#what does it mean to be a figure of HOPE on a population that depends on HOPE to survive
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grillbyz · 10 months ago
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thinks again about how asgore breaks the mercy button bc he doesnt want mercy, thinks ab how he could theoretically kill you in one shot thinks about "If a monster doesn't want to fight, its defenses will weaken" and thinks about how asgore's defense weakens and thinks about how his hands don't hurt you and thinks about how, if you spare him and flowey's dead, he kills himself and thinks about "I like Santa Clause. He's a nice old man that never changes. No matter how cruel everything gets, he laughs calmly… and comforts the people of the world...I was never an excellent leader. But i think i might be a nice Santa Claus." Thinks about---
#rye rambles#undertale#asgore dreemurr#slams fist on floor!!!!#he is a tragedy and in this essay i will---#duty vs desire vs morals#what does it mean to be a leader. what does it mean to be alone. what does it mean to be desperate and afraid and grieving#what does it mean to lose everything and everyone you loved#what does it mean to regret. what does it mean to be in such a situation where your entire people depend on you#and on the horrible choice you made#what does it mean to have done something so cruel that you hurt and irreversably push away the person who you loved and loved you so deeply#what does it mean to have killed and killed and killed and grieved for each one of them knowing that they will not be the last#what does it mean to be a figure of HOPE on a population that depends on HOPE to survive#what does it mean to prolong the pain because you are so afraid.#what does it mean to be a kind person who was put in a terrible situation#what does it mean when the love was there it didnt change anything it didnt save anyone#but the love was there and it matters that it was there#RAGH. <- they are once again thinking ab old men that love so deeply but that love is put at odds with their duty#how does it feel to be in a hell of your own creation and face the consequences of your actions when you love and care so so much.#how does it feel to be a good person but to do terrible things in the name of a greater good you don't know if you can believe in#but do anyway to keep face for the people who look up to you. who depend on you
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notdysfunk · 26 days ago
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Got a question or two about your Stars of a Feather au (if you're open to questions about it right now)
First: Since Moon can't fly does Sun carry him occasionally (like if they needed to get somewhere fast) or is he too heavy/it would be humiliating and just make him feel worse about his broken wings?
Secondly: Are Sun and Moon considered 'abnormal' in this au? And I mean as in 'they're the only robots/celestial themed guys in a world mostly populated by regular humans' kinda abnormal.
Thridly (and I don't think there's a great way of wording this) what does Sun's back look like? NOT in a creepy way! I'm just curious how three pairs of wings (two of which are pretty darn big) fit on him.
That's all (for now lol) Love your au and I hope you have a nice day!
YESSS !!! I absolutely love taking questions on Stars of a Feather because as it stands, there is a lot of "plot holes" and not REALLY a story yet. So take my answers with a grain of salt, as I'm still figuring some things out but questions rlly help!! Tysm for asking all this!!! 1) Yes, Sun can and will carry Moon if he asks for it. FOR THE MOST PART, the world is more than welcoming to those who are more comfortable walking than flying. (i.e. those with wings that CAN'T fly, those who haven't fully gotten control of them... and folks who r just tired lol). So for the most part, they walk around rather than flying. Sun does feel bad for Moon and his wings, and does what he can not to turn attention to it. But they both understand that if it were an emergency, Sun is more than willing to carry Moon!! 2) Again, take this with a winsy bit of salt... But yes, in a good way and a bad way. There are a lot of "abnormal" people in this universe. I mean everyone has wings, so there's some pretty weird looks that can come from it (Look to y/ns ear wings) Sun and Moon most typically wear human clothes, and have a lot of normal mannerisms. Sun seems to know his way around the world, and Moon does too. So maybe they're letting on more than they seem as "robots". 3) YOU'RE ALL GOOD IK WHAT UR GETTING AT LOLOL!! Here you go!! Here's a quick look at his back, with a cut-away of his left wings so u can kinda see how they're positioned on his back. Since anyone can have any number of wings, it depends on placement. For Sun's case, all six are on his back, and are spread evenly down it. The top, biggest, set on his upper back near his "shoulder blades" area. The next set being nestled between his chassis and his torso, the last pair being near his lower back. Hope that's what u were looking for ^^
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4) You didn't ask this but I kinda wanna yap about it since its related to your last question. Something I've thought about is HOW does Sun fly with 6 wings LOL I imagine that the top wings do most of the work, being the biggest they catch the most air and do most of the actual flight. The second wings probably alternate around the larger ones, making up for any lack of speed the top ones give. Honestly the bottom wings are mostly just for show, they still flap but stay out of the way. What I do know is that Sun IS capable of lifting into the air, and spreading his wings all out in a very cool way cuz it's cool LOL
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himbeereule · 6 months ago
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Hello! I just read the demo. I loved it!! I'm excited to read the remaining parts of this prologue. By the way, I'm surprised at the trouble you took with the reactions to MC's attractiveness. Depending on our appearance will there be an important impact on history?
Anyway, thanks for the demo! I loved everything ❤️❤️❤️
Ehmm I have quite a few questions: 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️
1 - Why is MC so popular? What is the reputation of the siblings among the people?
2 -Is there any reason why the empress is so absent in the lives of her children?
3 - Who besides the emperor and brother knows about Lebedev's incident with f! MC?
4- Will there be a funeral for the royal family?
5- I just love Lavrentiy. It seems like he was jealous (?), although he equally loved MC
6 - What were the last thoughts of MC's family before being executed? Will we see more of them in the future?
7 -How did other monarchies react to this "revolution"?
8- How rich/relevant is Nevtskiya in the world? And it has great military power? Besides agriculture, is there any other important sector for the economy? Can we promote the development of the country?
9 - What is the standard of living of the general population?
10 -Will there be much difference in the story of a male or female MC?
11 - What religion does the country have?
12 - Were there many other popular protests in the past?
PS we are lucky that the rebels didn't leave MC's body hanging or decapitated in some public place haha
Hey~
About the attractiveness: there will be scenes like the ones with Sabilov where it'll play a role, but it won't have a really important impact on the story overall.
1- MC is popular because the newspapers pushed them as a celebrity. As for why they did that... you'll have to find out eventually. As for the siblings: Artemiy is revered as the Crown Prince, but he's a pretty distant figure, so it's more formal than personal popularity. Lavrentiy is very controversial due to his escapades (you'll learn more about that). Sasha/Tasha is very private and mostly unknown among the public.
2- This'll be expanded upon in the scenes with your siblings I'm planning to add to the Prologue - basically, she realized the person she married (arranged marriage, but initially she was very happy with it) was an absolute asshole. So she ended up getting the kind of depression where you isolate yourself from everyone and everything.
3- Nobody, though at least one person is guaranteed to find out. Towards the end of the story, though.
4- No. You'll see why later...
5- I said it before, but I'm super happy people liked Lavrentiy. I hope his additional scenes will cement his image of "would actually be lovely if he stopped being so mean"
6- Can't answer, spoilers ^^"
7- There won't be intervention armies, but they see it as a prime opportunity to expand their influence. Whether you'll let them sponsor you or your enemies at the cost of getting dependent and owing favours will be a major decision later on.
8- Nevetskiya is huge, and old, but that's pretty much it. It's a regional power, too far behind in economy, society and technology to really contend with any of the great powers - but it is still counted among them. Industrialization is already beginning to happen, hence the revolution, and its development will be a factor in the story and especially the gameplay.
9- For the nobility - extremely high. For the clergy and the emerging traders and industrialists - pretty high. For the accountants, bureaucrats and landowners - okay. For the peasants and workers (which is almost the entire population) - abysmal.
10- There will be some exclusive story arcs for all genders.
11- I haven't really touched on religion yet, as of now it's just a vague polytheistic copy of the Orthodox Church. I'll develop its lore more once it comes up in the story.
12- Yes, there were peasant revolts every one or two years, but they were quickly and brutally suppressed.
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minitiate · 2 years ago
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in the roleswap AU, Gideon would be a shit Reverend Daughter but actually a great necromancer
she REALLY resents having to minister to this population of breathing corpses without being able to DO anything concrete for them.  like that’s a pretty effective torture for a Gideon!  she ESPECIALLY resents how her only playmate is mad at her for something that is totally not her fault.  She blows off as much of the ceremonial stuff as possible; she will fix your bones but her bedside manner is absolute shit as she does it because she’s calculating how soon you’re gonna die anyway. 
however: the facts that there is nothing to do on the Ninth, and that Gideon (much like Harrow) gains ego from skill mastery, have not changed from canon.  She would study, and she would do the heck out of bones, because she likes having a Thing To Be Good At, and it makes people look at her like “wow, the weirdo freak is actually cool and useful” or “maybe we didn’t COMPLETELY fuck up by making the airdrop baby our heir as a last ditch planet saving effort”.  She would fix the shit out of people’s arthritis because that’s the only Actually Be Useful outlet she has.  She devises more and more sacrilegious things to do with bones to get under Harrow’s skin.  She harbors a secret thought that maybe if she’s good enough word will get out and the cohort will HAVE to recruit her and the rev parents won’t be able to say no without admitting they have no replacement.  she’ll steal them some vat wombs so they can continue their precious line of succession and she can go off gallivanting throughout the galaxy.  maybe she’ll just steal some babies.  they will simply HAVE to let her go to the sixth and fix their servitors or whatever.  and do some genetic outreach if you know what I mean.  or maybe she’ll say that’s what she’s doing and then fuck off and leave the Ninth to its lot.  the ending changes depending on whether she’s arguing it to the rev parents for the 89th time or whether she’s putting herself to sleep with it.  it may not make a lot of sense but she really doesn’t have a lot else going on.
she would actually be more well-rounded of a necro than Harrow on account of learning spirit magic in order to try and summon her mom in secret, in the hope of having a parental figure who (hypothetically) doesn’t see her as merely a means to an end.  given the Ninth’s lack of resources in this area, unlikely she’d get anywhere, but it’s an area she would have an actual personal interest in! 
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painterontheshore · 10 months ago
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The plight of the individual in modern society
What will the future bring? From time immemorial this ques tion has occupied men's minds, though not always to the same degree. Historically, it is chiefly in times of physical, political, economic, and spiritual distress that men's eyes turn with anxious hope to the future, and when anticipations, Utopias, and apocalyptic visions multiply. One thinks, for instance, of the chiliastic expectations of the Augustan age at the beginning of the Christian era, or of the spiritual changes in the West which accompanied the end of the first millennium. Today, as the end of the second millennium draws near, we are again living in an age filled with apocalyptic images of universal destruction. What is the significance of that split, symbolized by the "Iron Curtain," which divides humanity into two halves? What will become of our civilization, and of man himself, if the hydro gen bombs begin to go off, or if the spiritual and moral dark ness of State absolutism should spread over Europe?
We have no reason to take this threat lightly. Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population. One should not overestimate the thickness of this stratum. It varies from country to country in accordance with national temperament. Also, it is regionally dependent on public education and is subject to the influence of acutely disturbing factors of a political and economic nature. Taking plebiscites as a criterion, one could on an optimistic estimate put its upper limit at about forty per cent of the electorate. A rather more pessimistic view would not be unjustified either, since the gift of reason and critical reflection is not one of man's outstanding peculiarities, and even where it exists it proves to be wavering and inconstant, the more so, as a rule, the bigger the political groups are. The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness.
Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason's having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic. Under these conditions all those elements whose existence is merely tolerated as asocial under the rule of reason come to the top. Such indi viduals are by no means rare curiosities to be met with only in prisons and lunatic asylums. For every manifest case of insanity there are, in my estimation, at least ten latent cases who seldom get to the point of breaking out openly but whose views and behaviour, for all their appearance of normality, are influenced unconsciously by pathological and perverse factors. There are, of course, no medical statistics on the frequency of latent psy choses—for understandable reasons. But even if their number should amount to less than ten times that of the manifest psy choses and of manifest criminality, the relatively small percent age of the population figures they represent is more than com pensated for by the peculiar dangerousness of these people. Their mental state is that of a collectively excited group ruled by affective judgments and wish-fantasies. In a milieu of this kind they are the adapted ones, and consequently they feel quite at home in it. They know from their own experience the lan guage of these conditions, and they know how to handle them. Their chimerical ideas, sustained by fanatical resentment, ap peal to the collective irrationality and find fruitful soil there; they express all those motives and resentments which lurk in more normal people under the cloak of reason and insight. They are, therefore, despite their small number in comparison with the population as a whole, dangerous as sources of infection precisely because the so-called normal person possesses only a limited degree of self-knowledge.
Most people confuse "self-knowledge" with knowledge of their conscious ego-personalities. Anyone who has any ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them. In this respect the psyche behaves like the body, of whose physiological and anatomical structure the average person knows very little too. Although he lives in it and with it, most of it is totally unknown to the layman, and special scientific knowledge is needed to acquaint consciousness with what is known of the body, not to speak of all that is not known, which also exists.
