#gradually Danny wants to fix things less and less

[savanir]

DP x DC prompt [9]

Danny doesn't remember much of what happened after his fight with Pariah. he knows the suit nearly killed him. 

He knew he passed out after and had to be carried back.

But considering the fact that the sky is blue and he's in his bedroom it was pretty safe to say that it was a classic case of a job well done and everything was back to normal.

The next day however, more and more oddities started happening. 

No longer did Amity Parkers get assaulted by GIW warnings when they accessed the internet. Instead they just got… nothing, nada, zilch.

Did the GIW go all in and just disconnect them from the rest of the world completely?

But then it became clear that that was the case with everything. stores weren't getting any shipments. 

phone calls would automatically say that numbers weren't in use. 

packages and mail weren't being picked up. 

Very worryingly, credit cards also stopped working and any attempt to contact the bank went utterly nowhere. 

people gradually are starting to get more and more worried.

Amity was very independent and self sufficient but this was a bit much.

At the very least now the city was more open to the doctor's Fenton energy solution of simply using Ecto to power everything.

The guys in white didn't show up in the city anymore either. 

The same went for the other out of town ghost hunters.

and after a quick check from Danny himself (as Phantom) he confirmed that the little not so very hidden base the guys in white had set up outside of the city borders was now simply gone.

Not only that but the roads going out of Amity also just suddenly stop.

At this point Team Phantom is starting to have a certain suspicion, and Sam asks Danny to find the nearest gas station and get them some newspapers.

Back home and now with a bunch of newspapers spread out over the floor with articles about Alien invasions in a place called Metropolis or the top floors of a skyscraper being blown up in a city called Gotham, they have enough to confirm their worries.

“Guys I think we got put back wrong”

[pokelolmc]

Fixing TUE Part 4.5--Clockwork and the Observants Headcanons

Welcome back to my analysis of The Ultimate Enemy. Anyone who wants some juicy Clockwork lore, welcome! I've criticised his canon portrayal in Part 4, so here we are onto the changes!

(Part 4), Part 4.5, (Part 5)

I’m not entirely sure on how I'd change the events of The Ultimate Enemy itself—but I can spitball some ideas for background lore of what Clockwork is, what he's capable of and how he works. Establishing limits/profiles of Clockwork’s power, knowledge or moral compass to help guide how his character would act in a rewrite.

Idea one: Limit Clockwork's knowledge. He can only see time by viewing the time window, and has the ability to gain knowledge in real time. He's distinctly fallible.

Idea two: We could limits Clockwork’s power to act on his knowledge by saying that his existence happens outside of normal time—and mixes with it like oil and water. Perhaps his tower/lair is a rift in time, the temporal dimension bleeding into the Ghost Zone—so it’s sort of a “negative space” compared to normal time. Rather than his “Time Outs” being just a tool to manipulate time…it’s his only means of navigating the flow of normal time itself. He can interact with normal time only by existing in these moments “in between”.

The amulets allow him to bring other elements or people from regular time into this “gap in time” to talk to them, but he has limited power outside of communicating with them during these time-outs so they can act in his stead. Hence, why he relies on other ghosts to do his dirty work.

The only problem is, of course, that would still leave the question of “Why not inform the other characters of Dan’s origin story?”, “why not get other characters to interfere with the birth of Dan” and “why not just bring Dan outside of time to fight or contain him?”…but I don’t have answers for that just yet.

Idea Three: Alter Clockwork's intentions, morality or free will. For example, what if Clockwork wasn’t a ghost in control of time, or a master of time, but literal time itself? 

That is, he was less of a person and more of a force of nature. As if the rift in time, which created his tower, leaked energy in the Ghost Zone until it gathered enough ectoplasm to create an avatar for itself. Clockwork is time’s ghostly extension, or an extra limb…or if time itself had its hands up the back of an ectoplasmic sock puppet, making it talk.

Time itself could be a primeval or fundamental force. But just like in real life, it’s not a person. It doesn’t really have thoughts, or feelings, or free will/agency to act on its own behalf. Time…simply is. It just exists. It just…happens the way it does. If time is a program, Clockwork could be like the holographic interface or pop-up window telling the user what’s going on in the OS. An ectoplasmic AI which has learned how ghosts communicate, but isn't as self-aware.

So, we have an interesting twist on the age-old “wise master of time refuses to interfere because they want to be responsible” trope (like the Time Lords from Doctor Who). It's not that there's some "grand plan". Clockwork’s lack of proactivity to change things optimally is because he is the avatar of time. And time just is--it doesn’t try to change itself. Heavy attempts to alter time are a very human…or…ghost thing to do.

This could be why the Observants are the ones who prompt him into action. Perhaps the Observants were the ghosts to discover time travel, and to whatever extent that they have manipulation over time, they have control over Clockwork. They’ve given up on interfering and instead prompt Clockwork to do their bidding.

If we wanted him to have character development, we could have him gradually gaining more "humanity" as he interacts with Danny. Or maybe the Observants' control stunted the development of Clockwork's ghost as his own person, and Danny releases him.

Or perhaps he already has some level of personhood/his own mind as his own ghost, but since he’s still connected to time itself he has limited free will—he is still largely directed by the whims of fate. Though you would have to establish that some sort of fate exists.

Idea three: This is another limitation or weakness that revolves around Clockwork more as a thinking person than the face of an unthinking force. It’s inspired by the Bootstrap Paradox.

Clockwork, as someone who (in canon) can both affect the events of the timeline AND see future outcomes in the time window…should be theoretically able to see timelines/events that result from his own actions, before he gets the idea of what to do. Either he could see what he does, or the results of what he does and infer what he did in his own relative future.

But if Clockwork only knows what to do, because he saw it (or could only deduce what he’d done) in the results in the time window… He didn’t realise it by himself, but was affected by the information of how his future alterations would affect time—he watched what he would do, and knew what to do from there. And the only reason his future self would’ve done that would be because he saw it in the time window too. In that case, where would Clockwork’s ideas have come from? How much free will did Clockwork have?

Which is why I propose the idea that Clockwork can see the results of others’ decisions in the time window, but not his own. He can see what everyone else can do, but not what he can as a being outside of normal time. He has to predict the results of his actions the way a normal person has to rely on guesswork, but with more intelligence involved.

This wouldn’t excuse stupid actions like giving Danny the CAT answers, since he’d still be highly intelligent or wise, but he at least wouldn’t be already know the impacts of his own choices before he makes them. It gives him more wiggle room to potentially fail, or be surprised by Danny’s choices and humanity. Things could have a viable reason to take him off-guard.

[tuotuo2024]

Key Information Revealed by Google About the Recent Major Algorithm Updates

In early September, search marketing expert Barry Schwartz interviewed Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, and later published a lengthy summary of the interview.

Barry Schwartz is the founder of Search Engine Roundtable and the CEO and technologist of RustyBrick. Danny Sullivan, on the other hand, represents Google in clarifying and explaining updates to Google Search, algorithm changes, and other related matters to ensure that the public understands how Google Search works and how to adapt to these changes.

Given the professional and authoritative background of these two figures, this interview holds great value for those who are keen on understanding Google’s recent algorithm updates. I’ve read through the interview and have summarized the key points to help others gain a clearer understanding of the direction Google is heading with its updates, potentially offering insights for future traffic-driving strategies.

Below is my summary and personal thoughts.

(I want to emphasize that this summary was not generated by simply pasting the original content into GPT; it was organized and summarized manually, so you can read it with confidence.)

**Key information is in bold;**My personal thoughts are in italics.

On Update Frequency

Google Search undergoes around 5,000 updates a year, and periodically introduces “major updates” when necessary. These large-scale updates, which have a broad impact, are referred to as “core updates.”

This means that Google Search makes about 14 adjustments to its algorithm every day. This further reinforces my view that “you shouldn’t waste time trying to outsmart the algorithm.” It’s highly likely that any loophole shared online has already been fixed. (Focus your time on creating content that truly serves users.)

Rewarding Small Independent Sites

Google’s core updates from March to August 2024 focused on giving more rewards to small independent sites, and Google is far from finished with this effort. It’s expected that small independent sites with quality content will continue to benefit from future core updates.

Small independent sites often have less commercialization, are more niche, and are more personalized. I refer to them as “purer” than larger sites. It seems that Google is aiming for more diversity on the web and is rethinking how it defines “authority.” This has significant implications for those operating independent sites: you’ve chosen a very good path, so stick with it.

What to Do When Your Site’s Rankings Drop After an Algorithm Update

Google acknowledges that some sites experience significant traffic fluctuations following algorithm updates. Sullivan’s advice is to “just make sure you’re doing the right thing for users” and remain patient (as the updates are a gradual process). He also emphasized that chasing Google’s ranking system is an outdated approach.

Every algorithm update is unlikely to be perfect, especially considering the diversity of both websites and users. In online gaming, there’s a saying that each version has its own “OP character,” and the same can be said for Google Search. Perhaps Danny gave a more fundamental piece of advice: focus on your users, not on Google’s algorithm.

What Does a Ranking Change Mean?

If your site drops from first to second place, the impact on traffic can be significant. But this doesn’t necessarily mean Google’s algorithm dislikes your content. The reality is that the higher-ranking content is likely also highly valuable to users. Google’s goal is to ensure that all the content in search results is useful, or at least that every user benefits from it.

No page will occupy the top search spot forever. In the highly competitive world of top-tier search rankings, the key question is whether your content is universally more valuable to users searching for related keywords. Frankly, this isn’t something that technical optimizations or tricks can achieve.

Does Google Adjust Its Updates During the Rollout Process?

Some updates cause significant ranking and traffic fluctuations, but Google has made it clear that it won’t adjust the algorithm mid-update just because of these fluctuations. These updates go through multiple rounds of evaluation and testing before being rolled out, and the only thing Google will do is expand the update to a broader scope.

This feels a bit arrogant, given that Google isn’t always objectively correct. However, from a technical perspective, changing the update content midway could introduce untested issues and create even bigger problems…

Does Filling Out Google’s Feedback Form Affect Your Site’s Ranking?

Sometimes, during core updates, Google releases a feedback form to gather input from users or site owners about the impact of the update. The feedback form for the March 2024 update received 12,000 submissions related to 1,300 domains. Google has made it clear that whether or not you submit feedback will not affect your site’s ranking.

There’s a story of someone submitting the feedback form over 1,700 times for the same domain, but Google has debunked the myth multiple times: there are no shortcuts in SEO.

What Kind of Content Does Google Reward?

Sullivan gave a specific example, translated here:

A local plumbing website wasn’t ranking well for “local plumbing” topics in Google Search. This was because the content looked like the usual generic content, such as how to fix a sink. It was just ordinary plumber content that likely didn’t drive conversions.

In contrast, if that plumber shared personal and professional stories about plumbing issues in their local area, that would be the type of content Google wants to reward.

This dialogue clearly illustrates that Google is looking to reward content with strong personal or unique qualities. Generic content often feels repetitive and doesn’t inspire users much. For example, the internet doesn’t need thousands of articles explaining “what coffee is” (nor will Google distribute traffic to them). However, if an article is about a unique experience at a seaside café, it’s likely one-of-a-kind and more worth reading.

Emphasizing Page Experience

If your users have a satisfying experience when they first land on your site (from the first page onward), Google’s ranking system will try to reward your site. As a site operator, you should pay close attention to your site’s “Core Web Vitals,” though this isn’t everything.

Here, a concept is introduced — Core Web Vitals. Let me explain:

Core Web Vitals are a set of key metrics introduced by Google to evaluate a webpage’s user experience, focusing on loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. These metrics are designed to measure the actual experience users have when visiting a page, helping websites optimize these aspects to improve user satisfaction and search rankings. Specifically, Core Web Vitals include three core metrics:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how quickly the main content of a page loads, referring to the time it takes for the largest visible element on the page to load. Ideally, this should happen within 2.5 seconds.

First Input Delay (FID): Measures a page’s interactivity, referring to the delay between the user’s first interaction with the page (such as clicking a button) and the page’s response. Ideally, this delay should be less than 100 milliseconds.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability, referring to unexpected shifts in page layout during the loading process. Smaller shifts (CLS score below 0.1) indicate a better user experience.

These metrics comprehensively assess the quality of the user experience on a website and influence Google’s ranking factors. Thus, it’s crucial for webmasters and developers to optimize Core Web Vitals. However, user experience can’t always be captured by a few simple metrics, so Google encourages site operators to think more about the human aspects of improving the experience.

