#and i liked the idea of an angel eating the idea of a corporate brand | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

juju-on-that-yeet · 3 years

Text

At My Worst (Chapter 1)

Work Summary: Thanks to his enduring popularity in the fandom, The Author pops back into existence and the egos must suddenly contend with someone they thought was gone forever coming back from the dead. No one is more shocked than Dr. Iplier, who can't help but remember how things used to be - and slowly fall back into bad habits, despite his better judgement.

Warnings: Mild descriptions of past violence/discussions of death (more tags on AO3)

Read on AO3

Enjoy!

Last he knew, Dark was ripping his eyes out.

Then, he was nowhere and nothing.

Now, he suddenly is, where before he wasn’t, and the rush of sensation returning is terrifying and paralyzing. But he still knows who he is, he knows his name and that he’s a figment, and he remembers his life. Rather, his previous life, he suspects.

It doesn’t take long for The Author to get his thoughts back in order and regain the presence of mind to look around. He appeared standing, and somehow didn’t fall, but he doesn’t trust his legs enough to move just yet. He’s surprised by the fact that he can look around, that the eyes he viscerally recalls losing are back in his head, fully functional. The area he’s in looks familiar, reminds him of the forest his cabin sat in, but it becomes apparent that the place is different now. The trees are less wild, the ground more even. He’s standing on a path, perhaps a nature walk or hiking trail. Last he remembers, there were no such trails in his woods.

He finally walks, letting his instincts take him to where his cabin should be, though he already has a feeling it won’t be found. Sure enough, he goes as far as he can down the trail, leaves the path and goes onward, and eventually finds himself at the edge of a neighborhood. Where the cabin used to be is a two-floor house, probably built for a family with kids, and in the surrounding street are even more such houses.

Author doesn’t know how much time has passed, but clearly, it’s been a long time since his cabin stood. He has to wonder what became of his books, his life’s work. Were they saved by the other egos, or are they forever lost?

For a moment, he isn’t sure what to do. But he’s a clever man, so he thinks. If he exists, surely the other egos must be around somewhere, too. All he has to do is find them. But if they aren’t here, then where?

He walks back the way he came, back to the trail, passing the place he appeared in and continuing onward. By the time he makes it to the trail’s beginning, night has fallen, and the parking lot by the trail is empty. He walks past the parking lot, comes to a road, and walks. It’s not so late that no cars are driving, at least; it only takes a few whizzing by his upturned thumb before one decides to stop.

“Where you headed?” asks the driver, an ordinary-looking man with a moustache. Author wonders how entertaining he’d be in a story.

“LA,” Author says, settling into the passenger seat like he belongs. For having not existed at all twelve hours ago, his easy confidence returns quickly.

“Heh, aren’t we all?” the man chuckles, pulling off the roadside to start driving. “Anywhere in particular? I can put it in my GPS.”

“Not really,” Author says, “Just get me to the city and I’ll take it from there.”

The man shrugs, but doesn’t pry. Maybe he wouldn’t be a protagonist, but possibly a character just there to help the protagonist along, as he is now. Then again, his unquestioning nature would make him easy death fodder, too.

On the way to the city, Author tries to look around the car, just to see if he can figure out what day it is. The radio playing tells him the day of the week and the month before long, but he can’t figure out the year. It’s not a terribly long drive to the city (Author remembers how long it took to get to Dr. Iplier’s clinic, and the distance isn’t that different) (Oh, Dr. Iplier, he must be somewhere too, does he still hate Author for what he’s done?), and once he gets there, Author has but one favor to ask.

“Thanks for the ride, but quick question,” he begins as he unbuckles his seatbelt, “Any chance you have a pen and a notebook in your car I can have? Or even just a sheet of paper and something to write with?”

“Uh, sure,” the man answers, confused by the request but not so much that he won’t grant it. He rummages through the glove compartment until he pulls a notebook with some corporate logo, and a pen with the same branding. “Have these, got them from work a long time ago but I don’t need them.”

“Perfect!” Author exclaims, taking the notebook and pen. He flips through the notebook, taking in the sight of blank pages, empty canvases, ready for him to make his own. “Have a good one, man.”

