#MY FINANCIAL CAREER

[muhammad-ubaidullah-khan]

MY FINANCIAL CAREER

by Stephen Leacock

[gowns]

something to think about with "the right age to become a parent"... there's a fine line between "they should be at the club" like "why am i spending my precious youth changing diapers and getting screamed at" and the next stage of your life which is the "wait my back hurts" "i sprained something" "i'm so stiff today" "i'm getting a migraine" age. and it's not a clean demarcation, in fact you can be both "supposed to be at the club" and also "jesus christ my hips, it hurts to walk." you can be figuratively and spiritually at the club, physically a bag of bones and raw nerves and skin losing its supple elasticity, while emotionally and literally taking care of a child or multiple children. and so i say to you: there is no perfect age to become a parent. however do consider that at one point you will be in an active state of decay and you gotta ask yourself if you want to have a screaming toddler who you have to pick up over and over again... while your brittle joints snap crackle and pop.

[compacflt]

ice and his obnoxious ass academy ring are my fav part of TG 86'

does your mav have any thoughts ab his husband wearing that damn ring

he’s probably still a little bitter about it but it’s not like ice SHOULDNT be proud of going to the USNA or anything so what is he gonna do, ask him to take it off??

i have this image ive yet to incorporate into any of my writing where ice spends his whole life with the USNA ring on the fourth finger of his right hand & feels a little imbalanced. something’s missing. & then he marries maverick, and he has the wedding ring on the fourth finger of his left hand, and finally he is complete. he has both. he is both a great officer and someone capable of love. neither side is subservient to the other anymore. they coexist in harmony at the end of the day. and of course that’s something maverick would respect.

oh shit brb adding that image to my slider one-shot rn

[stardust-falling]

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[girlwithfish]

literally how much money are you supposed to have at my age. LOL

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The issue of power is so interesting (or something) to see because yes, from an economic perspective Taylor undoubtedly has more sway -- she's one of the most famous people on the planet, she's a billionaire, her every move is followed, etc. So I can almost sort of understand the concern, in another scenario, where some people may expect that she could crush her detractors (For instance, I'm thinking about how Harvey W. silenced his victims as a Hollywood mogul, or how corporate titans silence whistleblowers which I feel are analogies some people may turn to. Or maybe we've all just watched too much of the Roys on Succession.)

I said this in the tags of a post the other day I think, but I think some of the discourse is kind of conflating power with platform. And yes, Taylor undoubtedly has a bigger platform, again by virtue of her fame and position in the media/industry. But part of that is that she's visible in these areas, and her presumed subjects aren't, of their own choice. If any of these subjects ever chose to spoke out, or make art based on their experiences, or pursue opportunities in the media/public eye, they would absolutely be given a platform for it. (Going way back, think of how JM used the media to give his side of the story through his music and his interviews after their split. And I'd argue he was probably way more public/direct about it than she ever was.)

If any of these people decided they wanted their side of the story out there, it would be and it would absolutely be turned into a story. (And arguably that may already be starting but that's a whole other thing.) And this is just my opinion, but given that the subjects of these topics are often privileged white men, I'd argue that their sides tend to carry (more) weight regardless of their economic status in relation to her. If JM or JG or JA or HS wrote a book or a song or a script about their experiences, even only insinuating about her, it'd be the conversation. And not to be a cupcake about it, but the media seems to always want to find something to knock her down a peg about (which, sure, journalism's job is to hold people accountable, but that's not what always happens here and we know it), so they would absolutely give this the time of day, if they chose to put anything out there.

The thing is, I do see in a superficial way that there is there is a clear difference in their socioeconomic/celebrity status, and perhaps that's perceived as a power imbalance, but that's implying that she's dictating a whole host of entities out of her control, and I just don't think she holds the sway of those that some feel she does. Don't get me wrong, she's absurdly wealthy and has influence, but so do so many other people around her, including those who don't support her. (That's the wrong word for it, but I just mean, people who aren't in her circle/sympathetic to her.) And as I've posted about so so so many times before, THESE OTHER PEOPLE (men) ARE WEALTHY AND IN THE PUBLIC EYE TOO. They are all in careers that entail celebrity and involve their own influence in the media. These are not shrinking violets in private civil life who are like, grocery store checkout clerks. They're actors and musicians and media personalities who play the same game. And even the "poorest" of these subjects for the most part are millionaires who are far, far wealthier than any of us will ever be in our lifetimes. They may choose to stay off of social media or the press when it suits them, but they could absolutely make art or give interviews about their experiences and they would command their own kind of influence. (I'd also argue that they would be given a platform thanks to Taylor's platform, but that's another thing.)

