#they just have a big upfront cost

[chrisrin]

Will you be selling the stickers as a separate thing later or are they only a bonus for the keychains?

ye! stickers will get sold on their own as well. my plan is both for sticker sheet (themed per series? im still thinkin' abt it) and also individual options with bundle discounts.

[artisticdivasworld]

Why Factoring can be a Lifeline for Truckers During Economic Downturns

A lot of truckers are familiar with factoring, but maybe you haven’t thought about how it could be a life saver during economy uncertainty. Everyone’s feeling the pinch with fewer loads, longer wait times, and the unpredictability of when payments are coming in. Right now, cash flow is more important than ever, and factoring could be the thing that keeps your business steady while you ride out…

[tetedurfarm]

get started in meat rabbits masterpost!

yesterday i accidentally hijacked a friend's post and got way more engagement than i expected, which is both amazing and exhausting. so today i present to you: a big post full of resources and answers to the most common questions i've been getting! please refer to this now before dming me with questions <3

information below the cut!

why rabbits?

because they're one of (and in my opinion, THE,) best small-scale meat animal out there. they are relatively small, extremely quiet, can live in cages and therefore do not take up much space, and have a higher feed conversion rate (meaning they make more meat per lb of feed) than chickens, and their poop is AMAZING for gardening! in the footprint of a washer and dryer you can have a trio of breeding animals and space for growing out their litters if you use stacking cages. you just can't beat that.

what do they taste like?

like chicken or turkey. domestic rabbit meat is a very mild, white meat, and can be substituted for chicken in almost every meal. most of my rabbit i grind into mince and use it in place of ground beef. my rabbits, at least, get enough fat to make it unnecessary to cut the mince with pork or beef fat, so even the burgers are really juicy!

will you sell me some meat?

unfortunately in the state of washington it is illegal to sell meat that has been processed at home. at best i could sell you a whole rabbit but you'd have to butcher it yourself.

how much do they cost?

this depends heavily on where you live, though imo they have a fairly low upfront cost relative to other livestock. your biggest upfront expensive will be cages, though you can find good deals on cages and other equipment at livestock auctions/swaps and craiglist/kijiji/similar. the rabbits themselves can be anywhere from free to $100+, though i personally would not pay more than $30-$35 USD for a meat animal (but again, your average prices may vary.) after that, it's all in the price of feed.

feed costs vary from area to area and brand to brand - generally a locally milled feed will be a bit more cost-effective but they can also be lower quality so do your research. depending on your area, you can also feed rabbits partially or even completely on forage or pasture, just make sure you keep an eye on your parasite loads and weights to ensure they are eating enough.

this is a good site that discusses rabbit safe forage: https://riseandshinerabbitry.com/2012/02/26/safe-food-list-for-rabbits/

and this is a good site discussing hay: https://hoppyharlequinsrabbitry.weebly.com/hay-chart.html

this page is focused on other larger livestock but is a decent basic rundown on reading a feed lablel: https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2070/2023/03/FS138E_Reading-a-Feed-Tag.pdf

and a basic overview of rabbit nutrition: https://www.merckvetmanual.com/exotic-and-laboratory-animals/rabbits/nutrition-of-rabbits#Pelleted-Diets_v54343534

i do not personally believe that feeding hay is necessary for rabbits to be healthy, which is contrary to what most of you may have heard from online sources. we'll talk about that in a minute. all commercially-available pelleted rabbit feets are made with hay, and the 'long-stem' thing you read about is based on studies in ruminant animals that DO need a 'grass mat' to digest properly...but rabbits are not ruminants. they chew up their hay into fine dust, which is basically what pellets are anyway.

what other equipment do i need?

obviously, your first step should be cages. i prefer cages that are either 24x24 or 30x30 inches depending on the size of the rabbit. you generally want a cage big enough for the animal to lay flat on its belly with its legs out and not touch at least one of the sides (i prefer them to be able to touch none,) and tall enough that they can sit up comfortably. i like to err on the side of larger for breeding does, since their nestbox will take up floor space for a few weeks, and the kits need room to run around and grow before they are weaned. weaned kits need a larger cage or hutch to grow out in until they are eating size.

these cages can be wire bottomed or solid bottomed, just be aware of the hygiene differences between these styles of cages. wire cages are not evil, and will not harm a rabbit's feet provided it has proper density of fur. you can avoid foot problems by buying and breeding rabbits with well-furred feet.

other necessary equipment includes: feeders (j-feefers or pro-b feeders are my favourites), some way to provide water such as bottles, crocks, or an automatic watering system, a hay rack if you want to provide hay, grooming tools such as combs and brushes (if applicable; most rabbits will not need much grooming,) nail clippers, a first-aid kit containing things such as scissors, vet wrap, antibiotic gels and drops, saline solution, fenbendazole (brand name panacur, a dewormer,) gas medications such as simethicone/gas-x, critical care (a specially formulated powdered feed that you can mix into a gruel and syringe feed rabbits that won't eat on their own,) probiotic powder, electrolyte powder, and of course, toys!

make sure any provided toys are edible (so avoid plastic,) and will not get turned into mush and cause dirty mats in the cage when peed on. toilet paper and paper towel tubes are great, as are just chunks of untreated lumber offcuts, wooden baby blocks, or soda boxes. if you have some splurging money, bird toy websites like abirdtoy.com have amazing selections of things that rabbits love destroying. i recommend the refillable skewers!

what about vet care?

this is a fairly divisive topic. most vets do not know much about rabbits, and those that do are typically operating on outdated or simply untrue information that aligns with animal rights groups. therefore, a lot of meat and show breeders do not trust or use vets unless the situations are dire or there is disease testing to be done, and then generally we'll go to our state's ag exstension or college lab. i don't want to come off as anti-vet, i am far from it. but i and most people i know have not had good experiences with vets treating rabbits.

in general, exotic animal vet care (and yes, rabbits are considered exotic pets,) is extremely cost-prohibitive in general, much less when you have multiple animals. like most farmers, rabbit breeders typically handle basic medical situations ourselves.

medirabbit is a great resource for rabbit medical information including illnesses and medication dosages: https://www.medirabbit.com/

how many rabbits do i need?

the average litter size is between 5 and 8 kits, and rabbits can breed montly (though i recommend giving the girls breaks between litters depending on how they kept condition.) a trio of one buck and two does can produce a very good amount of meat for a one or two person household. my spouse and i lived on five or six litters a year for a very long time, using rabbit as our primary meat source!

do they need friends?

no. despite what house rabbit circles tell you, rabbits do NOT need companions and in fact having cagemates can stress them out unnecessarily. rabbits live in warrens in the wild, yes, but that is a survival tactic and the warrens are usually very violent and only work because they can run away when they need to. in capitivity, rabbits that are cohabitated can and commonly will KILL one another. it is much safer and less stressful to keep rabbits in their own spaces. i promise they won't mind.

rabbit colonies, where they are raised together in more 'natural' systems, are becoming very popular with homesteading circles but you should not jump into colonies as your first way to keep rabbits. they require just as much if not even more time and effort to manage than your typical cage setup. plus, you have to have the space to do that, which not everyone has.

can you help me find rabbits?

maybe! if you live in the united states and are comfortable sharing your local craigslist, i can take a look and link you to any rabbits or equipment i think would be worth your time. if you are local to me in western washington's i-5 corridor counties, i may have rabbits i can sell you for the price of feed and gas, but that depends on availability. if you are on the olympic peninsula in kitsam, jefferson, or clallam counties, hit up my buddy ren @buttonbuckfarm for similar services.

arent't they really fragile?

yes and no. rabbits are prey animals with an extremely specialised digestive system. if you are familiar with horses...same deal. if a rabbit stops eating, it will die, and they love bloating/colicking just like horses. there are also a few diseases that are common in rabbits that you should keep an eye out for, especially if you pasture or forage raise.

that being said, rabbits are not made of glass. you can flip them, you can poke them, prod them, put them in a car, drive them across the country, and squish them into weird shapes on a show table. as long as you take precautions during stressful situations and desensitise them to things like handling and transport early, they're shockingly physically hardy despite their sensitive guts.

i'm scared to kill them...what if i mess up?

it's perfectly understandable to fear the end of the process of raising rabbits. and accidents do happen. slaughter is a skill that must be practiced, and maybe you can take solace in knowing that we have all messed one up at some point or another. when this happens, the only thing you can do is try again as quickly as you can until you can confirm the animal is dead. and then take a minute to decompress.

it comes easy to me, but i know that is not true for everyone. but i am a firm believer that if you are going to eat meat, you should know where it comes from and how it gets to your plate. the best thing we can do for our food is to give it a wonderful life, kill as kindly as we can, and use as much of it as we are able.