I believe the key points are creativity, imagination, and attention to the details of users’ feelings.

Content from Forums Like Reddit in Google’s Rankings

Google is keen on showcasing content from social platforms and forums (such as Reddit) and will continue to do so. This is because these pieces of information are often more specific, niche, and can offer clearer help or guidance to searchers. Sometimes, content shared on Reddit even ranks higher than the original source, possibly due to search keywords and content freshness, among other factors.

Recall that if you’ve ever searched for a very specific scenario on Google, content from forums like Reddit might have been more helpful because it’s often centered around a very specific topic and is more timely.

This shows that the value of social media and forums lies in offering content fragments that address specific problems. When Google determines that this is the answer users are looking for, this content will be indexed at the top. This is a boon for UGC content marketing, but ensure that the content genuinely holds value.

On Hidden Gems

Google is continuously working to improve its algorithm so it can better identify and surface these “hidden gems” for users, ensuring that not only high-ranking pages get discovered, but also sites with genuinely valuable and unique content.

In Google’s search algorithm, Hidden Gems usually refer to pages that, despite not ranking highly or having much traffic, offer exceptionally high-quality and useful information for users. These pages may not have high rankings due to lack of SEO optimization or enough links, but their content is invaluable for specific queries or user needs. It seems Google is actively taking steps to uncover these sites.

On Parasite SEO

In early 2024, Google began manually penalizing Parasite SEO behavior and has no plans to implement automated penalties in the near future.

In Parasite SEO, attackers typically find vulnerabilities on legitimate websites (such as government, university, or large brand sites) and exploit these vulnerabilities to upload or embed their own content. This content may include links, spam, or other SEO targets. Google seems cautious about rolling out large-scale penalties.

On AI-Generated Content

Google made it clear that the key issue with low-quality content isn’t whether it’s AI-generated, but whether it’s mass-produced. If Google detects that content is mass-produced for ranking purposes (whether generated by AI or manually), it will be considered a violation of their policy on scaled content.

Google repeatedly emphasizes that it is more concerned with whether content is valuable to users, regardless of how it is created. AI can produce highly valuable content (For example, a blog generated using Blogcard — Sorry for the marketing; it is indeed my product.), just as humans can generate large amounts of low-quality content.

The answer is obvious: think about what your users want and write for your users, not just for ranking purposes.

This concludes the key information summary (and personal thoughts) based on Barry Schwartz’s interview with Danny Sullivan.

Sullivan’s insights give me the impression that he is much like the Head of Operations in the TV show Westworld. Just as you cannot fully control the behavior of the “hosts” in the show, you also can’t be certain about how Google’s indexing results are generated. They have set many rules, but the answers need to be found in the real world.

Interview original text: Search Engine Roundtable

[neil-gaiman]

Hi, I am a french reader, I just discovered Sandman, which I love, and I have a question about the colors in the restored publication of the serie. In the original publications, the colors were flashy and psychedelic but in the new ones, they are more "realistic", less wild in a sense. Is there a reason for this change ? Were you unsatisfied with the coloring of the first publications ?

It was a combination of things:

The biggest one was the very white glossy paper in the books was very different to the newsprint that the colouring was designed for. The original colouring was a lot more restrained, because it sank into and was absorbed into newsprint. It became "flashy, psychedelic and wild" because it wasn't meant to look like that.

Part of it was that the early colouring, especially in the Sam Kieth issues, especially once it was printed much heavier than intended, hid art details.

Part of it was consistency. We were going to have to recolour the early issues from scratch, to make the colour suitable for modern printing, and to create digital versions of the art. (Basically Sandman colouring was pre-digital until issue 49. I'm fairly sure that Worlds' End on were done on computers, although Danny Vozzo was still colouring by hand, with "Android Images" doing the color separations, and they were done for whiter paper, so they weren't going to need to be recoloured.) So it seemed wiser to let Danny Vozzo go in and just... colour it. He'd coloured over 50 issues of Sandman, and he knew what he was doing.

In my blog in 2006, I was asked:

Dear Neil, the new coloring for the new Absolute Sandman looks great. I have a couple of questions regarding it: 1) Who's supervising the new coloring, and who's doing the coloring? 2) Were the new reproductions made from the orignal inks/art? 3) Do you feel that the new coloring better represents your original vision, the artist's original vision? is it a matter of technology? 4) will the Absulote Sandman be your "Artist's definitive version" in terms of coloring? and I replied: 1) Danny Vozzo is doing Sandmans 1-8, 17 and 18. Lee Loughridge is doing The Doll's House (9-16). It's being supervised by Karen Berger, Absolute editor Scott Nybakken, and me. And I'm signing off on every panel. 2) No. Most of that stuff was sold 17 years ago. We got a few pages, although the most useful thing was a cache we found in my attic of photocopies I was sent for proofing purposes, and some of the artists had clean photocopies of some pages. There are only a couple of pages now, in Sandman 16, where the black line leaves something to be desired. I bet the originals will surface as soon as Absolute Sandman Volume 1 comes out. 3) Yes, to all three. The original technology means that with every new printing on cleaner paper with sharper inks, it looks worse. There was never the time or the money to fix anything in the old days, and stuff simply went out as it was, sometimes to the detriment of the story. As things went on, we got to computerise the colour, and the technology gradually made things better. Compare Preludes and Nocturnes to The Kindly Ones, just from a standpoint of colour and you'll see what I mean. 4) I very much hope so. Maybe in 30 years the technology will have advanced to the point where we have to do it again, but probably it won't.

....

I hope that helps. If you want to see the artwork uncoloured, it's in The Annotated Sandman...

[bert-thefrog]

The Emergency: An Edenbrook Fic

Casey Valentine’s POV

We were getting ready to leave for the day, our rounds finally finished and the locker room was filled with laughing interns, chatting animatedly about what they’d do with their Friday night. “Agh! Bryce fuck off!” Jackie is half angry, half laughing as the surgical intern shakes himself like a dog after a shower, splashing water on all of us. “Oh my god! Everyone shut up!” Landry yells suddenly, turning up the volume on the small portable radio he likes to keep in his locker, his face is white, whiter than usual and for once we all listen to him, turning to hear whatever it is that’s shaken him.

‘There have been reports of an incident in KW Steel Fabricators, a fire has broken out as a result, it is not yet know the extent of casualties or fatalities, but there are many suspected. We will be back with more on this breaking news story as it happens.’ A newsreader’s voice crackles through the speakers and we all look at each other, the playful smiles from earlier gradually slipping into masks of horror.

The doors to the locker room burst open moments later and Ines and Zaid enter hurriedly, glancing round at all of us stood in shock. “Get back in your scrubs guys. Dr. Emery has called us all to the Nurse’s Station.” Zaid orders. For once, not even Bryce has a one-liner to crack about his state of undress. As we all gather out in the foyer that counts as the nurse’s station, we eye one another anxiously, the Night Shift are just arriving, already aware of what’s happened and joining the crowd. Harper Emery sweeps through the huge double doors, every move commanding attention. “I take it you’ve all heard what’s happened at the steel works? Then you know that we’re about to be slammed. I need all hands on deck, they’re transferring the victims to hospitals across the county, but Edenbrook will have the lion’s share. We will have to deal with not only those directly affected but also their relatives. Cancel any plans you made tonight, you are officially on the night shift.”

“Alright, lets get the ER cleared and ready for triage. Move it people!” Mirani claps his hand and begins herding a group of interns down the corridor. “Tanaka, get your interns together and prepped for surgery. Medical interns I want half of you down in triage, the rest of you are going to be up here to treat patients as they come through from triage. Any walk-ins are to be putting in waiting unless it is a literal life or death situation. Do I make myself clear?” Dr. Ramsey stares us all down, blue eyes aflame. My stomach churns with anticipation and fear for what’s about to come through those doors as we split and I head for the ER with Aurora and Landry. “Good luck.” Sienna squeezes my hand as I walk past and I pull her into a hug. “You too.”

“You guys ready for this?” I look to Aurora and Landry, both are grim-faced and stoic, internally preparing for the bedlam we’re going in to face. “God no. But I won’t freeze. Not this time.” Aurora’s voice is low and resolute as we hang back from Landry, he marches on ahead, unaware or maybe he just doesn’t care. “I believe in you.” I assure her, earning a wide smile in response. She’s been softer lately, less likely to assume someone’s using her for her aunt, in my case anyway. “Now is not the time for team bonding guys!” Mirani rushes past, handing both of us a stack of coloured tags as he goes. My heart is racing now, I can feel it thumping hard against my chest, reminding me with every beat, the urgency of the situation. “Let’s do this.” I brace myself, shouldering through the door with Aurora behind me. “Doctor, please! My husband he’s bleeding.” A man yells at me and I rush over, moving the man’s hand from his leg and being greeted by a bright red burst of arterial spray from the wound. “Fuck; Alright. Keep pressure on his leg like so.” I demonstrate, quickly gathering the materials needed to make a tourniquet. The patient is white, eyes rolling in the back of his head as I work, his partner whispering sweet words of comfort in his ear as I work. “That’s all I can do for now, someone will be with you soon.” I promise the couple, assigning him with a red tag and moving on.

“Casey this is Archie, seven years old, he’s sustained major burns to the right side of his body, he’s having issues with his respiratory system it’s under ten.” Rafael enters through the ambulance dock, pushing a small boy with a head of black curls towards me. “Alright, I’ll take him. Anything else?” I take over pushing the gurney whilst Archie clings to Raf’s arm. “Don’t leave me sir!” He cries, wincing from the effort. “I’ll be back little buddy, I promise. I’ll come visit you after work yeah?” Rafael detached himself from the small child, his face pained as the boy cries harder, struggling to breathe through the tears. “Hey it’s okay, he’ll be back to you soon. Raf’s just like Superman isn’t he?” I reassure my new patient as Rafael heads for the door. “Hey Raf?” I call after him and he turns his head to me. “Can you try not getting into mortal peril this time?” I flash him a quick smile and he can’t help but laugh. “I’ll do my best.” There’s an invisible but at the end of that though, we both feel it between us. We’ve no way of knowing what could happen out there. “Alright mister, lets get you on oxygen, and a nice nurse will be around soon to get those burns treated. Do they hurt?” I frown and the charred skin down his face and arms as I assign him a green tag, feeling guilty the entire time. “I’ll come visit you soon too.” I promise the little boy, getting ready to attend to the next person through the doors. “Can you find my daddy? He brought me to work with him.” Archie removes the mask for a moment, looking at me with wide, hopeful eyes. “I’ll do my best.” I pat his knee and head away.

Jackie Varma’s POV

“Lahela you’re with me.” Ramsey wheels a bloody and battered teenaged girl past, her skin shiny and crackled with burns as she struggles to breathe, a man follows behind running to keep up, his large stomach jiggling with exertion, his face red and blotchy from tears. “You’ve gotta fix her doc! She’s my little girl, you gotta fix her!” He yells at them.

“I need everyone to calm down. We will let you know as soon as possible what is happening but right now we need to get your details and the details of whoever you’re looking for so we can update you as soon as possible, sir please step back.” Dr. Delarosa is struggling to control the hysterical mob of family members and friends in the waiting rooms. “Sit down and shut up if you want to get any information tonight!” I yell, standing up on one of the coffee tables and praying I don’t fall straight through. “Not how we’re supposed to do things Dr. Varma, but thank you.” Delarosa hisses as the crowd fall silent. “Alright I’m sorry guys, look Danny and Lauren are here to take names and identification and we will update all of you as soon as we know something. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you, but you need to let us do our jobs.” My voice softens as I take in the weary, tear stained faces around me. “Better. Dr. Varma come with me.” Delarosa leads me into a room where a man lies moaning softly. A piece of metal sticks out of his shoulder painfully and I shudder involuntarily. “It looks worse than it is. I need you to sterilize and suture the wound. Can you do that? Also find out what his name is.”

“Piece of cake.” I snap on a pair of blue gloves and get to work, the man barely looks at me. “Get it out, just get it out, I need to find Annie.” He moans, screaming as I touch the skin around the object. “Who’s Annie sir?”

“My wife.” He puffs with exertion as I begin preparing to remove the piece of metal, it’s not big, maybe the size of my hand, but it’s cleanly wedged in his shoulder. “How did this happen?”

“I dunno, I fell after the explosion and one of the shelves came down on top of me.”

“Oh my. I’d like to examine you further please? There may be internal injury.”

“Alright, just hurry. I’ve gotta find Annie.”

