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razberrybi · 4 years ago

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hello! this isn’t the most timely of postings, but I want to make a series with stuff I wish I knew before applying for/getting into college. the series will be most helpful to lower-income american students, because that’s my experience! eventually I’ll have more stuff regarding STEM courses & tips for when you do start college. everything will be tagged #college help by raz. I’ll get a link for it up and running on my blog.

first off, probably the ugliest part of the process for me: filing the FAFSA, aka the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. I wouldn’t be able to go to college without it but the process literally brought me to tears.

if I save just one student some unnecessary frustration, then my job here is done! kal @promethes was my inspiration to do this, she’s running something with a similar purpose in a couple months so if you’re interested keep an eye out for that.

finally, if you’re trying to get into college/are just getting in and have any questions, don’t hesitate to send me an ask!

if you don’t want to open up the link above to a google doc, the text is available under the cut.

Things to know about the FAFSA:

It opens on October 1st every year. Be prepared to file it right when it opens, the aid is first come, first served.

If you’re going right into college after high school, that means you should apply on October 1st of your senior year.

If you missed the deadline, it’s open till June 30th the next year, but do not procrastinate this. Please trust me. Mark October 1st on your calendar, know it like your birthday. This is free money from the gov, don’t miss out.

You need to file for the FAFSA every year you’re in college, it’s not a one-and-done thing.

To file, you will need an FSA ID for you AND one of your parents (unless you’re not a dependent. If you’re living with a parent/legal guardian and they provide more than 50% of your financial support, you’re probably their dependent. That means they claim you on their taxes & get money back on their return). Make those FSA IDs here. Remember the passwords.

These are separate accounts that you’ll need to actually file the FAFSA. Also, if you have loans taken out they’ll show up here.

When you’re ready to do the FAFSA, use this official website. Other websites can charge you. They might not be secure and definitely won’t be any easier.

Sometimes, income is complicated or parents aren’t always on top of their taxes. Thankfully FAFSA wants documents from two years prior, i.e., for the 2020-21 school year they’re asking for 2018 taxes.

Try to check that those are filed away somewhere you can access before the Oct. 1 deadline. Make sure your parents know the government will pay for your schooling if you do this, and you usually won’t have to give that money back.

If your situation changed and you make a lot less than you did 2 years ago, contact your school’s financial aid office. Sometimes they can help with extra aid.

What documents will you need?

Your social security number

Your driver’s license, if you have one

W-2 forms from 2 years prior, and other records of money earned

Your (and/or your parents’) Federal income tax return from 2 years prior (form 1040, will be different if you’re in an American territory and not one of the states)

Any untaxed income records form 2 years prior, like payments to deferred pension & savings plans, tax exempt interest & child support

Records of taxable earnings from federal work-study from 2 years ago

Record of grants, scholarships, or fellowship aid that was included in you or your parent’s 2018 adjusted gross income

Any current bank statements

Any current business and investment mortgage info, business/farm records, stocks/bonds info

Documentation that you’re a permanent US resident or other eligible noncitizen

If you’re lucky, all these records will be filed in one spot or easily accessible. Try to access them early just in case.

If you have an idea what colleges you’re applying to, add them to the FAFSA when prompted. This will help you know exactly how much money they’re giving you sooner.

Because of the whole “parents not being on top of taxes” thing, I’ve always had to manually put things in instead of clicking the button that lets you manually import the info.

It’s frustrating and takes a while, but you will be able to do it. Thankfully the FAFSA has been getting better with the help available on the page (you can click an info button and it explains most things).

Still unsure what something means? Open a new tab on your browser and google it. You need to answer everything honestly, don’t take chances and take your time.

If you do get to auto-import, I suggest you go through the information manually to double check things if it lets you! I’ve used a similar tool with a tax-filing service and they can get some things wrong.

There are a couple “optional” sections. I fill them all out except for the section about assets, which I’ve consistently skipped. I always get max aid doing this, your mileage may vary.

When you finish, you’ll get a number for your EFC, or expected family contribution--how much they predict your family will have to pay for college. For example, if that number is 000, you’ll hopefully get maximum aid and your tuition will be paid for.

Sometimes, they can’t give it all in grants (money you don’t have to pay back), so some of the money will be made out to you as subsidized or unsubsidized loans. If you need them, take out the subsidized loans first, these will not gain interest until your grace period ends, typically 6 months after graduation.