here is the AVMA's list of approved humane slaughter methods: https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Guidelines-on-Euthanasia-2020.pdf

and you can find pretty good videos of the various methods demonstrated on rabbits specifically on youtube:

broomstick, choke chain, bunny ballista, hopper popper

please be aware that the above videos show animals being killed. though if you are reading this i imagine you are prepared to see that.

how do i process them once they're dead?

this is another one you can find pretty good videos of online. visiting a local rabbit show may get you in contact with someone willing to teach you in person, as well!

i am working on a big project website that is basically all i think you should know about raising rabbits, which will include detailed slaughter, skinning, and butchering videos, though as of now these are not available. i plan to have this project at least usably done by the end of the year!

ok so what's the thing with pet owners vs breeders

you may have noticed that i've been doing some 'as you may have heard' debunking in this post. that's because there is a very huge divide between the beliefs and practices of pet rabbit owners versus show and meat breeders and owners. why? well, that's complicated, but the big bad evil guy that is the first place to point at is the House Rabbit Society, or HRS.

the house rabbit society is basically rabbit PETA. i am not joking. here is a big masterpost on all their bullshittery: https://www.tumblr.com/o-i-have-too/185596917579/a-masterpost-of-house-rabbit-society-bullshit

i know this comes off as me having an agenda, and i guess i can't say that i don't, but i believe that the HRS' rules and rhetoric are not just wrong they are actively dangerous to follow. i have owned rabbits for nearly a decade and have produced more somewhere in the 1,500 range of animals in that time. i have owned a LOT of rabbits and have experienced all the different ways they can thrive and die and have done a lot of experimenting to find what works. just about everything the HRS says about caring for rabbits is blatantly false according to my experience. proper wire cage floors do not destroy feet. rabbits do not need hay if they eat a good pelleted diet. pellets are not evil or 'fattening' or the main cause of stasis. rabbits do not need leafy greens or veggies. rabbits do not need to be bonded. they are perfectly happy living alone, in cages. flipping a rabbit is not torture and is in fact sometimes necessary for many reasons. meat and show breeders are generally not contributing to the 'overpopulation' problem - if we don't want an animal most of us just eat them. breeding for meat is not evil if it's done appropriately and they are killed humanely.

unfortunately the HRS won the google SEO game and so their website and the sites of others that believe their rhetoric are the only thing that comes up on the first pages of search results. i'm not saying you have to blindly trust me, but i have the experience, and the combined experience of many of my peers both online and offline, that says that basically everything they believe in and preach is just...not true.

anyway that's it, hope this answers most of your questions! i may add to this in the future depending on what other questions i may get. stay tuned for updates on my website project and in general more farm content, rabbit and otherwise :)

[aethersea]

I've always wanted to learn bookbinding, ever since I was a wee little nerd, but there are a lot of things I've always wanted to learn, and this one has both a daunting upfront materials cost and a daunting upfront research cost. however, my sister is a jewel among siblings and gave me for christmas last year a handy dandy bookbinding manual, a block of good paper, and a little bag of tools.

but I still didn't have a suitable workspace, nor any of the many important tools and materials that she didn't include in her gift. so I just read the manual and pined. until maybe a month ago I got fed up with pining, flattened a cardboard box for a cutting mat, and went to town.

and I'm real proud of myself, so here's me rambling, plus photos!

I went to the thrift store and got glue + some fabric to bind the cover, went to Michaels for a paintbrush (and later went back for a metal ruler lmao it's amazing how useful it is to have a straightedge for cutting the paper), and...could not find material for the cover boards. so I went home and pined some more. but the urges were too strong, so after a couple hours of moping I got a stack of printer paper at the grocery store (I could not bring myself to use the good paper for my first, inevitably weak attempts, I just couldn't do it) and started making a little booklet. which was a great idea, it turned out, since it makes for good practice with cutting the paper, measuring things, punching holes in the signatures, etc.

I have a big box of greeting cards from Michaels, which I used for the covers. it didn't feel like I was making a Real Book, so I got some colored paper from the stationery store and used that for end papers.

so fancy~

galvanized by this success, I ordered a stack of chipboard online to use for cover boards; and once I was confident that I could cut paper without making it look too stupid (getting that straightedge ruler sure helped lol), I made signatures out of the good paper, left them under some heavy books overnight since I don't have a book press, and then punched holes in them! (huzzah for this nice video on getting the holes right)

my sister's gift included good linen thread. it's unwaxed, but after some poking around on r/bookbinding it looks like that just means I'll have to be more careful to avoid tangles and keep good tension. I am fine with this. I can be extra attentive. (I considered just running it over a beeswax candle, but one commenter said if your wax has paraffin in it, it could melt in a hot car, ruining the spine. I can't guarantee my candle is 100% beeswax, I didn't make it, so maybe we just move on.)

I don't have good linen fabric to use for the tapes, but the important part there is that the fabric be thin, sturdy, and not stretchy. the probably-cotton I got from the thrift store fits the bill, so it'll do!

this is a french link stitch, which I got from this exceedingly good tutorial. apparently it's strong enough on its own that for a book of this size, I don't actually need tapes, but I'd already cut the things so eh here we are. and tapes plus french link will make it a stronger binding still (according to a friendly redditor on r/bookbinding), so we carry on.

specifically we carry on to the gluing step. now as I mentioned, I do not have a book press, and you....kinda need one for this step. you need to hold the book block in place with the signatures facing upwards, pressed together hard enough that the glue won't run down between them and stick the pages together (though you do want the glue to get between them just a little, just for like a 16th of an inch). you at least need some clamps and a couple boards to sandwich the book block with.

but you know what? I'm not a professional, this is my first ever book, if it's a little bit off it'll be fine. so we grab all the heaviest books off the bookshelf and improvise.

it's fine! I'm sure it's fine! and just in case it's not, I've tucked a bit of cardboard underneath to catch any glue that drips down so it won't land on the floor. see? I'm prepared! I'm acing this.

and actually, it really was fine. I used clear elmer's glue, applied with a flat paintbrush from the art supplies aisle at Michael's, and frankly I liked the way the flat paintbrush let me slip glue in between the signatures. I did poke around on a couple bookbinding sites to see what kind of glue I should use, and the gist is that although there are better options than this, elmer's glue is perfectly serviceable, and the main downside is it's not archival grade. but I don't need my first bookbinding attempts to last 200 years, that's fine.

the next step is to add the mull. mull is a specific type of fabric – extremely loose-weave linen – and the idea is to paste it down over the spine to essentially hold the tapes and signatures all in place in relation to each other.

but I don't have mull! so I'm using more of the thrift store probably-cotton, because it's thin enough and not really stretchy at all. I'm sure this will be fine too. I painted a layer of glue onto the spine, then left it to dry a bit while I measured and cut the fabric, then painted a generous stripe of glue down the center, where it'll affix onto the spine. then I added a bit more glue to the spine, just to be sure, and pressed the mull into place, rubbing it thoroughly to make sure it's firmly affixed to every signature, with no creases in the fabric or air bubbles beneath it.

honestly I might have overdone it on the glue. I've never done this before, I don't know! I think it's okay, though – I tried not to ever let it become a thick layer, just a slight coating, since the danger of too much glue is that it might crack once dry and weaken the spine.

and now we leave it in the press overnight to dry, and pick up the next step in the morning!

[rennebright]

TRANSLATION COMMISSIONS OPEN

Heya, been a while since I made a post about this, I'm Renne from the (mostly one-man) translation group Shuten Doujin Translations, or"SDTLs" for short, we specialize in translating adult manga/hent*i from Japanese to English, if you're curious about our works you can search "SDTLs" in the adult manga site of your preference, such as e-/exhent*i or nhent*i. (We're always open for commissions but I thought I should make a new post promoting them since the circumstances have changed since last time.)

While adult manga is our forte, it doesn't need to be specifically that, it can be short (sfw or otherwise) comics or scripts (though probably not something the length of a book) as well as just editing b/w manga (everything but single doujinshi/manga chapters have different fee rates, so please inquiry about specifics). Our translations are JP→ENG⇆SPA

If you're interested in commissioning us here's a breakdown of the main info:

$25 (USD) base fee + $6 every 200 translated words (+ $any extra editing, transparent text, heavy redraw, etc., up to a maximum of $25 [might require outsourcing]) x 1.08 bullshit p@ypal fee.

With that pricing, an average 20 page chapter with simple editing would be roughly $40~$55 depending on the word count.

Strictly forbidden content includes: /o/icon, sc@t, bestia/ity, and other similar extreme fetishes. (Note that even if it doesn't feature any of that we might refuse to work on it for other reasons.)