What is commonly called "self-knowledge" is therefore a very limited knowledge, most of it dependent on social factors, of what goes on in the human psyche. Hence one is always coming up against the prejudice that such and such a thing does not happen "with us" or "in our family" or among our friends and acquaintances. On the other hand, one meets with equally illusory assumptions about the alleged presence of qualities which merely serve to cover up the true facts of the case.
In this broad belt of unconsciousness, which is immune to conscious criticism and control, we stand defenseless, open to all kinds of influences and psychic infections. As with all dangers, we can guard against the risk of psychic infection only when we know what is attacking us, and how, where and when the attack will come. Since self-knowledge is a matter of getting to know the individual facts, theories are of very little help. For the more a theory lays claim to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts. Any theory based on experience is necessarily statistical; it formulates an ideal average which abolishes all exceptions at either end of the scale and replaces them by an abstract mean. This mean is quite valid, though it need not necessarily occur in reality. Despite this it figures in the theory as an unassailable fundamental fact. The exceptions at either extreme, though equally factual, do not appear in the final result at all, since they cancel each other out. If, for instance, I determine the weight of each stone in a bed of pebbles and get an average weight of five ounces, this tells me very little about the real nature of the pebbles. Anyone who thought, on the basis of these findings, that he could pick up a pebble of five ounces at the first try would be in for a serious dis[1]appointment. Indeed, it might well happen that however long he searched he would not find a single pebble weighing exactly five ounces.
The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories which are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, one could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity.
These considerations must be borne in mind whenever there is talk of a theory serving as a guide to self-knowledge. There is and can be no self-knowledge based on theoretical assumptions, for the object of this knowledge is an individual—a relative exception and an irregular phenomenon. Hence it is not the universal and the regular that characterize the individual, but rather the unique. He is not to be understood as a recurrent unit but as something unique and singular which in the last analysis can be neither known nor compared with anything else. At the same time man, as member of a species, can and must be described as a statistical unit; otherwise nothing general could be said about him. For this purpose he has to be regarded as a comparative unit. This results in a universally valid anthropology or psychology, as the case may be, with an abstract picture of man as an average unit from which all individual features have been removed; But it is precisely these features which are of paramount importance for understanding man. If I want to understand an individual human being, I must lay aside all scientific knowledge of the average man and discard all theories in order to adopt a completely new and unprejudiced attitude. I can only approach the task of understanding with a free and open mind, whereas knowledge of man, or insight into human character, presupposes all sorts of knowledge about mankind in general.
Now whether it is a question of understanding a fellow human being or of self-knowledge, I must in both cases leave all theoretical assumptions behind me. Since scientific knowledge not only enjoys universal esteem but, in the eyes of modern man, counts as the only intellectual and spiritual authority, understanding the individual obliges me to commit the lèse majestè, so to speak, of turning a blind eye to scientific knowledge. This is a sacrifice not lightly made, for the scientific attitude cannot rid itself so easily of its sense of responsibility. And if the psychologist happens to be a doctor who wants not only to classify his patient scientifically but also to understand him as a human being, he is threatened with a conflict of duties between the two diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive attitudes of knowledge on the one hand and understanding on the other. This conflict cannot be solved by an either/or but only by a kind of two-way thinking: doing one thing while not losing sight of the other.
In view of the fact that, in principle, the positive advantages of knowledge work specifically to the disadvantage of understanding, the judgment resulting therefrom is likely to be something of a paradox. Judged scientifically, the individual is nothing but a unit which repeats itself ad infinitum and could just as well be designated with a letter of the alphabet. For understanding, on the other hand, it is just the unique individual human being who, when stripped of all those conformities and regularities so dear to the heart of the scientist, is the supreme and only real object of investigation. The doctor, above all, should be aware of this contradiction. On the one hand, he is equipped with the statistical truths of his scientific training, and on the other, he is faced with the task of treating a sick person who, especially in the case of psychic suffering, requires individual understanding. The more schematic the treatment is, the more resistances it—quite rightly—calls up in the patient, and the more the cure is jeopardized. The psychotherapist sees himself compelled, willy-nilly, to regard the individuality of a patient as an essential fact in the picture and to arrange his methods of treatment accordingly. Today, over the whole field of medicine, it is recognized that the task of the doctor consists in treating the sick person, not an abstract illness.
This illustration from the realm of medicine is only a special instance of the problem of education and training in general. Scientific education is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the world, in which the individual, as a merely marginal phenomenon, plays no role. The individual, however, as an irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality, the concrete man as opposed to the unreal ideal or "normal" man to whom the scientific statements refer. What is more, most of the natural sciences try to represent the results of their investigations as though these had come into existence without man's intervention, in such a way that the collaboration of the psyche —an indispensable factor—remains invisible. (An exception to this is modern physics, which recognizes that the observed is not independent of the observer.) So, in this respect as well, science conveys a picture of the world from which a real human psyche appears to be excluded—the very antithesis of the "humanities."
Under the influence of scientific assumptions, not only the psyche but the individual man and, indeed, all individual events whatsoever suffer a levelling down and a process of blurring that distorts the picture of reality into a conceptual average. We ought not to underestimate the psychological effect of the statistical world-picture: it thrusts aside the individual in favour of anonymous units that pile up into mass formations. Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d'état}. Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled, and are distinguished only by the fact that they are specialized mouthpieces of the State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied.
The seemingly omnipotent State doctrine is for its part manipulated in the name of State policy by those occupying the highest positions in the government, where all the power is concentrated. Whoever, by election or caprice, gets into one of these positions is subject to no higher authority; he is the State policy itself and within the limits of the situation can proceed at his own discretion. With Louis XIV he can say, "L'etat c'est moi." He is thus the only individual or, at any rate, one of the few individuals who could make use of their individuality if only they knew how to differentiate themselves from the State doctrine. They are more likely, however, to be the slaves of their own fictions. Such one-sidedness is always compensated psychologically by unconscious subversive tendencies. Slavery and rebellion are inseparable correlates. Hence, rivalry for power and exaggerated distrust pervade the entire organism from top to bottom. Furthermore, in order to compensate for its chaotic formlessness, a mass always produces a "Leader," who infallibly becomes the victim of his own inflated ego-consciousness, as numerous examples in history show.
This development becomes logically unavoidable the moment the individual combines with the mass and thus renders himself obsolete. Apart from the agglomeration of huge masses in which the individual disappears anyway, one of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass- mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of his foundations and his dignity. As a social unit he has lost his individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. He can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance. Looked at rationally and from outside, that is exactly what he is, and from this point of view it seems positively absurd to go on talking about the value or meaning of the individual. Indeed, one can hardly imagine how one ever came to endow individual human life with so much dignity when the truth to the contrary is as plain as the palm of your hand.
Seen from this standpoint, the individual really is of diminishing importance and anyone who wished to dispute this would soon find himself at a loss for arguments. The fact that the individual feels himself or the members of his family or the esteemed friends in his circle to be important merely underlines the slightly comic subjectivity of his feeling. For what are the few compared with ten thousand or a hundred thousand, let alone a million? This recalls the argument of a thoughtful friend with whom I once got caught up in a huge crowd of people. Suddenly he exclaimed, ''Here you have the most convincing reason for not believing in immortality: all that lot wants to be immortal!"
The bigger the crowd the more negligible the individual becomes. But if the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of his own puniness and impotence, should feel that his life has lost
its meaning—which, after all, is not identical with public wel[1]fare and higher standards of living then he is already on the road to State slavery and, without knowing or wanting it, has become its proselyte. The man who looks only outside and quails before the big battalions has nothing with which to combat the evidence of his senses and his reason. But that is just what is happening today: we are all fascinated and overawed by statistical truths and large numbers and are daily apprised of the nullity and futility of the individual personality, since it is not represented and personified by any mass organization. Conversely, those personages who strut about on the world stage and whose voices are heard far and wide seem, to the uncritical pub[1]lic, to be borne along on some mass movement or on the tide of public opinion and for this reason are either applauded or execrated. Since mass suggestion plays the predominant role here, it remains a moot point whether their message is their own, for which they are personally responsible, or whether they merely function as a megaphone for collective opinion.
Under these circumstances it is small wonder that individual judgment grows increasingly uncertain of itself and that responsibility is collectivized as much as possible, i.e., is shuffled off by the individual and delegated to a corporate body. In this way the individual becomes more and more a function of society, which in its turn usurps the function of the real-life carrier, whereas, in actual fact, society is nothing more than an abstract idea like the State. Both are hypostatized, that is, have become autonomous. The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it. Thus the constitutional State drifts into the situation of a primitive form of society—the communism of a primitive tribe where everybody is subject to the autocratic rule of a chief or an oligarchy.
--Carl Jung en "The undiscovered self"
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Tips for Launching Your Own Commercial Fishing Business
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the-firebird69 · 2 years ago
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We have a court date for this hearing and it's a class action and it's against John remillard and company. Stan is on it will Bill Ken our son Mack his sons ben Arnold very powerful people. We have a top secret file too and depends on the judge and really he messed up a lot of projects with Max and some of ours. So we want them and he said the date is not available and it's like well it could harm you and he says I downloaded it and he's not capable of getting it and we wouldn't let him he says it's your fault if it gets out or something happens I'll send he says this they just sat there and they could have been fooling us and they look like huge assholes so they don't know if we took the data from Dave using Lucy and we had to let it rot or not they don't know if that happened and they were asking about it but forgot and really they move stuff around so it's really hard for them to figure out that's what they're doing walking around farting in the suits and stuff and they're a bunch of idiots some people hate him and they're riding these motorcycles on the planet and you have to feed an oxygen since tanks on them and the same who gets the oxygen me or the motorcycle yes what happened to the electric motorcycle and this is not as cool so why don't you run it lean jackass rich I mean run it rich and he says how do you do that and said what the f*** are you a n***** I mean wigger I'm sorry I'm part black myself that's why I'm stronger than you it says flipping everybody off it says I don't know how to run it rich so they all started laughing because you run it rich and you use oxygen and they have to do it that way and they don't know how to do it.
It's going to start up soon and our business selling those masks has increased there's other movies too that are actually going
There's a movie in Georgia and they figured out what George is about so they're storming it it's like two three trillion people all different ones all trying for the stuff they can't find it and of course Deliverance will happen after and Greenland the movie and the series of Jason and Friday the 13th and Halloween and Michael Myers it's really Michelle. And it's going to be a great event but right now the movie for Mars is starting up and it's going to happen soon
But the war in space has to be concluded and we mean it too the one above Australia New Zealand will not be concluded for some time now but the war would Tommy F and the planet toys have to be out of the way for all that is to happen so really Star wars is going to start and that is what it's about and they name him as separatists and he's not really the clone Army but he is they're calling them the good guys because it's really clones of stand and he did nuclear cloning. What's going on now and it's going to become huge the warlock on both islands are ready to strike the max of handed them a list of things are going to blow up if they do and they're trying to get a list of stuff to blow up if they get blown up and they're getting ready to go on it they have a lot of forces built up it's about 20 trillion which is a very large number of people it is a lot it's 400 areas and it'll be detracted from what's already lost today they're already to 3100 it would bring them down to $2,700 and that might not be the end of it because reprisals are what they promised to do and it does count the 0.9% is the population versus the planet but the number of areas is calculated with Australia and New Zealand included so we are going forwards with our plans and they are going to get beat down here too as it is they're already suffering a beating I'm going to announce the numbers momentarily and he's going to get ready to depart
Thor Freya
I hope you understand that we need you out of there and you're saying 2:00 would be okay but you're going to be leaving earlier a lot earlier and I see that it's 12:00 that was high tide 1:00 it's just starting to go out there is turbidity there sometimes it falls during it but there's really not much but it is to 4 ft so he understands now
Hera
Yeah I should have got that
Zues
Olympus
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slugtranslation-hypmic · 3 years ago
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Hello Slug! I hope you're doing well 🌻 Since I ship Samatoki and Jyuto I've always wondered about this one line in Bayside Smoking Blues which is "非常線を張り追いかける赤い目ライト". I don't know jp so I read a lot of fan tls. This line in particular is tld quite differently depending on the person. I'd love to hear your take on it, if you're fine with it of course. If it really is about Samatoki's eyes I'm going to go 🐒 Thank you!
