter of a portrait painter, this painter/poet’s first collection is clear-eyed and insightful, poetry that points to her inheritance, a vigilant and insistent gauging: “We wait, we dry out into plaster, and become the wall / The dry and cold of a California I never mastered is coming back in plumes.”

–Elaine Sexton, poet and critic, author of Drive and Prospect/Refuge

This is so moving and delicate — the journey from caring for infants to looking after the elderly and their needs, and all the tenderness and sense of employment (and possibly enjoyment) both require. The rhythms of marriage and divorce work so well on the page. Smith is so right in what she says about January — the way it is always twice as long as any other month. I like the sense of the world in which every tiny thing counts for something and the cost of that on the heart and soul and the corresponding yield…

–Susie Boyt, author of Loved and Missed and My Judy Garland Life

Room Tone is wildly evanescent — traversing expanses of time and space, then spiraling into the palm of Smith’s hand. … [Her] poems are illuminated by a ferocious sense of beauty and tragedy, converging in sublime insight.

–Broughton Coburn, author of The Vast Unknown and Aama in America

In Room Tone, silence is rendered palpable through Vanessa Smith’s hauntingly described scenes of life, love and loss. Whether it’s observation or imagination, there’s a meditative nature to her writing that will transport you to a state of personal reflection. This collection is a call to open your heart to the mysteries that surround us.

–Sara Arnell, author of There Will Be Lobster: Memoir of A Midlife Crisis

Please share/repost #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #read #poems #literature #poetry

#poetry #flp authors #preorder #flp #poets on tumblr #american poets #chapbook #chapbooks #finishing line press #small press

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adalidda · 4 months ago

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Sourcing and Contract Farming Programs for 2025 in Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Madagascar

September 29, 2024

We are excited to announce that my team and I will be visiting Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Madagascar from October to December 2024 to lay the groundwork for our 2025 sourcing and contract farming programs. During this time, we will focus on building strong partnerships and exploring collaboration opportunities to ensure a successful and sustainable program.

If you are an agribusiness leader, agricultural cooperative, or agrifood manufacturer interested in joining our 2025 sourcing or contract farming programs, please contact our Senior Advisor, Mr. Rajaram Gulothungan, via WhatsApp at +91 94451 04542. He will gladly provide further details and schedule a meeting with our team.

Our Product Portfolio

Vegetables:

Fruits:

Spices:

Nuts & Seeds:

Animal Feed:

Coffee & Tea:

Cocoa:

Other Agricultural Products:

Processed Products:

Sourcing Program

If you are a producer or manufacturer of any of the listed products, we invite you to explore global export opportunities with us.

Requirement: The ability to supply at least 100 metric tons per month per product.

Contract Farming Program

For the 2025 season, Sahel Agri-Sol is introducing an ambitious initiative to source white sesame, maize, and sorghum through our contract farming program. Our objective is to provide cooperatives with stable markets and fair compensation for their crops.

We seek cooperatives that can meet the following criteria:

These prices are based on pick-up from the cooperatives' warehouses, with logistics handled efficiently to ensure minimal disruption to farming operations.

Our Commitment to Agricultural Cooperatives

At Sahel Agri-Sol, we believe farming is more than a livelihood—it’s a way of life. Our contract farming program is built on trust and long-term collaboration, providing partners with significant benefits, including:

We are equally dedicated to environmental sustainability. Our practices are designed to protect soil health, water resources, and biodiversity, ensuring the longevity of agriculture in Africa. This partnership provides cooperatives with the tools and expertise to adopt sustainable methods, helping secure a thriving future for the region.

We look forward to working together to advance the growth of the agricultural sector in 2025 and beyond.

Warm regards,

Kosona Chriv

Chief Sales and Marketing Officer

Solina / Sahel Agri-Sol Group

Sahel Agri-Sol

Hamdallaye ACI 2 000,

« BAMA » building 5th floor APT 7

Bamako

Mali

Phone: +223 20 22 75 77

Mobile: +223 70 63 63 23, +223 65 45 38 38

WhatsApp/Telegram global marketing and sales : +223 90 99 1099

Email: [email protected]

Web sites

English https://sahelagrisol.com/en

Français https://sahelagrisol.com/fr

Español https://sahelagrisol.com/es

简体中文 https://sahelagrisol.com/zh

عربي https://sahelagrisol.com/ar

Social media

BlueSky @sahelagrisol.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/sahelagrisol.bsky.social

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sahelAgri-Sol

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/sahel-agri-sol

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj40AYlzgTjvc27Q7h5gxcA

Sahel Agri-Sol, an agribusiness group headquartered in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, with operations spanning West and East Africa, is committed to bringing the finest agricultural products from the Sahel and surrounding regions to the global marketplace.

Our mission is rooted in promoting inclusive economic growth, fostering sustainable development for farming communities, and preserving their cultural and environmental heritage.

By partnering closely with agricultural cooperatives and local producers across the Sahel, West, and East Africa, we guarantee fair compensation for their premium crops, driving prosperity and resilience in rural areas.

#Agriculture #Farming #SourcingPrograms #ContractFarming #Sustainability #Agribusiness #UgandaAgriculture #TanzaniaAgriculture #MadagascarFarming #ExportOpportunities #CocoaProducts #CoffeeTrade #SorghumFarming #SesameSeeds #MaizeProduction

Photo: Coffee tree in Uganda (credit: Venture Uganda Travel / Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Read more at https://sahelagrisol.com/en/news/66f7b0d46e2754c1df167c36

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suntodayseeds-blog · 5 months ago

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passivenovember · 4 years ago

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Snippets of partially written fics that will never see the light of day, part one!

He keeps a battered spiral notebook in the back pocket of his Levi’s like some sort of behavioral scientist. Life Among the Gorillas, Jane Goodall through and through, beginning when the car is parked on Cherry lane.

Billy considers the slopping roof, the screened in porch, and the cracked pavement that proves the house has never seen a family from the west.

That’s the first fact in his notebook, the holy grail Billy will share with the world when he journeys back home again; houses in the Midwest are not equipped to care for families that were born near the sea.

Families where children are born with boards nailed to their feet. The surfing and skating kind.

Billy doubts they’ll be doing much of either, here.

“It doesn’t look that much different from home.” Max clutches her regulation board to her chest. The world’s most awkward and uncomfortable teddy bear, wheels poking and prodding skinny arms as she glances over, worrying the skin of her lip. “Do you think it looks different?”

Billy thinks it does.

He hates it. Everything about it; the brown house, on its brown yard, next to its brown driveway. Pancakes and hash browns. Grass as far as the eye can see.

Max worries the skin of her lip.

Billy thinks it looks different. Thinks it looks like hell, like wastelands and flood lands and miles of isolation, but. “Nah.” He shakes his head anyway.

“Yeah?”

“Feels different, though.” Billy rolls down the window, plugging his nose dramatically. “Smells different, too.”

Max snorts. “Shut up.”

Small victories.

“It does, it smells like cow shit.” Neil and Susan are still a ways off, pulling the Ford behind the moving van. Billy figures they have time, before.

Things change. Before boards are exchanged for Nike shoes and wool coats in the fall.

Billy digs around for his lighter. “Wonder what the locals do about the stench.”

“Maybe they plant flowers.”

“Impossible,” He says, taking a pull from his smoke and stretching his legs where they sit. It’s been a long drive, but. He’s not ready.

Not yet.

“Maybe they have massive green houses and everyone buys crates of lilies and sunflowers when they seasons change.” Max fiddles with the wheels on her skateboard. “Maybe their living rooms are full of yellow petals. Maybe they only eat sunflower seeds.”

“Sunflowers don’t smell like anything.”

“Bullshit.”

“They don’t, that’s why the factories cover them in barbecue sauce. To make ‘em smell good.” Billy watches Max filter through a series of expressions before she lands on her favorite.

Irritation. “Just because you’re my big brother--”

“Jesus, don’t call me that?”

Max blinks. Wide and owlish. Wet. “How come?”

And Billy doesn’t want to start off on the wrong foot. Doesn’t want to start over at all, but. That’s what this is. Endings and beginnings and relationships that crumble and turn to dust before siblings rebuild them out of clay, into.

Something shiny.

And new.

Billy tugs the collar of his jacket up and around his ears, frowning. “Makes me sound old.”

“You are old,” Max says lightly. “You know too much random shit not to be old.”

“Like what?”

“Like,” Max adjusts the skateboard, running her hands across the etched and worn surface. “How to change a tire. Where to find the best hiking boots. How to roast a turkey--”

“‘S not my fault your mom can’t cook for shit.”

“I know that.” Max says. “That’s what old people do. Complain about how their recipe for peach cobbler is better, and the local youths are ruining the duck pond, and like. Brag about shit they know how to do.”

“Oh yeah?” Billy counters. “And what kind of shit is that?”

Max shrugs. “Survival.”

She opens the car door after that, placing the skateboard on the pavement and testing the waters. Billy rolls her window down for better driveway vision.

“You think I know how to survive.”

It doesn’t seem possible.

“Yeah, you know.” Max gets a little more confident after her feet plant themselves on the board. She maneuvers pretty well over the cracked pavement, a kick flip here, a slash turn there. “ You understand lots of stuff. Maybe everything.”

“Everything, huh?”

Billy watches with glee as she falls on her ass over the fist split in the concrete. Max looks up at him, scowling when he can’t quite swallow the laugh working its way up his throat.

“The jury’s still out on that one.” She says stiffly.

Billy doesn’t buy it for a second. “Whatever, shithead. I’m your big brother now, and I know everything. Remember that the next time you’re trying to get your way.”

Max flips him the bird. Billy leans against the hood of the Camaro, eyes tracking the movement as Max tries the turn again.

If nothing else it feels good to stand on his own two feet.

Everyone in the Midwest leaves their clothes out to dry in the afternoon sunlight, and the only reason Billy knows this is because Steve Harrington’s clothes smell like warm sugar and daffodil blossoms.

Billy thinks it might be the detergent his mother uses.

Maybe the uber expensive, hyper polyester blend that makes up the polos Steve swaps out for gym clothes at basketball practice, but when he finally works up the courage to do more than sniff, Steve looks at Billy like he’s gone insane.

“You actually have dryers on the west coast?”

Billy frowns. “Of course we do, what is this. Little House on the Prairie?”

Harrington balls up his gym shorts, tossing them at Billy’s head. “The next time you wash your sheets, hang them outside.”

So Billy does.

And the next time he crawls into bed Billy realizes that sun bleached fabric does more than block out smells it creates a fortress. A barrier. Warm afternoons and the smell of oak leaves wrapped in his own little world.

From somewhere, through a haze of smoke and the wafting grasp of day old pizza, a needle tore a hole that felt like a bee sting. Painful in the way his feet would sometimes burn on the Middle School blacktop during summer.

Nancy yanked on the yellow rubber-band, letting it fall back in place. It slapped thickly against the meat of Steve's arm, and.

He was hanging in a butcher shopped. Ripe for sale. Wrapped from head to toe in caution tape, and.

Radioactive.

"Ow." Steve hummed distantly, fingers moving to rub. To soothe.