However, please take into account that:

Since the total cost is based on TRANSLATED WORDS I won't know the exact amount until the script is done, I can give a rough estimate but it can be wrong, if the difference is too big I'll let you know and we can reach an agreement.

Because of that, there's no upfront payment, an invoice will only be sent once the script is done and there's a 100% guarantee that I'll complete it once it's paid.

There is a queue and it's suceptible to the length of other commissions as well as personal events in my life, be patient but don't doubt messaging me to ask for updates if I take too long.

If you'd like to inquiry about commissioning something feel free to DM me on tumblr, join my discord server and post it in the appropiate channel (or send me a discord DM through there), or email me at shutendoujin★gmail.com (★→@).

Reblogs are appreciated and if you happen to ever have read anything from us let me know through DM/ask or in the tags, I always appreciate seeing people's opinions, thank you!

[anipgarden]

Adding To or Starting a Garden

AKA, the beginning of the Plants-Related section of this series.

This is my third post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps! 

Got an area of lawn you’d like to convert to a wildlife haven? An area you can stick some hanging baskets in? Want to know how your garden of tomatoes and zucchinis is already putting in a lot of work? This is the section for you!

It would be dumb of me to not acknowledge that the act of gardening can come with a lot of costs. Buying seeds, buying plants, buying soil, raised bed materials, mulch, etc. … it can all get a bit daunting, let’s be honest! But there’s quite a few ways to get seeds and plants for free or extremely cheap, which I’ll be addressing in this section! The next section will be all about addressing the other Costs in gardening and how to mitigate or eliminate them entirely.

Also, do keep in mind; there’s no need to try and convert a whole area from lawn to garden or unused to garden at once. In fact, it could actually be extremely beneficial to do it a little at a time--maybe four or five square feet to start out.

Front Lawn (or Managing Principles)

If you live in a place where you’re required to have a grass turf lawn (HOA’s come to mind…), try replacing it with native grasses instead! You could even possibly use a low-growing ground cover plant like clover to a similar effect! Reseeding/replacing an entire lawn can be a big upfront cost, but even just letting the lawn be a little messy and tall helps. If the lawn gets patchy, leave the bare spots for a little while and something different will likely pop up! Pioneer species will fill the gaps and provide benefits to other plants around them, support animals, and more! If you want to take the guesswork out of it, you could always research what the pioneer species are in your area and plant the ones you like most. 

Obtaining Seeds for Cheap or Free

The cheapest way to start a garden is by far via seeds. However, seeds can be a bit complicated to grow, and some sources make them… way overpriced. Fortunately there are ways to get seeds for little to no cost! 

Some places sell seeds for as low as a dollar, 50 cents, or 25 cents! The packets may not have a lot of seeds, but it’s definitely a good start for a low budget! I’ve personally bought cheap seed packets at Walmart--the Ferry-Morse and Burpee brands are not what we’re looking for here. Typically the cheaper ones I’ve found are American Seed (which is owned by Green Garden Products, which also owns Ferry-Morse, Livingston Seed, McKenzie Seed, and Seeds of Change. Do with that information what you will), but they’re rarely stocked near the Ferry-Morse ones in the Formal Gardening Section. I’ve most often found them on end caps near the gardening section, so you may have to weave through a few aisles to find them, but once you do there’s an array of flower and vegetable seeds to select from! Alternatively, I’ve found seeds at Dollar Tree sold 2 or 4 for a dollar in Spring as part of their seasonal product; however, when they’re out of stock, they’re typically out of stock for the year. Try to check them out early in the year!

Otherwise, other seed companies like Urban Farmer or Botanical Interests will often have semi-frequent sales in spring and fall, when people are stocking up on seeds--joining their email lists can help you be the first to know when a good sale is going on!

Some foods from grocery stores will provide seeds that you can use in the garden as well. I’ve had the most luck with store-bought bagged beans, peppers, and tomatoes. Some people have had luck with watermelons, apples, citrus, squash, and more. Do keep in mind that you likely won’t get the same variety of fruit/vegetable as the one you bought--the resulting plant may look different and taste different.

Give it a shot! Pick some beans you like--if they don't grow well, at least you can eat the rest!

If you live in the US, food-producing live plants, bare roots, and seeds can often be purchased with SNAP benefits. But what does growing fruits, veggies, and herbs have to do with boosting biodiversity? While food crops aren’t typically native, they still provide valuable shelter for native insects. Some plants even have intricate relationships with native fauna--like the squash bee, a solitary bee which exclusively pollinates cucurbits like pumpkins, squash, and zucchini. And we get to benefit more directly as well! If you’re planting a diverse range of foods in your garden (as opposed to the swaths of single-plant farms that typically produce what’s sent to grocery stores), you’re supporting high levels of biodiversity by providing a variety of plants for creatures to live and hunt around.

Most of the time, when we think of boosting biodiversity with a garden, we think of a colorful flower garden teeming with pollinator species. However, if we’re striving to use native species, it can be a bit difficult to find some species in stores. I can say from experience that trying to find any wildflower seeds other than butterfly weed, purple coneflowers, and black-eyed-susans is… challenging, if you limit yourself to stores like Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowe’s. You might occasionally get lucky with an ACE Hardware or a local nursery, but even then sometimes it can be hard to track down who in your area is selling what--let alone if you live in an area where no one really is selling native plants or their seeds. Not to mention, even once you find a local or online store selling the seeds you want, they can sometimes cost a pretty penny. So what do you do?

If you have the option to, consider gathering native seeds yourself! Get good at identifying the native flora and fauna--or at least, a few target plants and their lookalikes--and get ready to go! Learn where they tend to grow, when they’ll be seeding, etc. Try to identify the plant before it goes to seed (for most plants, it's easiest to identify when flowering), then check back regularly to gather seeds. Typically, if I want to learn how to collect seed from a specific plant, I just search it on Google or YouTube--oftentimes, I'm lead to the GrowItBuildIt Youtube page, so it may be a helpful resource for you as well! Of course, make sure to leave plenty of seed behind so the wild population can repopulate, and seed can feed other creatures in the area. A good rule of thumb is to take no more than 1/3rd of what's available.

Buying seed in bulk is an option if you can afford the upfront cost. Try teaming up with a few friends to buy some bulk seeds and split them amongst yourselves--you’ll get tons of seed! Prairie Moon is a popular site that'll sell seeds by the pound if you can afford the price--though they're in the US, and I believe they focus on Midwest and East Coast natives.

If you want to cheat the system, don’t buy bulk sunflower seeds--buy bags of sunflower seeds being sold as birdseed. They’re typically all black oil sunflower seeds, but they’ll sprout, and they’re fairly cheap for the amount you get!

However, beware generic wildflower seed mixes! Many brands like to sell wildflower seed mixes in big box stores like Home Depot, Target, or even Dollar Tree, but they’ll often include flowers that aren’t native or possibly even invasive in your region! Before you make any purchases, double check to make sure the contained seeds won’t do more harm than good! A quality source of native seeds will provide English and Latin names for all seeds included, and will be native to the region or at least non-invasive. 

See this? I don't trust this.

There’s a good handful of programs online that’ll send you free seeds if you’re planning to start a native habitat project! Poke around online and see what you can find; you might get lucky! The best time to start looking for these is fall and winter, I find--by early spring, many of them are either done or beginning to wind down... though some also start up in spring. Ultimately--just check regularly! You never know what you can find!

Other Ways to Get Plants

Don’t want to start from seed? That’s fair! You can try cuttings! Just be sure not to take too much of the plant while you do so. Make sure you’ve gotten a few leaf nodes on your cutting, and cut any flowers you may have gotten. Make sure to leave some blooms and foliage on the original plant for the creatures in the current habitat--you don’t want to destroy one habitat to make another in your garden. There’s tons of methods of rooting cuttings, many of which have different efficacy rates for different plants, but that’s a topic for another post.

If you find seedlings growing in a place where they won’t be able to sustain themselves long-term, or are in danger of being destroyed, consider relocating them! You may be able to gently dig up and transplant the seedling to your garden. Don’t do this if they’re in a place where they can easily survive--ideally, you’ll be taking plants from sidewalk cracks, heavily maintained public gardens, roadsides, etc. Do be careful while doing this--ensure your safety first!  

You’re totally allowed to join gardening communities like clubs, facebook groups, and more before you’ve even put a trowel to the dirt. These are great places to learn information and advice! Many gardeners are more than happy to help out a new gardener, and will eagerly provide seeds, cuttings, or even baby plants! Talk to some people about your gardening journey and what you’re hoping to do, and you just might find some kindred spirits--or at least get more people interested in the topic! 