“Annie is certain to be in the best care possible here Mr...”

“Brown. George Brown.”

“Okay George, can you feel that?” I press gently against his gut and he bellows with pain as I feel the tender tissue beneath the skin. “That’s not good sir. Ines!” Delarosa comes running in as I call for her, showing her the man’s gut. “His BP is dropping, I think his spleen is ruptured. George how do you feel?”

“It hurts, but, I’m so sleepy. I need to find Annie. Have you seen her?”

“Crap. All the OR’s are full and he isn’t high enough up the list to be priority. Just, monitor him okay?” Ines tugs at her hair in panic.

“I’ve got him. Don’t worry.” I promise her as she turns to leave.

“Has anyone seen Dr. Ramsey?” I hear Chief Emery in the hall and stick my head out the door. “He was with Bryce earlier, they were going off with a patient.”

“That was half an hour ago, I’ll page him.” Danny speaks up from where he’s filling out forms on the counter. “We need him down in ER, they’re getting overrun. Dr. Trinh come with me.” Emery beckons my roommate, she farts away after her, plait swinging back as forward on her back as they head for the stairs. “You don’t think there’s been complications do you?”

“I don’t think so. They were only supposed to be prepping that poor woman for surgery and they would’ve let us know if they needed us.” A crinkle forms between Ines’ eyebrows, her lips pursing as she contemplates exactly what could have happened. “I’ll hold down the fort here for a bit if you want to go check on them. Elijah and the nurses are here too.” I gesture around me, it’s not exactly peaceful but the mayhem is controlled. “I’ll be five minutes tops.” She beams at me, squeezing my shoulder as she passes, hurriedly making her way to the elevator Ethan and the Scalpel Jockey went through earlier, I almost want to laugh at the sight of her tiny feet, almost tumbling over themselves as she races away.

Casey Valentine’s POV

It’s quieter up on the actual wards, the drama and panic better contained behind cubicle curtains and closed doors. Jackie is standing out in the middle of it all, a clipboard in hand as she orders people around. “Alright there captain?” I joke, hunching up on the floor from exhaustion. It’s three in the morning and everyone is beginning to feel the strain of having gone nearly a whole day without sleep. “Ines went to find Ramsey and Lahela.” Jackie shrugs, kneeling down in front of me, her brown eyes wide sigh concern. “You okay Casey? No offense, you look like shit.”

“Gee thanks I’m fine, just tired. I was going to head to the on call room, Mirani ordered it.” I yawn, rubbing my eyes. “How long has Ines been away?”

“A while. But we’re three doctors down with her and the other two missing.” Jackie chews her lip anxiously. “I’m not doing anything right now, I’ll see what’s happened. Hey Danny, can you get me access to the security cameras?” I call to the nurse as he emerges from one of the rooms with a full catheter. “Give me a minute.” He grimaces, leaving to dispose of the equipment before returning, sanitizing his hands throughly. “What are you looking for?” Danny asks as Jackie gets back to work. “Ines, Bryce and Ethan, I think they went to the fourth floor pre-op rooms.”

“No nothing, wait.” Danny pauses the video.

“Is that a gun?” I feel bile rising through my throat as we watch Ines being pulled into one of the pre op rooms. “What?!” Jackie spins back round to face us, eyes wild. “Danny call the police. Now.”

I have no idea what I’m about to do, but I know I need to be there. “Dr. Valentine don’t you dare.” High heels click rapidly behind me and Harper catches up to me as I reach the corridor I know they’re down. “The police are on their way. What exactly do you think you can accomplish by being here?” She looks like a woman possessed, her hair wild and unkept, eyes bright and darting and her typically pristine white coat is stained red from blood. Before I can respond there’s a scream and a gunshot from behind one of the doors and the two of us spring into action, Harper producing a master card from her pocket as we open the door to our left. A huge bear of a man lies unconscious on the floor while Dr. Ramsey shields Ines, there’s a female patient lying out on a gurney but my eyes are drawn to Bryce, he stands frozen, our eyes meeting as he begins to fall in slow motion, crimson blood blossoming like a deadly flower from his gut. “Bryce!” I scream, rushing forward to catch him. “Help him!” I plead with Ethan and Harper as they freeze in shock. Panic and fear flash across Bryce’s face, foreign expressions to him, making him seem years younger. “I think he’s punctured my lung.” Bryce wheezes, his hands covering mine as I try to stem the flow off blood.

“Amongst other things. His lungs have collapsed, he’s bleeding out.” Ethan grimaces, his hands coming away from his examination bloody. “I need the trauma cart in here stat!” Harper runs into the corridor yelling, all composure is gone, she looks like the rest of us, vulnerable, human. “He shot him close range, there’s very little-.”

“Finish that sentence and see what happens Ethan.” Harper eyes him angrily, kneeling down beside us as we wait. Bryce is crying now, ugly heaving sobs that none of us can stop no matter how many times we try remind him to save his energy. “Don’t leave me Casey, I don’t wanna die alone.” He sobs hysterically, his face blotchy.

“You’re not going to die, shhh it’s all going to be fine.” I stroke his hair back from his face, shiny with sweat. “Where is that trauma cart, Delarosa keep applying pressure to the wound, Ethan get me a scalpel or something now!” Harper orders as I cradle Bryce in my lap, rocking him backwards and forwards, weeping myself. “Casey.. I’m cold.” Bryce has ceased crying, his breath coming in slow, shaky bursts. “Help will be here soon.” I kiss his forehead, trying to stop him seeing the bloody red liquid that is seeping onto everything. “Promise you’ll stay.” He clutches my hand weakly as Ethan races back into the room. “I’ll be here the whole time.” I promise him, running my thumb along his knuckles. “I need to perform a thoracostomy, to fix his lung.” Harper moves us out of the way, kneeling over Bryce and beginning to work, we all watch her in silence as Bryce stares vacantly up at the ceiling. “Dammit!” She screams suddenly, throwing the scalpel across the room. “There’s so much damage. It’s not enough.” She sits back on her heels, knees up to her chest as we watch Bryce fade in and out of consciousness. “You’re still here right?” He croaks.

“Right beside you.” I soothe him.

“If we start compressions we risk harming him further.”

“He’s dying Ines! I don’t see what we have to lose.” The two other doctors argue in low voices away from us. “Tell me something.” Bryce speaks up, the faintest smirk playing on his lips. “What?”

“Tell me I’m the prettiest surgeon in Edenbrook.”

“Bryce you’re the prettiest surgeon in the world.” I laugh, and he laughs back, but it cuts off too suddenly, turning into a gargling noise as his eyes widen in shock, hands frantically clawing his throat as he suffocates; blood flying in flecks from his lips. “It’s okay, calm down.” I stroke his face helplessly as he hemorrhages, the light in his beautiful brown eyes dying as he does. “Bryce stop fighting, it’s okay.” I plead with him as he struggles to breathe. “Where the hell is everybody!” Harper screams just as Ethan arrives back, flanked by Mirani and Tanaka. It’s just too little too late. Bryce’s hand slips from mine, slicked with his own blood, his head flopping to the side like a helpless infant. “Get him on the stretcher and into surgery now!” Tanaka orders, but I shake my head, clinging to my best friend’s body as they try to lift him. “He’s gone.” I whisper, looking down at his glassy pupils, staring into the distance but seeing nothing. Ines bursts into tears, burying her face in Zaid’s chest as he wraps his arms around her, soothing her gently. Harper watches me, her expression unreadable. “Rookie, I’m so sorry.” Ethan winces, slumping against the wall clutching his side. “Dr. Ramsey are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” He grunts, but his knees bend beneath him and he grits his teeth in agony. “I’ll treat him, someone... get Lahela out of here.” Tanaka bites his lip, glancing down at his former intern where he’s still cocooned in my arms.

———

It’s sunrise when we all emerge from Edenbrook. Shellshocked and silent, Sienna clings to me, afraid if she lets go that I’ll collapse and never get back up. “He’s really gone then?” Elijah shakes his head, as we all stand there staring up at the red streaked sky. Rafael leans against a pillar, waiting for us. “I’m sorry guys.” He frowns, holding out his arms to us. Jackie bursts into tears, letting him hold her up as she screams, pounding her fists against the wall. “It’s not fair!” She howls. “My last words to him were ‘fuck off’ why did I say that?” She sobs.

“Jackie, none of us knew this would happen, you were real and you were genuine and it was exactly the same as always. Your last words don’t matter, what matters is he knew you were his friend and he knew that, okay?” Sienna chokes back her own tears. Because nothing will be okay again.

“Can we just stop arguing, please.” I rub my eyes, lowering myself to sit on the ground. The doors open once more behind us and Landry is standing there, wringing his hands nervously. “Hey. I heard what happened, I know it doesn’t mean much but, I’m here for you. All of you.” He goes to leave but I put a hand out on his shin, stopping him. “Thanks.” I nod at him resignedly, it’s not worth fighting with him. Not anymore. He pauses for a minute but doesn’t leave, instead joining me on the cold cement floor by the ambulance dock and reaching for my hand. “You know he punched me when he found out what I did. I don’t blame him, like I deserved it.”

“He what?” Sienna joins us, crossing her legs and taking my other hand.

“He punched me, defending you Casey.” Landry gives a half-smile, squeezing my hand.

“Bryce was a stand up guy.” Rafael agrees, standing behind us with Jackie and Elijah in his chair. No one knows what else to say, so we just sit there in peace, watching the sun rise over the buildings on the horizon, each saying our own wordless goodbye.

*I know this doesn’t really explain what happened but all will be revealed in part 2, let me know if you’ve any criticism or advice or if you’d like to be tagged in part 2*

[ladylynse]

Snapshots: Phantom never changed, even though everything--everyone--else did. Even Dani. Especially Dani. Danny didn’t realize what that meant until later. AU  [FF | AO3]

Based off this post featuring @ghostgabber’s AU where Danny’s human half ages but his ghost half doesn’t; for @faiasakura and Phanniemay 2018 Day 24. Eventual character death. (This was getting long, so I’m going to split it into two parts.)

It was a moment of time frozen forever, but Danny didn’t realize that at first.

The changes were gradual; though his parents joked about it, he really didn’t shoot up overnight, and it took time for him to fill out his scrawny frame. He couldn’t hear the changes in his voice, and it’s not like he tried to grow out his hair or grow a beard. (The less he looked like Vlad, the better.) His face eventually lost the boyishness of youth, and he was unmistakably a young man.

But Phantom never changed.

It was embarrassing at first, especially with Sam and Tucker and Jazz teasing him about it relentlessly. Geez, Danny, you could give the little match girl a run for her money. He’d thought his ghost form would change with him. You’re shorter than me and you know it; you’re my little brother. He’d seen the other ghosts change their forms over the years; why did his stay the same? Oh, man, you look so puny!

Look young though he did, his powers grew. He honed his skills, and any ghost who knew his reputation didn’t cross him. Some of them seemed to pop up and attack for old time’s sake—Skulker and the Box Ghost being the most frequent—but he became friends with most of them. Johnny 13 would let him help fix his motorcycle (Danny still wasn’t sure whether it had ever actually broken if it was just a peace offering, but he wasn’t complaining), and Ember actually invited him to one of the concerts she held in the Ghost Zone.

Danny’s grades had never been good enough for him to get into the space program, and despite his parents expressing their support for him to pursue whatever he wanted, he chose to stay in Amity Park after high school instead of applying to college. He’d wanted to assure himself that the town wouldn’t be overrun in his absence. Sam and Tucker had been reluctant to leave him on his own, but Tucker had been offered a great scholarship to MIT, and Sam wouldn’t have been happy staying under her parents’ roof any longer. Even Valerie left, though judging by her visits home, she monitored the news from her hometown closely.

So instead of seeking higher education, Danny officially took up the family business. With Jazz off at university, he could no longer depend on her to monitor their parents’ inventions. And by working more closely with them, he got a better idea of their views. They still had no love for Phantom, but they were eventually willing to (begrudgingly) admit that Phantom did a good job protecting the town.

It was a start.

It made him think he’d be able to tell them, eventually.

When it became clear that Phantom wasn’t physically changing to match Fenton, Danny used that to his advantage. They didn’t resemble each other as much as they once had, and the fact that they didn’t was seemingly further proof that there was no connection between them whatsoever. Not that anyone had really been looking. Not that he’d known of, at least. But if anyone had, now it could be laughed off as a strange coincidence, not used as potential evidence of what should be an impossibility.