Nancy slapped his hand away. "Stings if you do it like that."

"Stings now, holy shit."

"You gotta let it heal."

Steve frowned. "I didn't think that was the point."

Which made Nancy giggle. "What, not to let it heal?"

"Yeah, I thought." He licked his lips. Once. Twice. It was like seeing God. "I thought we were supposed to let it bleed."

#harringrove #billy hargrove #max mayfield #steve harrington #jaz speaks #I dunno man

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thebibliomancer · 4 years ago

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #244: "AND THE ROCKET'S RED GLARE!"

June, 1984

The Wraiths walk among us!

Actually, the Dire Wraiths would be a good answer for what the imposters in Among Us are. They're imposters, they can shapeshift, and they have deadly tongues.

I think I've cracked this case wide open.

Anyway, we go straight from Secret Wars into another event, although this is a crossover called Wraith War and mostly a story arc in the ROM book but with tie-ins to Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four. In fairness, we were told the Avengers would be getting involved with the Dire Wraiths before Secret Wars went on sale.

That's the life of a superhero. One day, getting raptured to a toy commercial and the next, fighting alien shapeshifters who aren't Skrulls or Space Phantoms.

Last time: half the Avengers were involved in the Secret Wars, the other Avengers hung around and had small adventures. Then the first half of the Avengers returned. And Wasp quit as chairperson so Vision could take over with his big plans like establishing a second Avengers team.

This time: a nice boat.

The nice boat is chilling on the Banana River outside the John F. Kennedy Space Center when a ball of light swoops down on it.

But with Captain Marvel on the Avengers, sometimes a ball of light is her and not the Beyonder bodyjacking people.

Monica returns from patrol to report no suspicious activity at the space center and also to compliment this sweet boat.

Remember how she was in the market for a boat as part of whatever new job she’s cooking up for when she’s not Avengersing.

Well, this is Wasp’s yacht and it’s real nice.

Vision pops up through the deck to tell the two to join everyone else below for a strategy sesh.

It’s kind of a casual strategy session. Half the Avengers are dressed down.

Wasp is in a bathing suit with a neckerchief around her neck. Wanda took off the body stocking part of her costume so looks like she’s wearing a swimsuit despite the boots. And Starfox decides when in Rome and takes his shirt off.

Wasp isn’t even chairperson anymore and she’s still telling some men to undress and this time its Steve Rogers. She only gets him to take off the civilian clothes that he’s wearing above his costume though.

And only as a concession to the heat. They’re in FLORIDA and he’s dressed in layers. I live in Florida and sometimes one layer is too many layers.

Also, Steve America muses on how they were only back from Secret Wars a few hours when Wasp stepped down as chairperson in favor of Vision but he describes Secret Wars as “our confrontation with that... that Beyonder” which is technically accurate but not really how I would describe Secret Wars.

But that’s the hazard of writing about something in the past that hasn’t come out yet. Can’t really have Steve say “that confrontation with the most recent time Doom swallowed an energy field bigger than his head” because that would spoil the game and also maybe that plot point didn’t exist yet. Although the seeds are there from the start.

I would have just had Steve say “back from that Secret War TM” or “back from being kidnapped by the Beyonder.” Go with what’s clear and obvious from issue 1.

New Chairman The Vision summarizes the plot.

New Chairman The Vision: “All right, Avengers... just as a review, we’ll be meeting at the cape with General Bridges within the hour to discuss a number of supposed accidents... Accidents which Washington suspects may be sabotage caused by alien creatures known as Dire Wraiths. The government has managed to suppress information of most wraith activities -- but the space center is too much in the public eye. Eventually, word will leak out. We must do something!”

Captain America: “You’re right on that count, Vision! If an alien life-form attacked the space-center, there could be worldwide panic!”

And as soon as he says this, there’s an explosion on the test-pad.

Talk about timing!

The Avengers leap immediately into action!

Wasp just heads into action in her swimsuit because its not the first time she’s had an adventure in her swimsuit. Her powers are entirely internalized by this point. But its impressive for Wanda because she puts the bodysuit part of her outfit back on without seemingly taking off the leotard part.

Chaos magic? Chaos magic.

Also, they leave Wanda to anchor the yacht and then follow in a skiff so its not like she needed to get dressed magically between panels. She just decided to.

When the Avengers arrive there’s a massive cloud of smoke covering the launchpad and they spot some men dashing into the smoke instead of away from it.

Captain Marvel returns from scouting and mentions that the damage is confined to the test-pad gantries and that there’s not all that much damage.

But then there’s a loud KROOM second explosion which takes down the main supports. The rocket booster on the test-pad starts tipping over so Starfox, Captain Marvel, and Vision rush to try to stop it.

One of the attackers, the Rocketeers, says a few more mini missiles will take the launch-pad out of commission but exposition isn’t a free action and he gets WHUNK’d by Captain America’s mighty shield.

And if that weren’t enough to make him yield, Wasp shoots him in the nipple.

Wasp: “Let’s have no complaints out of you! I can make my Wasp-stings a lot nastier than that!”

Yeah, that guy is lucky she didn’t use one of her patented ‘can blow up a small house’ Wasp-stings. His nipple would never have been the same.

Vision and Starfox catch the rocket booster before it smashes into the ground but Captain Marvel zips around it and spots major fuel leaks.

Since it’s going to explode even if they gently set it down, the two huck it into the Atlantic.

Then the three start lifting rubble and rescuing those injured from any of the mini-missile explosions.

Over at Cap(tain America) and Wasp, they’ve beaten up all the Rocketeers but one. Good job you two! By some accounts the two least powerful among the Avengers present and yet you’ve kicked some ass.

The Last Rocketeer: “You may have stopped my buddies, but you won’t stop me!”

Wasp: “Oh, brother! If you only knew how many times we’ve heard those words -- !”

Captain America: “Don’t embarrass the man, Wasp! He’s in enough trouble as it is!”

Wow, if its not enough that they’ve beaten up all his friends and are about to beat him up, they just burned him so bad that I don’t know if he’ll survive.

The guy throws a lawn dart bomb at Cap and the Wasp. Cap tells Wasp to get behind his shield but the bomblet sharply veers up with a ninety degree turn.

Wow, how improbable!

If you guessed that Wanda showed up after parking the yacht, you guessed right.

And then Wasp shoots the Last Rocketeer in the eyes. His goggles did nothing.

Even though the Rocketeers were wrapped up pretty easily, Vision suggests that they had help since they knew exactly when and where to strike.

But a Dire Wraith shaped silhouette watching this fight from afar reflects that the Avengers are skilled and decides to unleash THE MISTS OF THE DARK NEBULA.

Which is a thick fog. But wait! There’s more! The fog is like a mind-numbing gas and makes the Avengers slow to respond, even Vision who only breathes out of social obligation. And it rouses the Rocketeers who escape into the fog.

Vision follows after them, less affected than the others, but he gets bowled over by the Rocketeers taking off with their rocket packs which presumably given them their names.

As soon as the Rocketeers escape, the fog conveniently disperses.

The Avengers go around making sure they’re all alright but when Cap(tain America) asks Vision, he claims that he is a lot more resilient than “an organic man” and tells Cap not to waste concern on him when there are injured people to be helped.

Wasp, in her thoughts: “Sounds like the only thing wounded was his pride!”

While the Avengers carry injured people to arrived ambulances, Vision castigates himself for the failure.

Vision: “We failed! My first official battle as Avengers leader, and the enemy got away! I suppose I should find solace in the knowledge that the sabotage was cut short and lives were saved... but I cannot!”

“I must not allow myself to be satisfied by anything less than total victory... Not if my long-range plans are to succeed! The Avengers must ferret out the power behind the Rocketeers and bring it down! The trust of the world could depend on it!”

That’s a completely non-ominous thing to think, Vizh.

Also, maybe you could help?

Meanwhile, over at Los Angeles International Airport, Hawkeye and Mockingbird arrive traveling as a perfectly normal couple. Hawkeye wanted to bring his arrows on as carry-on but yeah. Hard to explain that to the TSA.

... Wait, did the Avengers not have a spare Quinjet to send Hawkeye in?

Anyway, Bill Foster meets them at the airport. He’s local to LA and has been checking out some real estate leads for the West Coast Avengers base.

WEST COAST AVENGERS!

It continues to be approaching.

Are we going to get Bill Foster on the team? We haven’t seen him in Avengers for what feels like ever.

But enough of West Coast Avengers, there’s more Dire Wraiths plot to do.

Back at the Cape of Canaveral, General Bridges introduces the Avengers to the very high-strung Dr. Woodrow Cather, the highest ranking civilian scientist.

Cather flips out on seeing the Avengers and asks why they’re here. I guess nobody debrief him on all the explosions.

General Bridges has a slideshow for just this instance and activates a projector to show everyone a Dire Wraith.

The ROM Space Knight and Dire Wraiths plot has been going on for about fifty issues in ROM’s own book by this point so there’s some amount of exposition that just shotgunned in one page.

The Dire Wraiths are an offshoot of the Skrulls, apparently. Except instead of just shapeshifting they have a more predatory method of camouflage. They attack a victim with a drill-like tongue, eat their brains, and assume their forms while the original person is reduced to ashes.

At least, that’s how female Dire Wraiths work.

The Dire Wraiths are like the Badoon in having some truly wild sexual dimorphism and a high degree of hostility between the sexes. The female Dire Wraiths prefer sorcery and the males SCIENCE. Except there was a war of the sexes over differences in their plans for conquering Earth and the women Wraiths won and became the dominant Wraiths.

The Rocketeers that attacked the launchpad today are similar to a group of male SCIENCE Wraiths who also called themselves Rocketeers and attacked Clairton, West Virginia.

So Vision suspects that a group of male Wraiths survived the war of the sexes and are up to Something.

General Bridges isn’t really concerned with the nuances of who and how people are attacking the launch site. He just wants it all to stop.

Dr. Cather is leading the ion-drive project and its already in trouble because most funds have been diverted to the space shuttle program.

General Bridges doesn’t think the ion drive is a target, OR worth attacking (ouch), because none of the sabotage has struck it yet. Bridges thinks the Space Shuttle should get priority attention and decides he’ll call a full battalion to help the Avengers guard it.

Vision disagrees.

He pulls rank and forbids calling in any backup.

Captain America: “You’ll have to excuse us, gentlemen! Our chairman... has plans of his own!”

I BET HE DOES!

Meanwhile, continuing the Quicksilver subplot, it’s Quicksilver.

He Lockjaws down to Transia, Earth to go recruit Bova to be nursemaid for his baby but to his startlement he finds that her cabin has been destroyed.

Big mystery for Quicksilver but followers of this going-slightly-above-and-beyond liveblog will know that Magneto trashed it while interrogating Bova for information about his children.

Wanda and Pietro already rejected Magneto as their dad for being a jerk plus the jerky way he’s treated them. I imagine learning he terrorized a poor cow woman won’t soften their hearts to him.

Anyway, back to the Dire Wraiths plot.

The Rocketeer Dire Wraiths are sitting around and complaining about how the Avengers kicked their butts and they didn’t know humans could be so strong. But what they’re really concerned about is the Dark Nebula Mist.