Seed and plant giveaways and trades happen all the time in gardening clubs, as well as online! Just poke around and see what you can find! Some are explicitly trades, meaning you’re expected to send something in return, but once you get your feet on the ground with some plant knowledge you’ll be stellar! You may be able to explain you’re just starting out, and someone may send you seeds without expecting a trade, but I’d suggest trying giveaways first. 

Poke around online and see if there’s a local chapter of your state’s native plant society. From there, you’ll likely be able to find a calendar of events--many of them will host plant sales in the spring, with a bunch of native plant seedlings ripe for the pickings if you can make it out and have some money to spare! Fair warning, though, you’ll want to get there early if you can. If they say they’re starting at 10, try to get there by 9:45. Year after year, there’s always record turnout, and they sell out of plants faster than ever. Just trust me on this. I’ve been let down; hopefully you won’t have to be.

Some libraries are beginning to host seed libraries! Check around and see if your library has one! Ideally, the system works best if you also have seeds to contribute in return, but if you’re just starting out I’m sure they won’t mind you taking some seeds! Just consider saving some seeds to contribute in the future and pay it forward. If your library doesn’t have a seed library? Consider asking if they’d be willing to start one! Community interest is a great way to get the ball rolling on projects like these, but they’ll only know the community is interested if the community tells them they’re interested!

Volunteer to Garden for/with Someone Else

Maybe someone in your area wants to garden, but is struggling to find the time/energy. Many elderly people who used to garden simply can’t anymore but still would like a garden. Other people may love to have a helping hand in their garden. You might even find a few people in your area interested in renting and sharing a community garden plot with others, so they don't have to handle it all on their own! They may be interested in increasing biodiversity right now, or may be willing to if it’s brought up to them. You might be just the kind of person someone needs! Since it won't be your garden, you’ll likely need a bit of permission and collaboration to get anything in particular going, but it’s worth a shot and a way to maybe even make friends! 

Again, your mileage may vary with some of these. You may not know where there's a bunch of wildflowers growing in your area, or maybe your local library doesn't have a free seed library. That's okay! Do what you're able to, find what you can find, get what you can get! And there's never any shame with starting small--in fact, starting small can make the project easier to manage and expand when you're able!

That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to start growing plants cheaply--low cost seed starting set ups, essentially. There's a lot of good options, many of which I've used myself even! Until then, I hope this advice is helpful! Feel free to reply with any questions, success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!

[thebibliosphere]

I saw your post about ingram, and out of curiosity, is there some advantage to going through the whole self-publishing thing with retailers when you're just starting out? like I mean the way that fandom zines work is that they don't even bother going through ingram or amazon or whatever. they just set up a social media site (usually twitter) to gain followers, open preorders (usually 1-2 months in length) to generate the costs of printing upfront, and then sell anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred copies of their books (usually artbooks, but anthologies exist too). I've seen some zines generate over a thousand orders. they're kind of like pop-up shops, except for books. maybe the sales numbers aren't so impressive to a real author, but the profit generated is typically waaaay more than the $75+ apparently needed for Ingram Spark, so I still feel like new authors could benefit from this method too, especially if they just need some start-up cash to eventually move to ingram if they want to for subsequent runs of their book. I think authors would also have to set aside some of the pre-order money to buy an ISBN number to have printed on their book, and I'm not really sure what other differences there are, but I just wanted to ask about it in case there's some huge disadvantage I'm missing!

So, popup zines work well for some people, and I know some authors who kickstart their work successfully. But for a lot, it's just not feasible as a long-term stratedy. Or even as a means to get off the ground.

Fanzines succeed primarily because an existing fanbase is willing and ready to throw money at something they love. They’ve got a favorite writer or artist they want to support. Supporting all the others is just a happy by-product. They also take a HUGE amount of short-term but intense planning that just doesn’t always jive with how some of us work.

I, for one, would never offer to organize a fanzine. I’ll take part in them as a creator, but I’d rather throw myself off a cliff than subject myself to wrangling that many people and dealing with the legal logistics.

When it comes to authors doing anthologies, it'svery much the same. The success of the funding often hinges on having other big-name authors involved whose existing fans will prop up the project. Or having a huge marketing budget.

Most self-pub authors have zero marketing budget. I’m one of them, and I’m under no illusions that my work would not be as popular and self-sustaining as it is if I didn’t have a large Tumblr blog.

When I thank Tumblr in my forewards, I am utterly sincere. Tumblr brought fandom levels of enthusiasm to an unknown work and broke the Amazon algorithm so hard, that Amazon thought I was bot sniping my way to multiple #1 spots and froze my sales rankings.

That’s not the norm. And while I could probably kickstart my own work as an indie creator, that’s because I’ve put literal decades into building up a readership. I’ve been doing this since I was 16 and realized people thought I was funny. I didn’t know what to do with it or if I’d ever actually write anything, but it meant the groundwork was already there (thank you, past-me). I basically fell upward into my success by virtue of never being able to shut the fuck up and wanting to make people laugh. Clown instincts too strong.

New or first-time authors trying to sell their work without that will find it infinitely harder.

All of that aside, even if an unknown author somehow gets lucky and manages to fund their work, there’s still the question of shipping and distribution logistics. Are you shipping everything yourself? Better hope you’re able-bodied and have the time for it. (for reference, it took me months to ship out 300 patreon hardbacks because of my disabilites. It damaged my back and hands. I couldn’t type for several weeks after I was done.)

Are you going to sell primarily at conventions? Better hope you’re able-bodied, have the time and don’t have cripling anxiety about being in large groups...

Also, will selling a dozen to a few thousand copies in one burst be sustainable in the long run as a career? Not for me. Doing things via Ingram and Amazon means I earn a steady trickle of sales for the rest of my life provided the platforms remain and so long as I keep working and can generate interest in the series, not just when I have funds to pay for physical copies to sell. The one-time (in theory) cost of $75 to distribute through Ingram gets paid off pretty quick that way. And it doesn't require the same logistics as doing the popup/crowdfund.

Ultimately, it comes down to what you are capable of but also the type of work you’re doing. If you’ve got an extended network of fellow creatives who will back you or you’ve got a large following elsewhere, doing it like a popup might work for you.

If you’re an exhausted burnout who can’t fathom the short but intense amount of organization that sort of thing requires, not to mention doing it over and over and over... Ehhhhh. No thank you.

[tsartistry]

So there is a character in Niobe Fic that I have not really mentioned at all, and I don't think any of you care, but I care and I wanna talk about Elmer. I think he's neat. I will be honest upfront, this is me indulging in one of my favorite friendship tropes:

Small Precocious Child and the Big Beefy Bodyguards who will protect them at all costs.

More than anything, Niobe needs to make sure no demigods get anywhere near Lester, so she hires monsters as security around her home/business. After all, monsters can smell demigods from miles away. She pays them handsomely, and includes very delicious and filling meals as part of their compensation so they won't be compelled to wander away and hunt for food.

Periodically throughout the Riordanverse we get glimpses of the monsters having an entire underground society (Monster Donut, the serpent on the train in TON, etc.) It seems like the majority of them want nothing to do with Demigod Bullshit and just want to live normal lives. So I think Niobe had no shortage of Monster Applicants wanting a Normal(ish) Job that pays Actual Wages instead of whatever Kronos was paying them (if he was paying them at all.)

Elmer is a Manticore that Niobe hired to be Lester's personal bodyguard. He has one job: If he smells any demigods, get Lester out of there.

Of course, Elmer has no means of sniffing out any other kinds of special children. So when Lester starts hanging out with Carter and Sadie, Elmer is just like "Well, the kid does look pretty lonely. He should have some normal human friends. As a treat."

Lester, being a mortal who doesn't remember anything about Greco-Roman myths being real, doesn't see Elmer for what he is. Which makes things very awkward for Sadie, who can see his true form almost immediately.

But Elmer seems pretty fond of Lester, and pretty chill in general so... maybe he's not dangerous? But there's definitely something WEIRD about Lester's life that she wants to figure out.

(and for those just joining us, Lester has a service dog because the process Niobe used to erase his memories gave him literal brain damage, so now he has a seizure alert dog)

[arcadiabaytornado]

Double Exposure is such a let down. The Devs are stupid to break Max and Chloe up.

It makes so sad that I game I regard as pretty fun is forever going to be tainted as the game that broke Max and Chloe up.

Like...I have seen NOTHING about Gwen or Amanda or Safi or Vinh in the aftermath of the early release. All I've seen is everyone is talking about Pricefield, and...yeah. That seems obvious to me.

Pricefield was one of the first big queer ships to exist within a popular video game, and it's been a fan favorite ship for years because of the insane (positive) dynamic between Max and Chloe.