I’ve literally never had success applying for random online scholarships and I applied to a lot of them. The FAFSA is so important if your family is low-income, those grants cover my entire tuition. The rest of my college, including room/board and a shitton of fees, is covered by merit scholarships directly from my school. I go to a large, in-state school, and suggest you stay in state if you can’t get into an out of state college that will 100% pay everything for you. Those colleges, not coincidentally, are also extremely hard to get into especially if you don’t have connections--think the Ivies, MIT, etc.

I recommend in-state because it’s almost always much cheaper than out of state tuition. Sometimes colleges have programs that will let you go to another state and pay in-state tuition at their partner school, if you’re desperate to move far look for those programs OR find a farther college in your state keeping in mind how good their program is for the major you’re looking at.

Also, fancy private schools might get you some connections or more famous speakers at events but the quality of your education won’t be much better, if at all.

Look for scholarships that come directly from the school you like.

Merit scholarships are money your school will give you for having good grades/test scores. How much money 100% depends on the school. Mine had a program where they had different levels of aid, and they calculated which level you fell into based on your high school GPA, ACT, and SAT scores. It’s worth trying to improve your scores on one of those tests if you know it’ll get you more money. These scholarships tend to renew every year/semester if you keep your GPA up in college.

For school-specific questions, contact the school’s financial aid office. For general questions, contact me! Send an ask to @razberrybi on tumblr.

Finally--if you manage to complete the FAFSA wholly or partially on your own, congratulations!! It’s not an easy feat. In my experience the FAFSA is literally harder and more frustrating than filing your taxes. Treat yourself for getting it done!

#college help by raz #studyblr #college tips #college advice #university #college #student #studyspo #fafsa #financial aid #promethes #sorry for the tag spam but I want to help this get around!

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oasisofpassion · 3 years ago

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bro you gotta tell me more about that fic you mentioned in the tags of that reblog that sounds like smth id like bro idc about what fandom it is i just wanna read it

oh bad news I worked on for two years and then never wrote it lol.

BUT I DID WORK ON IT FOR TWO YEARS SO I CAN SURE INFODUMP! WARNING: VERY LONG RANT INCOMING!! Like... incredibly long. I can't stress to you enough you can take your time reading and responding to this because it is that long. The word count is in the thousands.

fic contains: mentions of abuse, rape, trafficking, body horror, gore, suicide, basically just... a shitton of angst. like so much angst, dude. not all of these are in the first part but they will be in subsequent parts.

Ok, idk what you know about DBH so I'm just gonna give this a quick preface by just explaining all the important parts to the fanfic.

Basically DBH is some anti-racist game that failed at being anti-racist, somehow. Probably because David Cage wrote it. Also something about it takes place in 2038 there's technological advancement and androids and the androids do this deviation thing where they suddenly get the ability to Make Choices and Feel Emotions.

1. Zlatko

Zlatko Andronikov is some villain guy in the original game that you have to pass through in Kara's storyline to know about where they need to escape to—Canada. He also takes androids and does one of two things; resets them (erases their memory, basically undeviates them) or he makes them absolutely fucking horrific.

Like truly horrific! They're actually quite tame compared to their concept art, and many of them—not including this one—have been badly burned. Apparently androids don't feel pain canonically but everyone ignores that because it's fucking stupid.

2. Connor

Connor's your obligatory Autistic-Coded Nonhuman Character because he spends most of the game as a robot who doesn't understand The Human JokesTM, sarcasm, and the like. He also deviates very late in the game. Obviously this is game has like 40+ endings but for the purposes of this you only need to know that he deviates. Also his story was objectively the most competently written because David Cage literally didn't have too much influence in it. The actors for the main duo, Bryan Dechart (a twitch streamer who played Connor and is seriously the most wholesome man ever. He made some videos with Jacksepticeye.) and Clancy Brown (Yes, Mr. Krabs Clancy Brown who played the Old Grizzled Alcoholic Detective character Lieutenant Hank Anderson/Connor's father figure or husband or best friend depending on who you ask) wrote a lot of the story by seeing the script and saying "Fuck this lol."

Here is a picture of Bryan Dechart and his wife Amelia. It shocked me to find out at the time of writing this that Bryan Dechart is older than Philza Minecraft. What the fuck. Also during my looking through videos for this, I realized I had forgotten how fucking attractive this man's voice is. I want to steal crumbs of his gender from under the table like a starving Victorian child working for the rich family above me.