If the Guys in White were still sniffing around, they hadn’t shown their faces in years. Danny rather hoped that their department’s funding had been cut and the program was now defunct, but he wasn’t going to get sloppy because of that assumption. He couldn’t afford to. It was better if next to no one knew his secret. It was still safer. For him. For his friends. For Dani.

The first time he realized the changes—or lack thereof—weren’t simply physical was during one of Dani’s visits, actually. He’d been twenty at the time and over at Sam’s to escape some of the Christmas-y-ness of his own house and to visit with her and Tucker while they were home for the holidays. Dani had dropped by with Youngblood to remind him where everyone was gathering for the Christmas Truce.

Sam and Tucker had thought she’d come alone.

No one had corrected them, and that had been the beginning.

“Maybe you just need to get out of this town,” Dani said as they flew over Amity Park. “Travel the world. Actually see something. Maybe that’ll jumpstart whatever’s not developing.”

Danny huffed. As Phantom, he still looked like he was fourteen. Dani, on the other hand, looked twice his age and barely resembled the scrappy twelve year old she’d once been, no matter what form she took.

It wasn’t fair.

She was a clone.

He shouldn’t have to be stuck looking like snot-nosed kid when he was in his thirties.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Tell your parents you want to see about expanding their company. Use Vlad as an excuse if you have to. I can hang around here for a while if that’ll make you feel better, but I doubt any of the ghosts are going to break your truce.”

She had a point. It had taken years of negotiations—begun, of course, during the Christmas Truce, when he could hold a decent conversation without trading shots—but he’d worked out a system, more or less. If the ghosts didn’t harm anyone when they came, he’d allow them to visit without interfering.

The Box Ghost still made a mess of things, but he was no more terrifying than usual. Johnny 13 and Kitty became regular visitors, along with Wulf and Dora and occasionally Youngblood and Klemper. Poindexter had even dropped by on occasion. Ember was limited to one concert in the Real World per tour, but Technus was free to scavenge for recycled or abandoned electronics as long as he did all his compilations in the Ghost Zone. (Danny was pretty sure he was still planning world domination, but a strategic comment regarding his skills had him competing with Skulker in a rivalry that kept both ghosts fairly busy.)

“I don’t think the fact that I haven’t travelled the world is the reason for this.”

Dani shrugged. “Suit yourself. But don’t rule it out till you try it, cuz. Travelling’s about the experience, not the destination. You’re not going to find out what a place is really like from a TV screen.”

Danny pulled up short, and Dani flew back to join him. “You think I’m wasting my life by staying here, don’t you? Dani, I’m protecting people.”

She crossed her arms. “You were protecting people,” she corrected, “and then you fixed it so that they don’t need you anymore. By staying here and claiming you’re protecting this town? You’re just trying to protect yourself.”

“Dani—”

“You have a family. And you can’t tell me you think they wouldn’t accept you after everything. So obviously that’s not why you’re not telling them. But maybe you think you’re trying to protect them now, instead in of yourself. Protecting them from the truth. You’re forgetting how much lies hurt, and you’re shortchanging them for thinking they can’t handle this.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Yeah, but it’s true. You’re not telling them because you don’t want to admit you’ve been lying to them.”

“I’m not—”

“You didn’t even try to pursue your dreams once you thought it was safe to do so. And, yeah, fine, so maybe it would’ve been hard to’ve become an astronaut, but there are other jobs out there relating to space that you definitely could’ve done. You’re smart, Danny. Intuitive, which is worth much more than book smarts. But even when your parents were willing to let you go, you stayed. If I’m dead wrong, then why are you still here?”

“I like what I do, Dani.” Normally, he’d give her points for the pun, but not now. “And Amity Park still needs Phantom, whatever you think. Pretty much every time I let my guard down, someone comes through and tries to destroy the world.”

“That hasn’t happened since your truce.”

“And you think I’m going to tempt fate with my luck?”

Dani shot him an exasperated look. “C’mon, cuz, you can concede my point. I mean…. I get if you don’t want to tell them about me. You’re my family. I don’t need anyone else.” Lies, judging by her face, and that made them more painful for it. “But you still need them. They’re your family. And this isn’t a good reason to push them away or just put up with them trying to kill you whenever you’re in ghost mode. They wouldn’t if they knew the truth. And I get it’s been easier to keep your secret from them because Phantom hasn’t changed, but…. Think about what you’re taking away from them by keeping this up.”

She wasn’t really wrong. He did think his parents would accept him if he finally told them, and he really didn’t want to admit that he’d been living a lie for years. If he told them about Dani, they’d probably accept her, too. But he just….

This was easier, in a way. Predictable. And he didn’t have to deal with Vlad hovering over him, demanding to know why he’d done what he had when the truth endangered his secret, too.

He hadn’t talked to Vlad in years except when he couldn’t help it, but he might have to. Dani was right about something else, too: whatever this was, it couldn’t be normal. Not when she was his clone and she wasn’t affected by…whatever this was. To Danny’s eye, Plasmius had never changed, but it’s not like Vlad had ever pulled out pictures from his days as a young halfa. So what if something was wrong? And if there was something wrong, who was affected? Him or Dani?

“Look, cuz, fun as this has been, I need to head out of state again. Valerie wants me to back her up while she checks something out. I’ll call you later. Just…please, think about what I said.”

She took off without waiting for a response.

Vlad raised his eyebrows. “You’re only asking me this now, little badger?”

Danny bristled. He still hated that nickname. And even though he was taller than Vlad in his human form, the other halfa hadn’t changed his ways. “Just tell me.”

Vlad shuffled the papers on his desk, playing for time and just trying to make Danny squirm. It didn’t improve his mood. But while Dani hadn’t brought it up again, Danny had been thinking about what she’d said that day—and, more to the point, what had been bothering him since he’d first realized that her ghost form was changing while his stubbornly stayed the same. That was why he was here, now, crashing at Vlad’s unannounced and demanding answers.

He hadn’t wanted to give Vlad warning, since the old fruit loop might use the time to prepare convenient answers that seemed to be the truth but were really just what Danny wanted to hear.

“Danielle is a clone, my dear boy, but she is not a perfect one. For obvious reasons.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Just spit it out.” Vlad never got straight to the point when he could go on and on. While he had more or less given up on the whole idea of getting Danny to turn on Jack and be the son Vlad had never had or of creating a reasonable facsimile, he still enjoyed the attention. And antagonizing Danny at every turn.

“How’s your biology?”

“Aside from what I need to know? Terrible.”

Vlad sighed. “Then suffice to say, little badger, that by her very nature, Danielle’s body will age faster than yours.”

Danny just stared at him.

“One of her imperfections is her instability. You may have stabilized her once, Daniel, but she is not exactly conservative in her actions, and such wear and tear is hardly the best thing for her fragile body. I must admit I cut quite a few corners accelerating her age to twelve years when I first started; it’s surprising that she does not appear older than her current age now.”

Danny opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lips, and tried again. “So, what, one of these days, she’ll destabilize again? Why didn’t you tell me this years ago? How can we stop it?”

“It’s not a process that can be stopped. There are simply too many mutations within her genome, and cytolysis seems to have been introduced with the accelerated aging—”

“And you haven’t figured out how to fix it?” Danny growled, knowing his eyes were burning green but hating that Vlad had kept this knowledge to himself, that he was content with letting Dani die so easily. “We have to save her!”

“There isn’t anything we can do.”

“But there has—”

“Daniel. Her aging isn’t normal. Surely you’ve realized that, considering that your own ghost form hasn’t changed.”

“That just makes me the abnormal one,” Danny bit out. “Other ghosts have changed and grown. It’s not just the shapeshifters.”

“The other ghosts are ghosts. Have you really not figured this out? It’s been years, Daniel. I had thought you at least a little cleverer than this.”

Danny was about to retort when Vlad’s words clicked. He’d made a distinction between ghosts and halfas and already made it fairly clear that Dani’s apparently normal growth was the furthest thing from it. Which meant…. “You’re not aging, either? In ghost mode, I mean?”

Vlad leaned back in his chair and changed into Plasmius. “Do I still look so old to your young eyes?”

Plasmius didn’t resemble Masters as much as Phantom resembled Danny’s human half, but— “No. You look…. Geez, you almost look younger than me.”

“I am. I was in my mid-twenties when your insufferable father caused the proto-portal to explode in my face. But this form has its advantages, little badger. It becomes more and more difficult to give up.”

“Uh huh.”

Vlad gave him a level look, a slight curve of his lip the only indication that he disapproved of Danny’s flat tone. “You’ll understand someday. Youth isn’t something to be scorned.”

“You can’t talk. Plasmius doesn’t look like a teenager. People don’t look at you in ghost mode and not respect you. I swear, the kids these days—”

Vlad cut him off with an amused chuckle. “And you call me old. But let an old man teach you a lesson you should have already learned: accept what you cannot change.”

“What, not be the change you want to see?”

“You were always good at changing things, Daniel, but you never quite got the hang of accepting them.”

“I handled the half ghost thing well enough,” Danny muttered. He wasn’t sure what Vlad was trying to do by giving him this so-called advice, but he was more concerned about everything else the other man had said. If he wasn’t lying about Dani…. “Did you really not figure out a way to stabilize your clones? I mean, you could’ve adapted your own mid-morph sample if you were messing with DNA anyway.”

Vlad frowned, though Danny didn’t know if that was because he was incorrect or just grossly oversimplifying things. “Is that really your biggest concern right now?”

“Yes!”

“Then you haven’t learned anything at all. Run along, little badger. Try to prove me wrong. But don’t be surprised when you fail.”

“So you still haven’t told her, huh?”

Danny phased his hand through the wall of his old bedroom to the empty space where he kept a vial of Dani’s ectoplasm. He’d had to beg it off Vlad, not wanting to tell Dani what he was doing until he found a way to fix this, so he was careful with it; he wouldn’t have the opportunity to get more. Fortunately, his parents weren’t home right now, which meant he had free reign of the lab—and it meant he could have Jazz on speakerphone. “There’s gotta be a way around it. C’mon, haven’t you come across anything?” As of last week, Tucker hadn’t had anything, either, and according to Sam’s text yesterday, her best attempt at a lead had fizzled.

“You’re the one working with Mom and Dad, not me. I haven’t been covered in ectoplasmic goo in years.” Danny opened his mouth, but Jazz continued before he had a chance to say anything. “I know, I know. I’m keeping an ear to the ground, but I don’t think I’m going to be much help. You should ask Mom.”

“That would require more explaining than I’m prepared to do,” Danny pointed out as he headed downstairs. Jazz was just trying to make the point again that he should tell them his secret, especially now that he’d finally—finally—gotten them to agree to work with Phantom more overtly than ever before. He knew they didn’t trust him much, but they were getting older, and they weren’t as quick or—at least in his mom’s case—as accurate a shot as they’d once been. He’d told them, as both Danny and as Phantom, to turn on Phantom if he ever went bad, but that was as much for their comfort as for his.

He didn’t want to be let loose on the world if, for some reason, he was being controlled or anything like that. Valerie knew that, too. She didn’t need to live in Amity Park or Elmerton to keep up on the news, and Phantom going rogue? She’d pay attention to that.

But he hadn’t told her his secret, either, even after she’d accepted Dani. Because that wasn’t the same. On that point, it did come down to cowardice. Like Dani had said, he didn’t want to admit to the years of lies. And, brief though the period had been, he had dated Valerie. She might take that as a betrayal of trust. Willing to work with her enemies though she might be, she could definitely hold a grudge.

Of course, mad at him as she might initially be, she would get over it. Eventually. And then he’d have someone else to help him solve this problem with Dani before it was too late. He was beyond pretending that he didn’t need help.

“And you tried talking to Vlad again?”

“He’s no help and you know it,” Danny said as he flicked on the lights in the lab. “He gave up on her a long time ago. As far as he’s concerned, he’s humouring me. Waiting for me to realize I can’t do anything. As if I’m going to abandon her.”

A sigh. “Danny, I know how much this means to you, but you need to talk to someone who knows more than we do. Sam and Tucker have their own lives now. They can’t drop everything to help you as easily anymore.”

“And neither can you,” Danny finished. “I know. I’m not asking you to do that. I’m just—” From Jazz’s end, someone leaned on a car horn. Danny winced. That was the downside of calling Jazz in the middle of the day; if she was somewhere she could talk to him, then she was in transit, fighting her way through what seemed to be constant traffic. She walked as much as she could, claiming it kept her fit, but Danny suspected the truth was one too many close calls with drivers little better than their father. “Someone got cut off?” he guessed.