I don't want to dismiss the influence of her wealth and stature in the entertainment industry, and I feel like that's kind of where the perceived "imbalance" comes from, but to be frank, I feel like if any of these other subjects spoke out, the media would be so quick to raise their stature in the press for the sake of clicks/controversy/what have you. Critics claim that Taylor can crush any story or person who goes against her, but I think given the breadth of stories out there about her at any given time (the NYT op ed, the jet stuff, the DM stuff, etc.) I don't think that's true; I think the publicity/clicks outlets get for covering stuff, even if salacious, outweighs any concerns over upsetting her or burning bridges. (Not saying that may have not happened, but... I think it would be more obvious if it were a regular occurrence these days.) If anything, 2016 through rep kinda proves that she doesn't have the "control" of the media that some claim she does.

But most importantly, THE ALBUM ISN'T OUT YET. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE LYRICS ARE. Taylor gets accused of writing diss tracks, but she rarely does, and I don't think she's written an outright callout song since her Fearless/Speak Now days when she was a teenager/very young adult. Just about everything since Red on has been about her own feelings, experiences, etc. and not a literal "you did x and y and z and you're stupid and i hate you" song. She's not calling people out by name, and truly only chronically online fans are going to deduce who songs are about; five years from now, people discovering the music will just know they're bops (or depressingly sad breakup songs, as the case may be).

I don't know where I'm going with this, i'm talking in circles, it's just interesting how things are being interpreted or assumed so far. I fully acknowledge I'm a cupcake so I'm generally not going to jump to the worst conclusion about Taylor, but there's also curious sociological/gender stuff happening in these conversations. I absolutely think that if the roles were reversed and her exes were billionaire household names and she was an indie artist, nobody would ever talk about power dynamics. I think it's all moot because like so many people have said, I don't think the album is going to be what some think it's going to be, and I think it's going to be way more introspective/vulnerable/dark than what they assume a breakup album is going to be, though obviously I don't know anymore than they do. It's just funny because you never hear about this with other people. (Like, was there a big fuss when Kelly Clarkson wrote a breakup album about her ex-husband? I know she's not as wealthy as Taylor and her ex was probably wealthier than Taylor's exes, but she's someone with sway in the industry and is on TV everyday, but everyone kind of said "lol her ex was a jackass wow she writes sad banger ballads" and moved on.)

Anyway I don't want to start shit or anything, but I'm just giving my two cents about my observations of the whole media landscape stuff.

[toytulini]

wonder if i could just become a clown. is that doable. how do i do that

[soldier-poet-king]

Actually the whole work thing would be infinitely less stressful if I actually knew how to navigate the white collar world and was not from a working class background and I have no idea how anything works because we were poor! No one in my family has done shit like this!

[not-poignant]

How much does money effect how and what you write? If money wasn't an issue would you write more or less? Or would you still write but go with different ideas?

As a professional artist myself I sometimes ponder what projects I'd choose to do if I wasn't worried about finances. Because sometimes the things we want to create aren't financially viable, and that can really put a limit on our creative freedom and potential. But it's sometimes nice to daydream right

Hi hi anon,

Tbh I don't know how to easily answer these questions, because I do need money to live, and that's tied into my writing, so it's hard to imagine exactly how things would change.

Generally speaking, I'm quite a... rebellious writer, in the sense that I work hard to find readers who like what I do, vs. writing to market or writing for broad or wide audiences. The former would net me more money, faster. But I don't really do anything the 'right' way, I do it in the way that is the most fun for me.

So wherever possible, I am actually trying to do the things that best explore my creative freedom and potential. I tried writing more to market with Perth Shifters and while I don't regret writing those books, I don't love them like others do and I can't reread them, and didn't really enjoy the process. It actually taught me a lot about the costs of like... trying to do things the 'right way' because it makes more sense from a business perspective.

It didn't make more sense for me. Having unmedicated ADHD for so much of this was definitely a part of that!

Otherwise though, there are things that would change. For a start, I'd work less and take more breaks. I'd also have more nights to myself. I actually sacrifice a lot of evenings (particularly early evenings) to put up chapters in a timezone that's most user-friendly to the majority of people in the northern hemisphere. For many years that actually meant I could never go out and see friends or family on a Friday night.

Now it's Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday (not always, but at least always Thursdays). So when I'm organising cathcing up with people, there's a lot of 'I can't do it that day.'

I'd say money most effects how much I write. I wouldn't have a monthly word-count to hit, if this was just a hobby, for example. I definitely wouldn't write as much! But honestly, I already write less than I used to. Over time, I've realised the things I want/need the most are the things I should be working into my career anyway. Part of being your own boss is not being as much of a cunt to yourself as your other bosses were ;)

And I'm a pretty terrible boss to myself! I'm working on being less of that, lol.

I don't think I'd really write that many different ideas. I'd probably write more fanfiction.

I've been quite lucky, because in many respects, I have altered my writing career to suit me, instead of altering myself to suit a generic writing career. I think the latter is a really great path to permanent burnout, and I've been doing this for almost 10 years, and I feel like I'm figuring it out more and more as time goes by.