Actually all of this was just unnecessary gushing. Connor's a cop. He gets thrust into a shitty position by the Evil Corporate Overlord (DBH is also anti-capitalist! And it actually did an OK job at that one so) CyberLife, the company that created androids. He gets the fantastic job of Most Advanced Prototype CyberLife Has Ever Created who Hunts Down The Defective Deviants With The Detroit Police Department. In canon, this causes a shitton of political discourse, because the unemployment rate in the US is already in fucking shambles due to CyberLife's androids being dirt cheap (seriously they're under 10k USD) and preprogrammed to do certain tasks that make it easier for business owners to buy androids rather than hire a human workforce. He deviates because of all the deviants he hunts being like, actual fleshed out people who feel real fear, his buddy cop Hank learning to no longer be racist, and him starting to tangle with his own emotions as well.

Another thing about Connor: He likes dogs! He can also pet Hank's dog when he goes to visit his house. That's not important but it's nice to know.

Also he canonically uses puppy dog eyes. Like. People would joke Ha Ha Yes He Probably Uses Puppy Eyes On Hank and. And it was canon. They didn't have to headcanon it, it literally happened. And the kicker? It fucking worked. It is exceptionally difficult to find the clip, though. Like. Really hard. I've been looking for like ten minutes and I can't find shit. It happens in the chapter The Nest when Connor just stands around doing jack shit and Hank tells him they gotta skedaddle before he "dies of an asthma attack," but Connor makes him stay because idk fatherly instinct or something.

3. The Jericrew

Markus, North, Simon, and Josh. North is the only one with any personality. She is my second favorite character in the whole game. Markus and Simon had homoerotic tension and they were originally supposed to have a romance path but David Cage is homophobic so he made Markus and North date. I kept this in the AU because I think North deserves nice things, and Markus is a nice thing. Josh is a pacifist. North wants to kill people (this is because she was a victim of sex trafficking who killed her rapist and escaped. She believes that violence is the only way humans will understand their message. Markus, at least for these purposes, decides if he's gonna die he's gonna die a martyr and continue to be robot MLK.). Simon is a Markus simp. He literally has no opinions on Markus. Practically everything you do will up your relationship with him. He is fucking in love, I swear. In one of the endings he is literally North's replacement if she dies and Markus gets shot and has to have someone come save him. I'm sorry but "Our hearts are compatible, you have to take mine" THAT IS FUCKING FRUITY AS HELL.

4. RK900

Okay. This guy is 100% fanon. Like. His character showed up for 30 seconds in one ending you have to try to get. He stood there looking pretty and didn't say a word. Usually in fanon he's portrayed as Hot Tall Sexy Burly Stoic Big Dick Sex God because the fandom is really horny and he is somehow the second person in the most popular ship (reed900, they literally have a movie, uh, i think the ship's a bit problematic though, for a few reasons). In this fic though I decided to make him kind of a nervous wreck lmfao. The most popular names for him are Nines and Conan (I like Nines though so I went with that). Also we didn't even know that Nines is taller or more muscular than Connor but we assumed so based on pure vibes.

OK. SO IF YOU ALREADY KNEW ALL THAT OR IF YOU READ IT ALL: HERE'S THE AU!

Now, I've forgotten a ton of this AU. I think it's been exactly six months since I've thought about this story. I have forgotten a scary amount of it, but trust me, in its prime? It was amazing.

Basically, it was... four years after the events of the game? 2042. Lots of found family shit. Connor and Hank are PURELY vibing, especially with Connor's jobs with the Detroit Police Department + working with the Jericrew. Uhh. Yeah basically Connor, Hank, and Nines are all roommates who all support each other. Mutuality or whatever. Hank's a recovering alcoholic, Connor is... a lot, actually, he is so much, he has so many issues, especially after he gets home, but that's later, and Nines has just some major fucking anxiety issues. Sumo is a dog. He is happy all the time because he is a dog except when his family goes to work then he's sad.

Connor reads textbooks for fun. He's a big Knowledge Enjoyer and has a crippling astronomy hyperfixation. Did I mention I projected my ADHD onto him? I projected my ADHD onto him. He has ADHD. Don't ask why he can have mental disorders because he's a robot and that wouldn't make sense, yes they can, and because I said so.

Then, one day, something happens I literally don't remember I think he gets hit with some sort of Robo Blow Dart in his back neck port. That gets explained later though. He was on a bus. So he gets kidnapped! Cool.

He's taken to Zlatko's mansion, which looks a little something like this:

and gets put in a terrible cell full of android guts which looks a little something like this:

(I was like 100% I had more screenshots than this but apparently not. It's so hard to get a screenshot of these cells though because they are just that dark).