“Patience is hard to come by in the big city,” was all Jazz said. “Sometimes it feels like you’re risking life and limb even venturing out onto the sidewalk.”

“But your patients thank you for it,” Danny said, grinning as he imagined Jazz’s eye roll. “And I’m grateful that you still put up with these phone calls from me. You’re a life saver, Jazz. Really.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ve got, what, ten minutes till you want to be there for your next appointment?”

“Yeah. It would be tight if I didn’t give myself a few extra minutes. But you didn’t call to talk about me. Was it really just to see if I’ve miraculously discovered something to help Dani?”

She knew it wasn’t; her tone made that perfectly clear.

She could still read him like a book.

“Dani was wrong. About me just needing to travel, I mean. Since Vlad confirmed that he’s the same as me…. The joke about me being half dead might not be as much of a joke as I thought. Phantom’s never going to change, Jazz. I could be ninety, and if I go ghost, then bam! Wimpy teenager. Again.”

Jazz snorted. “Phantom can’t exactly be described as wimpy, and I don’t think perpetually looking like a teenager is what you’re really worried about. You aren’t losing yourself whenever you change, little brother. Just because you look like your past self, it doesn’t mean you’re becoming him. You’ve grown a lot over the past couple of decades, even if you can’t see that growth on the outside. That face in the mirror is still yours, and you’re still you. Phantom might be almost unrecognizable alongside Fenton, but that dissociation isn’t—”

Jazz’s words ended in a shriek, difficult to distinguish over screaming tires and blaring horns. After a loud crackle, the line went dead.

Danny’s shouts went unheard.

A warm hand dropped onto his shoulder. “She’s gone, sweetie,” Maddie said quietly as she moved around to join him at her kitchen table. “We have to accept that.” He’d come over for a visit, found them both out, and sat there to drink some tea which had long since gone cold. He hadn’t heard them come back. He had also apparently missed the kettle boiling, as she held her own steaming mug as if she were going to attempt the same thing he had. He wondered if she’d be any more successful.

Nothing seemed to be successful lately, including getting some sleep, considering there hadn’t been any ghost attacks.

It had been three weeks.

Three weeks of numbness. Three weeks of anger. Three weeks of tears. Three weeks of being an emotional mess, swinging between feel nothing (dead inside) and feeling too much.

Three weeks of that unfinished conversation repeating itself whenever he closed his eyes, always ending the same way.

Maddie pushed the warm mug toward him and pulled his untouched one away. He stared at it dully for a moment before slowly curling his fingers around it in acceptance. The patterns of steam in the air were mesmerizing. “This is incredibly hard for all of us, honey,” his mother said. “You should consider talking to someone like Jack and I do. Jazz would have wanted that.”

You don’t know what she wanted. He couldn’t bring himself to voice those words, though; there was no reason for such venom. Had a ghost taken Jazz from them, no one in their family would have hesitated. They would have been able to spring into action and take down the ghost, stopping it from doing this to anyone else even if they weren’t in time to save Jazz.

But it hadn’t been a ghost.

It had been an ordinary human. Driving. Drowsy, maybe, or drunk or texting. Danny didn’t know for sure. All he did know was that the man had run onto the sidewalk and hadn’t been able to stop fast enough. He’d hit Jazz and a few other pedestrians. He’d died from his injuries after a few days in the hospital; the others had, as far as Danny knew, recovered.

Jazz hadn’t even made it to the hospital.

“This isn’t right,” Danny whispered. “Jazz has too much left to do.”

Maddie found his hand and squeezed it. “I know it hurts, sweetie. Your heart is aching with her absence. But she’s gone, and you have to accept that. We can’t change it.”

Her words made him remember the conversation he’d had with Vlad years ago. “You were always good at changing things, Daniel, but you never quite got the hang of accepting them.”

But did he have to accept this? Jazz’s death had been abrupt, senseless, and had come well before it should have. She was the definition of someone with unfinished business in this realm. Didn’t that mean there was a chance that she was out there somewhere? Lost in the Ghost Zone, trying to recollect her memories of her past self or trying to muster up the energy to move through the Ghost Zone, find their portal, and break through?

Danny let out a slow breath. “She might not be gone gone.” He tore his eyes away from the mug and looked at Maddie. “She might be out there. In the Ghost Zone. Mom, I might be able to find her.”

Maddie’s smile was small. Sympathetic. Saddened. “Jazz wouldn’t have wanted to come back as a ghost, sweetie.”

“That’s not necessarily a choice! And if she’s out there—”

“Even if something is out there that resembles her, Danny, it wouldn’t be her. You know that.”

“You’re wrong,” he insisted. “You know as well as I do that some of the ghosts in the Ghost Zone are people and animals who had once lived in our realm. They aren’t all just sentient ectoplasmic forms or whatever your latest term for it is. And the ones who aren’t, the ones who were once alive— There’s more of the people they once were in them than you think. Death doesn’t change everything. Jazz would still be Jazz, not just a ghost that looks like her.”

Maddie sighed. “I know it’s a comforting notion, Danny, but you can’t delude yourself with such falsehood.”

“It’s not—”

“Ghosts aren’t alive!” Maddie snapped. Danny blinked, not expecting her anger, and she took a few breaths before saying, “It’s dangerous to hope like that, Danny. You’re just setting yourself up for disappointment, and you know better.”

Danny swallowed. “I know more than you do. I know more than you think.”

Jazz had always wanted him to tell them.

“Danny—”

“Do you remember that accident I had in the lab when I was a kid? The one that sparked the portal? When you wanted me to go to the hospital but I insisted I was fine and Dad was so excited about the portal working that you didn’t push the point?”

Maddie’s lips thinned but she nodded.

“More happened then than I ever told you. I…. I don’t know how it works, exactly. Jazz always understood it better than I did. But my DNA…. Something changed. I think it was infused with ectoplasm.”

There was a frown on her face now, but at least she wasn’t interrupting him. He was surprised she’d let him get this far.

“The thing is….” Danny could still see the steam rising from the mug. He looked down at it and channelled some of his ice powers into his hands. The mug cooled, and the liquid within froze solid as ice painted the outside. He didn’t look up, even though Maddie’s gasp meant she’d seen it as he’d intended. “Everything changed then, Mom. I was just fourteen. I’d been in an accident that probably should have killed me—it was worse than I ever admitted—and…. I came out of it alive and with ghost powers. Which sounds crazy, like something that should be in a cartoon or comic books or something, but it’s not. It happened.” He glanced up and met wide violet eyes. “I can turn into a ghost.”

Silence.

“I’m Danny Phantom, Mom.”

Heartbeats passed.

Maddie let out a slow breath.

Danny waited.

Finally, a quiet, heart-wrenching, “Jazz knew?”

Not what he’d expected, but Danny treated the question as the lifesaver it was. “Not at first,” he admitted, “but she figured it out, and then she helped me. Sam and Tucker knew from the start. And Vlad….” He hesitated. “Vlad knows, too. Since that reunion you dragged us to. He, um, hadn’t entirely given up ghost hunting like you and Dad thought.” That was the safest way to put that. Let Vlad explain it for himself. “But my point is, Mom, I can go into the Ghost Zone and look for Jazz. I’ve been in there before. A lot. And I’ve got friends in there who can help me. We can find her.”

Maddie took a shuddering breath. “Please don’t.”

“I—what?”

The tears that had been gathering in Maddie’s eyes began slow tracks down her cheeks, disturbed as she’d tried to blink them away. “I…. I don’t want to think that she’s a ghost.”

A lump that had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with an old terror filled Danny’s throat. He managed to choke out, “B-but…ghosts aren’t evil, mindless beings. That’s my point. I’m still your son, even though I’m a ghost, too.”

Maddie closed her eyes. “I know. And I….” This time, she was the one having trouble finding the right words. “I still love you, Danny, and so will your father. I don’t have to understand this to know that. But that’s different than what happened to Jazz.”

Relief flooded him, and he found himself smiling as he argued his point. “No, it’s not.” He almost felt like laughing. Jazz was right; he should have done this years ago. He’d have to tell her the good news. “I can go find her, and—”

“Jazz is gone, Danny,” Maddie repeated. “You can’t find her. There isn’t anything here—or in the Ghost Zone—for you to find.”

“But—”

“No. Please, just let your sister rest in peace. For all our sakes.”

Maddie stood and went down to the lab, presumably to find Jack. Danny just stared after her, dumbstruck. He’d thought…. He’d thought she’d be happy, knowing her daughter might not be lost forever.

He headed into the Ghost Zone the next morning anyway, determined to find Jazz.

Part II or see more fics

[wineanddinosaur]

Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry

The spring and summer of 2020 brought a reckoning for many Americans, with a global pandemic causing mass unemployment and the murder of George Floyd spurring protesters across the country to decry police violence against Black lives. For the restaurant industry, these events brought every failure and uncomfortable truth to the forefront — and exploited and jobless workers suddenly had plenty of time for such conversations.

Social media was flooded with infographics about the racist origins of tipping and the inequities that have kept the hospitality machine running in America since its birth at the blurry end of legalized slavery in this country. Capitalism itself was under a lens, the unfair concentration of power and profit magnified with every report of another billionaire doubling or tripling wealth. Replacing this economic and political system is a long shot, but anti-capitalist practices have existed in bars and restaurants for years now. So what does this look like, and why should everyone care?

Fair Wages

Capitalism is an economic system wherein the means of production of goods and services is privately owned rather than state-owned, with those private owners reaping the sole benefit of profits. That leaves the “means of production” — bartenders straining your Margarita and line cooks preparing your al dente pasta — in the hospitality industry exposed to exploitation thanks to notoriously slim margins for success. And since the hospitality industry, like most in this country, was built on the backs of Black people, it should be surprising to no one that the mistreatment of BIPOC, immigrant, and undocumented workers remains prevalent, despite their significant majority as employees in restaurants today.

One of the most basic ways an establishment can ensure the safety of its staff is by providing stable pay. Sadly, tipped workers who serve guests in bars and restaurants often make a subminimum wage, which is legal in all but seven states. Organizations like One Fair Wage seek to end this subminimum wage, but so have business owners.

In 2015, the practice of paying restaurant staff a higher but un-tipped wage cropped up noticeably. Prominent chefs like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., began including service fees in guests’ checks in order to facilitate the change, while now-closed Bar Agricole in San Francisco raised its prices 20 percent to do the same. Chef Amanda Cohen was an early advocate for abolishing tipping in New York City when she adopted the practice at her Lower East Side location of Dirt Candy.

A Level Field

One of the most prominent supporters of the movement was Union Square Hospitality Group’s Danny Meyer, who announced back in 2015 that USHG would gradually end tipping and raise menu prices at all of its restaurants. Citing pay disparities between back- and front-of-house employees, which often fuels an unspoken feud between the two, the move to eliminate tipping at such a large and influential restaurant group convinced others to follow suit. This past summer, Meyer reversed the company’s “Hospitality Included” policy, meaning that servers at Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe (to name just a couple) are once again working for tips.

Where Meyer posited that staff should benefit from guests wanting to tip generously in the wake of an economic crisis, Stephanie Watanabe, co-founder of Brooklyn wine bar Coast and Valley, found the opposite to be true. “We instituted a universal living wage, which was super important for us,” she says. “I think we did that in the summer after realizing that folks were not tipping.”

With tips plummeting, Watanabe and her partner Eric Hsu began to have the conversation about livable wages with their staff. “It really solidified for us when Covid hit: People before profits, period. It’s non-negotiable,” she says.

Thanks to her background in filmmaking in Hollywood, Watanabe brought outside perspectives to the argument against tipping, too. The “Most Favored Nations” clause utilized in movie contracts for smaller independent projects — paying the A-list celebrities the same amount as the supporting players — inspired her to try something similar. “We saw the dynamic between dining room and kitchen [employees], and it really bothered us,” says Watanabe of the tipped FOH/untipped BOH schism. “So for me, this was a way to level that and say, ‘No. We’re not going to pay this person less because somehow their job is deemed less valuable than the person who is able to go to get their WSET [Wine & Spirit Education Trust certification].’”