It's a big deal that another company bought the rights to the franchise and then decided that they didn't want to be bothered going forward with their dynamic, and, in my opinion, it's an even bigger deal that they didn't want to go forward with it gracefully. There were ways Max and Chloe could have broken up without it feeling like the devs wanted Chloe out of "their" story as soon as possible...but that's not what happened.

As a consequence this game is going known in the fandom as "the game that broke Max and Chloe up" instead of "The game that introduces a ton of super cool new characters and has a pretty fun plot and power mechanisms." Which is a huge shame.

I also think they shot themselves straight through the foot by being super vague about Chloe's presence leading up to the game's release. I honestly think if they had just been upfront about the breakup from the first trailers people would have been less upset. Because I do think it feels deceptive that they didn't reveal the breakup until people had already bought the game, and the fact that they were so secretive about it implies to me that they knew it would be an choice that could cost them money from Pricefield fans.

So, yeah, I am upset that Decknine handled Pricefield so badly. And I'm upset that their handling of Max and Chloe took away from a good game, because even though I had PLENTY of moments where I was really enjoying DE, there does tend to feel like there's an giant blue haired elephant in the room.

[afrocentric-divination]

Crochet, fiber arts community, and artists come in real quick for a sec.

So I’m crocheting this bag and I’m getting a point where I can see myself selling my pieces, and I’m purposely making this bag to sell. I might keep it for a small bit to make content with it and show it off but I want it sold and I want to make more like it to sell. So I decided to look around to see what a bag like this might sell for online.

Im thinking about selling it at markets but this is a pretty pricey bag. To sell this I would also have to have cheaper items to sell and that requires more planning. Also, the big thing to note here is that while most crochet would be expensive because of the time you put into it, this bag has a pretty pricey upfront cost on top of the time. We’re talking $40-$60 in upfront, something you only see with like blankets or maybe a dress.

Anyway, I decide that the type of person who might want this kind of bag may be on Etsy, and I know there are people selling this kind of bag on that site and so I went over.

Tell me why most sellers are selling the exact same bag for $60 🥴. Also mind you, it takes about 6-8 hours to make depending on your energy and skill.

I included both upfront and just the minimum wage (in FL) for the amount of hours, then rounded up to get a minimum cost of at least $150 if I were to sell it. Close to $200 if I have to add different colors and accessories. You also have the concept of selling for twice the amount that you paid for to be able to get double the materials to make more and thats over $300. I’ve seen one person selling for $400 (marketing was on point for it but still…). And Etsy sellers are only selling it for $60 🥴🥴🥴 that’s not even enough for the labor!!

I know we want to make art accessible for everyone. And yes, an artist can sell their art at any price point. But damn, at least put cost and labor into it 😭 it really hurts my heart to see people undervaluing themselves selves. Like yes the recession is technically here for consumers but it’s also so for artists too. Artists will forever deserve to get paid, and we as a society gotta do better with paying them and showing that appreciation.

[wisteria-lodge]

wait there are no house elves in malfoy manor? i mean it's possible that during the time voldemort and the others where there the house elves could just be in prison or they are there and jkr just didn't mention them

because let's say there aren't house elves and voldemort and the death eaters are there, who would have prepared the meals or whatever things guest needs when they visit or stay in someone's house

In Harry Potter, we see a few other strategies for maintaining and running a magical house. Let’s break it down.

OPTION ONE: NON-MAGIC PEOPLE vs HOUSE ELVES

Yep, we are going to be dropping some Filtch lore today.

So in canon, it’s really hard to explain why that man (who isn’t able to do magic) has that job (caretaking an entire magical castle.) But I’m going to do my best to make it work. Because pre Statute of Secrecy, it actually makes a lot of sense that old medieval buildings like Hogwarts and Malfoy Manor would have been staffed by muggles. 

I mean, the only reason you build castles (big, easily defensible fortresses) is so they can be the last line of defense if anything happens to the serfs who are renting/farming your land. The peasants supply food/clothes/weapons/luxury products to the Lord of the manor/castle, and in return they are protected (in theory.) That’s feudalism. If anything, being a wizard would just make you a better Lord. There’s no way the Malfoys or the Founders would have been sitting at the center of a community of only wizards, there aren’t enough wizards. Also, if you want someone to run/maintain your house and you’re choosing between Muggles and house-elves… in a lot of cases, muggles are actually better.

Like okay, house-elves are slaves, which means they would be cheaper than Muggle peasants, but like… not a lot cheaper. Also, there’s got to be some upfront cost of time/money/effort in order to catch a house-elf and bind them to your house. Once you start getting generations of house-elves that’s not a problem, but when you’re setting up a household… yeah I think getting in a staff of muggles would be quicker and easier.

The other thing house elves do have in their favor is that they’re really really powerful. A single house-elf is much more effective than a single human servant. But… they’re also kind of too powerful? If you have a human servant who betrays you, does a bad job, or that you just don’t like… you can fire them, imprison them, and (if you’re a wizard) oblivate them so they can’t tell anyone your secrets. 

None of that works with house-elves. Unlike a human you can’t bribe them (because they have a culture that doesn’t value money.) You can’t imprison them (because whatever magic prevents wizards from apparating doesn’t work on them. Dobby gets in and out the Malfoy dungeons just fine.) I’m also assuming you can't obviate them, because if you COULD then oh my god, Barty Crouch Senior would have 1000000% obviated Winky. 

Until house-elves are freed they do seem to have some magical compulsion that prevents them from speaking ill of their masters…  but they can clearly still mess their masters up pretty bad if they want to. Dobby spends all of Book 2 undermining Lucius. Kreacher spends all of Book 5 undermining Sirius (and honestly is the catalyst for the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.) This doesn’t even seem out of the ordinary: Tom Riddle framed Hokey for Hepzibah Smith’s murder, and apparently everyone bought it. That's another reason a muggle would be a solid choice: even if they wanted to kill a wizard, it would be nearly impossible. But Kreacher and the Hogwarts house-elves actively fight wizards during the Battle of Hogwarts.

So if you have a house-elf that you can’t trust, basically your only response is to free them. Which is bad, because they know all your secrets and can now talk to whoever they want (Dobby absolutely bad-mouths the Malfoys after he's freed. It’s super plausible that Winky could’ve said something about Barty Junior while she was smashed off Butterbeer.) So really… the only truly safe option is to kill them. And it seems like you have to kill them by hand, like with a sword. The Blacks did sign up for this, and we can see their wall of decapitated house-elf heads as proof. House elves do make more sense for the Blacks, because I'm thinking if they became powerful at around the same time as the Statute, they would have been setting up new muggle-less households, not adapting old ones to the new paradigm. But then, not everyone is as hard-core as the Blacks. The Malfoys, for example, actually seem quite squeamish about violence. Draco is also very happy to refer to what Hagrid does as "servant stuff," which means he's comfortable with that particular worldview.

Now, Hogwarts also has house-elves, and they certainly don’t seem to kill them. Of course it's a school rather than a house - if one of those elves went rouge, what damage could they really do? Compare that to Dobby who like, if had wanted to put Lucius Malfoy in Azkaban… he could give some really damning evidence. Lucius Malfoy’s defense was that he was under the Imperius curse. Dobby knows that’s not true. Dobby knows where all the contraband in that house is, Dobby knows that diary belonged to Voldemort, he knew Lucius was threatening Hogwarts on purpose. Maybe elves aren’t allowed to testify in front of the Wizangamot, but Dobby, bring that info to Arthur Weasley. Bring it to Dumbledore. If I were Lucius Malfoy, I would be terrified. Even if I had other house elves, I don’t know if I’d keep them around after second year. Definitely not after Kreacher went rouge and betrayed Sirius, which *Narcissa* knows all about.

Hogwarts also has Filch (and Hagrid, who *also* can't do magic, at least on paper.) And I guess I could see an interpretation where if Hogwarts was initially designed to be run by Muggles, then maybe there are certain functions of the castle that can only be performed by Muggles. Like, we all know there’s something weird going on with Mrs. Norris. She’s too smart, she’s the only animal who shows up on the Marauder’s map, she’s telepathically bonded with Filch. So, maybe she is the manifestation of some magical function that oversees the castle, and maybe you need someone without magic to properly access her magic. Like if a witch/wizard tried to bond with her, their magic gets in the way of the castle’s magic. I’ll buy that. 

Eventually though, Salazar Slytherin started becoming wary of Muggles, so maybe he started a process of phasing out any muggle servants working in the castle and replacing them with house-elves. That makes sense to me. And if the castle needed non-magic workers… squibs would be a good compromise. 

OPTION TWO: AUTOMATED MAGIC

So we know you can cast a spell on an object, and then that object will just sit and do nothing until the spell is triggered. Fred and George’s hats don’t do anything until you put them on - and then they turn your head invisible. You are not doing anything to cast the spell, it’s all in the hat.  Presumably their cloaks and gloves that deflect curses work the same way. 