So yeah! He's not very happy about this.

Oh, and fun fact: androids have the ability to communicate across long distances. Like, they're walkie talkies.

Not Connor! Zlatko broke that shit so he can't call for help.

There are three other androids with him who are also get a very similar treatment Connor is about to endure:

Harry

Faith

and Iris

So ya! They're all pretty fucked up. Harry was a military bot, Faith was a maid, and Iris was a sex robot. Harry and Faith are the only straight couple ever except for maybe Phil and Kristin. They have a child, who Connor has actually met before, so it's like... pretty imperative they get out.

But remember that Robo Blow Dart?

That's permanently in him now. It's in all of them. And it's controlled by the big bad villain... Zlatko.

So any chance of escape could just be stopped by him hitting a button and knocking them all out, and they wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

Also, Connor's like. Kinda fucked up as well.

Some time later, idk, we meet BEST BOY EVER.

ENTER G R E G O R Y

THINK WE CAN TELL ON HOW MUCH EFFORT I PUT INTO HIS HEADSHOT BASED ON THE OTHERS WHO MY FAVORITE IS, BECAUSE HE MEANS ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING TO ME.

Alrighty, here's what you need to know about Gregory for now: He's 5'6 (this will become funny later), very quiet, a little bit curt, but all the same a very sweet man who is just trying his best so that everyone under his care doesn't go fucking crazy. His hair goes down to his ass and he has a bunch of tattoos. He's also my favorite. Have I told you he's my favorite yet? He's my favorite.

He is just as under Zlatko's thumb as the other androids. He has been in Zlatko's possession for about... eight years, if I remember correctly. He was born in 2036 and wasn't alive for long before Zlatko snagged him and reprogrammed him to do the snagging for him (He's actually a canon character and is the trash bot who tells Kara and Alice where Zlatko lives). After Kara and Alice left taking FUCKING ROBODAD (his name is Luther he's not important to this story but he means absolutely everything to me) MY BELOVED with them, Zlatko took Gregory to go be like, his helper, and fill in Luther's place. So Gregory gets to help with Zlatko's surgeries and food and such. He doesn't leave the house.

Ever.

Except for one time. I'll get to that later.

Gregory and Connor have this sort of, like, rivalry. Gregory's pretty used to running the house and how it functions, and it irks him a bit that Connor just waltzes in his fuckin house and starts bossing people around as if he owns the place. Part of this is because Gregory resigned to his fate a while ago. Like, he's pretty sure he's gonna be stuck in this endless loop forever, but there is absolutely no way he's killing himself, lest someone take his place and abuse the androids under Zlatko even more. He is their last defense, and he is not trusting anyone else with the job.

Another thing? Gregory's got a bit of a silver tongue. He knows exactly what he needs to say, how he needs to say it, and when. It comes from years of experience of working with a volatile piece of shit who does drugs and gets off to torturing innocents he knows feel emotions. How I know he knows it? It's his whole fucking business model. Also he's a bit of an artist. Just a tad. He likes to do the draw. it's his coping mechanism.

That's really all you need to know for the exposition/inciting incident.

Let's get into the real plot now.

Um... I don't remember it.

I. I don't remember the real plot.

Because there were so many different fucking arcs I had to juggle. So some shit is gonna be kinda fuzzy, especially with the trio (Harry, Iris, Faith) because I'm gonna be honest... I did not focus on them that much lol was too busy with the main duo Connor and Gregory.

Alright, here's the second most important character in the entire fic:

Emerald. Except I'm getting way too lazy to draw now so.

Emerald is like Gregory 2 except they're allowed to leave the mansion. Emerald is the key to everyone's fucking escape. Emerald and Iris are dating.

Emerald is the mansion security guard. They watch all the security cameras. This is important, because as far as Zlatko knows, all the money he's paying them is going to keep them bitches STORED.

Not gonna happen, though. Not on Emerald's watch.

Connor starts spitballing ideas to escape.

Nobody likes this.

Especially Gregory, who, by the way, is absolutely scared shitless of Zlatko. There's a reason for this! There are so many reasons for this. Holy shit, I cannot even tell you how many reasons there are for this.

Some shenanigans happens. Eventually, they do some wacky shit and manage to do Something?????? All I know is that the trio is out of commission, not dead I don't think they were, Connor is unconscious for a bit and Gregory's just. Fucking having a panic attack I don't know.