This is a super interesting question. Thanks! Before we take a look at this line itself, let's talk theory for a minute. Song lyrics and poetry often present a unique challenge with atypical grammar and figurative language. As translators read the original line in the source text, they form their own interpretations of what this figurative language means, but when it comes time to write this in the target text, they're faced with a conundrum. Should they try to push their interpretation, or should they leave the translation more open-ended for the audience to form their own interpretations? (And, in that latter case, does the audience have enough information to inform interpretations that the author was likely to have intended? Does the author's intent even matter?) Then, the translator also has to consider other factors like the purpose and style of their overall translation. Does it have to rhyme? Should it have rhythm? My take on a line would be affected by all these questions, but since the purpose of this particular translation seems to be sharing what I think this figurative language means, let's go with that! Let's start by giving you the opportunity to interpret the source text in more or less the same fashion I'm receiving it in. Fairly literally, this line reads as:
Throwing up a cordon, red eye lights in pursuit
Like I mentioned up above, song lyrics use irregular grammar which I often find challenging to parse, being a non-native speaker. With that being said, it is my understanding that the "red eye light[s]" is one term that is pursuing something else. Likewise, it makes the most sense to me to understand the cordon part as a separate thought. Right off the bat, my first impression is that it sounds very cop-ish, as if Juuto is saying, "Let's put up a cordon and then follow [criminals, I guess] with the flashing red lights on our cop cars." However, that "red eye" part is peculiar. I can see why people are assuming this relates to Samatoki. It's time to do some digging. I Googled and DuckDuckGo'ed that, since I've never heard that turn of phrase before, and it looks like it's unique to Hypmic. I also couldn't find any similar phrases close enough to indicate that there's a pun, wordplay, or reference going on, although it's always completely possible something slipped my radar. In situations like this, where Hypmic makes something up and I'm not sure what to think about it, I go to look and see what the Japanese fans have to say. It's not that they're necessarily more right than any other set of fans, but they have the obvious advantage of being the target audience and not having a language barrier. I looked up "赤い目ライト" on Twitter and found that there's not a consensus on this in the Japanese fandom either. A few people have gone your route and suggested that it refers to Samatoki, but more people think it refers to the lights on a cop car. Interestingly, though, one other explanation appears with great frequency - it's a sign of his rabbit-ness. ... What? Apparently (I did not know this until I looked into it), there exist several Japanese breeds of white rabbits with red eyes so much that the general population associates rabbits with that image. (There are, of course, rabbits with other eye colors too, but they're not cultural icons. Think of the idea of rabbits eating carrots. Sure, rabbits eat lots of vegetables in real life, but we associate rabbits and carrots anyway.) Considering that last bit, my final takeaway from this line is that it's probably supposed to be talking about his police work but with a fun rabbit twist. However, figurative language can be interpreted in lots of ways! If you want to think of it as Samatoki, then you have every right to do so. This was a ton of fun to look into, so thanks for the ask!
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shades-of-stony · 3 years ago
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ABO Stony AUs!
Celestial Navigation by  sabrecmc
Summary:  18 year old Omega!Tony finds himself Bonded to Captain Steve Rogers. He isn't happy about it until he is.
Note: Does it need any explanation? This fic is an all time classic and favorite in the Stony fandom!
Object: Matrimony by BladeoftheNebula
Summary: Omega Tony Stark craves adventure and an escape from the life his parents have planned for him in New York. He places a listing in a marriage catalogue to seek a match with an alpha out West, and Sheriff Steve Rogers answers his advertisement. But finding a nice alpha doesn't mean it's all smooth sailing from there..
- A Mail Order Bride AU -
Note: A 10/10! This has all the splendid elements of ABO with an added twist of a West setting and time! 
 The Team Omega by AngeNoir for PhenomenalAsterisk
Summary:  Steve Rogers is thawed, stressed, and not quite sure what Director Fury wants with him. Giving him a unit of all alphas, even if most of them Steve had fought alongside when the alien menace had nearly wiped out the entire city of New York... The thing is, more than four alphas wouldn't work in a unit with one another, not for long. Everyone knew that. Steve knew that, intimately, with the Howling Commandos.
Which was why Director Fury had, apparently, assigned them an omega.
Frustrated at the inability to even choose his team, let alone choose the omega that was supposed to keep the peace between everyone, Steve storms back to his unit's assigned quarters. There, he meets Tony Stark, grandchild of Howard Stark, clearly unhappy with his position and just as clearly unwilling to break contract with the U.S. military complex. So why was someone like Anthony Stark here, in Steve's charge?
And how could Steve even act upon his genuine attraction, with the power imbalance clearly in place?
Note: I admit, this has one of the best takes on ABO I read in a while! It’s a good read!
 If You Love Me I'll Love You Too by Carsonian
Summary: Starrk hands Steven a knife, leatherbound and strong, to fulfill the rite. The Alpha must go first. Steven takes Anthony’s hand, slices a clean line across the palm.
“And in the sharing of blood, I am become yours.” Steven recites.
Anthony takes the knife and returns the favour.
“And in the sharing of blood,” He looks up, eyes dark and unfathomable, “I am become yours.”
Note: A well-written ABO Stony fanfic with a dash of arranged marriage and Middle Ages (though the time period wasn’t exactly specified). It takes on how Steve and Tony navigates through their forced marriage and how they learn to care for each other!
Tribute Given, Treasure Gained by sphagnum
Summary: “Steve,” the Captain said, hand over his chest.
Tony licked his lips. Was he supposed to give his name, or remain silent until he was asked a direct question? The Captain--Steve, apparently--already knew his name, he had to, it had been included on the settlement he and Stane had signed. Was this a test? Time was passing and Steve was still waiting with his hand on his chest but Tony had to figure out the right answer fast or when Steve moved he might--“
Tony,” he blurted.
“Tony,” Steve repeated. He hadn’t come any closer. He said something short that might have been pleased to meet you or you look good on your knees. Tony had no way of knowing and he wasn’t going to risk echoing it. He kept quiet. See, Howard? I do know how to shut up when my life depends on it.
Note: A nice ABO with Warlord!Steve! This is a great read, with the steamy smut on the end being a nice cherry on top!
While We Pretend to Sleep by Typo66
Summary:  Tony pretends to be an alpha. Then he forgets he had been pretending. One thing he remembers is Steve. Steve tries to help out in his old fashioned, ethically strict way. Tony likes making big gestures. He has never been subtle.
Note: Another Stony classic! This is a great take on ‘Tony denying his nature’! A deifinite 10/10 read!
Rockabye by BladeoftheNebula
Summary: Cute alphas didn’t appear out of nowhere to help ruined omegas. That was a widely accepted fact.Tony Stark had always known his life wouldn’t be easy as a genius omega in an alpha’s world. But not even he predicted getting knocked up and forced to move to a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Note: A fun read where Firefighter!Steve lend a hand to pregnant Tony! It also takes place in a Small Town kind of setting, which is an added bonus!
In the middle of the night by defenceless_stark
Summary:  In the past, alphas used to only mate with other alphas and maybe the occasional beta or delta. Omegas were seen as useless and scum to alphas. Omegas would only stay in a pack if they could keep up and they were only protected if they were the head alpha’s offspring. Over time, alphas soon discovered that omegas were useful for producing offspring, due to their high fertility rates and weaker genes, so, in most cases, only the alpha’s genes will pass on. Alphas soon evolved to an omega’s scent, making them possessive and dominant over omegas which led to an increase in abuse and mistreatment. Steven Rogers was expected to be an omega, but much to everyone’s to surprise, he was an alpha.
Anthony Stark was expected to be an alpha, but much to his father’s disappointment, he was an omega.
Like any omega, Tony had his fair share of omega abuse and harassment. But unlike any other omega, he wasn’t one to sit around and take it.
Note: If you are avid ABO fan, this is a Stony fanfic that you wouldn’t want to miss! 
In A Rut by rougewinter
“You don’t have to do this, Tony.” Pepper said as she tightened her white knuckled grip on the clipboard in her arms. “I’m sure we can find someone else.”
“Yes. I do.” Tony said, surprised that his voice came out steadier than he expected.
Or the one where Steve goes into an Alpha Rut and Tony is the only one who can help.
Note: A short but sweet-well, not sweet since it has that dose of great smut! make sure to check it’s sequel where Tony is in heat! (Heat Up by rougewinter for avengemehamlet)
Please don’t (give me what I want) by masterlokisev159
Summary: After the events in Siberia, a new law is declared and Steve and Tony's newly reformed relationship is torn to pieces.
Then Tony goes into heat. And Steve is adamant to save it.
A post-civil war story where Tony is put in a position where he cannot consent to anything at all. Steve, the strongest alpha of all time, is furious.
Note: For those Stony shippers that wants a bit of angst! 
Perfect Man for the Job by Ilearnedtoreadforthis
Summary: After his ordeal in Afghanistan, omega Tony creates the Stark Housing Initiative: Executive Level Development (or S.H.I.E.L.D., for short) to provide housing to returning veterans. When alpha Steve Rogers applies to manage S.H.I.E.L.D., it turns Tony's life upside down.
Note: This is a cute employee/boss story with a dash of ABO! 
World Acclimation by Del_Rion
Summary:  When an unexplained phenomenon washes over the entire planet, the Avengers are left to struggle along with the rest of the population. Chains of command, relationships and friendships alike are put to the test as new biological imperatives take hold, and only one thing is certain: the world will never be the same.
Note: This is one of my favorites! It has a unique take on ABO that I don’t see often. And well, Am still hoping for the next installment. Though, read the tags carefully!
You Are Not Broken, Just Bent. by NazakiSama166
Summary: He won't break!
No matter how much he was tortured, no matter how much he was beaten, starved, threatened... He won't, he won't, he won't!
Until he did...
--- When Shield uncovers a hidden sub-basement in the house of Obadiah Stane, they find a tortured omega and his pup. Everything went down the drain when that Omega turned out to be Tony Stark, Howard Stark's son that went missing six years ago.
Note: Anyone in the mood for angst?
WIP: 
Finding Pack by Naferty
Summary: In a world where pack means everything from status to fame to survival and to family, newly pack-less Tony Stark is trying to survive after those he once trusted betrayed him, and starting over by searching for a new pack to take him in, but with his age and status weighing heavily on his shoulders finding someone to take a chance on him might be easier said than done.
What pack wanted an old infertile omega in their ranks? Certainly not the famous Avengers pack led by the equally famous Captain.
Note: This is a bit of a slow burn Stony fanfic that ticks all ABO boxes! It’s an all-time-favorite and classic! 
Secrets Don't Make Friends by sayah1112
Summary: Tony Stark has a secret. Several, in fact. Outed to the world as an Omega, he finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. His only hope at salvation rests upon the strong shoulders of a certain Captain Steven Rogers. The problem? Rogers hates his guts.
Note: Another favorite of mine! This is a great hurt/comfort fanfic centered on stony!
This is just part 1 guys! I’m kind of a big fan of ABO so I have a few more to recommend!
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fairyoftbz · 3 years ago
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it's never too late... | b. jacob
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🏀 pairing: crush! basketball player! jacob x fem!reader 🏀 genre: high school!au, fluff, (sort of) strangers/acquaintances-to-lovers 🏀 word count: 5.2k 🏀 tw: very cliché 😳 and it goes kinda fast lmaoo 🏀 a/n: lisa I'm sorry I took this long to do your request, but I hope you'll like it nonetheless!! ALSO: to my fellow Americans, here football = soccer!! 🏀 requested: yes! thank you lisa!! @skrtbabe
╰☆☆☆☆╮
You had waited for this time since the beginning of your academic journey there. Graduating from high school was two months away, and it felt just as exciting as weird.
It felt like you had started your first year last week, but the amount of work and time spent in those dull buildings makes you feel like you’ve been there for at least five years.
It was exhausting to attend classes and see the same people every single day of the year, with repetitive subjects, annoying or cool teachers depending on your luck and everything that followed. The homework, the assignments, the small -or not so small- fights between classes or groups of people, you were praying that university wouldn’t sound like that.
However, at the same time, you were almost starting to feel nostalgic for this time. The last years where you could remain a bit silly before entering the adult world, being in your last teen years with people that you appreciated and met there. You chose to do this before letting them go and live your own lives, memories that will disappear if you don’t cherish them enough.
So, with Soyeon, your best friend, you decided to enjoy the time that you had left to do things together while still studying and revising for the exams, which was sometimes not easy to do. Yes, you shared classes, but personal and private activities sometimes came in the way and prevented you from hanging out.
“It’s life after all,” she said one night over the phone as you shared your opinion on this topic, “it’s good that we can be together almost 24/7, but sometimes, things don’t allow us to be together. It might be for the best, we never know,” she said, trying to be positive no matter the situation she was in, but you knew her well. As much as she wants to appear strong, you had found her many times crying on her own. But it was her personality, and no matter how hard you tried to change her, what's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh.
Soyeon wasn’t your only friend, you were getting along well with most of your girl classmates, as well as the boys that weren’t suffocating under the number of pick-me-girls that were populating your school and your class.
Sadly for you, you’ve been eyeing the most popular (and prettiest) boy in your whole school since you crossed gaze with him at the very beginning of your first year there. Jacob, your crush, was also the star basketball player of your school, and constantly surrounded and attracting cheerleaders or rich, random, good-looking girls, which had a knack for getting on your nerves. He was always spending time together with his pals and teammates, but other people as well. Everyone wanted to be his friend because you know, he had a promising career ahead of him, so it was always nice to be friends with a potential future celebrity.
As defeated as you were, there was still a small voice in your head telling you to do something before he left to go back to his home country, South Korea, where he had a career already planned and traced out.