The man nods, rolls up his window, and drives off, leaving Author standing on a random sidewalk just inside Los Angeles. But he’s not bothered, because he finally has his tools. He can do anything or get anywhere. He knows that Dr. Iplier’s clinic has likely gone the way of his own cabin if it’s been too long, but the egos must be somewhere in the city. Author doesn’t know why he feels that way, but he supposes his instincts have the right idea. He’s always been a creature of impulse, so he does exactly what he did when the sun was up and lets his legs carry him where they may.

When he gets hungry, he enters a fast food restaurant and opens his notebook again, this time to write. While in line, he reads the cashier’s nametag and puts pen to paper: When The Author reaches the front of the line and orders, Stella pays for his meal herself. And she does, without skipping a beat. Author stays in the building to eat, and internally snickers at the confused look he sees on Stella’s face when she realizes what she did, seemingly for no reason.

As far as Author can perceive, it hasn’t been very long at all since he last used his power. But his body can tell it’s been a long time, somewhere deep in his mind knows it’s been forever since he picked up a pen and changed reality to suit his needs. A part of him is glad he’s still got it, but how could he ever lose it in the first place?

Back to walking. It’s late at night, but his mind is too active to be tired. It wouldn’t be the first time he was up all night, whether pacing his cabin trying to untangle the next scene of a story, or painting LA red in search of inspiration, or tormenting a character in the woods, or staying up with Dr. Iplier until the sun came up and he had to return to his clinic in the early hours, yawning through a cup of coffee. Thinking of his doctor only makes Author’s mind buzz even more. How long has it been, truly? What must Dr. Iplier be like now? Can they start over again, now that Author’s been reset?

The more Author walks, the more he feels a pull to keep going. It’s as if there’s a GPS unit inside his brain, telling him which way to go. He has no clue where he’ll end up, but he follows anyway, not having anywhere else to go. Besides, perhaps he’s being led to the other egos, maybe some element of himself is being drawn to them. He still knows that he’s a figment, of course, and that being a figment makes him a little more magical than the average human, a little more special, even ignoring his reality-bending powers. Part of him wants to use his writing to get into a locked car and drive to where the magic inside him is leading, but even at this hour, he knows it’d be quicker to walk.

It’s morning by the time Author feels he’s gotten somewhere, nearly a day has passed since he found himself alive again. By now, the streets are once again full of people and cars, and the swelling sounds of conversation and car horns remind him of his trips into the city with Dr. Iplier. His feet finally come to a stop in front of a huge building. It doesn’t look very different from the other corporate skyscrapers standing along the street and stretching into the horizon, but it radiates magic. It’s a beacon, and Author can tell just by looking at it that this is where he’s meant to be, this is the place he’s meant to stay.

He’s startled out of his reverie by someone bumping into him, barking at him to watch it, and moving hurriedly along. Author is disgruntled, but has little time to get angry before yet another person does the same thing. He moves out of the way of traffic to stand under the magical building’s awning, away from the crowd. Amazingly, no one even seems to see him anymore. No one acknowledges him, or even looks at the building Author is standing in front of. Whatever magic it has, humans can’t see it. Perhaps that’s the point, perhaps the building’s magic is keeping it hidden. Author can’t help but be impressed. If he’s right, it must be Dark and Wilford’s doing; no one else would have enough power. Still, keeping a building shrouded constantly would take a lot of energy, and though Dark and Wilford are powerful, they aren’t powerful enough for something as big as this as far as Author remembers.

As if he needed more confirmation that it’s been a long time since he last existed.

Still, he’s made it to where he wants to be, and he’s not about to stop moving forward now. He walks to the door, pushes the double-doors open, and steps inside.

The doors open up into a wide lobby, high-ceilinged. Off to one side is another set of doors, wooden and old-looking. There’s quite a few other, more typical doors along the back wall, a couple labeled that lead to staircases and some without labels that likely lead to other rooms. There’s also an elevator in the center of the wall. The lobby is much bigger than the outside of the building would suggest, and Author has to assume it’s more magic at work. He has no more time to wonder, because one of the unlabeled doors opens.