Little bit later Connor wakes up and we're introduced to BEST GIRL. BEST GIRL EVER.

ANDROID BEAR!!!!! Her name is Aurora and I love her and she's the best thing ever.

THIS IS GETTING REALLY LONG AND IM GONNA SPLIT THIS UP INTO PARTS SO THERE'S THE END OF PART ONE!!!!

#oasisofasks #grayson #IM SORRY I HAD TO SPLIT THIS UP KEKW #THIS DEADASS TOOK ME LIKE A MONTH GUYS YOU DONT UNDERSTAND

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jmtorres · 5 years ago

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hey so the latest thing that's making me headdesk on the "tumblr users don't understand why tumblr is going to die as a platform" is i've seen a couple of posts that are like "$3million? Anyone could buy it! let's start a gofundme and buy tumblr ourselves!"

my dearhearts, $3 million may be the value of tumblr's assets less its liabilities, or it may be a totally made up figure between two companies like your dad selling you his old car for $1, but it doesn't remotely touch what it costs to RUN Tumblr. as far as I can tell, tumblr is a money pit, which is probably why verizon was willing to sell it at a huge loss--it was already losing them money.

accounting super basics: Revenues - Expenses = Profit. If it's positve it's profit. If it's negative it's loss.

Revenues are any income. If you are a retail store, when customers buy groceries or whatever from you, the money they pay you is revenue. If you're a cable company, the fees customers pay for your services are revenue. If you're Tumblr, your revenue comes from ads. Best estimate I could find on the internet, Tumblr makes about $12-13million a year in ad revenue, and possible some relatively negligible amount from those premium blog layouts hardly any users are willing to pay for.

$13 million, you think, okay! So a year after buying Tumblr we'll be sitting pretty!

If you didn't have to pay anything to maintain it, maybe. But there are expenses.

Expenses are anything a business has to pay to stay in business. You have paid employees? Their wages are expenses. If you're a retail business, all those products on your shelves, you bought them from manufacturers or wholesalers, and what you paid for them are expenses. You rent office space? Expense. You pay utilities? Expense. You advertise? Expense. If you're Tumblr, your expenses are lots of server and data things. A lot of us don't really have a good handle on how much that costs, and went I went poking the internet I had a pretty hard time come up with anything, because Tumblr never had to file public financial statements and it was not a big enough segment of either Yahoo or Verizon for their financial statements to itemize its operations from their other segments. So I don't have a good estimate for their total expenses, but I found one article from like 7 years ago when they switched from hosted servers to running their own data center and were bragging about how much money it saved them. They went from $4-5million a month a server costs to $2million a month on server costs. So that's ONE expense. I poked my partner, who works in webhosting, and their reaction was "Huh, I'm surprised they saved that much, but also they're probably still paying a shitton for [other technical things that went over my head]."

So we have ONE expense for Tumblr estimatd at $2million a month, that is to say $24million a year. They have other expenses which are probably comparable if not more, I just have no way of estimating them. But that revenue figure of $12-13 million per year? Doesn't remotely cover that one expense, let alone all the other untold expenses.

When I say Tumblr's going to get shut down if no one can figure out how to monetize it, this is what I'm talking about. It's operating at a loss. It's been operating at a loss for years. It does not make enough money to cover its expenses, and frankly the amount of money going down the drain on it annually makes its $3million price tag sound like nothing. Automattic wants to try more freemium--I don't know if that will work, I don't know if anything will work, but they HAVE to try to do something to get money out of Tumblr because we're not talking about trying to turn a profit here, not really, we're talking about trying to get it to stop hemorrhaging money. Tumblr could float along if it could BREAK EVEN. If they can't get Tumblr to the break even point, they'll cut their losses and sell it on, or shut it down. That's all there is.

so like, maybe you could raise enough money to buy it--but what the hell would you do with it? Pour more money down its gaping maw? If that's an investment you want to make, you need to either be so ludicrously wealthy you can spend millions every year on tumblr without return, or you need to come up with a plan for it to actually generate enough money to sustain itself.

#tumblr #$1b flop #accounting

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tyrantwaffles · 5 years ago

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Tagged by: @dapenntja !

Name: Steph

Gender: Bitch

Star Sign: Taurus!

Height: 5′4″

Sexuality: Bi-Bi-Bi

Hogwarts House: Slytherin/Hufflepuff combo

Favorite Animal: Whichever I have most recently seen or learned about, but some consistent faves include alligators, foxes, coyotes, sharks, and birds.