You were confused as it was almost impossible for you to get a chance with him since you were not one of those girls and you simply couldn’t compete against them, but Soyeon and her boyfriend Sunwoo were always there to praise you and reassure you about your potential chances of dating him. Never convinced by your friends’ words, you had tried many times to get him out of your head and focus on someone else, but it never worked. Everything came back to him. He was unique and oh so nice, everything reminded you of him, and it was sickening at this point.
“He won't get out of my head, it’s getting on my nerves,” you shared your thoughts to your best friend as you braced your head in your hands, slapping your cheeks as if it were going to change anything and help you throw Jacob out of your brain.
“Why do I keep this stupid boy in my head when I know I don’t stand a single chance against those girls,” you slapped your cheeks harder and whined as Soyeon’s hand landed on your wrist.
“Y/N, stop your nonsense. You are perfect, you don’t need to change anything for him!”
“It’s easier said than done, you pulled the football star player!” you exclaimed, and she rolled her eyes, shifting closer to whisper.
“He pulled me because he knew that I am pretty, and that wouldn’t change a single thing for him. If he’s not happy with who I am, he can leave,” she shrugs, signalling you to do the same if you dated Jacob.
Sunwoo was also among the popular boys, but your friend remained the same, not even trying to fit in with the popular girls. She claimed that Sunwoo fell in love with her for her true self, so she didn’t see the point of changing to please other people. And you wished you had her confidence and her strength, admiring her for not changing anything about herself to please others.
Back to the present.
You felt stuck, desperately in love with an unapproachable boy who was too popular and way out of your league to be lucky to have his eyes sparing you any sort of attention. Even if he was a sweet young man, he was always surrounded by popular people, who were trying to hook up or use him for his school fame and sharp features.
One day, while studying with your best friend at the library, Sunwoo and one of his friends, Hyunjae, the football captain, burst into the library and come not so quietly to your table.
“For the love of God, can you both be quiet for once?” Soyeon whispered-yelled but her voice got toned down by Sunwoo vividly pressing his lips on hers, an arm wrapping around her shoulders. Hyunjae laughed but quickly gagged as they didn’t stop the kiss as quickly as the captain wished.
“Gosh, please, get a room,” he mumbled before hugging you, your knee resting against his as his arms pressed you against his chest.
Your friendship with Hyunjae felt more like siblings, he was genuinely nice and caring with you, making sure that you were okay and that you had enough of everything before allowing you to go home. Despite all the teasing and a few rumours going around school, you were not dating and didn’t have any romantic feelings for each other. He simply checked that you had an older brother figure since you were the first-born child, and it felt relieving.
The thing you did not know was that Jacob and a few of his basketball teammates, Juyeon, Eric and Younghoon, were a few tables away from yours, your back facing them, the future star looking at you and Hyunjae from the corner of his eyes. He nodded at his friend at your table, who gave him a wink as an answer, Jacob’s eyes burning holes into your back as Hyunjae was close to you. Too close to you for the basketball player not to feel something churn in his stomach.
Two long, manicured fingers snapped in front of his eyes to get him out of his reverie, lazily looking at the girl that sat across from him, who he was supposed to get help from.
“Jacob please, pay attention to meeeeee,” she whined and pouted, giving him puppy eyes that he couldn’t give a single fuck about, too busy in his mind to hear what she had to say.
She had volunteered to help him study History, but she wasn’t any better, probably worse than he was. It was already the third time Juyeon corrected her basic knowledge without being an expert himself, not even caring about the death glares she kept sending him. It only made him smirk as he knew it irked her dearly yet amused the rest of the table a lot.
They all sighed as she finally took the hint and left their table, Jacob bitterly chuckling as Hyunjae rolled his eyes when she walked past your table, his demeanour making you laugh.
╰☆╮
“Bro, do you think I should ask Y/N for help? Isn’t that a bit… lame?” Jacob sat on one of the soccer balls, hands joined and panting as Sunwoo practised his dribbling skills before shooting the ball in the cages, aiming for the up-right corner. He trotted to his friend and collapsed on the grass next to him, the last rays of sunshine offering his skin a wonderful, honey glow. He ruffled his hair after plopping down, checking his phone for any message before answering.
“If you need help, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask her. I mean, she’s super smart in every subject, but she’s just the boss in History. Her presentations are always golden, and she explains things a lot better than some of the teachers.”
“I got Smith as a teacher,” the basketball player grimaced, his left hand holding his right wrist as his gaze wandered in the grass.
“We’ve got Antal, and I can tell you that she’s always mad when Y/N does a presentation because they honestly just sound better than her lessons,” Sunwoo chuckled as Jacob pondered his friend’s words, the gears of his mind working at full speed.
How is he going to be able to approach you and get to talk to you?
╰☆╮
“Bestie, no. I swear I saw that in the other book,” you said as you found yourself back in the library the following week, bending over the table to grab the book your best friend was resting hers on. You started flipping some pages when a loud, masculine chortle followed by some whispers of annoyance drawing your attention.
“Hi, babe! Hi Hyunj- Oh hi Jacob!” your neck almost snapped as you abruptly lifted your head up at the mention of your crush’s name, a small, embarrassed smile making its way on your mouth. You were a bit sad that your brother best friend was not here with Sunwoo, but you weren’t going to complain to have your crush instead.
“Can I sit here?” the basketball player asked in a soft voice while pointing at the empty spot next to you, making you quickly nod and gather your stuff to make him some space.
You resumed searching for the precious paragraph you were searching for your project as if it were nothing, trying to ignore your stammering heart in your chest and the couple eating each other's mouths. The only thing you hoped was that Jacob couldn’t hear the loud, irregular beats in your ribcage because it would give in your attraction to him.
“Hum, Y/N?” the voice next to you made you flinch, surprised that he knew your name and that he said it aloud.
“Y-Yes?” you said, cursing in your head as you stuttered.
“I heard that you were the Ace when it came to History,” Jacob started, and you couldn’t look at him in the eyes, fire spreading in your chest up to your face.
“I can’t really say that I’m the Ace, but I really love that subject, so yeah I have some… knowledge,” words tripped over your tongue, and your best friend pulled away from Sunwoo and scoffed.
“Some knowledge? Are you kidding?” she said, Sunwoo placing a hand on her mouth as she was louder than intended. She removed his palm and furrowed her brows at him, before turning her head back at you with the same angry expression.
“She knows so fucking much that Antal hates her because she feels humiliated compared to Y/N. So let me tell you one thing, Cobbie, if you need help, you’ve come to the right person. Y/N is just a living encyclopaedia,” your best friend proudly smirked as you glowered at her, Sunwoo chuckling at his girlfriend’s behaviour before immediately stopping.
“Wait, did you call him Cobbie? How come you call him like that when I get nothing other than babe or baby?” Sunwoo argued while pouting, and your best friend sighed, ruffling his hair before pressing her lips against his one more time, making you slightly grimace as envy flooded your veins.
You sighed and dared to look at Jacob, who was reading the beginning of your essay written on your computer, leaving Sunwoo and your best friend bicker like the cute couple they were.
“Do you have this project too?” you asked, and he shook his head, eyes remaining glued on the computer screen.
“It’s so interesting what you wrote, I like your way of writing and explaining stuff,” he offered a small smile as he looked at you, clearing his throat. For someone that was super popular and constantly surrounded by friends or people at parties, he behaved and sounded quite like an introvert.
“W-Well, thank you,” you said with a smile and turned your head to the side for a second, taking a deep breath before looking back at him, opening a new tab on your computer after he gestured to you that he was done reading.
“What do you need help with?”
╰☆╮
You were astonished at how quick-minded Jacob was. Behind his fit, muscular appearance and obsession with basketball, he had the soul of a thinker and grasped the knowledge of historical concepts quite easily and rapidly. He just wasn’t good with the way Smith was teaching, the method not suiting him.
“You retain things well for someone who hates History,” you joked, and he shyly smiled, scratching his neck. His smile looked gorgeous, and you were pleasantly surprised at how much of a genuine person he was.
“Well, History is not my cup of tea, but it might be a bit more thanks to you,” he said, and you tried to stifle a smile, thankful that your best friend was no longer sitting across from you because she wouldn’t have let you two live.
“It’s nothing. You can come back to me if you need help, I really don’t mind. I actually like explaining things,” you said, and he nodded, clicking your pen close before placing it in your pouch.
“Thank you, really. Sunwoo was actually the one that told me about you, so I have to thank him as well,” you stood up and slowly started to pack your stuff, shutting down your computer with a smile.
“I’m glad he did so, I just hope it was positive,” you giggled, and he quickly joined you, twirling his pen in between his fingers as he cleared his throat.
“You know, it’s Sunwoo. It can only be nice and positive,” you genuinely smiled at him and fall in silence, throwing glances at each other from time to time as the conversation was slowly starting to die down.
“And... How’s basketball going by the way? Is everything going well?” you asked, and his heart skipped a beat at your question as it took him off guard.
“I-It’s going pretty well, I’m excited to finish high school to be able to focus on basketball. I’m gonna have to take some of my last finals in South Korea because the season and the training start pretty early in Summer so…” his voice trailed as his eyes widened, a hand slapping his mouth as you both stood up.
“What?” you quizzed, confused by his sudden change of behaviour.
“I… was meant to keep this a secret,” his voice trailed, the end of his sentence falling in a whisper as he started panicking. “Can we pretend you didn’t hear what I said?” he asked as you placed your bag strap on your shoulder, taking your sweater before pushing the chair against the table.
“Said what?” you replied with a smile, and Jacob sighed in relief, somehow feeling like his secret was safe with you, even if you’ve talked to him for the first time at the beginning of the afternoon.
╰☆╮
The rest of the month rolled off smoothly, yet the stress and the revisions became more intense as the days went by. You didn’t hear anything back from Jacob, but you’ve caught him staring at you a few times, offering him an awkward wave and a smile as not to get noticed by some of his “fan girls”, as they called themselves.
You still had a whole month left before finals, and you felt blessed as summer decided to start a bit earlier this year. It was only the beginning of May, but you were already able to wear shorts and dresses. It felt good to see the blue sky and being surrounded by the warmth of the sun hitting your exposed skin after the cold, lonely winter and spring you’ve just got out of. Everything looked prettier and warmer, and it did nothing but make you happier and brighter, despite the stress of the finals piling up on your shoulders.
So, to get rid of this pressure, you decided to leave town with Hyunjae and let him drive to one of the lakes that surrounded your town, knowing that the beach and parks would get crowded in no time. It was a place that you used to go to with your parents when you were still a child, memories that you shared with your friend coming back flooding in your mind.
Hyunjae and his family tagged along to give you some company and take care of you as your parents were busy looking after your newborn twin sisters, Hyunjae and his younger brother acting like elder siblings to you.
After driving for a few dozens of minutes, you settled your stuff in the shade, right under a weeping willow that offered you freshness throughout the entire day. Your best friend napped almost the entire time you were there, hand lingering on his abs while the other plucked out some grass until he dozed off, trying to store as many hours of rest as possible before finals. By his side was you, reading a book and enjoying the chilly water to cool down from the hot temperatures of early Summer, playfully nudging the young man next to you each time he was starting to snore.
It’s near the middle of the afternoon that you heard another car pulling up near the lake, a bunch of excited teenagers coming out of a van. You didn’t pay much attention to them, only sighing as your peace was about to get ruined, their screams when they jumped in the water woke your best friend up.
He abruptly sat up next to you and rubbed his eyes, some sleeping marks lingering on his face, making you giggle. Being the short-sighted idiot that he was, he squinted to try and recognise some people, but he didn’t have to.
A young woman screamed and started jumping up and down, waving her arms above her head in your direction, hearing her scream something towards you.
You looked at each other with Hyunjae, confusion painted on your faces, hearing your phone buzz in your small bag hidden by your folded clothes.
“Hello?” you said as Hyunjae’s phone started vibrating too, picking up the call as well.
“Y/N, it’s us! We’re on the opposite side of the lake! Come and join us!” you heard your best friend yell in your ear, hearing her as well through Hyunjae’s phone, who picked up a call from her boyfriend.
“Okay, we’re coming!” you excitingly said as you hung up, waving at your best friend from your spot as you started packing your stuff to get back in the car and meet up with your friends.
Your best friend excitingly jumped in your arms as soon as you got out of the car,
“Tt’s crazy how we’re so connected! Did you also think that the beach would be crowded?” she asked, and you nodded with a smile, happy to see her this joyful to see you.
The inseparable duo was here, as well as Younghoon, Jacob, Eric, Juyeon and Sangyeon, the striker of the football team. They all engulfed you in a tight hug, Jacob staying in the background the entire time.
“Hi Jacob!” you brightly said and wrapped your arms around his neck, hugging him close. “Hi Y/N,” his answer vibrated in his chest and had repercussions in yours, sending your heart flying in your ribcage.