The friction between staff, coupled with the usual caveats of tipping — tipped workers experience higher rates of sexual harassment and people of color are tipped less than their white coworkers — led to a discussion with staff about experimenting with a fixed wage. “We understand the deep roots that tipping has and how ultimately, it’s incredibly, incredibly harmful and racist, and that doesn’t sit well,” Watanabe says. “Every single person, including the owner, gets paid $25 an hour.” This anti-capitalist strategy, which values humans over money, brings her staff equality and stability. It is not, however, an easy way to run a business in America.

“Every month, we’re losing money. But we’re like, ‘and?’” says Watanabe. “Then so be it, then our business can’t survive. Period. And that’s a shame, but it’s also a function of capitalism and society and these systems and structures that exist.”

With profit margins hovering around 1 percent at places like Coast and Valley right now, most investors would be hesitant to risk it all, but many of Watanabe and Hsu’s backers are friends and family who truly believe in their vision. The team recognizes the real struggle that most bars face. “There are good folks out there, and the problem isn’t [that] owners don’t want to pay their people. Some of the time, it’s that they can’t,” Watanabe says.

Even for the big players, a seemingly minimal loss in income might come with strings attached. “Who knows if they’ve got investors and people that they’re beholden to that don’t share their commitment to those things?” Watanabe says. “Then oftentimes, you don’t have a lot of control over it. And that’s where capitalism kind of just comes in and wreaks havoc.”

Nobody is saying that flouting our capitalist tendencies is painless. “To do the right thing is really, really, really hard in this world that we live in,” Watanabe says. “I think it’s like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. But for Eric and I, … we can’t violate our own integrity, and so maybe that means we’re bad business people. And at the end of the day, I’d rather be a bad business person than a bad person.”

A High Road

Andrea Borgen Abdallah, owner of Barcito & Bodega in Los Angeles, was once a general manager at Union Square Hospitality Group’s Blue Smoke in Battery Park City, Calif. “I became really interested in that model and what it hopes to achieve — especially when it came to dealing with the inequity between kitchen staff and waitstaff,” she says. Borgen Abdallah followed USHG’s lead and did away with tipping less than a year after Barcito’s September 2015 opening.

Thanks to the restaurant’s proximity to the L.A. Convention Center, Borgen Abdallah noticed business was very cyclical. “[On a] Monday, I would out-sell a Friday night, and there was no method to the madness,” she says. But eliminating tipping created stability for her employees, ensuring that shifts would be predictably fruitful on any given day. “I was also able to introduce healthcare as a result of that,” Borgen Abdallah says — no small feat, given that the Affordable Care Act only requires insurance to be offered if an establishment has a larger staff of 50 or more full-time employees.

In March of 2020, with the shutdowns brought upon by the rise of Covid in the U.S., Borgen Abdallah closed her restaurant and made two important decisions. First, Barcito would continue to pay for the health insurance of its furloughed employees. Second, it would keep jobs available for anyone lacking a solid safety net. In this way, even though the restaurant was unable to provide the same hours, it was able to keep its doors open and its vulnerable staff cared for.

Last year, Barcito was also one of the first restaurants to participate in High Road Kitchens — a group of restaurants working to provide food on a sliding scale to low-wage workers, healthcare workers, and others in need. One Fair Wage, which fights to end subminimum wages nationwide, oversees the program through RAISE (Restaurants Advancing Industry Standards in Employment). Participating High Road Restaurants like Barcito commit to advocating for fair wages and increased racial and gender equity through hiring, training, and promotional practices.

Borgen Abdallah’s dedication to the fight for better wages began while working directly for One Fair Wage in the past, even making trips to Washington, D.C., and her commitment doesn’t seem to be waning. “I think this pandemic certainly exacerbated a lot of the issues that we’ve had for a really long time,” she says. “And I think a lot of people wanted to sweep [them] under the rug and finally were forced to reconcile.” Now, with all that is known about the instability of a life reliant on tips without guaranteed access to healthcare, paid leave, and other benefits, real change could be on the horizon.

The Hope

It has been one year since the start of the pandemic, and the cry of the overworked and underinsured is once again becoming just a murmur. An increase in vaccine availability quiets much of the fear of going back to a job where contracting Covid remains a danger, but bar and restaurant workers are still far from safe. Returning to work during a national emergency can be confusing, adding new ways for management to exploit staff such as through unsafe Covid practices, unexplained pay changes, and denial of federally required paid sick leave. After so much loss and disruption, mental health is suffering, and affordable insurance is often still tied to employment. One look at the long list of resources put together by the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation, a nonprofit created by and for restaurant workers, gives some insight into just how vastly workers’ lives have been and continue to be affected.

With the passing of President Biden’s latest Covid relief package, small restaurants received access to $28.6 billion in grants, but a $15 federal minimum wage amendment failed. “I think people kind of started to talk about [issues for restaurants],” observes Watanabe, “but it was just like ‘bailout bailout bailout!’ But … that’s not going to cut it anymore.”

Last month, Barcito was able to get all of its employees vaccinated against Covid. As eligibility opens up to the rest of the public, a new normalcy feels within reach. But the sense of urgency to repair broken systems within hospitality threatens to dwindle. “I feel like it has kind of started to fall to the wayside,” Borgen Abdallah says. “The light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter, and I think it’s just important that we [have] those conversations and that that continues to feel really urgent.”

Anti-capitalist methods can actually work well within our capitalist society, even beyond championing workers’ rights through ensuring stable wages, paid time off, health care, or shared ownership opportunities. American bars and restaurants will need to look at sustainability and minimizing harm not just to people, but to the environment. Ambitious bar programs that are eliminating plastics — eco-friendly paper, metal, bamboo, and even hay straws have become standard — tackling water usage, and targeting waste by focusing on the creative use of what most might toss out have a real chance to lead the way as well.

“I’m hopeful, but I also am disappointed in the industry,” says Watanabe. “I feel like we’ve had a year where we could have addressed some really deep problematic systemic problems in this industry.” Businesses must look frankly once again at where they are lacking in response to the racism, sexism, and ableism that has pervaded hospitality since its early beginnings in this country. If capitalism benefits from white supremacy, then now is the time to challenge them both. “Ultimately, it’s not just about hospitality,” Watanabe says. “This is happening all over the place, and there’s a lot of reckonings happening. It’s really about changing the way we do business to be more conscious, to be more people-centered, to be more thoughtful.”

2020 may have broken us down with its harsh realities, shuttering more than 110,000 bars and restaurants nationwide, but as long as we can keep the momentum of learning and reimagining a better future for this industry — one where it values lives over profits — there is hope. “It’s been a tough year,” says Borgen Abdallah. “I think a lot of it could have been avoided had we done things differently, and I don’t think reverting back to the old way of doing things is the answer.”

The article Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/anti-capitalism-hospitality/

[johnboothus]

Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry

The spring and summer of 2020 brought a reckoning for many Americans, with a global pandemic causing mass unemployment and the murder of George Floyd spurring protesters across the country to decry police violence against Black lives. For the restaurant industry, these events brought every failure and uncomfortable truth to the forefront — and exploited and jobless workers suddenly had plenty of time for such conversations.

Social media was flooded with infographics about the racist origins of tipping and the inequities that have kept the hospitality machine running in America since its birth at the blurry end of legalized slavery in this country. Capitalism itself was under a lens, the unfair concentration of power and profit magnified with every report of another billionaire doubling or tripling wealth. Replacing this economic and political system is a long shot, but anti-capitalist practices have existed in bars and restaurants for years now. So what does this look like, and why should everyone care?

Fair Wages

Capitalism is an economic system wherein the means of production of goods and services is privately owned rather than state-owned, with those private owners reaping the sole benefit of profits. That leaves the “means of production” — bartenders straining your Margarita and line cooks preparing your al dente pasta — in the hospitality industry exposed to exploitation thanks to notoriously slim margins for success. And since the hospitality industry, like most in this country, was built on the backs of Black people, it should be surprising to no one that the mistreatment of BIPOC, immigrant, and undocumented workers remains prevalent, despite their significant majority as employees in restaurants today.

One of the most basic ways an establishment can ensure the safety of its staff is by providing stable pay. Sadly, tipped workers who serve guests in bars and restaurants often make a subminimum wage, which is legal in all but seven states. Organizations like One Fair Wage seek to end this subminimum wage, but so have business owners.

In 2015, the practice of paying restaurant staff a higher but un-tipped wage cropped up noticeably. Prominent chefs like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., began including service fees in guests’ checks in order to facilitate the change, while now-closed Bar Agricole in San Francisco raised its prices 20 percent to do the same. Chef Amanda Cohen was an early advocate for abolishing tipping in New York City when she adopted the practice at her Lower East Side location of Dirt Candy.

A Level Field

One of the most prominent supporters of the movement was Union Square Hospitality Group’s Danny Meyer, who announced back in 2015 that USHG would gradually end tipping and raise menu prices at all of its restaurants. Citing pay disparities between back- and front-of-house employees, which often fuels an unspoken feud between the two, the move to eliminate tipping at such a large and influential restaurant group convinced others to follow suit. This past summer, Meyer reversed the company’s “Hospitality Included” policy, meaning that servers at Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe (to name just a couple) are once again working for tips.

Where Meyer posited that staff should benefit from guests wanting to tip generously in the wake of an economic crisis, Stephanie Watanabe, co-founder of Brooklyn wine bar Coast and Valley, found the opposite to be true. “We instituted a universal living wage, which was super important for us,” she says. “I think we did that in the summer after realizing that folks were not tipping.”

With tips plummeting, Watanabe and her partner Eric Hsu began to have the conversation about livable wages with their staff. “It really solidified for us when Covid hit: People before profits, period. It’s non-negotiable,” she says.

Thanks to her background in filmmaking in Hollywood, Watanabe brought outside perspectives to the argument against tipping, too. The “Most Favored Nations” clause utilized in movie contracts for smaller independent projects — paying the A-list celebrities the same amount as the supporting players — inspired her to try something similar. “We saw the dynamic between dining room and kitchen [employees], and it really bothered us,” says Watanabe of the tipped FOH/untipped BOH schism. “So for me, this was a way to level that and say, ‘No. We’re not going to pay this person less because somehow their job is deemed less valuable than the person who is able to go to get their WSET [Wine & Spirit Education Trust certification].’”

The friction between staff, coupled with the usual caveats of tipping — tipped workers experience higher rates of sexual harassment and people of color are tipped less than their white coworkers — led to a discussion with staff about experimenting with a fixed wage. “We understand the deep roots that tipping has and how ultimately, it’s incredibly, incredibly harmful and racist, and that doesn’t sit well,” Watanabe says. “Every single person, including the owner, gets paid $25 an hour.” This anti-capitalist strategy, which values humans over money, brings her staff equality and stability. It is not, however, an easy way to run a business in America.

“Every month, we’re losing money. But we’re like, ‘and?’” says Watanabe. “Then so be it, then our business can’t survive. Period. And that’s a shame, but it’s also a function of capitalism and society and these systems and structures that exist.”

With profit margins hovering around 1 percent at places like Coast and Valley right now, most investors would be hesitant to risk it all, but many of Watanabe and Hsu’s backers are friends and family who truly believe in their vision. The team recognizes the real struggle that most bars face. “There are good folks out there, and the problem isn’t [that] owners don’t want to pay their people. Some of the time, it’s that they can’t,” Watanabe says.

Even for the big players, a seemingly minimal loss in income might come with strings attached. “Who knows if they’ve got investors and people that they’re beholden to that don’t share their commitment to those things?” Watanabe says. “Then oftentimes, you don’t have a lot of control over it. And that’s where capitalism kind of just comes in and wreaks havoc.”

Nobody is saying that flouting our capitalist tendencies is painless. “To do the right thing is really, really, really hard in this world that we live in,” Watanabe says. “I think it’s like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. But for Eric and I, … we can’t violate our own integrity, and so maybe that means we’re bad business people. And at the end of the day, I’d rather be a bad business person than a bad person.”

A High Road

Andrea Borgen Abdallah, owner of Barcito & Bodega in Los Angeles, was once a general manager at Union Square Hospitality Group’s Blue Smoke in Battery Park City, Calif. “I became really interested in that model and what it hopes to achieve — especially when it came to dealing with the inequity between kitchen staff and waitstaff,” she says. Borgen Abdallah followed USHG’s lead and did away with tipping less than a year after Barcito’s September 2015 opening.

Thanks to the restaurant’s proximity to the L.A. Convention Center, Borgen Abdallah noticed business was very cyclical. “[On a] Monday, I would out-sell a Friday night, and there was no method to the madness,” she says. But eliminating tipping created stability for her employees, ensuring that shifts would be predictably fruitful on any given day. “I was also able to introduce healthcare as a result of that,” Borgen Abdallah says — no small feat, given that the Affordable Care Act only requires insurance to be offered if an establishment has a larger staff of 50 or more full-time employees.