That’s clearly the sign of the Dire Wraith sisterhood but why would they help the science Wraiths if not some weird mind game to flush them out.

One of the Rocketeers declares that the sisterhood’s intervention gives them a chance to complete their work. Sure, overt sabotage will be hard with the Avengers hanging around like they don’t have anything better to do. And sure, they’ll set up detection equipment. But the Avengers won’t suspect that the Rocketeers will have jamming watches that’ll let them avoid detection.

That’s why Science Wraithing is so rad.

The next morning, the Avengers are spread out throughout the Space Center.

Captain Marvel is standing sentry on top of the vehicle assembly building. Starfox is at launch complex 39A thinking patronizing thoughts about the Space Shuttle.

Starfox: “They call this a space ship? Charming.”

And Wasp watches over the ion-drive rocket.

Meanwhile, Vision, Captain America, and Scarlet Witch are in the security command post watching the cameras with the special detection systems.

If I remember Linkara’s Romtrospective, the special detection systems are probably based on Rom’s Analyzer, which he let SHIELD examine.

Anyway, Scarlet Witch switches to a random monitor to demonstrate that so far so good, pointing at monitor three and its entirely unsuspicious group of technicians.

Vision: “No problem?!? There’s a very big problem!! Can’t you see?!”

Turns out that Vision has better vision, hah, than a human. And with his special eyes he sees that those four technicians are NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.

He immediately grabs the microphone to the PA and announces DANGEROUS INTRUDERS and for everyone to evacuate the area immediately.

The four intruders make a mad dash to the ion-drive ship but Starfox does them a drive by punching.

Starfox: “Good morning, gentlemen! Since you aren’t evacuating the premises, might I assume that you’re our intruders? Hmmm?”

I’ll reveal a cursed secret. If it weren’t for Starfox’s special pleasure beam powers, I wouldn’t have a problem with him. He can be pretty fun sometimes.

Captain Marvel also zips over in light form and then re-assumes her meat form.

One of the Dire Wraiths: “Strike while she is helpless in her corporeal form!”

Captain Marvel: “Helpless?”

Never assume Captain Monica Marvel is helpless just because she’s made of meat. She was a boat cop, dammit.

Its a well known fact that all boat cops that get superpowers and join the Avengers, know how to flip a jerk.

Anyway, Dr. Woodrow Cather, the highest ranking civilian scientist, also runs towards the ion-drive rocket despite the evacuation order.

Dr. Woodrow Cather, the highest ranking civilian scientist: No need to worry soldier! I won’t be long at all... Once I’ve cut my ship off from ground control! I’m glad I returned to the test bunker last night. Otherwise, I might have been found like that the others! Their sabotage missions brought them to a bad end, just as I’d hoped! Now, their capture should be all the diversion I need -- to get away scot free!

Gasp! Dr. Woodrow Cather, the guy who was alarmed to see the Avengers involved is one of the Dire Wraiths and he’s dicking over his alien invader associates!

Is there no honor among alien invaders?

Scarlet Witch and Cap(tain America) arrive in Jeep to where Starfox and Cap(tain Marvel) are kicking the Dire Wraith ass. Scarlet Witch uses her do-anything powers to force the Dire Wraiths to assume their natural lumpy orange forms.

But then Dr. Woodrow Cather blasts off in the ion-drive rocket, luckily managing not to either blind nor burn to death anyone on the ground.

Captain Marvel zips after the rocket because speed of rocket is still way slower than the speed of light.

God, I love Monica’s powers.

The Dire Wraiths start bemoaning how they’ve been abandoned and betrayed but worse than that DOOOOOOOMED.

Cap(tain America) is like ‘come again?’

The Dire Wraiths explain that the ion-drive is actually a secret star-drive, that they cobbled together using whatever ‘backward technology’ they could get and sometimes just steal from other projects (I guess thats what the sabotage was? Covering the thefts?). But uh the red glow from the not-ion-drive exhaust is a bad sign.

It means that the engine is unstable and could explode like an anti-matter bomb at any time.

And to complete the hat trick of ‘rocket stolen’ and ‘rocket gonna explode and destroy a chunk of Earth’, Wasp was watching the rocket and is now trapped inside the command module, squashed against the bulkhead from the acceleration.

THE WORLD IS IN DANGER BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, THE WASP IS!

DAMN YOU DR. WOODROW CATHER, IF THATS YOUR REAL NAME!

Follow @essential-avengers because we like Wasp here. Wasp should be in more stuff in modern comics. Like and reblog as well but only if you think that the post is likeable and slash or rebloggable.

#Avengers #Dire Wraiths #the Vision #Scarlet Witch #Captain America #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #Starfox #the Wasp #i miss she hulk #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #the avengers are doing pretty well this issue #they got to chill out on a yacht and were pretty effective at dealing with the Wraiths #but still another issue to go

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jaeminlore · 5 years ago

Text

The World is Ending and I'm With You

SPINOFF | PLAYLIST (pls listen while you read)

summary: and i won't sleep through this. i survive on the breath you are finished with. words: 6.1k+ category: angst, fluff, suggestive, mark won't stop talking about how he used to be a cub scout warning(s): death, religion mention, death mention, implied sex ohoho i'm getting bold, littering (not from mark bc he's a good boy), unedited a/n: john mayer song that's kind of an easter egg, and a poem at the end by someone called s.b.,,, also you don't have to read the spinoff to read this one :) but it does take place in the same universe/timeline.

You never were one for smoking. Your mother always told you it would increase risk of cancer, and in turn, death. But now the world is ending, and your mom hasn't been home in a few days. So, you smoke.

The convenience store you work at doesn't have many packs left. Your manager has some stupid rule about rationing stock now that delivery truck drivers are quitting at a rapid rate. They don't want to be stuck on the freeway when the meteor hits. Which makes sense to you, but it's all your bitter manager seems to complain about.

You take a pack out from behind the clear screen and extract a stick. You're in the middle of lighting it with a lighter that most certainly isn't yours when a wide-eyed boy appears in front of the counter. He dumps a basket full of snacks onto the register, followed by a plethora of hygienic products.

"You worried we'll run out?" You try to joke. Really, this is a small town, and your store is the biggest one in town (which isn't saying much at all.) It's completely possible.

The boy shrugs. "I'm gonna hit the road before everything goes down. I don't want to be here if a riot starts. Also, I want to find my soulmate."

"Don't we all?" You say, blowing smoke out of your mouth.

The boy coughs and gives you a short glare. "Something to look forward to, at least."

You throw the still-lit cigarette across the store. Part of you hopes it will catch on something and burn the store to the ground. But it goes out on the cold linoleum floor. You look at the boy again. "I'll give you all of this for free if you let me come with you."

(Mark isn't sure why he chooses a road trip in the first place. It's not like his beat up old van can outrun the end of the world. Maybe deep down, he hopes it can.

He also isn't sure why he's let you tag along, save for the fact that he really needs to stock up on food, just in case. And he's also lonely. Maybe talking to someone will calm his restless soul.)

Mark has a giant van. There's a mattress in the back, complete with a blanket and pillow. He tosses his groceries in the back and clumsily shoves the key in the ignition. "Are you sure about this? I'm going across the country."

You light another cigarette. Five packs stolen from your store sit in his glove compartment. "We have what? A week left? I have nowhere better to be."

He takes this answer and begins to drive. The radio is staticky, but you can make out the preacher's message of salvation in the last days. You wonder if it gives the boy comfort. It gives you anxiety, so you take a long drag and focus on the weird way the cigarette smoke warms your mouth. "I'm Y/n, by the way."

"I'm Mark." He turns down the radio. "I'm pretty sure my soulmate is in California, based on my tattoo."

"Okay," you say, because you really don't care. You haven't believed in soulmates since your parents got divorced. You throw the cigarette out of the window and try not to think about the way your moon tattoo burns against your collarbones. "Does your tattoo say California or something?"

"No, it's just a sun."

You want to call him dumb. Or stupid. Or an idiot. "California isn't the only place on earth with a sun, you know. And apart from that, it's a huge state. How are you gonna find your soulmate in a week?"

Mark takes an anxious sip of his gas station slushee. "I know it's stupid, okay? But I feel drawn there, so it's my only shot."

You lower the sun visor and grab the pair of aviators that are hooked onto it. "Well I feel drawn to the sea, so let's go to the beach first."

(Mark wants to tell you that he knows he won't find his soulmate. His soulmate is probably dead with the rest of the world that got caught in the atmosphere change. His soulmate is probably farther than California, but for some reason the state is stuck in his mind.

He remembers his aunt's beach house. Solar generators for electricity and water. A familiar place to stay in the end. But for now, he wants to take his chances on the road. He doesn't want to be dormant, and he knows you don't either.)

Mark hits Oregon at three in the morning. He nods off once and veers into the side of the highway before you finally convince him to pull over for the night.

He parks at a truck stop and the two of you take showers, using what products you and Mark bought (stole). You use more than you need. Shampoo gets in your eyes.

Your eyes are still burning when you meet up with Mark at the van. He's already asleep, an open bag of chips beside him. He must've been too tired to even eat.

The back of the van is covered in those battery-powered clip-on fans from the mall kiosks. Mark told you earlier that he had bought them on sale. You had asked earlier why he hadn't just stolen them.

He told you he believes in heaven, and doesn't want to hurt his chances of getting there. You told him you don't think good works matter anymore.

You eat the chips and fall asleep beside him, ignoring him as he mumbles random phrases in his sleep.

(Mark lays down on the mattress. The van is hot, even with the windows cracked, even with the cheap fans, so Mark feels his skin beginning to get sticky with sweat. He doesn't want to eat. He doesn't want to sleep. He doesn't want to breathe in this foggy air and think about the inevitable.

He wishes you would just come out of the shower and join him. He waits for what seems like ages, until he's too worn out to keep his eyes open. He falls into a restless sleep, not noticing the way the mattress dips when you join him.)

"My dad was a mafia boss," you say, spitting a sunflower seed shell onto the dashboard. The Clash is playing from Mark's radio, and the station wavers in and out as you drive across state lines.

"Really?" You've found that Mark's eyes grow obnoxiously big when he's surprised about something. His mouth forms a little 'o' shape and his voice grows softer. It's adorable, so you make it your mission to surprise him as much as you can. That, and road trips are pretty boring when the world is ending.

"No."

"Come on!" Mark pouts. You can see it in your peripheral vision. "Stop lying to me. I bet your dad doesn't even have a cool job."

"Guess then," you taunt. "By the way, we passed the California-Oregon state line like, five minutes ago."

Mark gasps and rolls down the window, looking back towards the passing highway, as if the sign is going to still be there. "I can't believe I missed it! This could be it. This is where we find our soulmates."

You spit out another shell. "I'm hoping my soulmate's name is Long Beach because that's where I'm going."

"Let's stay together," Mark says. He's biting his thumbnail, eyes towards the empty road in front of him. "I don't know how many more of us will be left."