You looked so good being this carefree, it was thankfully a sight that he managed to imprint in his mind despite the shortness of the moment. Being surrounded by all your friends felt so good that you forgot to be awkward and worry about the stupidest things, and Jacob adored seeing you this natural and smiling in the company of your friends. He was a bit sad that he wasn’t fully the reason for your smile though, but he still managed to enjoy the rest of the day with you and your mutual friends, whether you were on the ground or in the water.
Sangyeon, Younghoon and Juyeon copied Hyunjae and joined him in a restoring nap, while Eric, Sunwoo, Jacob, Soyeon and you played different games in the water, improvising a volleyball match with an imaginary net and the ball Sunwoo took with him as the volleyball, but it did the job. It was just a bit hurtful for the liberos since it wasn’t as soft and bouncy as a volleyball, but the joy of the moment allowed any type of pain to become bearable.
The evening eventually started to settle in, and you all got out of the water, drying yourselves before deciding to spend a part of the night here. You helped Sangyeon build a bonfire in the safe area by bringing some different branches, the eldest placing them correctly before lighting them with his pocket lighter.
“Hyung! I didn’t know you were a boy-scout,” Sunwoo exclaimed and made everyone laughed as you all were sliding some marshmallows on a stick, Sangyeon smiling with modesty at everyone.
“Ya, don’t say this,” Sangyeon mumbled, and you smile, rubbing his upper back as he sat down next to you, thanking him when you handed him over his marshmallow stick.
“Oh no! Mine burnt,” Soyeon pouted when she retrieved her snack from the flames, and her boyfriend was quick to give her his sweets, Eric cooing at the gesture of affection.
“Give it to me, I like them burnt,” he mumbled as he bit in the fluffy texture, immediately regretting it as it was boiling. His girlfriend handed him water as he stood up, bouncing up and down to try and reduce what felt like flames in his mouth.
“Oh my, thanks babe,” he muttered with his mouth stuffed when he gulped down everything with a pained expression on his face. Eric’s eyes filled with boredom locked into yours and you both chuckled, your friend shaking his head.
“When is it gonna be my turn,” he huffed and Sunwoo hit him playfully in the back as you all laughed around the bonfire, relating to your friend.
“When you’ll stop being obsessed with football and mango juice,” Eric grunted and folded his arms over his chest as Sangyeon called him out, making you coo and playfully run to him, holding him against you as he fake-cried on your chest while everyone was laughing at him.
Except for Jacob, who only offered a weak smile, but you didn’t catch it, too busy having fun and being light-hearted with your friends.
After your stomachs were filled with sweets and soda, Sunwoo pulled out his guitar and strummed a soft melody until some became heavy-eyed or fell asleep against the other, his girlfriend succumbing to his musical talents first. Jacob looked exhausted as well but forced his eyes open, finding him even hotter with hooded eyelids and his hair slightly curling with the humidity of the air and the lake water.
When it was time to go home, Hyunjae, as well as Younghoon, Sunwoo, Soyeon and Eric decided to jump into Hyunjae’s car to go to the beach, feeling the urge and the thrill of going skinny-dipping. On the other hand, you and the rest of the boys were too exhausted and modest to do this, only wanting to go home and get some good rest.
Just like they had arrived, Sangyeon was behind the wheel while the rest was either next to him or in the back seat. And you didn’t know how it happened, but you got stuck between the window and Jacob, who was struggling to keep his eyes open.
“You good?” you asked, and he turned his head towards you before offering you a tired yet sweet smile, moving his head up and down.
“I'm just exhausted, tonight was simply amazing,” he mumbled, and you expressed your agreement by a happy hum and a nod, bringing your attention to your eldest friend.
“Are you sure you’re awake enough to drive?” you enquired on the current situation and Sangyeon looks at you through the inner rear-view mirror, eyes forming two crescent moons as he smiled.
“I just jumped in the water, I’m nothing but awake,” he clapped in his hands to motivate himself and started the engine, your best friend’s car already gone.
Jacob rested his head against the headrest and closed his eyes, his head rolling to the side each time Sangyeon took a turn. You settled yourself on the window and let the vibrations of the car lull you to sleep, the small talk that Sangyeon and Juyeon were having in the front seats acted like a background noise, which helped you dozing off.
However, when the car pulled up in front of your house, they didn’t expect you to have your head resting against Jacob’s shoulder, his hand on your knee. The two men smiled at each other before Sangyeon got out of the vehicle, drawing the door open. As he was about to carry you to your doorstep, Jacob’s arm was quick to wrap itself around your waist, keeping you close to him.
You woke up confused, blinking a few times as you saw the striker standing next to you with a wide smile on his face. He removed a limb around your body, and you felt someone groan under your right shoulder, noticing in dread that you snuggled up to Jacob for some warmth in your sleep.
“You gotta go before the beast wakes up,” Sangyeon joked and winked as he helped you get out of the car, closing the door behind you. It opened again a few seconds later, Jacob looking just as confused as you were.
“Come on, lovebirds, we don’t have the night.”
“Lovebirds?” Jacob and you asked in unison, the basketball player rubbing his eye with the back of his hand. He jumped out of the van and gestured to Sangyeon to get back in.
“You can go, I live just around the corner,” he drowsily said as he vaguely gestured behind him.
“You sure? Your house is on my way back home, I can drop you off,” Sangyeon suggested but he refused, offering a handshake to the striker before letting him go.
Being more awake now, you waved at your friends driving away before turning to your crush, who looked even more adorable as he was super sleepy and just woke up.
“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay? You look really tired,” you asked, voice still laced with sleep yet sounding caring, which made Jacob’s heartbeat fasten. He nodded and weakly smiled, taking a step closer to you. His attitude was a bolt from the blue as he wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you to him, nuzzling his face in your neck.
“You felt so warm during the ride, it’s almost like I could get used to this,” he tiredly said with a smile, gently pulling away to stare at you, his fingers leaving your back to come and slide a wild piece of hair behind your ear. Your whole body stiffened at his words as he stared at you in the eyes, noticing a small, washed-out smirk plastered on his face.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit... late to start something with someone? I mean, we have finals and then y-you’re le-leaving for South Korea and-” you started stammering as his thumb gently stroked your cheek, loving watching you lose your composure at his display of affection.
“It’s never too late when you love someone,” he whispered, feeling his warm breath tickling your lips in such a delicious manner that you have to resist the urge to move forward and press your lips against his.
His words punched the air out of your lungs, leaving you breathless as he kissed your cheek, mouth slowly moving to the side until it reached your lips. The kiss was soft yet a bit on the rougher side as if he wanted you to understand every feeling he had for you. Instinctively, your arms wrapped around his shoulders, and you kissed him harder, deeper, his hands on your lower back pulling you flush against him.
You had dreamt, wondered about what it was like kissing Jacob, but it never felt as good as you were experiencing it now. Fireworks and butterflies were erupting in your stomach, leaving you dizzy with love and passion as one of his hands came and cupped your cheek, the pad of his thumb gently caressing the skin.
Once you pulled away for oxygen, you held onto his shoulders for your dear life and he chuckled, his mouth slowly travelling down to your neck.
“I-I think my… my- oh my god, my parents will worry,” you gently pushed him away and he stared at you with a smile before diving in to capture your lips in another soft kiss.
“I'm only letting you go if you're free tomorrow. Let's put that off to tomorrow, shall we?” he asked, and your eyes widened at his suggestion.
“We can go back to the lake if you want, but only if we’re alone,” he said, his hand caressing your cheek while the other was busy stroking your upper back up and down.
“I want to enjoy this with you and you only,” he added, mumbling against your mouth and this time, you’re the one pulling him for a kiss.
“Come and pick me up at 10, then,” you said as you pulled away.
“I’ll be there, I promise,” he answered and started walking towards your house, closing the front gate behind you, waving at him with a smile.
He sent you a flying kiss with a smile and you waved at him one last time before closing the main door of your house behind you, both sighing with a huge smile and warmth painted on your faces.
You peeled the clothes off your skin and went straight to the bathroom to take a shower, shaking your head left to right while chuckling as you recalled what just happened in your last month of high school.
Nothing was making sense, you didn’t know how you got there, but you were happy.
And that’s what mattered the most.
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themirokai · 2 years ago
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Hi! Hope you're well.
Do you have anything you'd like to share about waste/drinking water management stuff? Something you wish more people knew?
Thanks for the ask! This was in response to my tags here in case anyone else is interested. Ok so important caveat is that I live and work in the US and nearly all of my experience is in an urban setting, so I’m coming at this from that perspective.
A thing that I wish more people understood is that unless you’re on a well, the water that comes out of your tap is the product of a massive, highly regulated, industrial process. Water gets piped from a river or reservoir to a water filtration plant. At the plant the water is physically filtered to remove solids, as well as chemically treated in a number of ways. The water is tested frequently, and the results of those tests are reported to state and federal regulators.
The treated water is pumped into the water distribution system which, depending on the size of the utility where you live can be miles upon miles long (think about it: there is a water pipe under every. single. street). These pipes are kept pressurized so that contaminants can’t get into the system. The pressure in the system needs to be constantly monitored and maintained by a central system. This also means that when there is a leak in one of those miles and miles of pipes it can become a big problem very quickly because the water is coming out at pressure.
This is a lot right? And that’s just the highest of high level overviews. All of this is a lot more complicated. And while I want people to understand this, the corollary thing that I wish everyone knew is that it is up to local governments and regional utilities to figure out how to pay for this. All that stuff I described above? It’s wildly expensive to run on a day to day basis. If you want to do proactive maintenance and not just fix things when they break (which, you know, can turn into a public health crisis) it costs even more money. And while there is some help here and there, the federal government generally does not pay for drinking water. So the local utilities have to make the people who use the water pay for it, otherwise they don’t have enough money to run the system in a safe way. As these systems age, they cost more money to maintain or replace, and utilities raise their rates. In places where a large part of the population is living below the poverty line (Flint, Michigan to take a particularly poignant example) what happens? Nothing good.
I could rant at length about a lot of this but… tldr: drinking water is an expensive industrial process in most of the US and it’s underfunded.
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niseamstories · 4 years ago
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10 Lessons on Realistic Worldbuilding and Mapmaking I Learned Working With a Professional Cartographer and Geodesist
Hi, fellow writers and worldbuilders,
It’s been over a year since my post on realistic swordfighting, and I figured it’s time for another one. I’m guessing the topic is a little less “sexy”, but I’d find this useful as a writer, so here goes: 10 things I learned about realistic worldbuilding and mapmaking while writing my novel.
I’ve always been a sucker for pretty maps, so when I started on my novel, I hired an artist quite early to create a map for me. It was beautiful, but a few things always bothered me, even though I couldn’t put a finger on it. A year later, I met an old friend of mine, who currently does his Ph.D. in cartography and geodesy, the science of measuring the earth. When the conversation shifted to the novel, I showed him the map and asked for his opinion, and he (respectfully) pointed out that it has an awful lot of issues from a realism perspective.
First off, I’m aware that fiction is fiction, and it’s not always about realism; there are plenty of beautiful maps out there (and my old one was one of them) that are a bit fantastical and unrealistic, and that’s all right. Still, considering the lengths I went to ensure realism for other aspects of my worldbuilding, it felt weird to me to simply ignore these discrepancies. With a heavy heart, I scrapped the old map and started over, this time working in tandem with a professional artist, my cartographer friend, and a linguist. Six months later, I’m not only very happy with the new map, but I also learned a lot of things about geography and coherent worldbuilding, which made my universe a lot more realistic.
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1)  Realism Has an Effect: While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with creating an unrealistic world, realism does affect the plausibility of a world. Even if the vast majority of us probably know little about geography, our brains subconsciously notice discrepancies; we simply get this sense that something isn’t quite right, even if we don’t notice or can’t put our finger on it. In other words, if, for some miraculous reason, an evergreen forest borders on a desert in your novel, it will probably help immersion if you at least explain why this is, no matter how simple.
2)  Climate Zones: According to my friend, a cardinal sin in fantasy maps are nonsensical climate zones. A single continent contains hot deserts, forests, and glaciers, and you can get through it all in a single day. This is particularly noticeable in video games, where this is often done to offer visual variety (Enderal, the game I wrote, is very guilty of this). If you aim for realism, run your worldbuilding by someone with a basic grasp of geography and geology, or at least try to match it to real-life examples.
3)  Avoid Island Continent Worlds: Another issue that is quite common in fictional worlds is what I would call the “island continents”: a world that is made up of island-like continents surrounded by vast bodies of water. As lovely and romantic as the idea of those distant and secluded worlds may be, it’s deeply unrealistic. Unless your world was shaped by geological forces that differ substantially from Earth’s, it was probably at one point a single landmass that split up into fragmented landmasses separated by waters. Take a look at a proper map of our world: the vast majority of continents could theoretically be reached by foot and relatively manageable sea passages. If it weren’t so, countries such as Australia could have never been colonized – you can’t cross an entire ocean on a raft.