I write very self-indulgent stories! I didn't think Falling Falling Stars would be successful, anon. I thought people would hate me for it, I thought I'd lose money for it.

My writing career is running a line between 'I think this will earn money' and 'I think this won't but I'm so obsessed with this project I think others will get obsessed with it too so it might not be as big a risk as I fear it is.' If anything, anon, Mallory & Mount feels like probably the biggest risk, along with Vexteria, anything that isn't Fae Tales. But I'm going to take those risk/s, because I want to trust that they'll pay off.

I like to think that one of the reasons many of my readers trust me and my writing, is that they know I'm writing the stuff I love the most, in the way I love the most - hurt/comfort and trauma recovery and BDSM in serial format. I'm not forcing myself to be a more typical writer. The downside to that is I don't yet make a liveable income. The upside to that is that I make a steady income with readers who really get this writing, and who are wonderful people.

When I used to work as a professional artist, I pretty quickly started refusing commissions. I don't do writing commissions either. There's so many things I don't do that I could do purely for money. I've made a lot of choices for quality of life, keeping my health in mind, which means the only thing I'd really change anon is nothing really to do with the content, and everything to do with just the amount.

If I had a secure income, I'd write, but I'd write less. And a bit more of it might be fanfiction. But who knows! I hope you can find more ways to make the things that seem like financial dead-ends into something viable. Falling Falling Stars looks like a dead-end from the outside in, it's an 800k novel about a boy learning how to be nicer, and that's it. It has no huge epic plot, it has no especially dense worldbuilding, it's 9-10 times longer than a standard novel. It should never have been financially viable.

Yet it was one of the more successful things I've ever written, and plenty of newcomers into the fandom these days get here via Falling Falling Stars and not Game Theory. Isn't that wild?

Sometimes it's the thing that breaks the rules that still does well. I like to think that's a combination of me really loving the thing, and it having a lot of authenticity in it, which means there's a lot for other folks to resonate with and feel personally. And maybe some skill to pull it off!

I'm very lucky to be where I'm at. But I'm also pretty realistic that I don't think I could be successful if I only made 'financially smart choices' because I would have so little of my heart left in it, that I'd eventually just abandon it entirely.

And frankly, I think a lot of viewers / readers etc. can tell when someone doesn't love something. Or at least, some of them can. It's more fun when we all get to love the same thing together, vs. me writing stuff while thinking 'but I really wish I was writing this other stuff' and my readers loving something I don't. The latter is pretty crushing, and I can't do that. I'd rather work retail, instead of turning a creative career into that.

That's my biggest flaw as a creator, frankly, that I'm selfish enough and indulgent enough that it has to be very much on my terms, and therefore that only appeals to a narrow bandwidth of readers/folks. That doesn't mean I don't work really fucking hard, but I could only work this hard for something that feeds my soul and allows me creative freedom, I'm too sick (literally) to consider any other options.

And if 'money at the expense of creative freedom' was my actual goal, I would do literally any other job that guaranteed an income, because you can make way more consistently doing retail, than you can doing even 'commercially viable writing' in many cases!

[muraenide]

I managed to get some replies out before I forgot how to write Jade omfg I am so happy but I'm still kind of on hiatus until mid-April at the very least.

[muhammad-ubaidullah-khan]

My Financial Career by Stephen Leacock

When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.

The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot.

I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to fifty dollars a month and I felt that the bank was the only place for it.

So I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks. I had an idea that a person about to open an account must needs consult the manager.

I went up to a wicket marked "Accountant." The accountant was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me. My voice was sepulchral.

"Can I see the manager?" I said, and added solemnly, "alone." I don't know why I said "alone."

"Certainly," said the accountant, and fetched him.

The manager was a grave, calm man. I held my fifty-six dollars clutched in a crumpled ball in my pocket.

"Are you the manager?" I said. God knows I didn't doubt it.

"Yes," he said.

"Can I see you," I asked, "alone?" I didn't want to say "alone" again, but without it the thing seemed self-evident.

The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I had an awful secret to reveal.

"Come in here," he said, and led the way to a private room. He turned the key in the lock.

"We are safe from interruption here," he said; "sit down."

We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.

"You are one of Pinkerton's men, I presume," he said.

He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a detective. I knew what he was thinking, and it made me worse.

"No, not from Pinkerton's," I said, seeming to imply that I came from a rival agency. "To tell the truth," I went on, as if I had been prompted to lie about it, "I am not a detective at all. I have come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money in this bank."

The manager looked relieved but still serious; he concluded now that I was a son of Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.

"A large account, I suppose," he said.

"Fairly large," I whispered. "I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars a month regularly."

The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.