Average Hours of Sleep: 8 because I cannot function on less than 7 hours

Current time: 9:12pm

Dogs or cats: Both! I currently have two adorable puppers, but when I have my own place and stable source of income, I really want to get a cat!

# of blankets I sleep with: At least 2 right now. I am constantly cold, but in the summer I switch to lighter blankets (still more than one most of the time).

Dream Job: Anything where I do not have to interact with customers of any kind, and get paid a lot of money. Ideally, I would have published several books and gotten a shitton of money from those, but realistically, I’d like to work in a State or National Park like Yosemite or Yellowstone, or the Redwoods as like a Park Ranger or something. IDK exactly what I would do, that’s just where I wanna be.

How old is this blog: fuck idk it’s been a while. I was in middle school I think, so...roughly 8 years???

Followers: 479 (<3)

Why I made this blog: @starcyntress made me do it. We were in art class

Reason for my URL: I took the “Tyrant” from my brother’s Xbox gamertag and added “waffles” to make it less threatening. Little did I know, my cousin who I would not meet until years later created a company called WaffleWorksCreations, where he makes and sells wooden jewelry and other stuff and it somehow has to do with skateboarding? (In case anyone’s interested, here’s his etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/WaffleWorksCreations ) So, my username runs in the family, I guess.

I tag: @neeksknocks @world-ruler-boo @dadmight @undeadrobby @starcyntress @nightlypatrol @half-ginger-half-goddess and anybody who wants to do this!

#the waffle has spoken #tag meme

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maryellencarter · 2 years ago

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This is kind of different with fanfic where some of these are canon, abd god knows I'm not listing every blorbo I've had, but:

* Go-to drink order: Wes -- depends what persona he's performing, we know Wedge knows he appreciates a good smoky brandy but if he's ordering something to be noticed it definitely comes with a tiny umbrella in it. Jigen -- whisky, usually on the rocks, unless there's a plotty reason for him to order something else, like that one time Lupin called him out on being homesick for NYC because he ordered a Manhattan. (Bonus callout for Logan because this one's canon and amuses me: Long Island Iced Tea.)

* Grooming routine: Wes -- in the Rebel Alliance, gets clean when and where he can, because you never know when you're going to be on the run; probably keeps up the habit in the New Republic; clean-shaven in all the canon evidence we have, which I headcanon/project is because anytime he's tried to grow facial hair to look a little less like he's fifteen, it just looks awful and he winds up shaving it off again. Jigen: I go back and forth between "actually quite clean and well groomed, trims the edges of his beard daily" (evidence: p2e33 has him under surveillance and repeatedly visiting a barber who's Lupin in disguise to pass along information, and the guys surveilling him appear to accept this as normal behavior) or "stinky bastard man, you must occasionally turn the hose on him" (evidence: it's funny).

* Disposable income: Wes -- once he has enough stability (say, after the New Republic moves to Coruscant), he collects just an absolute shitton of pillows, along with the most garish Space Lisa Frank and similar pillowcases, blankets, and sheet sets known to sapientkind. Jigen -- all the guns, obviously; also designer suits, high-end whisky, rocket launchers and other ordnance.

* Scars or tattoos: Wes -- for Star Wars bacta reasons, presumably has very few scars, only from things that weren't serious enough to get him popped into bacta, which means they're probably all along the lines of "was showing off and accidentally got dinged up". Jigen -- tons of them, I know I've written at least one lovingly detailed paragraph about all the different types of scars he has, maybe more than one. I don't tend to headcanon either one as tattooed, because Wes was/is a Rebel and Jigen's a merc, neither one wants any more identifying marks than they've already got. (For an ex-military Jigen I could definitely see a bunch of crappy flash tattoos including probably a tramp stamp, but I don't actually write him as ever having been legitimate military -- in my headcanon he was already solidly underworld by the time he could have passed for old enough to enlist.)

* Last time they cried: tricky for fanfic because it requires choosing at what point in canon. Wes -- probably whenever he last lost a duckling or squadmate, Leia and I decided years ago that our GFFA specifically doesn't include the "boys don't cry" bullshit. Jigen -- almost certainly the last time he thought Lupin was dead, although the last time a female ex died in his arms is also a good option.

* Oldest, middle, youngest, or only child? Wes -- oldest of a large farm family, I borrowed @irenkaferalkitty 's Janson clan which makes him the oldest of six anytime I need to be specific. Jigen -- I actually don't know, because I keep seeing references to him having a canon sister, including an AO3 canonical tag, references that I'm pretty sure are older than Part 6, but unless that's from TWCFM or Fujiko's Lie, I can't remember actually seeing where the reference comes from. Anybody?