In March of 2020, with the shutdowns brought upon by the rise of Covid in the U.S., Borgen Abdallah closed her restaurant and made two important decisions. First, Barcito would continue to pay for the health insurance of its furloughed employees. Second, it would keep jobs available for anyone lacking a solid safety net. In this way, even though the restaurant was unable to provide the same hours, it was able to keep its doors open and its vulnerable staff cared for.

Last year, Barcito was also one of the first restaurants to participate in High Road Kitchens — a group of restaurants working to provide food on a sliding scale to low-wage workers, healthcare workers, and others in need. One Fair Wage, which fights to end subminimum wages nationwide, oversees the program through RAISE (Restaurants Advancing Industry Standards in Employment). Participating High Road Restaurants like Barcito commit to advocating for fair wages and increased racial and gender equity through hiring, training, and promotional practices.

Borgen Abdallah’s dedication to the fight for better wages began while working directly for One Fair Wage in the past, even making trips to Washington, D.C., and her commitment doesn’t seem to be waning. “I think this pandemic certainly exacerbated a lot of the issues that we’ve had for a really long time,” she says. “And I think a lot of people wanted to sweep [them] under the rug and finally were forced to reconcile.” Now, with all that is known about the instability of a life reliant on tips without guaranteed access to healthcare, paid leave, and other benefits, real change could be on the horizon.

The Hope

It has been one year since the start of the pandemic, and the cry of the overworked and underinsured is once again becoming just a murmur. An increase in vaccine availability quiets much of the fear of going back to a job where contracting Covid remains a danger, but bar and restaurant workers are still far from safe. Returning to work during a national emergency can be confusing, adding new ways for management to exploit staff such as through unsafe Covid practices, unexplained pay changes, and denial of federally required paid sick leave. After so much loss and disruption, mental health is suffering, and affordable insurance is often still tied to employment. One look at the long list of resources put together by the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation, a nonprofit created by and for restaurant workers, gives some insight into just how vastly workers’ lives have been and continue to be affected.

With the passing of President Biden’s latest Covid relief package, small restaurants received access to $28.6 billion in grants, but a $15 federal minimum wage amendment failed. “I think people kind of started to talk about [issues for restaurants],” observes Watanabe, “but it was just like ‘bailout bailout bailout!’ But … that’s not going to cut it anymore.”

Last month, Barcito was able to get all of its employees vaccinated against Covid. As eligibility opens up to the rest of the public, a new normalcy feels within reach. But the sense of urgency to repair broken systems within hospitality threatens to dwindle. “I feel like it has kind of started to fall to the wayside,” Borgen Abdallah says. “The light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter, and I think it’s just important that we [have] those conversations and that that continues to feel really urgent.”

Anti-capitalist methods can actually work well within our capitalist society, even beyond championing workers’ rights through ensuring stable wages, paid time off, health care, or shared ownership opportunities. American bars and restaurants will need to look at sustainability and minimizing harm not just to people, but to the environment. Ambitious bar programs that are eliminating plastics — eco-friendly paper, metal, bamboo, and even hay straws have become standard — tackling water usage, and targeting waste by focusing on the creative use of what most might toss out have a real chance to lead the way as well.

“I’m hopeful, but I also am disappointed in the industry,” says Watanabe. “I feel like we’ve had a year where we could have addressed some really deep problematic systemic problems in this industry.” Businesses must look frankly once again at where they are lacking in response to the racism, sexism, and ableism that has pervaded hospitality since its early beginnings in this country. If capitalism benefits from white supremacy, then now is the time to challenge them both. “Ultimately, it’s not just about hospitality,” Watanabe says. “This is happening all over the place, and there’s a lot of reckonings happening. It’s really about changing the way we do business to be more conscious, to be more people-centered, to be more thoughtful.”

2020 may have broken us down with its harsh realities, shuttering more than 110,000 bars and restaurants nationwide, but as long as we can keep the momentum of learning and reimagining a better future for this industry — one where it values lives over profits — there is hope. “It’s been a tough year,” says Borgen Abdallah. “I think a lot of it could have been avoided had we done things differently, and I don’t think reverting back to the old way of doing things is the answer.”

The article Morals Over Margins: A Blueprint for a More Equitable Hospitality Industry appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/anti-capitalism-hospitality/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/morals-over-margins-a-blueprint-for-a-more-equitable-hospitality-industry

[hyperbolicpurple]

Jane Espenson on humor: types of jokes, part 1

Compilation of joke-telling advice from Jane Espenson’s blog. Yes, I’m just copying and pasting. These are all about screenwriting in particular, btw. I found them interesting, so maybe you will, too.

---

Hang on, everyone. I’m about to take an unpopular position. I’m going to advocate analyzing comedy. This is, in general, thought to be a very bad idea. Even dangerous. Once you start trying to figure out why something is funny, the reasoning goes, you lose the sense of whether it is or not. The enterprise is, at best, fruitless, and at worst, a path to the numbing loss of comedy sensation.

Well, it’s true that once you start taking apart a joke to learn how it works, you do lose track of your natural unselfconscious sense of what’s funny. The sensation of it is unmistakable. And, to me, very familiar. Before I was a comedy writer I was a student of Linguistics. We had to talk about language all the time, asking ourselves questions about which utterances were a part of our own natural idiolect and which ones weren’t. Even a few minutes of this kind of thinking tended to lead to blunted judgments about what one could or could not say. I have heard this referred to as “Scanting Out,” the name coming from the result of trying to figure out when one would naturally use the word “scant.” Would you naturally produce the utterance: “His entrance was greeted with scant applause”? “I had scant time to prepare”? How about “there was scant butter in the storehouse”? Or “She gathered her scant dress around her”? Or “He was a man of scant talent”? Or “Any loss of water will reduce the supply to scant”? Hmm-- lose your sense of it yet?

And still, we do not stop analyzing language. It’s valuable and worth the effort. I think joke analysis can also be worth more than a scant effort. (See-- the instinct is back again. It bounces back!)

I would love, someday, to create a Field Guide to Jokes. A real inventory of types of funny with lists of examples. Much of the skill that makes a good joke writer is clearly subconscious, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be sharpened. And for those of you who are new to joke writing, I think this kind of guide might help you a lot, giving you a mental check-list of possible funny approaches to a moment.

So let’s start.

One of the entries in the Field Guide would have to do with taking cliches and altering them, usually by simply reversing the intent. For example, when Buffy was battling an especially ugly monster she once said: “A face even a mother could hate.” And I vividly remember Joss pitching that in another script someone should say, “And the fun never starts.” In another, I riffed off the old Wonder Bread slogan “Builds strong bodies eight ways” to describe a weapon that “Kills strong bodies three ways.” This one was less successful since no one but me remembered the old Wonder Bread slogan. They can’t all be winners. The headline of this entry, a punnish play off a title, is one that I simply cannot believe we never used.

It’s a fun type of joke. Breezy, a little dry, kind of smart. You might want to play around with it. If you’ve got a character who needs a wry observation on what’s going on around them, this might be the joke type for you.

---

I recently received such an interesting letter from Gentle Reader Maggie in Brooklyn. She writes to point out another variety for our menagerie of joke-types — a favorite of her and her boyfriend. She says:

We were wondering if there’s a specific writers’ room term for a type of joke that we love. It happens when you cut to a scene and someone is in the middle of wrapping up a story, and the only line you hear gives you very clear, very funny picture of what the rest of the story was about.

She goes on to give some examples. One of them was from that Charles Barkley Super Bowl ad in which we hear him say, out of a cut, “…and that’s why I never eat shrimp.” Another is from “Pirates of the Caribbean” in which we hear Johnny Depp wrapping up a story with “…and then they made me their king.”

Maggie is right that this is certainly a distinct type of joke. I love this joke. I remember particularly taking note of the “shrimp” line when I heard it. I don’t think this kind of joke has been given a particular name, although every room invents some of their own terminology — if a particular show used this kind of bit as a running gag, I’m certain they’d come up with a name for it. Maybe it’s a Fragment Joke, since it’s based on only hearing a fragment of the whole. Note that it’s certainly the same joke if you only hear the start or the middle of a story. If you open a door just long enough to hear, “Now if I was to show you the OTHER buttock…” for example. That’s the same joke.

These jokes are so effective because they make the audience do the work of inferring what they missed. They’re certainly related to jokes like those in the old Bob Newhart routines in which we’d hear one side of a phone call or even an in-person conversation and have to infer what was being said or done. From his Driving Instructor Routine: All right, let’s get up a bit more speed and gradually ease it into second… well, I didn’t want to cover reverse this early….

Any time you can get the audience to do some of the work, you’re getting them invested, and that’s a great thing.

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The day that Harvey Korman died, I heard a little excerpt played on the radio of a comedy bit that I’d never heard before, taken from a sketch he performed with Danny Kaye.  I’ve located the whole sketch here, but you don’t need to watch the whole thing since other than one funny joke — the one I heard excerpted for the radio — it’s pretty dire.  But the joke worked for me.  Here it is:

HARVEY Class, for a baby’s bath, what’s the most important thing you absolutely need?

DANNY A dirty baby?

Now, listening to this being performed, it’s clear early on what the joke is.  It’s one of those “Stating the Obvious” jokes that I’ve talked about before.  Once you hit “the most important thing,” you know that’s the joke.  You probably already know that the answer is some version of “the baby.”  And yet the joke made me chuckle.  Because of the adjective.

It’s not just that adjectives make things funnier, although they often do.  Moist, bendy, pointy, itchy — they are all great words that spice up any sentence.  But in this case, “dirty” is doing something beyond that.  Can you bathe a clean baby?  Well, if you take bathing to include the idea of removing dirt, then, no, you can’t.  So the answer makes literal sense, but it also raises the idea of NEEDING a dirty baby — needing something that is normally undesirable.  For me, it even raises the image of someone purposefully dirtying a baby so that they can bathe it.  Funny!

The joke isn’t in the words, of course, but in the concept.  These are all the same joke (even though they don’t all work exactly the same way — since you can’t purposefully make a chicken raw, for example, it doesn’t quite resonate the way the baby one does):

What do you need to cook a chicken?  Raw chicken. To fix an engine?  A broken engine. To censor a movie?  A dirty movie. To cure the common cold?  Well, first you need a cold…

If you wanted to use these, you’d massage the language a bit, but those are the hearts of the lines, right there.

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Friend of the Blog Alex Epstein sends along an interesting contemplation on a certain type of joke.   I’m going to let you see his explanation and then present mine, which differs on a certain point.  Here is how he explains it:

Sometimes, I see good writers make fun of bad, obvious dialog and cliche. Saw a bit on Steven Moffat’s JEKYLL, ep. 3. A bunch of suits and techies watching the usual assortment of screens tracking Dr. Jackman:

Shot of a dot moving along a drawing of a railroad track.

Technie:  He’s moving. American agent: Of course he’s moving! He’s on a train!

We don’t really need “He’s moving” to tell us that he’s moving, unless we’re washing the dishes and listening to the TV out of one ear, or we are very, very stupid. The American agent makes that point for us.

But wait, there’s the retort:

Technie:  He’s moving. American agent: Of course he’s moving! He’s on a train. English agent: You obviously haven’t got the hang of England yet, have you?

Joss does this a lot, I think, subverting our TV viewer expectations:

Buffy:  Puppets give me the wiggins. Ever since I was 8. Willow:  What happened? Buffy:  I saw a puppet. It gave me the wiggins. There really isn’t a story there.

I bet that sort of retort comes up a lot in story rooms; I wonder how often it makes it to the screen. (Network exec: “But how does the audience know he’s moving?”)

Oh, this is very interesting.  I agree that this is totally about subverting the expectations of the listener.  It never would have occurred to me, though, that this had to do with a response to exec-driven overwriting.  I would have taken this (at least the first joke) more as a response to the real-life human tendency to state the obvious.  And the second one I take as a response to the expected structure of normal conversation (i.e. “ever since” is supposed to lead to a anecdote.)  So for me, both of these are about someone reacting to a statement that was deficient in some way, but deficient because of the foible of a character.

However, I’m open to Alex’s interpretation, now that I hear it.   Certainly, the first joke illustrates an excellent way to turn a “make it clearer” note into a benefit — have someone hang a lantern on the over-clarity and then, if possible, slap a topper onto it!  (So much writers’ slang!  Yay!)