Out steps another man, with hair swooped low and orange sunglasses and a tank top with the Bing logo on it, of all things. He stops mid-step at the sight of Author, and Author can’t help but pause, too. He doesn’t know who this person is, but he can tell he’s a figment. Not only that, there’s something too familiar in his hair, his face, his height. This figment is another one of Mark’s.

Author already felt like he’d found the right place, but now he knows for sure.

“Woah, how’d you get in here??” asks the figment, walking up to Author as his shock gives way to confusion. “Wait, are you a new ego?”

“You could say that,” Author replies with a shrug.

“Oh, sick!” the figment exclaims, now grinning with excitement. He reaches out to shake Author’s hand, and his grip is stronger than Author expects. “My name’s Bingiplier, but like, everyone calls me Bing. What’s your name, dude?”

“The Author,” Author answers, a little bewildered by Bing’s energy. Granted, he certainly seems like someone Mark would conjure up as a joke, but most of the true joke egos barely lasted a week.

“Oh cool, you write and stuff?” Bing asks. He frowns for a moment. “I gotta admit, though, I’m totally blanking on what video you’re from. I don’t watch all of Mark’s videos, but like, I don’t think anyone was expecting a newbie to show up soon.”

“I do write,” Author replies, though his mind is buzzing with the new information. No one’s expecting him? Then how is he here? “I can reality-bend with writing. I write it, and it happens.”

“Nice!” Bing says, “That’s, like, super-powerful. We haven’t had a real reality-bender show up in ages. Actually, your deal kinda reminds me of The–”

“Hey.”

A monotone voice, deeper than Bing’s, interrupts. Author and Bing both look to see someone else approaching. Author can’t help but grin, because this is an ego he recognizes. Googleplier’s hair is still long and shaggy, he still has his glasses, and even though figments don’t truly age, he looks older somehow, more mature. He’s not glitching the way he did when Author knew him, and his jaw is stronger, his stature more imposing. It takes a moment for Google to see Author past Bing, and it takes a moment more for him to register what he’s seeing. His eyes widen behind his glasses.

“Author? Seriously?” Google asks, incredulous.

“Wait, you know about him? Did I just miss the memo on a new ego coming or something?” Bing whines before glaring at Google. “Are you here for an actual reason, or just to butt into my conversation?”

“Ollie wants you, you won’t answer his pings, and the others are still charging,” Google answers, deadpan. Bing pauses a moment, face screwed up in confusion, before understanding slowly dawns.

“Oh, he did ping me. I was busy talking to the new guy.”

“Ping you?” Author interjects.

“Oh yeah, I’m an android!” Bing says brightly. “So’s Google, but he’s just the old default.”

“Leave already before you get dismantled,” Google growls at Bing, but his eyes don’t leave Author.

“Ugh, fine,” Bing sighs. He flashes Author a peace sign as he walks away. “See ya round, dude!”

Google waits until Bing is out of sight before approaching The Author.

“How are you here?” he asks, more bewildered than Author has ever seen him.

“You tell me,” Author scoffs, “You were always the know-it-all. All I know is that one second I didn’t exist, and the next second I did.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About a day? Popped into the woods where my cabin used to be.” Author stares hard at Google. “How long has it been? Since Dark tore my eyes out?”

Google hesitates for a long moment before responding.

“Six years,” he says.

Author’s jaw drops.

“Six years??” he gasps.

“Six years,” Google repeats. “It’s 2021, now.”

“When did Bing show up?”

“2017. Four years ago.” Google thinks for a moment. “Technically, that makes him older than you.”

Google’s right. Author was only a couple years old when Dark killed him. At this point, he’s been dead longer than he’s been alive.

“Jesus Christ,” Author mutters. He can hardly wrap his head around it.

“Jesus Christ is right,” Google growls, “How the hell did you get here? You died. You faded away.”

“I already told you I don’t know!” Author snaps. Google gives him a look like he doesn’t believe him. “Look, I appeared, I felt the urge to come here, and now here I am. So now what?”

“Now I have to take you to Dark.”

“Yeah, no. I remember how our last interaction went.”