* Shoes they're wearing: Wes -- New Republic combat boots are canonically implied to be *amazing*, given that the Fab Four ran basically the whole Cartann gauntlet in them and nobody mentioned sore feet or blisters later. I therefore assume Wes wears his in any context where he's wearing footwear that isn't, like, space flip-flops. Jigen -- his shoes vary wildly by Part, and sometimes he ties them like combat boots (or ice skates) too, but I'm very fond of his Part 1 shoes with the lil black spats. I like when Jigen is a fancy man. ^_^

* Place they sleep: Wes -- once they stop living on the run, he goes *bananas* for the pillows, blankets, soft fabrics, bright colors, etc. Jigen -- usually on the sofa in the hideouts, even when he canonically had his own bedroom in Part 5 we didn't see it, although there was that amazing Part 2 episode where Jigen and Goemon were sharing a bedroom with a pair of twin beds like a '50s married couple and also possibly wearing matching nightshirts, I can't quite remember. I assume Jigen has the same hangup I do where he can't sleep with his head toward the door, for self-defense reasons. (He's probably a little more versatile than I am because his method of self-defense is more flexible to aim -- I have to have my feet toward the door because my unarmed self-defense is that I kick like a mule. When I had a walk-in closet I slept in there, and I could also see Jigen doing that for stealth reasons.)

* Favorite holiday: Wes - very hard to pick because it's Star Wars and there's not a great assortment. In contemporary AUs he just goes nuts for basically *any* holiday. Jigen - not sure about favorite, but I suspect he absolutely *loathes* fireworks and the related holidays.

* Objects carried: Wes -- ration bars, vibroblade, blaster, datapad, and if he's in a flightsuit and has room he goes full mom friend and has painkillers, tweezers, the space equivalents of duct tape/safety pins/hair elastics/WD-40... Jigen -- gun, bullets, probably some snacks also.

So my problem with most ‘get to know your character’ questioneers is that they’re full of questions that just aren’t that important (what color eyes do they have) too hard to answer right away (what is their greatest fear) or are just impossible to answer (what is their favorite movie.) Like no one has one single favorite movie. And even if they do the answer changes.

If I’m doing this exercise, I want 7-10 questions to get the character feeling real in my head. So I thought I’d share the ones that get me (and my students) good results:

What is the character’s go-to drink order? (this one gets into how do they like to be publicly perceived, because there is always some level of theatricality to ordering drinks at a bar/resturant)

What is their grooming routine? (how do they treat themselves in private)

What was their most expensive purchase/where does their disposable income go? (Gets you thinking about socio-economic class, values, and how they spend their leisure time)

Do they have any scars or tattoos? (good way to get into literal backstory)

What was the last time they cried, and under what circumstances? (Good way to get some *emotional* backstory in.)

Are they an oldest, middle, youngest or only child? (This one might be a me thing, because I LOVE writing/reading about family dynamics, but knowing what kinds of things were ‘normal’ for them growing up is important.)

Describe the shoes they’re wearing. (This is a big catch all, gets into money, taste, practicality, level of wear, level of repair, literally what kind of shoes they require to live their life.)

Describe the place where they sleep. (ie what does their safe space look like. How much (or how little) care / decoration / personal touch goes into it.)

What is their favorite holiday? (How do they relate to their culture/outside world. Also fun is least favorite holiday.)

What objects do they always carry around with them? (What do they need for their normal, day-to-day routine? What does ‘normal’ even look like for them.)

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lichen-punk · 2 years ago

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pants so far uwu

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too-many-plants-man · 2 years ago

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Apologies in advance for the in-depth analysis no one asked for. I tried keeping it in the tags but there was too much.

-WITH REGARDS TO INCOME

The Addams family's primary source of income in the 60s show is fraud. Not that they're commiting it just that they were benefiting from others trying to commit fraud against them.

The land they live on in canonically inhospitable to most forms of life (which is part of why they own so much of it. It sells for basically pennies) and they're the only ones who can live on it.

There's a few episodes in the 60s show where some greedy ass thinks they're pulling a fast one by buying an acre of Addams family land for a steal bc they think there's some incredible resource on it. The amount they pay for the land was way more than the land is truly worth but, it's still way less than it would have been worth is there were any resources besides noxious swampland on it.