By the way, the Buffy example reminds me of another classic Joss joke, in which someone tries to deflect a question by saying “it’s a long story,” only to have another character quickly sum up the situation, leading the first character to lamely say, “Guess it’s not that long.”  The standard conventional rule is that “it’s a long story” ends any discussion.  To go past it and deflate it is funny.  

It’s making me curious about other jokes that do this.  Oh!  How about the Princess Leia/Han Solo moment:  “I love you.” “I know.”   That’s certainly a violation of how we know that exchange is supposed to go.  If you’re writing a comedy or a drama with wit, it’s worth doing a bit of thinking about this kind of joke since there’s something so ingrained about conversational assumptions that these jokes always pack a nice punch.

[mmowgnet-blog]

World of Tanks Q&A - WG conference 25 02 2018 pt3 - toxic players and new vehicles

Toxic Chat and players Amway921: The problem is I’m fighting my allies, but I can’t damage them because of repercussions. Pankov: We touched on player toxicity, since we want to test disabled team damage in May, for select modes, and just a limited time. Stun won’t be disabled, since it’s technically almost impossible. Amway921: That’s a leeway for plats and player who won’t be ‘punishable’ now. They’ll just push out allies. Pankov: You’re right. Disabling team damage will encourage such behavior. That’s why we’ll do something else – what do you say if all bloggers united and announced a campaign for fair play? Eg. people would send replays of pushers caught red handed. You send a replay and we judge the evildoer. In time, we’ll implement and internal system of likes and dislikes. Jove: We should be able to thank our allies. Pankov: We’re talking about culture of play, so you should start from yourself. We plan to expand the complaint system, and add a “thanks” button. Then we might return to a global chat. Jove: Nice. Maybe you should make some kind of incentive system. Pankov: When players will become less toxic. Ushakov: What the plan to counter forbidden mods? Pankov: We’re continuing with bans and trying to close the client to mods. Ushakov: Something like a digital signature so you can only play with allowed mods? Pankov: Yes, there’s a list of mods which we want to add. Jove: Which mods are those? Pankov: Enhanced session stats, maybe zoom out, crosshair size, new minimap. There’s really a lot of it. We know which mods are popular, and we’ll be able to integrate them. EviL GrannY: Version 1.0. Tanks 1.0 – why don’t you implement those changes now? We’ll have to install everything anew. Beletsky: It’s complicated from a technological standpoint. We agreed a year ago that in 1.0 we’ll only change graphics, the engine, and music. Everything else might destabilize the game. Pankov: First 1.0, then we’ll go slow for a moment. The changes in graphics are in fact a new game based on WoT. The same is with the maps and tanks. Optimizing everything will take some time – if a group has problems, we’ll fix it. Then we’ll add all the new stuff Beletsky: What will the new patch be? We’ll release 1.0 and start work on 1.0.1. EviL GrannY: So you’re working already… Beletsky: We’re actually finishing. The problem with stabilizing PC games is it takes a lot more time than with console games. A good stability is one of the most important traits of a game. Pankov: Notice the FPS. After 9.0 we had a lot of problems. There are no mass complaints about performance of the client, and now we release new graphics. I’ll just add that Personal Missions 2.0 will be relased in October, and we started working on them two months ago. We want a lot of small things, but we first have to plan them out. News about vehicles Evil GrannY: My question is about that. A huge, painful problem is the current arms race. There exit “old” tanks, and new ones, which greatly outperform the old ones. Buff the old ones, don’t introduce new ones, and nerf the lately introduced ones. IF you want to do something, just correct the branches. Why don’t you do it in a certain class? Look at the IS-4 and E 100 – their age is coming to an end. You should rebalance all tanks of a certain class. Pankov: It’s too complicated, and not so easy. We have to research the topic first. There are many candidates, but we don’t wanna rush. Beletsky: What drove us during the branch changes? We wanted to achieve a situation where starting a line, you could imagine what’s at the end, so that you would be in a specific play style from beginning to end. EviL GrannY: It’s an arms race. The tanks become stronger and stronger. Steamrolls are commonplace now. Pankov: We’re analyzing the situation carefully. It’s hard to classify and identify such battles, because we’re dealing with different players, tanks, maps, and dynamics. In a moment instead of quick wins, we’ll have mega camps. Beletsky: Regarding steamrolls, looking into the past, the last one-and-a-half year, the battle became slower, depending on the region Pankov: The average battle time before 4 years was 6.5 minutes, and it gradually increased to 7 minute 40 seconds. Players prefer a quick lemming train than get some from arty. Beletsky: Back in the day, you remembered such a oneshot for two days. Pankov: And people informed us about it. Beletsky: Anyway, we have plans. We know what the arms race is. It’s partially because of the fact that the player count began increasing. It’s like with the Type 59 – it was imba, but became average, and now it’s just boring. At the same time we didn’t do anything to it. Vspishka: The ecosystem changed. Beletsky: Yes, it did. Starting from the Swedes, where we experimented with new mechanics. It’s a very careful process. The Italians will continue this. EviL GrannY: To see 10 OP tanks in one Ranked Battle – priceless Beletsky: We know about it. It’s a delicate situation, because if we change something, or remove two-thirds of tanks from the game – there will be a shitstorm. Pankow: Typical battle mode… If you remember the Global Map, Himmelsdorf blocked with Mauses, Erlenberg with blocked bridges. The meta is shifting. New tanks come out, the ecosystem changes. Beletsky: If you remember the first Ranked Battle season and compare it to the current one, you’ll see the lineups are changing. Some tanks become obsolete. A tried and true tank is the Object 907. There’s more IS-7s. From new tanks – the 268 V4. Chat e giocatori tossici Amway921: Il problema è che sto combattendo contro i miei alleati, ma non posso danneggiarli a causa di ripercussioni. Pankov: Abbiamo toccato la tossicità del giocatore, dal momento che vogliamo testare i danni del team disabilitato a maggio, per le modalità selezionate e solo per un tempo limitato. Stordimento non sarà disabilitato, dal momento che è tecnicamente quasi impossibile. Amway921: Questo è un margine di manovra per giocatori e giocatori che non saranno "punibili" ora. Spingeranno fuori solo gli alleati. Pankov: hai ragione. Disabilitare il danno alla squadra incoraggerà tale comportamento. Ecco perché faremo qualcos'altro - cosa dirai se tutti i blogger si unissero e avessero annunciato una campagna per il fair play? Per esempio. la gente avrebbe mandato replay di giocatori tossici catturati in flagrante. Invia un replay e giudichiamo il malfattore. Col tempo implementeremo un sistema interno di Mi piace e Non mi piace. Giove: dovremmo essere in grado di ringraziare i nostri alleati. Pankov: Stiamo parlando di cultura del gioco, quindi dovresti iniziare da te stesso. Abbiamo in programma di espandere il sistema di reclamo e aggiungere un pulsante "grazie". Quindi potremmo tornare a una chat globale. Giove: bello. Forse dovresti fare una specie di sistema di incentivi. Pankov: Quando i giocatori diventeranno meno tossici. Ushakov: quale piano per contrastare le mod proibite? Pankov: continuiamo con i divieti e stiamo cercando di chiudere il client alle mod. Ushakov: Qualcosa come una firma digitale, quindi puoi giocare solo con le modifiche consentite? Pankov: Sì, c'è una lista di mod che vogliamo aggiungere. Giove: quali sono le mod? Pankov: statistiche della sessione migliorate, forse zoom indietro, dimensione del mirino, nuova minimappa. Ce n'è davvero molto. Sappiamo quali mod sono popolari e saremo in grado di integrarle. EviL GrannY: Versione 1.0. Tanks 1.0 - perché non implementare tali cambiamenti ora? Dovremo installare tutto di nuovo. Beletsky: È complicato da un punto di vista tecnologico. Abbiamo concordato un anno fa che in 1.0 cambieremo solo la grafica, il motore e la musica. Tutto il resto potrebbe destabilizzare il gioco. Pankov: Prima versione 1.0, poi andremo piano per un momento. I cambiamenti nella grafica sono di fatto un nuovo gioco basato su WoT. Lo stesso è con le mappe e i carri armati. L'ottimizzazione di tutto richiederà un po 'di tempo - se un gruppo ha problemi, lo ripareremo. Quindi aggiungeremo tutte le nuove cose Beletsky: quale sarà la nuova patch? Rilasceremo 1.0 e inizieremo a lavorare su 1.0.1. EviL GrannY: Quindi state già lavorando ... Beletsky: In realtà stiamo finendo. Il problema con la stabilizzazione dei giochi per PC è che richiede molto più tempo rispetto ai giochi per console. Una buona stabilità è uno dei tratti più importanti di un gioco. Pankov: nota l'FPS. Dopo la 9.0 abbiamo avuto un sacco di problemi. Non ci sono lamentele di massa sulle prestazioni del cliente, e ora rilasciamo nuove grafiche. Aggiungerò solo che le Missioni personali 2.0 saranno ridestinate in ottobre e abbiamo iniziato a lavorarci due mesi fa. Vogliamo un sacco di piccole cose, ma prima dobbiamo organizzarle. Novità sui veicoli Evil GrannY: La mia domanda è su questo. Un problema enorme e doloroso è l'attuale corsa agli armamenti. Lì escono "vecchi" carri, e nuovi, che superano di gran lunga i vecchi. Potenziare i vecchi, non presentarne di nuovi, e quelli di recente introduzione. Se vuoi fare qualcosa, correggete i rami. Perché non lo fate in una certa classe? Guardate l'IS-4 e l'E 100: la loro età sta volgendo al termine. Dovreste riequilibrare tutti i carri armati di una certa classe. Pankov: È troppo complicato, e non così facile. Dobbiamo prima cercare l'argomento. Ci sono molti candidati, ma non vogliamo precipitarci. Beletsky: cosa ci ha spinto durante il cambio delle filiali? Volevamo raggiungere una situazione in cui iniziare una battuta, puoi immaginare cosa c'è alla fine, in modo che tu possa avere uno stile di gioco specifico dall'inizio alla fine. EviL GrannY: è una corsa agli armamenti. I carri armati diventano più forti e più forti. Steamrolls (veicoli ce avanzano indistruttibili) sono all'ordine del giorno ora. Pankov: stiamo analizzando attentamente la situazione. È difficile classificare e identificare tali battaglie, perché abbiamo a che fare con diversi giocatori, carri armati, mappe e dinamiche. In un momento invece di vittorie veloci, avremo mega camperoni. Beletsky: per quanto riguarda gli steamrolls, guardando al passato, l'ultimo anno e mezzo, la battaglia è diventata più lenta, a seconda della regione Pankov: il tempo medio di battaglia prima di 4 anni fa era di 6,5 minuti e gradualmente aumentato fino a 7 minuti e 40 secondi. I giocatori preferiscono un treno veloce come lemming che ottenerne un po 'da arty. Beletsky: tornando indietro, ti sei ricordato di un tale oneshot per due giorni. Pankov: E la gente ci ha informato a riguardo. Beletsky: Ad ogni modo, abbiamo dei piani. Sappiamo cosa è la corsa agli armamenti. È parzialmente dovuto al fatto che il conteggio dei giocatori ha iniziato ad aumentare. È come con il Type 59 - era "imba", ma è diventato medio, e ora è solo noioso. Allo stesso tempo non abbiamo fatto niente (al carro). Vspishka: l'ecosistema è cambiato. Beletsky: Sì, certo. A partire dagli svedesi, dove abbiamo sperimentato nuove meccaniche. È un processo molto attento. Gli italiani continueranno questo. EviL GrannY: vedere 10 carri armati OP in una battaglia classificata - impagabile Beletsky: ne siamo a conoscenza. È una situazione delicata, perché se cambiamo qualcosa o rimuoviamo due terzi dei carri armati dal gioco, ci sarà una tempesta di merda. Pankow: Tipica modalità di battaglia ... Se ricordi la Mappa globale, Himmelsdorf era bloccata con i Maus, Erlenberg con i ponti . Il meta sta cambiando. Nuovi carri escono, l'ecosistema cambia. Beletsky: se ricordi la prima stagione di Battaglie classificate e la confronti con quella attuale, vedrai che le formazioni stanno cambiando. Alcuni carri armati diventano obsoleti. Un tank provato e vero è l'obj 907. Ci sono altri IS-7. Dai nuovi carri - il 268 V4.   Read the full article