You want to correct him and say that there are plenty of people left, and yet you know that a lot of people took the pill. Or got sick. Or killed in a raid. Funny, a meteor is scheduled to hit the earth and people decide to leave early. Or they lose their humanity entirely, and take people out with them. Truthfully, there aren't many people left at all.

"Okay," you say. Your eyes stay on his face a little longer than necessary. You take note of his wide, innocent eyes and wonder if he even understands what's happening. Or maybe he just looks like that. But really, all it does is make you want to protect him from the inevitable.

Maybe there's a secret spaceship you can hide him in, and he can start a new, albeit solitary, life on the moon.

You'd never make it to Area 51 in time. That's where they keep the spaceships, right?

(Mark doesn't know how to tell you that he doesn't even care about this stupid soulmate thing. He just doesn't want to be alone. He doesn't want to say that, because it means he has to vocally admit that he is alone. Truly. Not by choice.

He was out of town when his family got the flu. The atmosphere got too much. Whatever sickness killed and left as soon as it came, took them too. And he had to go. He had to get out, as far away from the east coast as he could. So he decided on the west coast. And then he decided on you.)

"Let's get our tan on!" You joke. The clouds are heavy and dark above the water. It looks like the sky and the water are becoming one, however slowly or quickly. You grab Mark's elbow and pull him towards the sea.

The waves roar against the silence of the land. There's a family down the ways, barely noticeable under the pier. You watch a seagull fly down towards the family and steal something. The little girl shrieks, but you don't know if it's in excitement or fear.

The beach is distractedly empty. No people — save those already mentioned — are anywhere to be seen. There's debris everywhere: old umbrellas, coolers, and towels are half-buried in the sand.

The tide is coming in higher (something the news channel probably warned about) and for some reason, it makes the world feel incredibly small.

Mark has already got his legs in the water. It's lapping at his clothed jeans, but he doesn't seem to mind. His back is turned to you. He's facing the horizon, still and silent.

You hate to ruin this for him, but as the mood grows more dismal, you want to lighten it.

You sneak up behind Mark and jump on his back. Your weight catches him off guard, and the two of you plummet into the cloudy water. Mark yelps when the water hits his torso. You fall in after him and grip his shoulders. Closing your eyes tight, you hold you breath and lift your face above the surface. "Feel refreshed?"

Mark coughs. He rubs his eyes, wincing when the salt reaches beneath his lids. "Why would you do that?"

"It's fun," you say.

Mark begins swimming into the deep water. He looks a bit like a lost child, doggy paddling in the vast sea. He grins, and his lips are a bit lopsided. You notice his cheeks grow hollow when he smiles. "You scared me, Y/n."

The sentence ends timidly, like he isn't sure if he's allowed to say your name out loud. But you like it. It's hesitant and soft; loud because it's the only word spoken for miles; quiet because it's Mark. You wonder briefly how to get him to say your name again.

The two of you swim until you can't touch the sandy floor below you anymore. Mark holds his own, but you struggle a bit. "They were right about the tide getting stronger."

"Here," Mark swims over to you and wraps his arm around your waist. "Stay close to me."

Something akin to reticence settles against the wall of your skull like the numb reminder that this is all very weird. Mark is a stranger, and you're cross-country with only him. It bothers you that your mind is already growing attached; your heart already growing attracted. This is the last thing you need to happen during your last days on this literal godforsaken earth.

You swim back to the shore first and lie on the sand. It clings to your wet skin. The tide laps at your feet. The sun is going down, and the air feels overwhelmingly muggy. You close your eyes.

(Mark thinks about the waves. He thinks about the frequency of your voice when he splashes you. He thinks of how your smile seems even prettier at this time of day. He thinks about the way you pulled back when he asked you to stay. While he knows this isn't exactly the time to fall for someone, he can't help but feel like he's starting to.

He watches you fall asleep in the sand. Your cheeks are red. Your eyelashes flutter against the tops of your cheeks. Your lips are chapped. Mark finds that he wouldn't mind kissing you. Or just simply being by your side.

For a few solitary moments, he doesn't even think about the end. Just the now.)

It feels like you blinked, but when you reopen your eyes you find that time has certainly gone by. Mark is sitting a ways away, stoking a makeshift fire.

"I was a Cub Scout," he says.

"I need a smoke." You go back to the van and pull out a pack and a lighter. Your brain feels fuzzy from having fallen asleep on the beach, and your back itches from the sand that has scratched its way down your shirt. To distract yourself, you lean against the van and take a drag; look up towards the sky.

It's a dark reddish black, some ominous code that the world is definitely coming to an end. Clouds swirl hazily against each other and you can see that a storm seems to be forming over the ocean. Months ago this would've been beautiful. An instagram-worthy shot, a coffee pot topic, and nothing more.

Right now it sends a chill down your spine.

You drop the cigarette and head back to where Mark is sitting. He has some kind of pot out over the fire, and what looks like a can of soup inside. The can itself is tucked neatly in the little box Mark has beside him. You wonder why he cares so much about a planet that's already dead. "Thanks. For, uh dinner."

"Yeah," Mark clears his throat and shifts in the sand. "That's what friends are for."

"We're friends now?" You raise your brow at Mark while he hands you a bowl of soup along with a spoon.

"I sure hope so," Mark quips. "I don't make soup for just anybody."

You laugh at that. Your heart stirs in excitement. Your stomach growls, so you ignore the heaviness in your chest and take a bite of your soup.

That night you fall asleep with a belly full of food and sand down your shorts. It's half-ideal, half-hell, but Mark gives you a hug before the two of you tuck in, so it's okay.

(Mark wants to say that he wishes the two of you were friends a lot sooner, but that would be weird. He's only known you for like, three days. Maybe he's delirious.

But he gives you a hug before you fall asleep anyway. He hopes you can't hear how fast his heart is beating. It's stupid anyway, he thinks.)

Four days left. Give or take. You aren't completely sure to be honest, and that brings on an entire onslaught of horror that you've never really felt before. There's something so terrifying about this whole thing. It's like you've knocked on Death's door, and you have no idea when he's actually going to open it.

Mark hides it well. He drives the two of you down to Hollywood Boulevard.

It's trashed. What was once the walk of fame is now defaced with graffiti, food, trash, and what looks like human feces. You throw up in the fake bushes and Mark pats your back while you do.

"Guess I won't get my picture with Kermit the Frog then," you joke.

Mark's eyes suddenly widen. He grabs his backpack straps. "There's a Kermit the Frog star?"

"Yeah," you laugh at Mark's expression. "My aunt was obsessed with The Muppets. She had a laminated picture of the star in her sewing room."

Mark bites his lip and averts his eyes. "I have a Polaroid. Not much film, but we might could get a few pictures."

The stars have to be cleared first. Mark comes up with the idea to sneak into one of the restaurants nearby and using their cleaning supplies. And since you have all day and nothing to lose, you agree.

The thing about a large and empty place like Hollywood Boulevard, is that every shadow feels like a threat. Memories of dystopian movies come flooding through your memories when Mark hands you a giant broom. You wonder if some evil man with a god complex is going to come and kidnap you both.

But the only people the two of you ever see is a man in a small shop that looks like it contains weed.

You and Mark sweep away as much debris as you can, while avoiding anything that came out of a human body. The graffiti covers a lot of the stars, but after a few hours of walking and sweeping, the two of you find it.

"Kermit," Mark breathes a side of relief before laughing out loud. His laugh is stark against the silence.

You join him anyway. "I can't believe we found Kermit! My aunt would be so jealous right now."

"Your aunt sounds weird," Mark says, no real bite to his remark.

"She is," you confirm. "She's up in Maine somewhere. At least, you know, last I heard."

Mark senses the change in tone and drops his backpack to the ground. He pulls out a baby pink Polaroid camera. He points it at you. "Say cheese, Y/n."

There's your name on his tongue again. That sound itself has you beaming as you lean against the brooms long handle and cock your head to the side. The camera clicks.

Mark takes out the picture and shakes it before he looks at it. "Cute," he says casually, then he tucks it in his shirt pocket.

"I want to see it," you say. You hope that if you don't acknowledge the warmth in your cheeks, Mark won't either.

"Too bad." He sticks his tongue out at you. And before you can retort, he squats down beside the star. "Okay, let's get a picture of this bad boy."

You squat down too. You match Mark's peace sign and smile in the direction of the lens. The camera clicks.

Nothing comes out. "Shit," Mark mumbles to himself. "I guess I had a lot less film than I thought."

You're about to apologize, feeling like maybe you should've put up a bigger fight when he offered to take your picture.

Mark seems to read your mind. That, or he's just too nice for his own good. He pats his shirt pocket and gives you a generous smile. "Worth it, though."

The sky is getting progressively darker as the two of you walk around, occasionally pointing at places you would've liked to go, had the circumstances been different.

You both eat from snacks you find in a convenience store. You take the rest and leave it in the truck. "What should we do now?" Mark asks.

The light from the store across the street flickers. You look at the neon leaf and then back to Mark. "Have you ever gotten high?"

(Mark has gotten high before, and he tells you so. What he doesn't tell you is that the picture in his pocket is getting heavier as the seconds pass. What he doesn't tell you is that this picture may be the only evidence left of you in a few days. Maybe it will disappear with the rest of them. Mark briefly wonders if a fireproof box would work against the end of the world, and whatever that entails.

He wants to tell you that he would immortalize you in a million different pictures if he could. He would show the dying world a million different ways to breathe again.

Instead, he only nods his head. "Yeah, but it's always fun to do again.")

You're positive it's the fact that you've taken one too many hits of whatever joint that weed guy rolled up for you. 'Said it was his best; he was saving it for something special. Since the world is going to hell, he shared it with you.

And now you're in the bed of Mark's van, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the way Mark's lips wrap around the joint. He has a really pretty mouth, you realize, and you want to say it out loud but something heavier takes hold of your chest and you bury it down with all of your other fears and revelations.

Mark coughs. Puffs of smoke blow out into the hot van, and he winces at the smell. "Didn't the guy say this was the special stuff? Why does it still stink?"

You take the joint from him and package it up, hoping to save it for another day (or maybe you just don't want to get so high that you can't focus on Mark's face.)

Mark scrunches his nose and leans back against the cool window of the van. "We should sleep outside tonight. It's too hot in here."

"Under the stars?" you ask. You feel your heartbeat pick up, but it falls just as quickly, and you settle back into the blankets. "Don't wanna move."

"I'll move you," Mark says, a mere whisper against your right side.

You watch him open the trunk. He hops out. "Come on, Y/n. Take my hand."

His hand is warm and calloused and rough and you want to ask him if he can actually play that guitar in the back of his van or if it's just for show. Mark lets you sit on the concrete of the pier. It's warm beneath your skin. Mark parked the van right against the pier, so the two of you could sleep right next to the edge.

While you hang your legs off of the edge, Mark drags the mattress out and pushes it right up to the railing. "Didn't peg you for a stoner."

You grab the blanket he throws at you and lie down on the mattress. "I'm not," you say, no bark to your words. "You're just better at it than me."

"At smoking?" Mark laughs. "I only took one hit. You took, like, four."