“You have to,” Google sighs, clearly resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “Every new ego has to meet with him–”

“I’m not new.”

“–And besides, nothing in this building happens without him knowing. I don’t like dealing with him either, but I’m not about to get in trouble for not telling him about you.”

“No choice, huh?” Author sighs. “Alright, let’s get this over with, I guess.”

Google leads Author to the elevator in silence. He presses the button for the sixth floor – the highest one – as Author thinks.

Six years. He still can’t conceive of it. Even for a normal human that’s a decent chunk of time, but for a figment, it’s like a lifetime. Plenty of figments don’t even make it to six years old…though clearly, Google and Dark have, and Author has to wonder who else has. Six years and six floors of this building means a lot of new people.

“Figures you and Dark stuck around,” Author muses to Google, “The fans always do love the grumpy ones. And now there’s Bing, and that “Ollie” and the “others” you mentioned…”

“That would be Oliver, Chrome, and Plus,” Google says, “The three of them are androids, other Google units, in fact.” That fact makes Author bark out a laugh.

“You got clones, now??” he snorts, “That’s awesome. Think I could borrow one for a story?”

“No.” Google’s response is instant, paired with eyes glowing icy blue.

“Alright, alright,” Author sighs, “Six years and you still haven’t gotten a sense of humor.” He pauses for a moment. “How many of us are there now?”

Last Author recalls, there were eight, including himself. Google barely needs a moment to mentally calculate it before he has an answer.

“Twenty-one,” Google answers.

“Twenty-one??” Author exclaims, jaw dropping.

“Twenty-two, now, with you. There’d be even more, but some have faded away.”

“Is anyone I knew gone now?”

“No, the oldest ones are still here.”

That means Dr. Iplier is still here. Author can’t help but feel relieved. He’s not sure what he’d do if he found out Dr. Iplier had faded away sometime during his absence. He’s so cheered by the thought that he forgets why he’s in the elevator until it finally stops at the top floor.

Right. Dark’s still here, too.

“I’ve already sent Dark an internal ping,” Google says as he leads Author out of the elevator. “He’s expecting you now.”

“Snitch,” Author mutters under his breath. Google rolls his eyes, but he chooses not to respond verbally.

The pair pass several doors as they walk, and Author wonders how many of them lead into the bedrooms of egos he hasn’t met. He wonders what Dark is like now. After all, Google seems to have barely changed aside from no longer glitching constantly. But he remembers how the people outside couldn’t even see this building, remembers the sheer size of the place, and knows that Dark must be much more powerful than he used to be to be able to pull it off. Too soon, Google and Author arrive at a door that’s much nicer than the others so far. Google knocks, something that the Google Author remembers would hardly ever do.

“Come in,” says a deep voice from inside. An older voice, but the same one that Author remembers well.

Google opens the door, and The Author steps inside.

Dark is not like Google. He doesn’t look the same as he did before. His hair is longer, swooped to the side. His eyes are still deep brown, nearly black. He’s wearing a suit and tie now, his skin is gray. Most striking is his aura. Where it used to be minimal, only wisps of smoke that showed themselves occasionally, it is now a swarming mass of writhing black tendrils surrounding him. It shakes even as Dark stares evenly at Author from behind a large wooden desk. Dark’s expression is cool and calm, and his hands are folded on his desk, but there’s tension in his shoulders and a hardness in his eyes.

“You’re dismissed, Google,” Dark says to Google, “But do not mention this to anyone.”

Author glances at Google, who nods and leaves, closing the door behind him, leaving Author and Dark alone.

“So,” Author says breezily, pushing down and hiding his discomfort. He’s not scared, but he does feel awkward, and a little annoyed to have to see Dark at all. “Nice place you got here.” He flops into a chair in front of Dark’s desk. “I hear there’s twenty-two of us now, crazy how time flies.”

“Exactly how did you come back?” Dark asks, without a hint of humor.

“I told Google like three times, I don’t know!” Author says, his annoyance getting the better of him. He takes a breath and calms before continuing. “I don’t know. I woke up in a forest, the same one where my cabin is. Or used to be, it’s just houses there now. I hitched a ride to the city and walked until I got here. It’s been about a day since I woke up.”