4)  Logical City Placement: My novel is set in a Polynesian-inspired tropical archipelago; in the early drafts of the book and on my first map, Uunili, the nation’s capital, stretched along the entire western coast of the main island. This is absurd. Not only because this city would have been laughably big, but also because building a settlement along an unprotected coastline is the dumbest thing you could do considering it directly exposes it to storms, floods, and, in my case, monsoons. Unless there’s a logical reason to do otherwise, always place your coastal settlements in bays or fjords.
 Naturally, this extends to city placement in general. If you want realism and coherence, don’t place a city in the middle of a godforsaken wasteland or a swamp just because it’s cool. There needs to be a reason. For example, the wasteland city could have started out as a mining town around a vast mineral deposit, and the swamp town might have a trading post along a vital trade route connecting two nations.
 5)  Realistic Settlement Sizes: As I’ve mentioned before, my capital Uunili originally extended across the entire western coast. Considering Uunili is roughly two thirds the size of Hawaii  the old visuals would have made it twice the size of Mexico City. An easy way to avoid this is to draw the map using a scale and stick to it religiously. For my map, we decided to represent cities and townships with symbols alone.
 6)  Realistic Megacities: Uunili has a population of about 450,000 people. For a city in a Middle Ages-inspired era, this is humongous. While this isn’t an issue, per se (at its height, ancient Alexandria had a population of about 300,000), a city of that size creates its own set of challenges: you’ll need a complex sewage system (to minimize disease spreading like wildfire) and strong agriculture in the surrounding areas to keep the population fed. Also, only a small part of such a megacity would be enclosed within fantasy’s ever-so-present colossal city walls; the majority of citizens would probably concentrate in an enormous urban sprawl in the surrounding areas. To give you a pointer, with a population of about 50,000, Cologne was Germany’s biggest metropolis for most of the Middle Ages. I’ll say it again: it’s fine to disregard realism for coolness in this case, but at least taking these things into consideration will not only give your world more texture but might even provide you with some interesting plot points.
 7)  World Origin: This point can be summed up in a single question: why is your world the way it is? If your novel is set in an archipelago like mine is, are the islands of volcanic origin? Did they use to be a single landmass that got flooded with the years? Do the inhabitants of your country know about this? Were there any natural disasters to speak of? Yes, not all of this may be relevant to the story, and the story should take priority over lore, but just like with my previous point, it will make your world more immersive.
 8)  Maps: Think Purpose! Every map in history had a purpose. Before you start on your map, think about what yours might have been. Was it a map people actually used for navigation? If so, clarity should be paramount. This means little to no distracting ornamentation, a legible font, and a strict focus on relevant information. For example, a map used chiefly for military purposes would naturally highlight different information than a trade map. For my novel, we ultimately decided on a “show-off map” drawn for the Blue Island Coalition, a powerful political entity in the archipelago (depending on your world’s technology level, maps were actually scarce and valuable). Also, think about which technique your in-universe cartographer used to draw your in-universe map. Has copperplate engraving already been invented in your fictional universe? If not, your map shouldn’t use that aesthetic.
9)  Maps: Less Is More. If a spot or an area on a map contains no relevant information, it can (and should) stay blank so that the reader’s attention naturally shifts to the critical information. Think of it this way: if your nav system tells you to follow a highway for 500 miles, that’s the information you’ll get, and not “in 100 meters, you’ll drive past a little petrol station on the left, and, oh, did I tell you about that accident that took place here ten years ago?” Traditional maps follow the same principle: if there’s a road leading a two day’s march through a desolate desert, a black line over a blank white ground is entirely sufficient to convey that information.
10) Settlement and Landmark Names: This point will be a bit of a tangent, but it’s still relevant. I worked with a linguist to create a fully functional language for my novel, and one of the things he criticized about my early drafts were the names of my cities. It’s embarrassing when I think about it now, but I really didn’t pay that much attention to how I named my cities; I wanted it to sound good, and that was it. Again: if realism is your goal, that’s a big mistake. Like Point 5, we went back to the drawing board and dove into the archipelago’s history and established naming conventions. In my novel, for example, the islands were inhabited by indigenes called the Makehu before the colonization four hundred years before the events of the story; as it’s usually the case, all settlements and islands had purely descriptive names back then. For example, the main island was called Uni e Li, which translates as “Mighty Hill,” a reference to the vast mountain ranges in the south and north; townships followed the same example (e.g., Tamakaha meaning “Coarse Sands”). When the colonizers arrived, they adopted the Makehu names and adapted them into their own language, changing the accented, long vowels to double vowels: Uni e Li became “Uunili,” Lehō e Āhe became “Lehowai.” Makehu townships kept their names; colonial cities got “English” monikers named after their geographical location, economic significance, or some other original story. Examples of this are Southport, a—you guessed it—port on the southernmost tip of Uunili, or Cale’s Hope, a settlement named after a businessman’s mining venture. It’s all details, and chances are that most readers won’t even pay attention, but I personally found that this added a lot of plausibility and immersion.
I could cover a lot more, but this post is already way too long, so I’ll leave it at that—if there’s enough interest, I’d be happy to make a part two. If not, well, maybe at least a couple of you got something useful out of this. If you’re looking for inspiration/references to show to your illustrator/cartographer, the David Rumsey archive is a treasure trove. Finally, for anyone who doesn’t know and might be interested, my novel is called Dreams of the Dying, and is a blends fantasy, mystery, and psychological horror set in the universe of Enderal, an indie RPG for which I wrote the story. It’s set in a Polynesian-inspired medieval world and has been described as Inception in a fantasy setting by reviewers.
Credit for the map belongs to Dominik Derow, who did the ornamentation, and my friend Fabian Müller, who created the map in QGIS and answered all my questions with divine patience. The linguist’s name is David Müller (no, they’re not related, and, yes, we Germans all have the same last names.)
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rosaliestark01 · 4 years ago
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Moral of the Story
Peter Parker x Stark!Reader
Requested by @itspetitfantomestuff: There's this amazing song called "Moral of the Story" by Ashe ft. Niall Horan, and in one of Niall's lines he says "Talking with your father he said that you could be mine" which gave me huge PeterXStark!Reader vibes, i was wondering if i can request an angsty story with Peter Parker and Stark!Reader based in that song pretty please?🥺❤️
Warnings: Angst, swearing, unhealthy relationship, the song made me cry 😢
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So I never really knew you God, I really tried to Blindsided, addicted Thought we could really do this But really, I was foolish Hindsight, it's obvious
Peter Parker was a shoulder to cry on after your father sacrificed himself to save half the population. Neither of you had been particularly close to one another. You both went to different schools, had other friends, but you did have one thing in common. You were both mourning your dad.
"How are you feeling?" Peter asked as he sat down next to you on the dock at your father's eco-compound. The funeral had just officially ended, and the majority of guests were staying for the "reception."
"Numb," you mutter to him, not wanting to raise your voice in fear that he'd be able to hear how much pain you were really in. "You?"
Instead of answering, he began to tear up. In all the times you've interacted with him, he was always cheerful and happy to help anybody who needed it. For some reason, seeing him like this simply added to your pain.
"None of this should have happened," he finally exclaimed. He let his head fall into his hands, and you resisted the urge to hug him. You didn't have that kind of relationship with him. "If I'd been stronger, I could've-"
"You couldn't. He cared about you too, you know," you cut him off. You instantly looked away from him, not wanting him to see the tears welling up in your eyes from your sorrow and embarrassment that he heard the crack in your voice. "He did this for all of us."
"I know. I just wish I could've done something. It's not fair," He croaked. This time, you let yourself place your hand on his.
"Nothing ever is."
Talking with my lawyer She said, "Where'd you find this guy?" I said, "Young people fall in love With the wrong people sometimes"
You could still remember the way his lips felt against yours as he kissed you for the first time that night. You both needed something to cling to, so you clung to each other in hopes that you both could dull the pain at least a bit. By the end of the summer, you were dating, but it felt more like coping.
You still wonder if it was compassion that led to that kiss or if it was just the fact that nobody understood your grief better than each other. Either way, you couldn't bring yourself to regret it as much as you feel you should. You couldn't get yourself to care that it didn't feel like love.
Some mistakes get made That's alright, that's okay You can think that you're in love When you're really just in pain Some mistakes get made That's alright, that's okay In the end, it's better for me That's the moral of the story, babe
"I'm sorry, it just reminded me of him too much," Peter cried into your shoulder as he recounted what had happened. Apparently, he was going through some old photographs when he came across one of him as a child wearing an Iron Man mask. Your dad had been his hero, his idol.
"I know what you mean," you tell him, resisting the urge to cry yourself. You'd think that after a few months that it'd have gotten better. "It's like, no matter where I go, there's always something that reminds me of him. I don't know how to stop it."
This time, Peter was the one to comfort you. He knew that he'd been conflicted on whether or not this could be called love, or if it was even close, but he felt a need to tell you the one thing that kept playing in his mind at this moment,
"I love you."
"I love you too."
It's funny how a memory Turns into a bad dream And running wild turns volatile It's not funny how it changes Ended up like strangers We burned down our paper house
Peter couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't what love was supposed to feel like. Compared to other happy couples, the way that the two of you "love" each other didn't seem right. You were a shoulder to cry on, but he doesn't remember a single time since the two of you had gotten together that either of you had a memorably happy moment together.
Every single day, he worries that you'll realize this and end things with him. To everybody else, this probably doesn't seem like the kind of thing that is meant to last, yet he hopes to god that it does. He wants things to get better because, at one point, he believed that he really did love you.
Talking with your father He said that you could be mine But some people fall in love With the wrong people sometimes
Mr.Stark was well aware of Peter's growing crush on you. Although he had mixed feelings about you dating a superhero, he felt as though Peter would do right by you if only you weren't so oblivious.
"M-Mr. Stark!" It was funny to Tony how flustered Peter got after being caught staring at you as you work on some new tech with Harley Keener, one of your friends.
"Parker, you do realize that if you talk to her, you might actually have a shot," your dad stated, hoping that Peter wouldn't chicken out like last time. It was funny, but your happiness was more important than his entertainment.
"I wasn't-"
"Please, I've known about your little crush on her since the moment you met," Your dad sighs as he thinks about what to say next. He wanted to help Peter, but he didn't want to be too involved. "Look, I know I'm her father, and I'm supposed to scare boys off instead of encouraging them, but I figured I'd let you know that there's a ninety-three percent chance that she won't turn you down."
"I- You- she- she likes me?" Peter stutters at his idol, hoping that this wasn't some lie to get him to man up. He wanted you to actually like him before he asks you out. What Peter hadn't counted on was his feelings for you changing by the time he actually did.
They say it's better to have loved and lost Then never to have loved at all That could be a load of shit But I just need to tell you all
"I know things haven't been ideal between us, but you do mean a lot to me," Peter stated. The two of you were visiting your dad's old cabin for the weekend in a desperate attempt to grow closer to one another since you both started college.
"You mean a lot to me too," You sigh as you look out towards the lake. You began thinking about how you and Peter had sat in this exact spot as you comforted each other after your dad's funeral. "You've been there for me in ways nobody ever has."
"I thought that- I don't want to lose what we have," Peter didn't know why he thought that this was a good idea. Neither of you seemed happy together, yet you both cling to your failing relationship like your lives depend on it. "If- If you continue to have me, will you- maybe, marry me?"
"Yes." That was the answer that Peter had dreaded, yet he pulled you into a passionate kiss anyway.
Some mistakes get made That's alright, that's okay You can think that you're in love When you're really just engaged Some mistakes get made That's alright, that's okay In the end, it's better for me That's the moral of the story
You saw the way that he looked at her. It left a strange ache in your heart and pain that he'd never looked at you that way. Although another part of you felt relieved, you didn't feel ready to say goodbye. You were just starting to feel as though things were getting better. Like the two of you were getting better.
Michelle Jones wasn't broken like you were. She didn't need time, effort, or comfort. Maybe that was why Peter seemed to like her so much. Perhaps that was why you made up your mind on what you needed to do.
When Peter came home from college for the day, you ended your engagement. You were doing this for him, after all. He deserved to be happy. You'd move into the compound; he could keep the apartment and everything in there.
"I'm sorry," he muttered, not being able to look you in the eyes. He thought that this was what he wanted, but he felt a hollowness in his heart as you said those words.
"I'm sorry too."
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womenofwonder · 3 years ago
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RWBY characters races for AUs set in our world.
How I’m going to do this: three things. The first, the city they live in Remnant. This is the least important because that leaves us with only five…maybe six places compared to our world’s hundreds of countries.
The second will be the original of their names, which they’ll have to keep in the AUs, meaning that they need some culture background for them.
The third will be their fairy tale origins.
So to start, Ruby Rose:
She lives in Vale, which is similar to France (I’ll explain why in another post maybe), but technically grew up in patch, a small island off the coast of Vale. I have no idea about Patch’s culture as we hardly ever see it, so I’m going to skip this one. We also don’t know if either Summer or Taiyang was originally from Vale.
We know Taiyang is Chinese from his name, so I’m going to say she’s half Chinese. I also wrote a western au once and really love the idea of Taiyang being an Asian Redneck…so I think I’m going to say Ruby is very, very southern just because that would be adorable.