"So?" You pout and refuse to return his stare. Instead you try to focus on the stars, and the way their alignments seem off. You wonder if it's the end of the world, or if it's just the weed. "I wish we had more time."

The candor in your voice causes Mark to finally settle down. He lays down. His shoulder brushes against yours, and when his fingers twitch, his knuckles touch yours. It stirs up a gentle longing in your heart. What might be. What never was. You turn to face Mark. "We haven't found your soulmate, yet."

Mark lets out a shaky breath. Something between a gasp and a sigh. He blinks, looks at you like he's indulging, and blinks again. "I don't know if I want to."

(He knows he doesn't want to. Hasn't for a long time now. But your innocent worry has him thinking. Has him wondering how much a soulmate is worth in the end.

He thinks of how you let your guard down when you're high. He thinks of the jolt of electricity that zips down his arm when your fingers touch his. He thinks of your face, so close to his and yet he's so, so afraid of leaning in. Or letting go. Or scaring you away.

Mark doesn't have to find his soulmate. There's no time, and no lead. He thinks that he'd be disappointed anyway.

At the end of all things, he thinks he'd just rather be with you.)

"Where'd you even learn how to siphon gas?" you cough. The air is growing thinner. An estimate of three or four days left, and the air is beginning to fall against the atmosphere like a weighted blanket. Ash and dust rise from the ground, and you keep a bandanna around your nose most of the time.

Mark spits gasoline out of his mouth and shoves the nozzle into his van. "Cub Scouts, remember?"

"Who knew Cub Scouts would prepare you for the end of the world." You kick the van's back tire.

Mark lifts his own red bandanna around his mouth. His jeans are scuffed up from the dirt and grime of the gas station, but the fact that he keeps his shirt tucked in and fastened with a belt is more endearing than it needs to be.

"Too bad I never earned my saving-the-world badge, right?" Mark chuckles. A sad silence follows.

You slip into the passenger seat beside Mark and place your hand over his as soon as it's placed on the gear shift. "What did you want to be? Before the news?"

Mark opens his mouth. Then closes it, laughs to himself and shakes his head. "It's stupid."

"It can't be stupid," you say. "Nothing you like is stupid."

Mark's neck flushes red. "I, uh, want to be a rapper."

"Still?" you whisper.

"Is that pathetic? To pretend the world isn't ending?" Mark lets himself glance at you for a solemn moment.

"I don't think so," you say. "If I've learned anything from you at all, Mark Lee, it's that you're full of hope. That's not pathetic at all."

Mark flips his hand over so that your fingers intertwine with his. "Thanks. You, uh... You've taught me a lot of things too."

"Like what?" You lift your feet onto the dash and squeeze Mark's hand.

"I don't want to say right now."

"Okay." You pull his hand into your lap and run your fingertips over his calloused palms. "Hey, I've been meaning to ask you this, but do you play guitar?"

"Yeah," Mark turns down a neighborhood of beach houses. "Remind me to play for you sometime."

(Mark likes the way you touch him first. He likes that you let him hold your hand. He likes that you pull his hand into your lap. He feels so much peace that for a brief moment, he thinks that if the world were to end right now, off-schedule, he'd be okay with it. He doesn't know how to tell you that you're teaching him to be okay with the end. He doesn't know how to tell you that he finds forever in these small moments with you.)

Mark takes you to his aunt's empty beach house and the two of you move your stuff in. He finds the solar generator, and the two of you take showers for what seems like the first time in awhile. You don't feel like wearing anything, welcoming the generated AC. But, out of respect for Mark, you adorn undergarments and a large t-shirt stolen from his "clean" suitcase. (He has a "clean" suitcase and a "dirty" suitcase, which is another thing you really admire about Mark.)

When you come out of the shower, towel around your neck, Mark is sitting on the corner of the bed. His own towel has been thrown over the window-side wicker chair, covering a starfish pillow.

What startles you is the fact that he isn't wearing a shirt; only a pair of black sweatpants. A pair of glasses you've never seen before are perched atop his nose. They slip down every time he looks towards the neck of his guitar. He strums out a sour chord and scrunches his nose. "Ah," he shakes his head at the instrument. "She needs a good tuning."

You're drying your hands with your towel, eyes hazy and focused on the way Mark's bare shoulders tense every time he strums a particularly bad chord.

Mark Lee is really pretty. His black hair is still damp, and a few droplets fall onto his cheeks. "Here," you rush out, not wanting another distraction in his favor. "Let me dry your hair. You'll get a cold."

Mark sets the guitar aside and you stand between his legs. "What song should I play for you?" He closes one eye and peers up at you with a close-lipped smile.

You hum. Toss the towel over his face so he won't notice how warm your face is getting. You dry his hair off with a few massages. "What's the one that makes you most happy?"

"I dunno," Mark says. "I like Come Back To Bed."

"Then sing that one to me." You toss the towel to the floor. For a moment, you wonder what it would feel like to run your hand through his hair. After all, you did just dry his hair, which is kind of an intimate thing already. But maybe touching it would be crossing the line. Maybe reaching out to tuck that stray hair back behind his ear would reveal too much. Unravel what you've been trying not to show.

But the world is ending, so it's time to have courage. You swallow your fear and reach out. When you run your fingers through his soft hair, Mark sighs in content. "That feels nice."

"Y-Yeah?" you say, because anything else would come out as a squeak.

Mark's eyes are closed. He leans into your touch and when your hand trails down the side of his face, behind his ear, he places a kiss against your inner wrist. "Yeah," he says, breath hot on your skin. "I'm... I'm glad I went into that convenience store a few days ago."

"Me too." You sense the mood drifting, so you sit beside Mark and pat his guitar. "Now play me something."

Mark nods, a big dazed. He picks up his guitar and begins to sing to you, and you think his voice sounds like the hope of a new dawn.

(Mark wants to bottle up the color of your blushing cheeks and paint the sky. He wants to hold you close to him and kiss you breathless. He wants to say so much more than he does.)

Mark makes eggs. You make waffles. They're both a little burnt, but they're made with love, so it's fine. You eat as much as you can, tired of all the convenience store food. "Thank God for your aunt's well-stocked, solar-powered beach house."

Mark giggles. "You know, she was gonna sell it later this year. She wanted to move to the mountains."

"I'm glad she didn't," you say. "This isn't a bad place for... you know."

Mark blinks. Solemnity drowns his face. "She rented a cabin in the mountains. Didn't want to die in the city she was born in. This was the best place I could think of for the end."

"Do you think it will hurt?" You don't want to ask, because it's such a dismal concern. However, you wonder if you're the only one worried about your last moments.

Mark shakes his head. "I think it will be very quick. Like a sneeze."

(Mark wants to say that he's terrified of a slow death. Or dying before you. Of having to watch you die, or leave you alone in this world. He wants to say that he's scared to death and every step feels like a closer one to the grave.

He thinks of telling you, but what difference would it make?)

That night after your shower, you find Mark in the kitchen, washing the dishes. "You don't have to do those, you know."

You wrap your arms around Mark's waist, and as soon as you make contact, he shudders. His body slumps against the sink and he hiccups a sob. "I'm scared, Y/n."

"Mark..." you turn him around as gently as you can and pull him into your embrace. "It's okay. It's going to be okay."

"Times almost up," he chokes. "We don't know if it will happen tonight or tomorrow– and I don't want to leave you."

He lifts his head from your shoulder and presses his forehead against yours. It feels a bit like the way a cat might ask for a scratch. But it feels more like Mark wanting to be as close to you as he can. From here, you can see his wide eyes magnified from tears. He sniffs.

You bump your nose against his and shift your hands up to his shoulders. "Mark, I think I love you. I know it's too soon, but we don't really have much time anyways, so I thought I should tell you. I know now isn't a good time, and I'm probably being extremely selfish for saying it while you're crying–"

"You're not," Mark blurts just before he kisses you.

He holds your face in his hands and pulls you against him. His lips are soft and smooth against your chapped ones and you like the way his breathing gets heavier when you reach up and twirl your fingers through his hair. "I love you too."

His hands shift to your waist. He backs you up until you hit the counter's edge. "Jump," he mumbles against your mouth.

You jump onto the counter and wrap your legs around Mark's middle, pulling him flush against you as you go to kiss him again.

He kisses bites your bottom lip and when you gasp at the pain, he leans back to smirk at you. The look on his face makes you want to either slap him or melt into his touch. You choose the latter, leaning back as his lips begin to trail down your jaw. "I don't ever want to let you go."

"Then don't," you say.

(Mark thinks having sex and making love are two different things. He thinks your pink shorts look really pretty against the color of your skin. He thinks of the sounds you make, and the softness of your stomach. He thinks of purple marks on your thighs and the way you say his name like it's worth something. Like it means something. He thinks of looking into your eyes and telling you that he loves you. He thinks of kissing your lips and your neck and your chest and your hips. He thinks of you trembling against him. He thinks of cleaning you up and pulling his hoodie over your tired form. He thinks of kissing your forehead and falling asleep to the sound of your heart.

He thinks of the stain glass picture his aunt has in her kitchen right above the sink. A poem about the sun and the moon. A picture of the two kissing. The words ring like an anthem in his head. He thinks maybe soulmates always find each other in the end.)

It happens in the night. You get up to get a drink of water. Your legs are sore but your heart feels warm.

You take small sips in front of the sink and look out of the window. The clouds are dark and red again, but you're distracted by a little hanging picture suctioned to the pane. It's a stain glass picture, painted gaudy blue and gold. You can see the vivid picture of the sun and the moon, fitting against each other like missing puzzle pieces. There's a poem painted in messy scrawl, but you make out the words easily enough.

Tell me what is more beautiful;

The sky seems to get closer.

How the moon lets the sun shine throughout the day.

The air seems to get warmer.

Or the way the sun lets the moon glimmer at night.

The sky darkens, and you close your eyes. You think of Mark alone in the bed and hope he won't wake. You hope he won't know that he has to go alone. You want to run to him, but you know this is nothing but a second on earth, and you're all out of time.

(Mark wakes up when his skin feels like it's scalding. He sits up and notices that you aren't beside him. You're gone, and he knows it's the end, and he knows he'll never see you again, and the thought claws it's way down his throat and breaks his heart from the inside out. And he's all out of time.)

#mark lee fluff #mark lee scenarios #mark lee angst #nct fluff #nct angst #nct scenarios #destwrites

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westcoastseasonseeds · 1 year ago

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Discover the Finest West Coast Seeds for Sale

The availability of West Coast Seeds for Sale not only encourages gardening but also promotes sustainability. By cultivating native plants and endemic species, gardeners contribute to the preservation of the region’s ecological balance. These seeds enable individuals to create gardens that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also environmentally conscious.

#West Coast Seeds for Sale #Explore West Coast Souvenirs

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floridarevealed · 4 years ago

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“A Trip Over the Transit Railroad”

by Joanna Grey Talbot

In 1883 journalist A. L. W. took a trip on the Transit Railroad in Florida, which connected Fernandina on the Atlantic to Cedar Key on the Gulf. They shared their experiences in an article published on the front page of the May 15, 1883, issue of the The Weekly Floridian in Tallahassee.