"Mr. Montgomery," he said unkindly loud, "this gentleman is opening an account, he will deposit fifty-six dollars. Good morning."

I rose.

A big iron door stood open at the side of the room.

"Good morning," I said, and stepped into the safe.

"Come out," said the manager coldly, and showed me the other way.

I went up to the accountant's wicket and poked the ball of money at him with a quick convulsive movement as if I were doing a conjuring trick.

My face was ghastly pale.

"Here," I said, "deposit it." The tone of the words seemed to mean, "Let us do this painful thing while the fit is on us."

He took the money and gave it to another clerk.

He made me write the sum on a slip and sign my name in a book. I no longer knew what I was doing. The bank swam before my eyes.

"Is it deposited?" I asked in a hollow, vibrating voice.

"It is," said the accountant.

"Then I want to draw a cheque."

My idea was to draw out six dollars of it for present use. Someone gave me a chequebook through a wicket and someone else began telling me how to write it out. The people in the bank had the impression that I was an invalid millionaire. I wrote something on the cheque and thrust it in at the clerk. He looked at it.

"What! are you drawing it all out again?" he asked in surprise. Then I realized that I had written fifty-six instead of six. I was too far gone to reason now. I had a feeling that it was impossible to explain the thing. All the clerks had stopped writing to look at me.

Reckless with misery, I made a plunge.

"Yes, the whole thing."

"You withdraw your money from the bank?"

"Every cent of it."

"Are you not going to deposit any more?" said the clerk, astonished.

"Never."

An idiot hope struck me that they might think something had insulted me while I was writing the cheque and that I had changed my mind. I made a wretched attempt to look like a man with a fearfully quick temper.

The clerk prepared to pay the money.

"How will you have it?" he said.

"What?"

"How will you have it?"

"Oh"—I caught his meaning and answered without even trying to think—"in fifties."

He gave me a fifty-dollar bill.

"And the six?" he asked dryly.

"In sixes," I said.

He gave it me and I rushed out.

As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a roar of laughter that went up to the ceiling of the bank. Since then I bank no more. I keep my money in cash in my trousers pocket and my savings in silver dollars in a sock.

[hugsqueeze]

.....THERE ARE TYPOS IN THESE 💀🪦 PLZ EXCUSE MY RIDICULOUSNESS But here's the basic info and synopses of my OC storylines (most of them at least). Not including projects that I have not fleshed out the stories of at all yet (like Census: Zero) or stories within stories (like Happy Harmony Fusion)... I HAVE LOTS OF IDEAS.....

[000png]

starting to get into the "we will pay/offer you more if you stay" conversations 🥴

[sevlucsimp]

Hey bestie 🖤 something that I think about a lot and would love your thoughts on; how do you think Lucius felt when he found out about Snape after the battle? Whether Sev lived (obvs he did) or not, I wonder what Lucius's reaction would be when the truth came out. I suppose it depends on Lucius's state after the war and whether he reformed or not - and maybe Snape's actions would have influenced that...

It’s nice to hear from you again Becca ☺️ I’ve been too busy to chat or read fics anymore. I miss it. 😔

Well first, I think it would depend on when he finds out about the truth. I imagine if it came out while him and his family were on trial for their involvement, then he would be to preoccupied to actually register the truth until later. But if the truth was revealed after him and his family were cleared, then he’d be able to process it as the news breaks.

His reaction would be split between feeling betrayed and also being very impressed with how well Severus fooled everyone for years. I have this vivid image in my head of Lucius fuming as he paces back and forth in front of the fireplace while ranting to Narcissia after hearing the news.

“How could he, Narcissa? Was our entire friendship a lie? “ 😡

“Well, he’s definitely not invited to our next party!” 😤 ( Not really, he changes his mind later. )

Now another thing to consider is if he would confront Sev about it at all? Or would Lucius cut him out of his life?

Well, I don’t like idea of them never being reunited so let’s go with Lucius does confront him. Maybe it’s through letters at first where Lucius expresses his feelings of betrayal and demands answers from Severus. Then after a little back and forth, they reunite in person. Where they passionately make out catch up some more and support each other through their trials and other troubles from the aftermath of the war. These little meetups serving as almost a return to old times.

Would Lucius forgive Severus though? Maybe he would or they both just avoid the subject in order to continue their friendship. Lucius seems like the type to hold grudges but might put it aside because of his history and fondness for Severus. So, I guess he’d forgive but not forget.

[ardentpoop]

saw a post on linkedin by someone going “fuck marketing I’m burning my career to the ground and starting from scratch” and I was like oh yeah. I wanted to do that too

[catboy-dysphoria]

One of the most grievous crimes you can commit on Tumblr dot com is being harmlessly annoying but ostensibly a fine person. Simple but harmless. Because then I get my feathers ruffled by how you seem like an annoying cunt but I feel bad feeling that way because you haven't necessarily done anything wrong.