But if you don’t want that idea I generally see Taiyang being either Asian-American or Asian-French, or Asian-British if your doing a HP AU. Summer is harder to pin down, but Red Riding Hood was originally an Italian fable, so I’m going to have her be Italian or Italian-American.
Weiss:
Weiss is German, although making her simply white America/British would work. I could see her being Russian too in some AU because Atlas fits well as Russia. For American works, Pennsylvania has quite the German population and coal mines, so that works pretty well for her.
Blake is really complicated. From Remment Australia which is culturally SEA (south East Asian), has an English name but parents with a Hindu-inspired names, but neither looking vaguely Indian. I’m going to assume her family are immigrants (as they are in cannon I think) to Australia, maybe even changed their name to help them fit in. Immigrants from where? Well, India is an option, but I like to think Malaysia. They have a large Indian and Chinese population, and I like to think Blake is a mixture of Chinese, Malay, and Indian ethnicities, from Malaysia and immigrated to Australia. And if you think this is crazy or unrealistic, you haven’t seen anything yet. The sheer mix of cultures I’ve seen growing up as an ex-pat is insane. This isn’t too crazy.
For Yang, we already have Taiyang as an Asian red-neck. Or at least I do. Raven and Qrow are going to be a little harder to pin down, but I’m think bandits getting replaced by mafia. Which mafia? I don’t know, take you’re pick. Branwen is Welsh, but I can’t think of a Welsh mafia. Coming from Mistral I would see them as being Triad, not Yakuza because Raven’s gang is famous for being less than coordinated.
If you need a logical reason for Yang having blonde hair, Taiyang could be only half Chinese, half blonde (blonde is race right?).
Either way I see Raven operating in an American city like New York or Detroit.
This would mean Yang is fully Chinese ethnically.
JNPR:
Jaune’s name and inspiration are all French. However his mother does come from Mistral (I think), so I do see him being half Chinese, but nationally French. It’s also funny to imagine him with a French accent.
Pyrrha: she’s Greek or maybe Greek-American with her parents being recent immigrants. Argus seems to Remnent-Greece and her name and fairy tale are greek.
Nora: she should be Scandinavian. I feel like in a MCU AU she’s Thor’s daughter. But she also grew up as a street rat in Mistral, which is hard to fit in our world. Therefore I’m going to have her in America, the great melting pot (and also America seems to be more like Mistral than any other Remnent king with our state system), and she going to ethically Scandinavian but knowing nothing of her culture due to her upbringing.
Ren: obviously Chinese, but I might have him be American-Chinese to fit his story nicely in with Nora’s.
Others:
Coco: we’re all ignoring that she’s based off Coco Channel, so let’s make her a LA girl
Velvet: Australia, because of the accent. Or maybe English because that is her story origin
Fox: he’s difficult, because tribes are pretty rare in modern AUs. But his story could work for various things. He’s one of the few black characters so he could come from practically any African tribe (I’m currently going with Hausa because it’s one of the few I know anything about). His name is based off ‘the fox and the hound’ which is a rare American story, so he could also be from a Native American tribe if you want the AU to be more American-based.
Yatsuhashi: Japanese, this one is thankfully easy.
Sun: Chinese. He comes from a tribe as well, but I can’t think of any nomadic Chinese tribes except the Uyghurs. Making Sun a Uyghur doesn’t make much sense but it will serve to piss off certain people on the internet. And now this is going to be taken down, isn’t it? Oh wait, this is tumbrl. This is anarchy. It won’t. Forgot why I liked this place for a second.
Scarlet: sorry for the rambling there. Anyway, Scarlet is definitely English. “I hope I don’t get sand in my shoes.”
Sage: well, he’s black, but other then that we have nothing to go one. He’s also from Mistral but that doesn’t really work? If Mistral is America as well as China I guess we can make him African American. Or whatever else works best for the AU. He might be Indian too now that I think of it. Or even Maori. Really options are limitless here.
Neptune: Yeah, so probably just American, but does have both a French last name and an Italian first name. So probably ethically American (aka white mutt). Also he lives near a port, I think I’m gonna gone with him being from Tacoma Washington because I am.
Flynt: African American
Neon: Japanese-American because of her meme (it started as part of Japanese pop song on YouTube, the latter of which is America summed up in one invention)
Oscar: Hispanic-American, he just looks it. And I’m guessing he lives in Kansas for obvious reasons. His last name isn’t Hispanic but their could be a lot of reasons for that. Or he could be Native American (Pawnee, Cheyenne, and Osage are all Native American tribes in Kansas).
Penny: well if she’s still a robot she probably stays white, but if you want her human in this AU she might end up being half black as Pietro is, although she also could just be adopted. I guess the later makes more sense, huh? I figure she’s American, with her dad working with a ‘well meaning’ but ultimately corrupt government. Probably living in DC, as that has both the government and the poverty issues.
Emerald: oohh, boy. This is hard. Sustrai is Basque, and Aladdin is a French addition to an Arabian story, she herself is dark skinned with anime features that are super unhelpful for this sorta thing.
I have three ideas. Brazilian, mostly as there’s no South American themed RWBY characters I can think of, and it’s diverse enough that someone looking like Emerald would fit. Secondly, for American centered stories she’s just an orphan with no idea of her ethnicity. Or she could be African, Indian, Pacific Islander, or Hispanic or some mixture between those four. It’s honestly really hard to tell. In my fanfic she’s from Suriname and ethnically 1/4 Indian, 1/2 Creole, and 1/4 Javanese.
Ilia: Sioux (Native American). Ilia means a lot of things in a lot of different languages, and Amitola mean rainbow in Sioux, so I decided to just stick with that.
Mercury: American, white mutt American. I’m guessing New York or Philli for where he grew up, it seems like a place where he’d be comfortable
Neo: the new novel reveals her father lived in vale (btw I haven’t read it, I’m just getting this off the internet) and her mother was a assassin who’s origins aren’t known. She doesn’t really have a fairy tale. So I’m going to go with British or French (thank RWBY thoughts for the first one) although in an American AU she works as just a white American.
Robyn: depends on what Atlas is in this AU, but probably German or American.
Qrow: I already mentioned he’s probably Chinese due to being from Mistral. It’s a bit weird to think of him as Asian, but not as weird as it to think of Raven as white, so I’ll take it. Although I do like the idea of him being American Irish, that’s fun.
Winter: whatever Atlas is in this AU, German or American, although British and Russian would work well too.
Maria: Mexican
Salem: If you want a AU where she’s just a normal person then New England or Italian for her story origin
Watts: British
Tyrian: uh…I have no idea, but he looks white. And he kinda has a British accent? I want him to be southern for the accent tho. Probably just another crazy American
Cinder: her fairy tale is French but her origin is Chinese. Also, Cinderella doesn’t really have an origin, it’s an ancient story with every culture having at least one Cinderella story. So I’m going to say Chinese.
Hazel: American, from the Midwest. He’s darkish so maybe he’s a POC? Part Native American or Hispanic? Idk or really care I can’t stand Hazel
Roman Torchwick: American-Italian, he runs/works for the mafia
Ozpin: American because of the whole wizard-of-Oz-thing or French, because he seems to have come from Vale.
Glynda: American or French for the same reasons Ozpin is
Oobleck: Jewish American (because Dr. Seuss was)
Professor Port: Russian, due to his fairy tale, or English, due to his style
Taiyang: already said he’s a red-neck Asian.
Raven: depending on whether you want her to be white or not, either Chinese or Irish American, like I already said.
Cordovin: Karen
Ironwood: again, depends on Atlas in the AU. Either American or German…maybe Russian
Clover: Irish-American (or German, obviously the ace-ops depend on where Atlas is. I’m just going to do the rest of them assuming Atlas is American because Germany isn’t that diverse)
Harriet: African-American, I guess. It kinda messes with the story because Harriet is supposed to be privileged, which doesn’t really work in this AU, but she’s also obviously black.
Elm: Just normal American, maybe greek-American because of the Aesop fable themes
Vine: Tibetan based on his design
Marrow: either African-American or Pakistani/Indian-American. (I’m personally going for Pakistani)
Klein: english. All butlers are English. It’s a rule.
Pietro: African-American
Johanna: Pakistani or Indian American
Fiona: Jewish-American (kinda random but while she’s obviously white she also needs to be a minority for the Faunus thing to work)
May: normal upper glass American/German
Ghira: Half Malay, Half Indian, from Malaysia but immigrated to Australia later in life
Kali: half Chinese, half Indian, but also from Malaysia
Adam: much like Fiona I’m going to assume he’s Jewish due to him being white but still needing to be a minority. German or American, again, depending on where Atlas is. Or he could be Chinese, even though it doesn’t work with his name, due to the theory that he was trafficked much like Cinder. I’m going with ethically Jewish though
Sienna Khan: Indian
Huh, I actually finished that. I’m pretty sure I was accidentally racist multiple times and apologize in advance,
I’m exhausted and starving and not thinking straight. But anyway, here it is. Your very messy guide to modern RWBY AUs. I swear this was insane to sort out.
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pinkbunnygirlwattpad · 3 years ago
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I’ve been writing a fanfiction based off this image for DBD Ghostface and I think it’s going pretty well. I still have to write the rest of it, reread it and edit it but it’s going pretty well. I think I might be half way through it but idk depends. Underneath is about a third of what I have so far.
Warning: Stalking, Danny being a pervert, murder(?), mentions of sex, other things
Summary: Reader is a closeted age-regressor but Danny is nosy so he’ll know
Daddy’s Little Girl
Danny had been stalking you for a while, much longer than any of his other victim but that was because you were special. He had seen you whilst he was at some house party with cheap liquor and horny idiots practically fucking on the walls and floor, he bitterly thought that it was more like an orgy than the drinking fest the host wanted it to be. Your friend had dragged you to the piss poor excuse for a party and one look into those round, doe eyes had given him the feeling he had when he saw someone he knew had to be one of his victims. He examined you closer while you were there and saw how your whole being exuded purity, from the way your hair looked so soft and the way your skin looked like a blanket made of silk. It was your face that really made him want you, though. Your lips were parted slightly, and you had slightly chubby cheeks, giving them a squishy, bouncy texture that made you look more like a child. But what made him really hooked was the innocent gleam in your eyes when you looked around the room.
 He followed you throughout the night and it made him much more excited about what he was going to do to you when he saw the oblivious state you were in with every guy who flirted with you. It would be so easy to trick you, unlike his previous victims who would have never been interested in some reported with a heart of gold, you would immediately fall for that shtick. He wanted to have sex for the pure gratification of corrupting you. Clinging to your friend all night had made it hard to get close to you but no matter, not when he could stalk you, find out your interests and then sweep you off your feet.
 It had not been hard to find out about you, it is what he does best. You were too busy worrying over your friend to notice a mysterious figure behind you. Danny even had fun of being obvious about it, but you didn’t notice a thing, a kind of obviousness that was hard to find in Roseville where all the people were cut-throat due to the high population of rich people in the area and harsh jobs that were specialised in that area. Your friend wouldn’t help either due to their pathetic drunken state. Thinking in this direction was getting Danny worked up and would leave him with a boner if he were not careful.
 After some time and a quick walk down a path in the nearby woods, you were home in your cottage with a white-picketed fence, beautiful flowers of all colours blooming in the front and some along the stone path leading to the back. The fences seemed to be more for décor reasons than serving an actual purpose since Danny knew that this particular land was quite spacious. You lead your friend inside and, from the window in the front, Danny observed you catering to your very drunk friend. He noted that the inside of the house were pastels and had lots of fantasy, fairy, cottagecore and light academia vibes. He did have to admit, even though he didn’t care for interior design aside from to keep up appearances, he appreciated something so beautiful like that.
 Now knowing where you live and marking it down in his black, pleather (he may kill people, but he wasn’t so heartless!) journal, he left for the night to get some rest. This was the first time in awhile he felt this excited for killing! Don’t get him wrong, killing was fun but it got monotonous to kill the same types of people over and over again. It was exciting to spicy his routine up a bit.
 Danny had been stalking you for 3 weeks and 4 days. He had taken pictures of you throughout that time, at your job, with your friends, when your alone and even in the shower! He did feel guilty about it for a few seconds before he decided that he was entitled to see your body if you had bad security in the first place that allowed people like him to get in. During the duration of this time, he had begun to psychoanalyse you and what your behaviour means, how your body language was an indication of your emotions and built a profile for you within his mind palace (it was easy with his photographic memory). You were so wholesome most of the time, whereas you did occasionally participate in conversations of kins, for the majority, you didn’t want to talk about sex or anything that came anywhere close. Something he also observed was that you had a tendency to not talk in ‘big words’ a lot of the time and he could list so much more that you did but that would be ranting. You bought many plushies, colouring books and ready-made snacks like chicken/tofu nuggets and yoghurt pots, stuff traditionally children liked. Although it made sense seeing how you were the go-to babysitter for the majority of your co-workers and friends, as well as distant neighbours and relatives. Plus, who didn’t enjoy hugging or collecting plushies? And Danny himself was a big fan of ready-made meals due to the time consumed by his work and ‘hobby’.