Let’s follow along as they visit 10 towns along the route.

“The majority of persons living in Middle Florida, whose business or pleasure has not railed them to the Eastern part of the State, have very little idea of the material progress, the great influx of immigration, I lie important industries, or the rapid development of the country along the line of the Transit Railroad, which connect Fernandina, the best harbor on our Atlantic coast, with the important port of Cedar Key on the Gulf of Mexico; nor is it possible in the short scope of one letter to convey more than a general view of this very important portion of the State. The traveller from Middle Florida, after a night spent in the comfortable sleepers of the Florida Central and Western Railroad, which is under the efficient management of Major W. M. Davidson, a Middle Florida man, strikes the Transit road at…”

Hotel Oliver, Baldwin, Florida, courtesy of the State Library and Archives of Florida

Baldwin

“…long a very important transfer point for freights for the line of the Transit road. Cedar Key and the Gulf coast, which formerly came from the North and West via Savannah and Live Oak, but which, since the completion o! the Waycross “Short Line," is now delivered to the Transit system at Callahan, twenty miles north of Baldwin. […] The lumber industry along this road is immense, as is attested by the long trains of heavily loaded flat cars which were passed at various points; in fact, the monotony of the pine forest was almost constantly broken by a panorama of saw mills, young orange groves and handsome residences seen from the car windows as we sped along, till proving the existence of an industrious and thrifty population, each contributing his quota to the prosperity of the road and the material progress of the State. The towns of Highland, Lawty and Temples were passed when the brakeman called out…”

Call Street, Starke, Florida, courtesy of the State Library & Archives of Florida

Starke

“twenty minutes for dinner and alighting from the train we proceeded to the “Railroad House," kept by Mr. Kleinsmidt, an industrious German, who owns a farm and orange grove near town, while his estimable wile and charming daughters vie with each other in serving the tired traveller with all the good things which go to make up a first-class dinner. […] There are several groves in the vicinity, some bearing, while most of them are young.— In the town new houses are going up on all sides and the song of the saw and hammer is the music which greets one at every turn. […] Speeding along we soon reached…”

Seaboard Depot, Waldo, Florida, courtesy of the Matheson History Museum

Waldo

“…the junction of the Transit with the Peninsular Railroad. Here we switched off the through coach which is run daily from Jacksonville to Wildwood, thus obviating the necessity of a change of cars between these points. Waldo has a fine hotel, a cigar factory, several stores and churches, and is the terminal point of the Santa Fe Canal, which brings the fine orange country of the lake region within easy access of the railroad. […] Our next stopping place…”

Arlington House advertisement in the “Eden of the South,” 1883, courtesy of the State Library & Archives of Florida

Gainesville

“…the metropolis of East Florida, is a city of about four thousand inhabitants and the county site of Alachua, one of the richest agricultural counties in the State. […] Besides its numerous stores and other business places Gainesville has a bank, a cotton seed mill, three ginning establishments, three livery and sale stables, two depots (the Transit and Florida Southern), two first-class hotels, the Arlington and Varnum House, (the former about the size of our Leon) and quite a number of boarding houses. I have not space in this letter to devote to the above business enterprises the attention which each deserves. […] Six miles further on we come to…”

A Giant Crop of Irish Potatoes in Florida, courtesy of the Matheson History Museum

Arredondo

“…the boss vegetable station of the Transit road. I have not spoken of this industry heretofore because I was at a loss how to convey to the minds of your readers a just idea of the magnitude of this business on the line of the Transit and Peninsular roads. All along we had observed at the different stations large lots of vegetables in crates waiting shipment but here we saw the entire platform covered with piles on piles of crates filled with, beans, cucumbers, peas, Irish potatoes and cabbage […]. Some idea of the extent of the business may be gleaned front the fact that twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays, an extra train far vegetables only, is run from Bronson to Fernandina to connect with the steamships of the Mallory line, in addition to the daily freight train.

Church Street, Archer, Florida, courtesy of the Matheson History Museum

Archer

“…also in Alachua county, is a live little town with five or six stores, and contributes its quota to the vegetable business. Peach culture has here been brought into some imminence by the Rev. J. P DePass, well known to many in our section.”

A.H. Bateman and family in front of their home in Bronson, ca. 1910, courtesy of the State Library & Archives of Florida

Bronson

“…the county site of Levy County, is distant from Cedar Keys about thirty-five miles. It has four stores, and besides being the shipping point of a vast scope of country for miscellaneous exports such as cotton, hides, wax, etc., being situated in the midst of a fine grazing country, large numbers of beef cattle are annually shipped from here to the markets of Savannah and Charleston. After passing Otter Creek, a flag station, we next arrive at…”

Rosewood

“…the residence of C. B. Dibble, Esq., who, in addition to his orange grove, has developed an entirely new industry; you who are familiar with the lovely flower gardens of the Floral City, just think of eight or ten acres in Tube Roses. The flowers are sold in Gainesville, Cedar Keys and other places, while the bulbs are shipped North, and I am told the proprietor has found it profitable. Soon after leaving this station we pass through a spur of the far-famed…”

Gulf Hammock fiber factory, ca. 1890, courtesy of the State Library & Archives of Florida

Gulf Hammock

“…probably the largest and finest body of hammock land in the State, whose sylvan depths furnish alike wealth to the enterprising cedar cutter, and the fattest turkeys and juiciest venison which ever tickled the palates of tourist epicures at the Egmont and St. James. Swiftly skimming over the few remaining miles we soon alighted at…”

Bird’s Eye View of Cedar Key, 1884, courtesy of the University of Florida Digital Collections

Cedar Keys

“…the Venice of the Gulf, whose cool sea breeze, fresh from the “cradle of the deep," tanned our (very dusty) brows, and tossed the smoke-plumes of our locomotive in fantastic wreaths and curls, the same whose shrill whistle had in the early morn mingled with the hoarse roar of old ocean as he piled his white-capped waves high on the smooth beach at Fernandina. […] Cedar Keys has been so often written up, and is so well known by reason and its importance as a Gulf port, that any attempt of my weak pen to do it justice would be futile. […] The principal industries of Cedar Key are its lumber mills, of which there are four or five for the manufacture of pine lumber, and two cedar mills belonging respectively to the Faber and Eagle Pencil Companies. In addition to the above its export of fish and oysters is a source of great revenue, while its sponge trade is by no means an inconsiderable item of its business. […]

“I have already spun this letter out to more than double my original intention, and yet “the half remains untold,” for one could find material for many letters in the beautiful little city of Cedar Key, and its adjacent Islands, bays and rivers, which I left with regret, feeling that next to the breezy hills of Tallahassee I would rather live on the lovely Gulf Coast of Florida.”

The full article can be viewed here via the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America database: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015289/1883-05-15/ed-1/seq-1/.

#Florida #trains #travel #Cedar Key #Gainesville

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hannahoduro02-13 · 4 years ago

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Chapter 11 Fieldwork: The Biography of a Chocolate Bar

The candy I chose: Hershey’s Milk Chocolate King Size

1. What are the ingredients? (perhaps start with cocoa, the primary ingredient)

Milk Chocolate [Sugar; Milk; Chocolate; Cocoa Butter; Milk Fat; Lecithin (Soy); PGPR; Natural Flavor]

2. Where do the ingredients come from?

70% of the world's cocoa comes from Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Cameroon. Three of the world’s largest producers of sugar are India, Brazil, and Thailand. France, Russia, and Germany produce most of the world's milk. Brazil produces most of the world’s soy.

3. How are the ingredients produced?

Cocoa beans are roasted, stripped, and then pressed to separate the fat from the beans which is the cocoa butter. Sugar cane is crushed in order to extract its juices, then its clean and concentrated into a syrup. Sugar crystals will then form and become what we call raw sugar. Soybeans are planted and grown by farmers then they are collected, cleaned, and bagged.

4. What are the working conditions of the people who produce the cocoa?

“...she said she’s spent the last three months lifting boxes of Hershey’s Kisses for $8.35 an hour in a warehouse with 400 other foreign students. … Her rent, about $400 a month, is automatically deducted from her paycheck. What’s left over must cover her expenses. … “I complain. I say, ‘I want another job.’ They say if I do not work here they will cancel my visa and I will go home.”” These quotes came from an article titled “Foreign students who work at Hershey warehouse say 'we have our rights'” written by Nick Malawskey. This article talks about the unfair working conditions that foriegn exchange students were subjected to while they were forced to work in Hershey’s warehouses. They were underpaid, overworked, and subjected to unfair/poor conditions so all the workers decided to protest and organize a sit in outside the centers gates until they were given their rights.

5. How do the producers get the cocoa to the market?

After farmers grow, frement, dry, clean and pack the beans. They sell them off to intermediaries.

6. How are the prices set?

When I went to the store the chocolate was on sale, so I bought it for $1.88. The regular price for the chocolate was $2.19. But overall chocolate prices are set based upon supply and demand.

7. Which international corporations dominate the chocolate trade?

(In the order of who's the most successful) Mars Wrigley, Ferrero, and Mondelez International dominate the chocolate trade.

8. Who regulates the trade?

The FDA regulates the chocolate trade.

9. How is chocolate marketed?

Companies' market tactics are based on what appeals to their consumers whether it's through flashy logos, the size or weight of their bars, or extra ingredients (stuff like fruit, or even alcohol). For example Cadbury chocolate targets their ads towards kids ages 5-10 because they are more likely to like chocolate. They use bright colors and animals in their commercials to appeal to children more.

10. Where did you buy your chocolate bar?

I bought my chocolate from CVS.

11. How much profit does a store owner make on one chocolate bar?

A store owner will get profit margins between 55% to 75%.

12. Are there hidden costs that are not included in the price you paid? (Consider underpayment of labor; environmental impact; government subsidies that are direct [to the company] and indirect [infrastructure such as roads, ports, bridges, and water systems]; and the healthcare costs created by the harvesting, transporting, processing, and eating of this food.)

The unsafe conditions that workers are subjected to, the underpayment of their labor, and their rights being disregarded for the company's profit are the hidden costs that we don’t realize we are paying for.

Biography

Starting off as a seed than growing into a sproutling in a West African farm, the cocoa bean will eventually mature into a full grown tree where it will then be harvested, roasted, stripped, some are pressed into cocoa butter. After the cocoa butter and cocoa beans are harvested they’re cleaned, packaged, and sold to intermediaries who then sell them to exporters. Once the product reaches the factory of whichever candy maker has bought it its then used to make chocolate, which will then be advertised towards their target audiences preferences. Afterwards the chocolate will be shipped and distributed to stores for consumers to buy.