We also see a lot of this kind of delayed-action magic when it comes to magical protections for locations. Dumbledore has spelled Grimauld Place to send specters at anyone who comes through the door. Muggle-repelling charms don’t do anything until a Muggle comes in proximity. Voldemort’s inferi trap in the cave is filled with magical objects that don’t activate until certain conditions are met. Also, these are not single-use protections that you need to replace every time they’re triggered. Once they're set up, it seems like they keep working until they're taken down.

We also know that there are plenty of spells to make running a household easier. We see Mrs. Weasley use spells to cook, to make clothes, she has whole books full of household magic. So my thought is - if you can bewitch the outside of a house to respond to certain conditions, then why not the inside of a house? How hard would it really be to bewitch a fireplace so it turns on every time someone walks into the room? I bet you could get beds that make themselves, carpets that clean themselves, make it so that certain meals are always cooked at certain times, and served in specific places. The house probably cycles through a set number of meals, and some of the food options would be slightly eccentric because that piece of food-magic was set in 1702. But it all seems very doable, in a programmable smart-house sort of way. Especially if you’re the Malfoys and have nothing but money, time, and a love of the ~*~*aesthetic*~*~ Because the aesthetic of a house like this would be absolutely peak. Very spooky fairytale, invisible servant, romantic Beauty-and-the-Beast castle vibes. 

I think this is the option that Malfoys would have chosen, when they no longer had access to Muggles to run their house for them. Apart from the heightened security and a cooler aesthetic, the Malfoys were very against the Statute of Secrecy, so I bet that (for a while at least) they were kind of hoping that it would be reversed and things would go back to the way they were. So, not as motivated to start building up a household staff of house-elves, which is a pretty irreversible decision. 

The Malfoy also like to keep secrets. In the present day of the book, we know they have contraband cursed objects, contraband poisons, a hidden room to keep all of their contraband in underneath the drawing room floor. I don’t think this is a particularly recent state of affairs. Going back to the 1700s, if the Malfoys were ordered to cut off all these very profitable ties with the muggle world… yeah they’re not doing that. They are definitely hiding income coming in from the muggle world, or muggle retainers that they were kind of supposed to obviate and didn’t. 

In the main timeline of the books, I think it makes a lot of sense that Dobby is a Black family house elf that came over with Narcissa when she and Lucius were first married. And I say that because… Dobby is a mess, and Lucius Malfoy puts a lot of stock in looking good while out in public. The Hogwarts house elves look neat and presentable. Winky’s tea-towel toga looks clean and neat. Dobby is shambling around a snot-stained torn pillowcase, is Lucius not embarrassed? 

My thought is that he kind of resents Dobby: he’s the Black family passive aggressively saying that Lucius can’t take care of Narcissa, or maybe he suspects that the Blacks are sending Dobby over as a spy, whatever. But whatever the reason he can’t get rid of him - first because he doesn’t want to offend his in-laws (Dobby is the equivalent of an ugly lamp that you keep in the closet unless the people who gave you the lamp are visiting.) Then Dobby witnesses the entire war, which makes him way, way too much of a liability to free. 

So that’s my answer. tl;dr - the Malfoys are a very private family with a long-standing distrust of the Ministry, with a house that was set up to be run by Muggles. It makes the most sense that they have retrofitted that house with automated magic, until it’s basically able to run itself. And then, whenever they’re throwing an event, or something a little too complicated for the house's magic to handle… just hire in a staff of wizards to work one or two nights.

[reasonsforhope]

"A new community housing development in the Bronx will feature a cool piece of kit: an on-site aerobic digester that can turn 1,100 pounds of food scraps into 220 pounds of high-quality fertilizer every single day.

Built by Harp Renewables, it’s basically a big stomach filled with bacteria that breaks down food scraps and wasted food into their component parts, and in the future could be a standard part of all apartment units as the amount of food waste in American reaches 30% of the total mass of all trash collection.

The Peninsula, organized by Gilbane Development Company, will feature 740 units of affordable housing, 50,000 square-foot light industrial space and equal sized green space, and 15,000 feet of commercial space, all of which will send their castaway comestibles right into the digester...

Fast Company reports that Christina Grace, founder of a zero-waste food management company, helped plan the design and implementation of the digester into The Peninsula, and helped organize a 40% grant from the city to pay the $50,000 upfront cost.

“The goal is for this material to work its way into the community garden network in the Bronx,” [Christina Grace, who helped plan the design] told the magazine, adding that she expects it to pay for itself over just a few years. “We see this as highly replicable in both commercial and residential venues. We know there’s a need for fertilizer.”

Producing fertilizer right there in the city reduces the need for it to be trucked in from afar, chipping away, even if just a bit, at NYC traffic.

Big problem solver

Perhaps uniquely beneficial to New York City compared to other spots in the U.S. is that the digester will have a significant impact on the Bronx’s share of the city’s rodent problem.

Those who’ve watched the Morgan Spurlock documentary Rats will understand why that’s significant—while those that haven’t will have to imagine what living in a megacity where rats outnumber people by around 8 or 10 to 1 looks like.

Another big problem the bio-digesters could potentially help is pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Fertilizer is a big emitter of all three of the most-targeted GHGs. Fertilizer, like quarry dust and ammonia is, like so many commodities, often imported from countries who specialize in its production, such as Norway, but also Russia and Ukraine, whose conflict has recently highlighted the fragility of the supply chain with sharp increases in prices...

Bio-digesters by design keep the CO2 and methane in the fertilizer produced, rather than it entering the atmosphere.

For these reasons and more, the aerobic bio-digester is slowly making its way into residential and industrial spaces around the country.

GNN reported on an enormous bio-digester at the heart of the D.C. advanced resource (sewage) recovery center outside the capital, and on the use of bio-digesters on Australian pig farms which are helping reduce the environmental and psychological impact of the effluent produced from such operations.

Harp Renewables tweeted how happy they were to have installed their bio-digester in the town of Cashel, Ireland.

Expect to see more stories like this pop up around the globe."

-via Good News Network, March 17, 2022

Note: Obviously gentrification bad and "affordable housing" is sometimes nowhere near as affordable as it should be, etc. etc. That said, this is such a fantastic use case that I felt I had to post it anyway.

[bhosadverse]

I think I like you (I hope you do too)

lily evans x fem!reader (modern!neighbours au)

a/n: first fic!!! pls be kind :) title is from your text by sundial

c/w: die joke, swearing (lmk if i missed anything)

You stared at the man with undisguised incredulity. “800 pounds? Are you kidding me? I thought we agreed on 500?” Trevor - or perhaps Troy rolled his eyes at you derisively. He probably thought he was being subtle - that stupid prick.

“It's just how it is, Miss. Moving stuff inside the 'ouse? Well, that's gonna cost you a bit extra, innit? Wouldn't want you gettin' in over your 'ead now, would we?" he jeered at you. His twin, Trevor, you identified from his tag, snickered stupidly at that. The universe was really testing your patience today. 

"Seriously? It would've been decent to tell me upfront that moving stuff indoors meant extra charges. This is ridiculous." Trevor turned to you then, all six feet of him tensed and towering over you. "Miss, it ain't on us. You got a problem with it, you take it up with the higher ups. Give us our dosh, we've got other bits to be getting on with." With a sigh you handed over the cash, regretting the choice of passing on your friends’ offers to help you with the move. 

With another sigh, you turned back to the big mess in front of you, your hands resting on your hips, visibly expressing the exhaustion you were already feeling. This had seemed like such an exciting idea at first, having your own space all to yourself. The independence and freedom that you had anticipated was certainly there and you were definitely feeling it now. Having to arrange all this furniture by yourself……very exciting. 

You let out a third sigh and felt the weariness seep into your bones. This was going to be a very long day. You took a step toward the covered couch - ready to begin settling into this new place, which would hopefully become your home. 

Suddenly, you were ambushed by a lasso which was thrown at your legs with murderous intent. The lasso then purred and you died…..due to the lasso’s cuteness. “Hello, kitty! Oh, you’re so precious,” you cooed. The cat (apparently not a lasso) meowed up at you, rubbing against your shins. “What’s your name, buddy?” you murmured softly, picking it up and settling it in your arms. The only response you received was another meow, and a curious paw on your face. Noticing your open door, you walked towards it, all the while, gently scratching the cat behind its ears. “You seem like such a distinguished member of the society. Oh, is that where you came from?” you wondered to yourself, noticing another open door down the hallway. “And you’re my new neighbour too, it’s so sweet of you to welcome me like that, kitty.” you giggled, shutting your door carefully.  “Let's get you back to your owner, shall we?” You walked up to the threshold of your neighbour’s house and knocked on the open door. 