 Packages were often delivered to your house, at least from what he had seen but maybe it was a wave of them at once, like a spree shopper may do. The thing that intrigued him most to the contents of those deliveries was the way you were very protective over them, not letting anyone see even though you thought you had nothing to worry about. It made him want to know what you might be doing with them or what was in them. For all he knew, it could be something from the dark web, something disgusting and vile that would make you a devil in angel form. Entertaining this idea made him more desperate to find out what it was. And he would.
 He had snuck into your house after you had gone to work so he knew he had a long time before you came home. Once he was inside after going through your unlocked window, (what a forgetful, little thing) he saw a pile of discarded clothes. Approaching the crumpled garments, he picked up a shirt and smelled it. Yep, it was dirty laundry. It sent a shiver of excitement up Danny’s spine from excitement. Oh, what a naughty bunny you were, leaving him such a tantalizing gift. If he didn’t know better, it would seem like you were hoping to rile him up. During this stalking periods as he called it, you became dissimilar to his previous victims who pull a dark desire straight from the depths of his heart where his sick fantasies were locked from the world, you made him want something different than what he already experienced with them. He thought that it could be a new way to kill you, one only for you and designed to be the perfect art form in which to send you off to the afterlife. Of course, he was beginning to realise it was different to this. But back to why he was there.
 Looking around, he spotted one of the boxes that had been opened on your bed with objects seemingly thrown haphazardly into it. He nearly ran up to it he was so exhilarated from the rush of finding out what you were hiding from him. Not that he couldn’t make as much noise as he wanted, your cottage was 40 minutes from the outskirts of the city, which wasn’t the safest environment anyways, and 3 hours away in all other directions from anywhere containing sane, human life.
 Once within reaching distance, he picked it up without peaking in and sat on your soft bed. His hands were trembling from a strong surge of adrenaline and, without wanting to torture himself further, began to look through it. He prayed to find anything that made you deceitful and like him but what he saw wasn’t what he expected.
 Adult pacifiers, shortalls, sippy cups and more items similar to them were inside it. His initial thought was that you were into age play, but he doubted it, even if you were, you wouldn’t use anything this expensive in your casual hook-ups. Now that he knew what was in the box, he had even more questions which wasn’t what he had expected. With a new determination, he had arranged everything back into its original position and left your cottage to collect his thoughts and write down his questions at his base of operation. As he was driving back to the house he bought, he went down to his basement where he kept all his hunting equipment locked in. Looking at the corkboard he used to pin information about his current target, he methodically updated your information. As he did, he realised that he couldn’t stop smiling. This was new, having reached this level of excitement from his victim, it only made his obsession grow bigger for you. Oh, how you would regret going to that party that night.
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pynkhues · 3 years ago
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Hi Sophie! I’m an aspiring writer and I had a question for you!! How did you go on about finding an agent? Also how does one find job postings related to writing? (Tv, etc.) I’m very inspired by you and how talented you are!!!
Hi, anon! Thank you for your kind words, and it’s so exciting that you’re an aspiring writer! I think knowing that you want to write really is the first step on a pretty incredible journey, and it’s one that it helps have to have tools on. Knowing how to ask questions, like you did, is a great way to start building that toolkit too.
Especially because your writing toolkit will be something you build, because there’s not really one answer to either of your questions. I really mean it when I say writing and publishing is a journey, and as a part of that, the pathways people choose to take (and the pathways available to them) often vary a lot, and are impacted by so many things, from where you live to the genre and medium you write in to the networks you have access to.
I’m going to try to answer that for you as well as I can here which I hope will be a useful starting point for you, but I will be contextualizing it a bit with the fact that a) I’m in Australia, which has a bit of a different industry to many parts of the world (in no small part because we have a very small population), and b) that I worked in the industry before I started having my work published, which did give me a jump start and a pretty good network of professional and personal support.
Okay!
So let’s jump in.
Behind a cut because this got a bit long.
How did I get an agent?
Well! I was rejected by four agents before I got one, haha, so that in itself was a bit of an adventure. It meant that I was effectively my own agent for quite a while (something that’s quite normal in Australia for reasons I’ll talk about later), which meant doing everything from pitching works to teaching myself enough legal vocabulary to negotiate contracts (not my strong suit honestly, haha).
The first two agents I ever spoke to were both agents that weren’t open for unsolicited submissions. This is an important term in the industry, because what that means is that they’re not reading any new writers who:
they didn’t invite to submit (usually this would be after you’d won a prize, or they’d read your short story or essay in a journal or magazine, loved it and got in touch)
didn’t come recommended by colleagues; or
didn’t come through their existing networks.
Does that mean you can’t get your work in front of them? It doesn’t actually. Usually when agents aren’t open for unsolicited submissions, they’ll still be interested in work. It just usually means they don’t have the time for a massive slush pile. What they frequently do in these instances instead is that they’ll attend conferences, festivals, workshops or events and do pitching sessions a couple of times a year. That usually looks like you booking a five, ten or fifteen minute window, generally for free (be cautious if they’re charging extra on top of your event ticket) and doing a verbal pitch of your project.
I’ve done a lot of these at various events in various contexts (it’s always hell, haha), but only twice to agents. Once was at the CYA Conference in Brisbane (which is a charged pitch but the money’s a donation towards the Children’s Book Council), where I pitched a YA manuscript I’ve since put in my bottom-drawer, and Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne, where I pitched The Rabbits, which is my novel which came out in July with Penguin Australia.
Those pitching sessions went just okay. Both liked my pitches, but the agent at CYA had a full stable of YA authors and was more looking for middle-grade fiction, which meant my story skewed too old. She gave me her card if I ever wrote for a younger audience, but otherwise declined to invite me to submit. Again, this is frequently actually why an agent might be closed to submissions or they might reject your work even if they like it – they're just at capacity with what you're pitching.
The one at EWF went better and I was invited to submit my complete manuscript, but she told me that while she thought I was a good writer, she didn’t personally like my writing style and therefore didn’t think she could sell it. She did actually invite me to submit something else if I had something more commercial, but I really figured that if she didn’t like my writing style, she probably wasn’t going to like whatever else I sent her, so I ended up declining because I thought it would be a waste of both our time.
The other two agents I submit to were both open for unsolicited submissions so I didn’t have to go through events. In both cases, I did cold submissions, which just means we’d never spoken before, so when you do that you need to put together a query packet because - - well. They don’t know who you are, haha. All publishers and agents have different requirements for their query packet and these should be listed on their website (if they’re not, feel really empowered to email and ask – in all of my industry experience, they have always infinitely preferred you doing that to guessing. It shows you know the etiquette and want to get it right).
Generally speaking though, what you're looking at pulling together for a packet is usually:
A cover letter explaining who you are, why you’re interested in them being your agent (being familiar with who else they represent is a good thing to highlight), and what story you’re selling them on.
A one-page synopsis of your manuscript.
A writing CV if you have one, or another relevant CV (i.e. if you're pitching a non-fiction book on being a nurse in the pandemic, attaching your nursing CV so they can see you're legitimate is important).
And usually either the first 50 pages or the first three chapters of your novel.
You generally email that to them, it goes into a slush pile, and they’ll read through it when they get the chance. I got a personalized rejection from one, which is pretty lovely (getting a personal rejection instead of one that’s clearly an email template from agents, editors and publishers might sound silly, but they’re actually pretty significant. These are people who get thousands of manuscripts a year, and taking the time to write a reply usually means your work resonated enough that they want to give you that encouragement even if the answer’s still no), and the other, I never heard back from, and my follow up email was ignored. Less lovely, haha, but unfortunately not uncommon.
So yeah, I took a bit of a break from seeking out an agent then, which I could do in Australia. One of the benefits of having a small industry here is that there’s a very limited number of agents (we’re talking literally about 25), which means submissions outside of agents and agencies are pretty normal. My understanding in the US and the UK is that you’re not really going to get a look-in without an agent, but in Australia you can submit direct, having an agent just makes it a lot easier.
So I didn’t have an agent when I actually got offered my book deal. I’d submit The Rabbits to a few different publishers, it had been rejected already by a couple and was still in the slush pile at one when I submit it to the Penguin Literary Prize. It won (yay!), Penguin offered me a book deal, and when the news broke in industry news, I was approached by six different agents, including, hilariously, the agent who said she didn’t like my writing style, haha.
I ended up talking to a few of them, but I went with a fairly new agent who I’d known through industry work, and I went with her because she had a really strong legal background which is what I was personally interested in.
Because that’s an important thing to consider too.
Why do you want an agent?
I actually knew that I didn’t really need an agent to sell my work. I’d been doing that for ten years already, I have over twenty short stories and a novella published, I’d sold my book, and I’d sold the rights to a screenplay already on my own, so the ability for an agent to sell work wasn’t so important to me. What was important to me was having someone who had a background in publishing law (my agent actually worked in the rights team in-house at a top five publisher before she became an agent), and understood rights management particularly in digital rights and international rights, because it makes my head spin, haha.
So that’s why I went with her!
But how do you find agents?
You didn’t ask this question exactly, but I think this is a very relevant question. There are databases of agents and publishers out there – Duotrope is probably the best known and I know people rave about it. One of the things that’s useful about it is that it’ll do a bit of a breakdown listing what genres the agent reads, if they’re currently open to unsolicited submissions, and their requirements. Take a look at Ginger Clark’s page for example (she’s not my agent – she’s American for starters, haha – but I have worked with her before and she’s a gem. Her most famous client is probably Ursula K. Le Guin, but she reps tons of other people too).
So yeah! Duotrope’s really useful. It has free info but also a paywall for certain things, and I personally find it kinda difficult to navigate?
I'd actually instead just recommend you take a look at writers you like and admire, especially ones who write similar genres to you, and just Google who their agent is. They all have websites, so they’re a lot easier to find these days than they were. 😊
How do you find job postings related to writing?
This is a tricky one, anon, as it depends on what sort of jobs you’re looking at. If you’re looking for copywriting opportunities, outlets for articles, short stories, poetry or essays, publishers who are posting open calls for manuscripts, or even cultural production jobs, those are all pretty different things. SO! I’m going to answer this one a little more broadly.
Writers Centres are your friends. Full disclaimer, I worked at one for five and a half years, and have been a member of Writers Victoria since I moved to Melbourne. They’re incredible resources for not only opportunities, but workshops, pitching, professional and creative development, community, networking and advice. They literally exist to help you achieve your goals.
- Writers Victoria maintains a free calendar of Opportunities and Competitions, but publishes more in their quarterly magazine which is a member perk. They’ll also often share job opportunities through their social media channels. I also still get the free e-news for Queensland Writers Centre and Writing NSW too because sometimes they share different stuff.
- I’ve heard Gotham Writers in New York is good too if you’re in America, but really I’d just suggest googling where you live and writers centre and seeing what comes up!
- Similarly festivals. I’ve worked at Brisbane Writers Festival and National Young Writers Festival here in Australia (the latter’s on online right now if you want to check out their free program!) Sign up to your local festival’s e-news, follow them on social media, they’ll usually share stuff.
- Speaking of! Social media! Haha. Twitter is often good for sharing jobs, competitions and opportunities, but I find it can be a bit of a cesspool too where people bombard the hashtags with self-promotion, so approach with caution. I find Facebook groups are way better for it personally, especially as there are a lot of specialized groups that are focused in certain or on certain writers. I know there’s lots for BIPOC writers for instance, I’m personally in a few and recommend:
Binders Full of WRITING JOBS
Binger Full of Copywriters
Style Binders – Writers in Fashion, Lifestyle and Beauty
Binder Full of Editors Seeking their Freelance Writers and Vice Versa
If you’re in Australia though, I’d especially recommend:
Women in Arts Management Collective (particularly if you’re interested in cultural production work)
Film and TV Networking Australia
Melbourne Women in Film
Writers Victoria Members
Australian Binder Full of Women Writers
Australian Arts Amidst COVID-19
Young Australian Writers
I think most of these are searchable, so just have a look, but also google your city or state + writer and see what pops up.
Otherwise, as much as it sucks to say it, a lot of the industry is who you know, so try and find ways to connect and meet with people and forge your own little community. Go to events – festivals, book launches, book clubs, join Facebook groups and in particular, if there are journals or magazines that are made in your local area, go to their launches and the events they run, no matter how big or small, and just chat to people there. As you get more established, you can be more discerning about what you go to, but when you're starting out, these are powderkegs of community and connection, and they breed suppport and, if you find the right people, you'll grow and develop together too.
Being a writer can often be pretty lonely, but being a part of supportive industry really makes all the difference, and as an old mentor of mine said – creative karma is real. You support the people coming up around you, and you’ll not only be creating a better, more inclusive and welcoming industry, but an industry that supports you right back. 😊
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