In the efforts to pull a fast one on the Addams' the characters waste tons of money and have to sell the land to keep their shit heel business running. No one wants to buy the land bc they know it's either worthless or bc they think it's cursed and the Addams' end up buying it back for less than they sold it for bc the greedy ass couldn't get anyone else to buy it and just posted it on the market for way less than even the scam amount.

"THE FREE MARKET WILL SELF REGULATE" is incorrect. Only the rich can truly regulate the "free market". Sometimes it just happens to be a weird guy (affectionate) and his wife who are too naive to get scammed.

-WITH REGARDS TO BEING "OLD MONEY"

Whenever Gomez invests in the stock market, they lose almost everything bc he picks the weirdest things to invest in, buys at the wrong times, sells at the wrong times. He's canonically terrible with money but he thinks that's how it's supposed to be. He thinks money isn't meant to be hoarded, he just also has so much of it that he can't get rid of it fast enough.

Most of their money comes from a distant, long dead relative (who was a pirate iirc who stole from rich, greedy assholes). That's part of why their main currency on the show is doubloons. (EDIT: in the 90s movie it was doubloons but in the 60s show it was primarily cash and I think that was mainly due to how hard it would be to make a shitton of fake doubloons in the 60s as opposed to fake dollar bills). But their main revenue is people thinking they're pulling a fast one on the Addams' bc of how gullible and generous they are and then something goes horribly wrong and they get their money back and then some (sometimes).

My personal theory is that the doubloons are cursed to return to the family by any means necessary if they're stolen or taken dishonestly. This lines up with Tully's end in the 90s movie and several of the episodes from the 60s show. The family would have given him the money if he asked (they even say this to him in the climax) but his greediness and sneakiness got him and Dr. Pinder-Schloss killed and all the money stayed with the family instead.

-WITH REGARDS TO EMPLOYMENT AND EXPLOITATION

They also have great benefits for their employees. Room, board, you can basically just fuck off to wherever in the house until someone needs something, you can pursue a short-lived music career, go on vacation, even have your mom live at the house with you free of charge.

Thing and Lurch get paid an absolute batshit amount of money and they love the family bc they don't really fit in anywhere else. They're treated better there than in any other job they could possibly find as an interdimensional hand (and arm occasionally) and a 7' tall monosyllabic man with a face people (in the show) think only his mother could love. It's sort of like getting paid to babysit and do housekeeping at the same rate a banker would make at the time without having to lie on your resume.

-WITH REGARDS TO PUBLIC IMAGE AND PHILANTHROPY

People also didn't want to associate with the Addams family and the locals would regularly turn down money offered to them in the show:

The guy running for some city official position in the first episode that was begging them to stop trying to fund him, the bank robbers on Halloween turned themselves over to the cops to get away from them even after the Addams' insisted they keep the money bc they thought they were trick or treaters, most of the episodes are like that.

Anytime they tried to donate things at the city fundraisers, they end up just buying the items they donated back for way more than the opening bid. If it weren't for how gullible they are, it would almost seem like a sneaky way to donate to the city in a way that people can't turn down bc they are simply following the rules of the auction.

In reality, it's usually that one of them put an item for auction, the other saw and thought "Oh, Morticia has one just like this, I'll just buy it and make a matching set" while Morticia is thinking "Oh, Gomez will be so upset if he finds out that I put this in the auction by mistake, let me be sneaky and try and buy it back." And then they both have a bidding war for the silly, cursed chachkies by pretending to be other people. And then they make out in the middle of the bidding war. That's vaguely referenced in the 90s movies and happens a few times in the 60s show.

-WITH REGARDS TO THE ORIGINAL POST

Even with all of that, they would definitely insist on the guillotines and host an elaborate feast to celebrate and still manage to avoid getting killed and be disappointed they survived. They'd probably willingly give as much money away as possible and insist on people moving into the empty rooms in their home to help rehabilitate and support the homeless population.

I just also think, due to past plots, that no one would be able to stay in that house for very long to actually reap the benefits of the program unless they truly had nowhere else to go. I'm pretty sure there's an episode where they rent a room out to someone for next to nothing and the guy dips bc he's too scared.

me when we start eating billionaires and i have to kill gomez addams

#mpp #im sorry #i just feel very strongly about these fictional billionaires bc they mostly stay rich for the plot and most episodes theyre basically on-#the verge of being destitute #bc they are just so bad with money but its meant to be a comedy so they couldn't really have episodes where they lose everything they owned

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