Just then, ‘Kitty’, as you had begun to call the cat in your head, jumped down from your arms and ran inside — towards the kitchen, you assumed. Standing on your neighbour’s doorstep awkwardly with no apparent reason was definitely not on your agenda for the day but before you could say or do anything, a figure emerged from said kitchen, you assumed again. Following that, your heart skipped around five or at least two beats. 

Standing in front of you was probably the most gorgeous woman you had ever seen. Her red curls were tied up in a top bun and there was a smudge of flour across her left cheek. And she was saying something — to you. “— hall?” She asked, with a curious gaze fixed on you. 

“Huh? Sorry — I didn’t hear that, I was - I was thinking something else, sorry” you felt heat rise to your cheeks. 

At this, a teasing smile spread on her lips. She replied with a playful lilt to her tone "I said, I hope Crookshanks didn't give you any grief, darlin', and I was wonderin' if you're the new neighbour down the hall." 

“Oh yes, I am.’’ you replied hurriedly. “I’m in 403. Which you probably already know, cus' of all the noise.” Then you registered her previous statement. “Oh, wait — his name is Crookshanks? That’s such a cute name! How old is he?” 

“He’s four!” she replied eagerly. “He’s Himalayan. And I’m Lily Evans. What’s your name, love?” she asked, walking up to you. 

It was so hard not to stare at her — she was radiant, and you realised with a start that your palms were sweaty as hell. Quickly wiping them on the back of your thighs, you extended your right hand forward as you told her your name — mostly so that you would have something to do with them, but also because she was just so pretty. Although you didn’t want to be a creep, her hands looked so soft. You realised too late that they also looked dusty. The apologetic smile on her face just made you want to cringe even more. 

"I'm terribly sorry. I was actually just whipping up some cookie dough for your welcome biscuits. Seems I've spoiled the surprise, haven't I? But I do hope you're rather fond of chocolate chip! It's one of my specialties, you know." she winked. 

In your opinion, if you fainted, at that moment, it would be completely valid. The little nicknames, the supposed flirting (you hoped), and that wink? It was a surprise you were still standing straight. It took you a few seconds to find your voice again. “Oh, you didn’t have to, you know? But also thanks a lot. Crookshanks and his owner both definitely know how to give a warm welcome.” That was brave. And also slightly lame, in your opinion. But it seemed to have its desired effect or so you thought, judging by the slight twinkle in Lily’s eyes. Her body language shifted. She leaned in a bit closer and hummed playfully. "Looks like I owe thanks to my mate for leaving the door ajar as he left. Annoying as bloody hell, but it seems to have finally come in handy." 

You quirked a smile at that, hoping her close proximity didn’t mean she could feel the heat emanating off of your face. “Looks like you do, I guess. Anyway, I should get going. I’ve still got a shit ton of stuff to do and not enough time. I’ll see you — and Crookshanks, later though?” Judging by the way her smile seemed to soften around the edges, she definitely caught the hopeful tone at the end of your sentence. “Yes, you will. Fancy joining me for dinner tonight? I'm not exactly a master chef, but I reckon the gas ain't sorted yet at your place, love.” this time, her tone was quieter and she was looking directly into your eyes with a small smile. You shifted your weight to the other leg and looked to the floor, considering it. Was this a date? You desperately wanted it to be, but what if something went wrong? Then you would have to live next to her with that and it would be awkward as hell. Looking back up at her, you saw that she was waiting patiently for you to respond, and you decided to give it a shot. What will happen, will happen, right? 

“Sure.” you replied, hoping your voice didn’t betray the conflict you had felt. “I’d love that.” She smiled brightly and clapped her hands together, leading to a small cloud of flour enveloping the both of you. At that she grinned sheepishly and whispered “Sorry.” Guess you weren’t the only nervous one, after all."I'll see you after you're done with work, love. Just give me a shout, yeah? I’ll be waitin’." 

And with that, you left for your own flat, and the big mess that awaited you. You knew the nerves of the date — was it? — would power you to get through a majority of the work. A giddy smile on your face, you began with the Herculean tasks.

And if the exhaustion of the day seemed like a good excuse to sit a bit too close to each other on Lily’s couch while watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine after eating slightly overcooked pasta, who were you to object to that?

i hope u enjoyed it <3 likes and reblogs appreciated

[xebreppemu]

emergency commissions!

so, me and my family are currently struggling with money. we've been struggling for a while now and have been able to barely make ends meet, but are especially in need now. we have some late utility and credit card bills and today they cut our water service.

i myself am unemployed and have been struggling to find a full or part time job for a while, so i opened commissions in order to make some money to compensate for the lack of income. however, i didnt have any previous artistic online presence and have yet to grow one in order to get commissions rolling in. this wasn't a big deal before, but like i said, we are in need and money is tight now more than ever.

with that being said... i do have a goal i would like to reach. since i dont live by myself, this is pretty lenient, but i still felt like it was a safe bet. the goal i have in mind is of around $250-300 usd, which is the overall cost of the late bills.

my commissions info post is pinned to my profile (you can also just access it here), but i'll give a rough summary. keep in mind that, since this is for an emergency, i'll be requiring 75% upfront of the total cost, if not paid in full, contrary to the standard 50% or full as stated in my commissions info post. i will also be sorting the queue by order of confirmation of payment. all payments via paypal.

bust sketch $30, colored $45

half body sketch $45, colored $60

full body sketch $75, colored $89

additional character +50% base price per character. background ranges from +$10-25 depending on complexity.

i also do furry art. same price rates.

i dont draw explicit nsfw or heavy gore, complicated mecha or anything discriminating.

any kind of help will be greatly appreciated, whether you get a commission slot or simply reblog and share with friends who may be interested.

[cantsayidont]

The thing I find most perplexing about the PICARD show — and I am going to say upfront here that I have not made any attempt to investigate any of the behind-the-scenes stuff or even paid any particular attention to the writing credits — is that judging by the end product, it really looks like there were significant differences between what was pitched, what was originally written, and what actually ended up on the screen. In fact, it seems like there were at least two, possibly three big changes in direction along the way.

@procrastinatorproject remarked (and I'm going to quote rather than reblog the reblog, to avoid making an unreadably long chain):

They spend a lot of time in the early episodes deconstructing Picard, the Great Captain. They make it abundantly clear that his typical MO of Giving A Great Speech and centering himself and his morality and his worth and self-sacrifice isn't a sustainable, useful way to solve problems. (See: threatening to resign in protest, tearing down the "No Humans" sign on Vashti and acting like he knows how to combat entranched racial divisions in a place he hasn't been to in almost 20 years, etc.) This is made clear repeatedly and I thought it was a really interesting and brave deconstruction of this Great Captain Narrative that we got especially in TNG (with the occasional nuance, yes, but still this at its core). And then they drop the ball on that when in the final episode, Picard saves the day by Making A Great Speech and cerntering himself by offering to sacrifice his life.

I'll go a step further than this: The strong impression I got from the first seven or eight episodes of PICARD S1 is that the first season was likely intended as a miniseries, and that it was originally pitched not simply as a deconstruction of the character, but as "The Death of Jean-Luc Picard." PICARD-era Picard is not a particularly young man even for the 24th century (he's 94 years old), and we're told early on that he's dying of a rare degenerative disease for which there is no cure. His choices have had serious consequences: He's burned bridges with most of his friends and colleagues, his last Grand Gesture was a disaster that cost him the last of his credibility with Starfleet (and destroyed Raffi's career, something the show never really has Picard even acknowledge), and he's isolated himself in bitter disillusionment. His former shipmates are no longer around to help him, and the people he recruits are not nearly so tolerant of his bullshit. The entire premise of the show suggests that this is Picard's last chance and his last ride — and I think probably the final curtain for the TNG cast as well. (The fact that the first season is set in the last year of the 24th century also seems significant in this respect.)

I also suspect that this was what lured Patrick Stewart back to the role; I think they probably told him, "Look, this is going to be Picard's King Lear — it's not going to be just another sci-fi action potboiler, it'll be a big Shakespearean tragedy that will really let you go out with some gravitas." (What actor would say no to that?)