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classicmarvelera · 5 years ago

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Leading the Surge: Tom DeFalco era

The year was 1987 when Tom DeFalco was announced as the new Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics after the sudden termination of Jim Shooter from the same post

DeFalco, a veteran writer with Marvel at the time, was a story-teller whose work for Spider-Man, Thor, FF and The Thing was gaining traction among fans. According to the late Mark Gruenwald, (unlike his predecessor) he didn’t have a vision of his own for Marvel which made him open to other peoples’ ideas about the company’s core products i.e. superheroes

DeFalco accommodated others’ visions while ensuring that quality content was delivered as the final outcome with the story or the arc reaching a resolution as Shooter had always insisted. Compared to Tom, Shooter was more on the Management side of Comic Books Publishing business. The latter ensured that books reached the market on time, editorial guidelines were being adhered to by staff, Creator rights (with respect to their creations) were honored and (where possible) a collaboration be done to increase company’s profitability (Secret Wars with Mattel, G.I.Joe and Transformers with Hasbro) but when it came to DeFalco, he made way for new talent like Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld and Marc Silvestri to name a few. This new talent’s work proved to be an instant hit among readers so much so that a title was able to establish a world record in 1991, proving more successful than McFarlane’s Spider-Man: Torment that was released a year before

These new artists and writers were paired with established legends and the result was one great success after another. New characters were introduced whose popularity hasn’t waned to this day:

Venom

Darkhawk

The New FF (Joe Fixit Hulk, Spider-Man, Wolverine and Ghost Rider)

Carnage

Deadpool

Domino

Thunderstrike

Anniversaries:

An important juncture in Marvel’s history were the anniversaries of its flagship characters. The company was 50 years old by 1989 but a there were at least two generations of readers who had grown up with characters from the Golden and Silver ages. A lot of work was produced and anniversaries offered a tremendous opportunity to Marvel Comics to celebrate their superheroes but also chart future editorial strategy with respect to them

During Tom’s tenure, Captain America was 50 years old while Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man celebrated their 30th Anniversaries but the grandest of celebrations were reserved for X-Men and Avengers that saw title cross-overs, lots of gimmick covers with some of the best stories ever told and related limited series

But the most successful of anniversary celebration at the time was of X-Men. With the amount of special editions released (limited series and one shots), the Fatal Attractions cross-over was the one that stood out. Each issue was embossed with a holographic card and it served as the conclusion to Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s Mutant Genesis saga

Merchandizing:

As a franchise, the X-Men’s popularity reached the peak with a total number of seven X-Family titles being published on a monthly basis as on-going series but the least talked about feature of DeFalco’s tenure is the level of merchandizing which saw Marvel action figures by ToyBiz and launch of Marvel Universe & X-Men Trading Cards

The late 80s was a booming time for Video Gaming as the shift was occuring from Arcade gaming to gaming consoles which can be played at home and Marvel at the time, came out with video games that were connected with much of their popular comic book storylines. These games were launched for NES, SNES, Gameboy and SEGA Genesis as these consoles dominated the scene back then but what is more surprising is the diverse range of games that were out there from Marvel. Punisher had a video game and so did Wolverine as well as Silver Surfer besides the flagships like X-Men, Avengers and Spider-Man

As if this wasn’t enough, Marvel Comics were now being widely distributed and sold in far away markets such as the Middle East and Asia. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the seeds for Marvel becoming one of the most preferred brands in the world were planted during Tom’s era. This was a time when there was no Cinematic Universe nor was there a thing called the internet

The DeFalco Legacy:

Looking back at the DeFalco era, one cannot find a time period which is a close equal to this one. Tom’s scorecard out of all the Editor’s that preceded him is most balanced: His leadership & advisory influenced positive outcomes for Marvel comics on all fronts. It wouldn’t be an over-statement to say that the DeFalco Era in Marvel Comics history remains the most successful...overall. Maybe the reason behind it was his knowledge about the art of story-telling and how it could resonate with the readers on various levels to the extent that they would be willing to pay the extra buck for merchandize besides the comics. His stamp on Marvel’s present can be seen on Amazon, Facebook Groups, Instagram accounts that offer comics, tpbs and merchandize that was produced during his era

If Stan Lee era is a yardstick for Creative Story Telling or Content Creation that resonates with readership and Jim Shooter’s era is the yardstick for Best Managerial Practice in Comic Book publishing business then Tom DeFalco’s era is the yardstick for overall success (incl. huge financials)

End Note:

There are 3 main facets of Tom DeFalco’s era:

If you are a Spider-Man fan, his stories are at par with greats like Stan Lee, Roger Stern, Gerry Conway etc.

As an Editor, he led the process of building up on the successes of Shooter era to the extent that Marvel was able to go Public (due to successful merchandizing and increased comic book sales)

Again as an Editor, his leadership resulted in the following great content from Marvel:

Kraven’s Last Hunt (Spider-Man)

X-Men: Fall of the Mutants

Iron Man: Armor Wars

Incredible Hulk: Beyond Redemption

Launch of Excalibur, Wolverine and Punisher: War Journal ongoing series

X-Men: Brood Saga

Avengers: Futures Imperfect

X-Men: Inferno

Joe Fixit Hulk & Patch Logan cross-over

Wolverine: The Gehenna Stone Affair

Captain America vs US Agent

Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment

Avengers West Coast: Vision Quest

Atlantis Attacks (multi-title cross-over)

Acts of Vengeance (multi-title cross-over)

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom

Silver Surfer: Thanos Quest

The New Fantastic Four

The Punisher-Wolverine: African Saga

X-Tinction Agenda

Infinity Gauntlet

X-Men: Mutant Genesis

End of New Mutants and launch of X-Factor and X-Force ongoing series

Smart Hulk

Marvel Comics Presents Wolverine: Weapon X

Iron Man: War Machine

X-Cutioner’s Song

Infinity War

Captain America: Man and Wolf

Hulk: Future Imperfect

Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage

Cable: Fathers and Sons

Fatal Attractions (X-titles cross-over/X-Men 30th Anniversary)

Sabretooth, Gambit and Deadpool limited series

Spider-Man 2099

Daredevil: The Man without Fear

Phalanx Covenant (X-titles cross-over)

MARVELS

Hulk: Troyjan War

#classic marvel era #tom defalco #marvel comics #marvel action figures #marvel trading cards #stan lee #roy thomas #len wein #marv wolfman #gerry conway #jim shooter #joe quesada #axel alonso #bob harras #c.b. cebulski #tom breevroot

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suntodayseeds-blog · 6 months ago

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rg-animalcrossing · 5 years ago

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DIYS FOR SALE AS OF JULY 13, 2020

RULES:

1. Each DIY unless otherwise specified is 500 bells.

2. The DIY will be at the entrance when you get off the plane. :) Please drop your bells and we can trade there. If I am able, I will leave you some fruit as a gift and a thank you! ^__^

3. TO CLAIM: PM me on this account. First come first served.

4. ABSOLUTELY NO DIVING SUITS. YOU COME WEARING ONE I CLOSE THE GATE IMMEDIATELY.

NOTES:

1. I am located on the east coast of the USA. So I will only be available during east coast times. So if it’s 2am on the west coast I most likely will not be on.

2. If you steal or don’t do your part of the deal I will block you and put your username and name and friend code up for everyone to know. Others deserve to know so they don’t tangle with you as well. Don’t like that idea? Don’t be an idiot.

3. I DO SELL NOOK MILE TICKETS. However they are of LIMITED quantity and are 100,000 bells each.

LIST OF DIYS

BAMBOO DIYS

Bamboo-shoot Lamp

Bamboo Doll (3)

Steamer Basket Set

Basket Pack x2

Bamboo Bench

Deer Scare

WALL DIYS

Honeycomb Wall

Wooden Mosaic Wall

Jungle Wall

Underwater Wall

FLOOR & RUGS DIYS

Jungle Flooring (2)

Light Bamboo Rug (2)

Water Flooring

Starry Sands Flooring

HOME DIYS

Stone Table

Wooden Block Table

Wooden Block Clock

Wooden Block Chest

Wooden Block Bed

Wooden End Table

Cardboard Chair (x 2)

Stacked Magazines

Kettle Bathtub

Shell Bed

Magazine Rack

Pansy Table

OUTDOOR DIYS

Birdbath

Birdhouse

Vertical Board Fence

Garden Rock (x 3)

Dog House

Angled Sign Post

Iron Garden Table

Bonfire

LOG DIYS

Log Bench (x2)

Log Stakes

Log Wall-Mounted Clock

Log Bed

Log Garden Lounge

Log Dining Table

MISC DIYS

Matryoshka

Pan Flute

Tulip Surprise Box

Pitfall Seed

Water Pump

Tiny Library (x2)

Grass Standee (x2)

Music Stand (x2)

Floral Swag

Kettlebell (x2)

Armor Shoes

Beekeeper’s Hive (x2)

Leaf Mask

Pansy Table

Bone Doorplate

Cute Rose Crown

Shellfish Pochette

Fruit DIYs

Peach Umbrella

Peach Dress

Peach Chair (x 3)

Cherry Speakers

Cherry Rug

Cherry Wall

Juicy-Apple TV

Golden DIYS

Gold Armor (1.5 Million Bells)

Gold Armor Shoes

Golden Dishes

Golden Candle Stick

Golden Wall

#diy #animal crossing #acnh #acnh exchange #animal crossing diy

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nomorelonelydays · 6 years ago

Text

kick your pretty feet up on my dash

Part 1

Sidney retires a little earlier than he thought he would, at age 34.

He retreats into a small town in Oregon. It’s not a hockey town. No one knows who Sidney Crosby is, and it’s an unexpected blessing.

He hadn’t meant to land in Cardwell Point. It’s a little vacation-ville that boasts an annual fair every summer; it has an artificial lake, a small, quiet cabin that Sidney now calls home, a garden where he can grow tomatoes (that refuses to grow), and friendly enough neighbors who are all, for the most part, below the age of 18 or over 60 and have been in the town for about three centuries. It’s far enough away from Pittsburgh, he supposes, so that’s a plus.

He knows the organization had expect him to stay, working with the team as a coach or at least for the sake of the Little Penguins program. He remembers the looks they’d given him when he’d broken the news to the front office. But it hurts more than it should, being so close to Geno hockey and not able to do anything about it.

Maybe his heart has gotten softer with age.

Maybe that’s why he packed so quickly, because when Geno asked him so mournfully, “Where you gonna be?” on his last day, he’d nearly changed his mind.

“I’ll let you know,” Sidney promises. A little white lie.

“You tell me soon, or I find you,” Geno says fiercely.

Geno had hugged him like he didn’t want to let go, and perhaps he lingered a bit. But Sidney had simply chalked it up to him projecting. As usual.

He’s spent the majority of his time in the NHL hoping for a man to love him back. He’d wanted the handholding, the late night, date night kisses on an empty street, and he’d been willing to wait years for it—did wait years for it. He had been ecstatic when they gave the C to Geno, finally. His heart had lurched forward, almost painfully, when Geno beamed at him, shy and determined under the weight of the letter, and Sidney tells himself that he’s happy. He is happy. He will be happy.

“So what’s next?” Flower asks, voice choppy (always) through the phone.

He figured he’d get a dog or something, maybe spend his hours fishing and not thinking about hockey or Geno or what anyone must think about him practically vanishing.

He did not imagine that he’d be dragging himself up at 4 in the morning, post-retirement, to a bakery that must’ve been in this town when Christ himself was born, to be up to his elbows with flour and butter. The owner, Deidre, is 68 years old, had laughed in his face when she first met him, squeezed in the corner of her café and brooding over his coffee, when he’d told her that he’s retired.