The problem, of course, is that while this is interesting, it makes for a pretty bitter pill for the audience. I've never particularly liked TNG, and my emotional attachment to the characters is limited, but I can't see that this is what most fans would have hoped to see for Picard: He's all alone, sulking on his family estate with his Romulan servants (another pseudo-Shakespearean gesture, I thought, though incongruous for STAR TREK's alleged post-scarcity socialist utopia); Beverly is ominously MIA; he hasn't talked to Will and Deanna in so long he doesn't know they have a 12-year-old daughter (and when he finally goes to see them in Ep. 7, by far the best of the series, Deanna very justifiably reads him for filth); and his relationship with Geordi and Worf is apparently cordial but distant. He's a sour, unhappy old man whom Starfleet Command sees as a self-righteous crank who's outlived any usefulness or relevance. Even without getting into the other ways the story takes Picard apart, that's pretty grim, and when he sets out with the other new characters on what's clearly suggested as his final quest, it's plain that he's probably not going home again.

The way the final episodes of S1 try to dial this back is SO jarring and so unsatisfying that it really doesn't seem like it was the way it was intended to end at all. What it feels like is like someone higher up at CBS came in after the show was already well along in production and said, "Wait, what are you doing? You can't kill off Picard! How are we supposed to have a Season 2? And where are all the other iconic STAR TREK characters?" There's every indication that the finale was hastily rewritten very late in the game, after much of the shooting was either underway or already completed.

So, rather than bringing the tragedy to an organic conclusion, we get an incredibly stupid cop-out finale that's still a downer without even offering a satisfying resolution. It's hard to say which part is more frustrating: Picard's big death scene surrounded by people who barely know him (and who up to that point didn't even like him that much); the incongruous arrival of the Starfleet "cavalry," riding to the rescue in a way we were previously shown (repeatedly!) wasn't going to happen; immediately undoing Picard's death in a very uneasy way (making him a synth, something the rest of the series then has to tiptoe around); or attempting to contrive an emotional climax with Data arguing for his right to die — despite the fact that the character had in fact been dead for 20 years. While we're keeping score, I was also irritated by the way the finale vilified the Romulans; the Romulans' response to the situation was a little heavy-handed, but the thing they were afraid of was very real, and the only reason it was averted was that the synths at least temporarily decided to table the impending "intergalactic robot genocide" they were preparing to kick off.

How the season — and, perhaps, the show — was originally supposed to end, or whether whatever was originally planned would have been any better, I don't claim to know, but I really suspect it was supposed to be different. (To @procrastinatorproject's other point, I don't know that the critiques the earlier episodes made of Starfleet and the Federation necessarily had any resolution or direction in mind; if PICARD was really intended to bring down the curtain on the TNG era, a lot of it might well have been left unresolved with the expectation that subsequent projects were going to move on to later eras, like the "post-Burn" future of DISCOVERY, where what happened with the late 24th century Federation could either be shrugged off as no longer relevant or used to set up other plot developments, as seemed most useful.)

I actually liked S2 much better overall: The stuff with Picard's mother is extremely clunky and never lands emotionally, the attempt to suggest a Picard-Laris romance is just uncomfortable (poor Orla Brady!), and there are aspects of the plot that aren't very satisfying, but there's also a lot that's fun. It has some nice moments for Jeri Ryan ("I am NOT the worst driver here!"), the scenes with Seven and Raffi are great, Agnes' ill-fated hookup with the Borg Queen actually breaks some new ground with STAR TREK's dullest villains (which S3 then walked back), tying up Picard's friendship with Guinan was nice, and I didn't even mind the unexpected Wesley Crusher cameo. Its biggest problems are that it doesn't really fit: The tonal shifts from S1 are jarring; it doesn't bother to resolve any of the critiques or dangling story threads from the first season; and for all its attempts to tie in more STAR TREK lore, the obvious question, from viewers as well as probably CBS, remains, "Why is Picard still hanging around with these (mostly) new characters he barely knows rather than the other beloved TNG characters?"

So, S3 changes course again, finally doing the "getting the gang back together" nostalgia plot that the network and a lot of fans expected in the first place. That by itself might have been fine, but it has to go out of its way to reverse a lot of the major developments of the first two seasons (resurrecting Data to kill him off and then having to contrive a way to resurrect him again really beggars the word "clumsy"), and the plot rambles and wanders in the middle in incoherent ways that left me unsure if it's just badly written or there was ANOTHER word-from-on-high change in direction during production. The hilariously stupid Big Rock Finish isn't even much of a finale, since they obviously decided they didn't want to completely close the door on Picard and company after all.

There's evidence of this kind of thing in the other shows as well. LOWER DECKS, for instance, sets up several new characters at the end of S2, but then basically abandons all of its ongoing character threads for the entirety of the very weak S3, which is full of pointless guest appearances and cameos that don't amount to anything even on a sitcom level, before trying to pick up the abandoned story threads in S4. DISCOVERY, of course, then does its big and rather jarring era shift after setting up STRANGE NEW WORLDS as a spinoff. The idea of establishing a new era chronologically later than TNG makes sense, and would have been a natural step if PICARD had really been the finale of the TNG era, but going from "It's a TOS prequel!" to "It's set 900 years after TNG!" in midstream is weird, and I have to wonder if that's what they originally intended.

Obviously, one doesn't have to strain too hard to see why CBS has decided that it's safer to lean on nostalgia, but the disjointed progression of it makes me think that there were more creatively ambitious (not to say necessarily better) plans that have repeatedly changed, and how each of these shows has wrapped up seems to be materially different from how they began, in ways that are often very odd as well as unsatisfying.

[eponadolls]

BJD Sales

Hi everyone! I will have several big expenses over the summer (wisdom tooth removal, newer car, potential ADHD and pcos evals/diagnoses, etc) and I want to make sure they are as... least-impacting as possible on my savings, especially since most are medical and I have no idea how much my insurance is actually going to cover... so any reblogs and shares are always appreciated!

Most things will be cross-posted on Den of Angels, Instagram, and Facebook. Additional information will be under the cut. I ship from the USA and due to postal concerns, I can only send the large, high-value packages within the USA right now.

Allergen warning: I live in a pet-friendly, non-smoking household near a corn mill.

Harucasting Smile Maji head: She’s some kind of tan resin, but I don’t 100% remember which one. Her previous owner split the head and body so the coa went with the body. I remember her previous owners name & email, but I don’t recall their instagram handle. Maji has thankfully NOT been recasted so I do not worry about her legitimacy, but I wanted to be upfront about that detail. Her magnets need to be reglued and she still has faceup residue. As with any of my Harucasting dolls, in respect to Haru’s wishes, I will only sell his dolls to pro-artist/anti-recast individuals.

$100 + shipping

5stardoll Elf Elaine: She was painted by her previous owner and given a mani-pedi which is chipping as well as pretty purple body shimmer. Her face still has faceup residue on it. She’s really cute but I need to make room — I am willing to sell her head separately, though. According to her card of authenticity she was produced in late 2018. I believe she is in normal pink skin.

$170 + shipping

Latidoll Blue Yern:

Yern is a slim MSD sized doll and the Blue (MSD) line has been long discontinued. Yern still has her coa and Latidoll manual, as well as the emblem in and outside of her head. I am not sure of the specifics but her torso has had some kind of mod job for mobility reasons?

Yern is from early 2009 and has certainly yellowed, but her yellowing appears to be consistent. Yern would probably benefit from a restringing with thicker elastics but I can get her to pose and stand just fine. Her s hooks were replaced and she has traditional/standard bjd s hooks in her wrists and ankles. For whatever reason one elbow likes to stay slightly bent. Yern will be shipped UNSTRUNG so that would be a good opportunity for her elastics to be changed; she still has an o hook for her head.

Her faceup is holding up really well considering it is quite old but please be aware that it is old, has some wear, and it is not factored into the price I am selling Yern at. The biggest sign of wear I noticed as a small dark streak near her temple.

She has some damage near her foot/ankle. Considering her age I think she has been holding up really well.

$100 + shipping

Dollzone MSD Girl Body: normal pink resin. Arrived from Alice collections in late 2022, spent most of its time in the box. Asking $200 + shipping.

Harucasting Big Geuru: She is in neul medium tan. She has a face up by @tonocha331. She has an extra pair of hands and comes with her box and card of authenticity. She will come without clothes or eyes.

She has some small s hook scratches in one wrist from a previous owner and several small scratches on her belly. Her face up seems to be in overall good condition other than three shiny spots on the side of her head. $550 + shipping

Logandolls Primrose: Primrose in light tan (coffee) with additional heel feet (strung) and an extra pair of hands. She does not come with a company box but she has a card of authenticity and comes with a blanket that I believe logandolls made for her. Received in a trade from my friend @groovyblueworld! She will NOT come with a pair of eyes. If desired, I can ship her in an old Dollzone company box for extra protection. Ordinarily she would cost $480 new but I am asking $440 + shipping - you basically get the extra hands and feet for free and an extra $10 discount. I can also sell a Flower Primrose faceplate in Resinsoul normal for an additional $40.

$440 + shipping