“What the hell do you mean, retired? You’re about 18, right?”

Sidney knows he looks nowhere near 18, but Deidre also doesn’t look she’s got the best eyesight around, so.

It takes about four more coffee runs, three “on the house” chess pies that Deidre insists on feeding him, and two times of Sidney helping her transporting bags of flour from the truck to the kitchen when she’d been short-staffed, that he realizes he’s accidentally stumbled into a some sort of volunteer-job hybrid.

But he likes it.

He has the time, and Deidre needs the help even if she won’t admit it. He likes listening to Deidre talk about the town and her husband (who hasn’t been alive since 2013, Sidney realizes way too late, when he makes the blunder of asking where he is—to which Deidre responds, ‘Who the hell knows. Fucking around up there, probably’) and her dry humor. He likes bringing out the trays of brioche rolls and learning the names of the regulars, from the adults stumbling in at 6:30 AM for their morning coffee, to the kids who come into the store for their afterschool cookies. (He endures the moms who—not subtly—tries to flirt with him while taking half the day to buy a dozen muffins.) He likes kneading the dough for the tarts, because it helps him forget about all those warnings the doctors said about how if he kept going, hockey’s going to knock out his knee once and for all and he’d be lucky to be able to walk at all.

Deidre asked him how he ended up at Cardwell Point, just once.

“You running away from home?” she asks, very seriously. Her glasses are sliding off her nose. “Don’t you lie to me. I’ll know.”

“Not really?” He’d kind of googled ‘small town’ and ‘West Coast’ and ‘house for sale,’ because ‘where to go after retiring at age 34’ hadn’t given him a lot of useful results (or any).

“This is a very small town, and I know this because I never left this place,” Deidre says. “No one comes here unless they were trying to get away from somewhere. A girlfriend, maybe?”

Before Sidney can say anything, she quickly adds, “Boyfriend?”

His hands stop for a briefly moment, but he catches himself and gets back into the rhythm of piping the cupcake. “Um.”

“Anyways,” Deidre says, already moving on and washing her hands, “I’ve been thinking of naming the desserts. Like a person name. I think it’d give them character, help them sell better. I’d want to name a cheesecake after my mother—that was her favorite thing to make when I was little, but I never really got the hang of messing around with cream cheese. What do you think?”

Sidney nods because it doesn’t matter to him either way. He’s suddenly struck with the fact that he hasn’t called Geno in weeks, even though he told Geno he would right after he’s settled in. And Geno hasn’t texted either, which aches like a dull, forgotten thing at the pit of his stomach.

He doesn’t have the heart to be the one to break their silence streak, because there’s a tiny part of him that’s still that afraid if he hears Geno’s voice, sounding so far away, he’d want to fly right back where he started, to break his heart all over again.

One afternoon, he’s making tags for the mini cakes and cookies with Deidre when, out of the blue, he blurts out, “I, uh, I really wasn’t lying. I had to leave my job because of medical reasons. My knee, it’s not—I can’t strain it too much. And um—he wasn’t a boyfriend. It wasn’t…it wasn’t ever going to happen.”

He kind of wants Deidre to spit out some sage, grandmotherly advice, not unlike a fortune cookie. He could use a fortune cookie. She has four kids, after all, all scattered in cities across the East Coast or the Bay Area, working in tech or finance or whatever the hell she had said. But she merely pats his arm and nods.

“Well, you have Cardwell Point now, if you want it,” she says, finishing up the lettering on her sign with a loopy ‘y’ for Lily. “There. My mother’s name. This one will be for the mini-cheesecakes. When I figure out how to make them right.”

He doesn’t know if that’s what he’s waiting for. But he’s spent so long chasing after things he can’t have that Deidre unofficially gifting him Cardwell Point makes his chest bubble up with something wonderful. He ducks his head low and finishes up cursive ‘a’ on his own card.

Day 65 into retirement, and Sidney doesn’t write a tell-all, post-retirement article about his life and regrets like what Deadspin is probably salivating for. (To be fair, Sidney doesn’t even know who to go to first to start publishing something like that.)

It’s way worse.

He opens an Instagram account.

@DeesBakeryCafe

Come in to see us and these lemon-curd filled, poppy seed muffins (The Trina) tomorrow! Happy Friday, everyone.

The muffins are artfully placed next to the window seat, where the sunlight gleams off the drizzled glaze. It gets 56 likes, which Sidney honestly believes might be just about the general portion of the town who have working smartphones and knows how to use it.

To Sidney’s surprise, they sell out the next day. Seeing Deidre’s display case empty at least an hour before they close and listening to Deidre chatter excitedly over their next seasonal item feels almost as exhilarating as winning a game. Maybe even just as good.

He only wishes he’d stop wondering what Geno would say if he knows what Sidney is up to. If he’d even want to know.

#retirement fic #oh man im gonna keep this probably at around 3 parts #i hope i dont lose steam like last time #i feel like this fic is gonna turn out like the saving nickels fic #whatever whO cares #this is like the compromise for not doing an autobiography fic #can you tell that i love unrealistic bakery AUs and the old bakery lady trope #because i do

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thephilosopheroftheboudoir · 5 years ago

Photo

Grim History

The Flower that Caused a Market to Crash: The Tulip Trade in the Dutch Republic

Market crashes are as old as capitalism itself. One early economic bubble in particular was unique since it resulted from the trade in tulips, a seemingly unnecessary luxury item. Although the cause, impact, and history of the event that came to be known as Tulip Mania can be disputed, one certainty is that it serves as a reminder that economics is an aspect of human behavior; like all forms of human behavior, intense emotions and irrationality can cause groups of people to engage in some pretty strange activities.

Tulips originally grew on the steppes of Central Asia. The movement of Turkic nomads east and west, along with the traffic along the Silk Road that led to Asia, brought the flower to the Ottoman Empire. European traders from farther west took interest in tulips, not as decorative luxuries, but as items of food which they called Turkish onions. The flowers were ignored while the bulbs became a common item on dinner tables. The edible forms of tulips have since gone extinct because their eye-catching colors and delicate forms attracted the attention of the aristocracy who purchased and cultivated them for their beauty. Farmers in the Dutch Republic, now known as Belgium and the Netherlands, discovered the flowers flourished in the climate of northwestern Europe. By the beginning of the 17th century, the trade and transport of tulips from the Ottomans to the Dutch had died out while massive tulip farms began to be established near the coast.

Members of the aristocracy took pleasure in certain breeds of tulips; some of them began to grow with lines or veins of various colors splitting the flower petals from top to bottom. The most coveted ones had violet, green, or bright red veins. The cause of the colors was unknown at the time but scientists have since learned that they are sick flowers, carrying a virus that only attaches itself to tulips. The price of these diseased flowers rose to astronomical heights because cultivating them to look that way was a long and difficult process and, in the human mind, rare items are believed to be of greater worth than more ordinary things. The tulip market in the Dutch Republic exploded and farmers who specialized in producing the most unique varieties grew rich.

Growing a valuable tulip is tricky. This species of flower is unique in that it grows first from seeds but the seeds eventually produce a bulb which, in turn, produces other bulbs as the plant grows. A small percentage of these secondary bulbs contract the rare virus when they are planted to grow more tulips. A short window of time in the Spring occurs when the original bulb produces a bulb that catches the illness so timing and climate play a major factor in whether a lucrative tulip can be cultivated. The flowers grow throughout the summer and are ready for harvest in the Fall. This is why the market for tulip trading thrives during the winter months. The Dutch tulip trade was a futures market involving high financial risks but one that yielded lucrative pay-offs when the desired results were achieved.

In the winter of 1636-7, the Dutch Republic was the economic powerhouse of its time. The tulip trade hummed along as usual as the aristocrats bought lots of flowers, waiting to collect on their spendings come the following Autumn. The interest in tulips had spread down market though and lower class speculators took interest in purchasing flowers with the intent of flipping them for a profit. Tulip brokers started showing up in taverns, armed with contracts and writing instruments to sign them. For small fees they were ready to negotiate between farmers and buyers; the taverns they worked out of were on the rougher sides of town and the tulips they would have on offer were low grade, common flowers that would not have interested the upper crust consumers of the business. But the speculators knew nothing about flowers; they only knew they wanted to make a quick buck. On a typical day at the beginning of the winter, a broker showed up with a stack of contracts. A speculator or two arrived early and bought them all then hired the brokers to sell the contracts on to another buyer at a slightly inflated price. Then the process repeated itself over and over and over again. An average contract could be bought and sold more than ten times and by the end of the winter, prices had gotten so high that sales began to slow down and eventually stopped. Some of the contracts had increased in value by as much as 400%.

The fortunes they thought they had made were nothing but castles made of smoke. The purchaser of a contract planned to pay for the contract after receiving the money owed to him by the next buyer of and so on down the line. The summer of 1637 came and went then Fall arrived. The brokers showed up to the tulip market in Haarlem to collect payments for the contracts and to make arrangements for the delivery of the tulips. Almost none of the purchasers showed up. The Black Plague had been especially severe that year and most of them had died. Then when the last purchaser of a contract did not pay, the speculator who sold the contract on to him did not get paid and therefore could not pay the dealer he bought the contract from before him. Tulip prices plummeted and he courts did not support the upholding of the final contracts because they regarded futures speculation as gambling rather than business, claiming that the buyers knew the inherent risk before entering into the transaction. The whole economic chain fell apart and the farmers were left with nothing but a bunch of plain and ordinary flowers that no one wanted.

Whether the bursting of this economic bubble had any effect on society is still a matter of controversy. Some economic historians say that no one actually lost a fortune since the speculators never had a fortune to lose to begin with. The prices had inflated well beyond the inherent monetary value of the tulips and since no money changed hands, nothing was really lost. The crisis of Tulip Mania did not have any impact on other financial markets and the mainstream tulip business did not suffer either. One thing that did change was that the Dutch Parliament altered the laws regarding trading in futures. Previous to the crisis the forward contract was typically upheld by law; the purchaser of a contract had to pay the agreed full price of the contract even if the value fell before the purchase was officially paid off. The options contract law replaced the forward contract law, stating that if the market value dropped between the signing of the contract and the date of payment, the purchaser had to pay a small fee to terminate the deal rather than paying the full amount.

Tulip Mania may have been one of the first known market crashes but it certainly was not the worst. Since that time, it has been used as a model for explaining the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s, the Dotcom bubble of the 1990s, the Housing Market Crisis of 2007, and the current fervor for Bitcoin which has potential to result in a financial crisis of its own. Some economists and historians debate whether the Dutch tulip market crash of the 17th century was actually a crisis at all but if anything, it has captured the imaginations of many and makes people wonder about what a market really is and whether money and goods even have any inherent value anyways.

References

Dash, Mike. Tulipomania: The Story Of the World’s Most Coveted Flower & the Passions It Aroused. Broadway Books, 2001.

Mackay, Charles. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1995

https://grimhistory.blogspot.com/

#grim history #tulip mania #dutch history #economics #european history

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