“I see.” Dark sighs, leaning back slightly in his seat. “This has never happened before.”

“I’ve gathered that.” Author frowns at Dark. “I might as well address the elephant in the room. Are you gonna pull out my eyes again or what?”

“No,” Dark answers, voice tight and aura swarming faster, “I will not. Things have changed since then, that is no longer how I deal with unruliness.”

“Is that what you call it?” Author mutters, “‘Dealing with unruliness?’ Does that make you feel justified for killing me?”

“You’ve been gone for six years,” Dark snaps, “Don’t pretend you know anything!” All at once, Dark’s form cracks, a shadow of himself turns away to scream in frustration. The scream is cut short, the whole thing lasts only a moment. Despite himself, Author nearly jumps out of his skin.

“What the hell was that!?” he shouts.

Dark settles himself, chuckling quietly. His aura calms somewhat, but it continues to churn the air.

“As I said, things have changed.” Dark rolls his neck, it cracks like the vertebrae are clacking against each other. “To put it in a way you would understand, my story has been rewritten in recent years. There’s a lot for you to catch up on.”

“I’ll pass,” Author retorts, “I’m not about to stick around here with you.”

“I’m afraid you have no choice.” Dark’s eyes go steely. “You may have guessed from the large number of us that Mark is much more popular than he used to be, which means we need to be more careful. You recall my desire to unite us all in a single building.”

“The building I died in, right?” Author snaps.

“Yes,” Dark replies coldly, undeterred by Author’s attempt to fluster him. “This building, in fact. The more popular Mark gets, the more recognizable we become, and the more vital it is for us to avoid attention. This building is imbued with magic to prevent humans from seeing or entering, and there are rules about the ways in which we may interact with them.”

“If you’re gonna tell me I can’t write my stories–”

“You can write as many stories as you like,” Dark says smoothly, “And you may use humans as…protagonists, if you so choose. But your stories may not be published, and you may not develop close relationships with humans.”

“And if I break the rules?”

“You get to visit my void.” Dark grins. “A place made of pitch, so dark you cannot see your hand in front of your face, cold and just quiet enough to hear its voices. It only takes a few hours to break someone weak. For someone strong, maybe a week.” He tilts his head. “I suspect a day or two in there, with no one to control and nothing to do, will drive you mad. At the end of a week you’d be tearing off your own skin just to feel.”

Author wants to scoff at the dramatics, but there’s something in Dark’s eyes and posture that makes him believe it.

“What if I leave anyway?” Author asks, “Strike out far away and find my own place?”

“Then you’ll have all twenty-one of us looking for you, whether actively searching or keeping an eye out. Once you’re found, the punishment would be immense. We’ve had egos run off before. The longest one ever stayed lost was eighteen days. Perhaps you could last longer, but your punishment would be that much longer as well. And if my void does not deter you, there’s a holding cell in the basement that’s designed to cancel out magic and keep figments contained indefinitely, where you can stay until you come to your senses.”

Author glowers, considering. It’s clear that he has no choice but to go along with the arrangement, but he’s too stubborn to give in yet.

“Any other rules I should know about?” he asks derisively, “Is there a dress code? Do I have to ask you if I want dessert after dinner?”

Dark glares at Author for a long moment.

“My, not even death could change you.”

He lets his own words hang in the air before continuing.

“The other main rule here is that you cannot harm another ego. Self-defense or defense of another ego won’t be punished, but aggression and attacks will.”

“That’s rich, coming from the one who tore my eyes out,” Author growls.

“You can watch your attitude,” Dark snaps, voice dangerous and aura waving wildly. “I’m still the leader, and you still need to respect me. You may not have changed, but I have, and I am much stronger than you can imagine. If you continue to draw my ire, you will find out just how much stronger I’ve become.”

Dark wasn’t nearly this imposing back in Author’s heyday. He didn’t have this maturity, this intimidating tone of voice, this simmering rage that only shows itself in bursts. He used to be pettier, whiny, more mean than cruel. There was a reason Author didn’t fear him, and it was that he could tell, clear as day, that Dark was threatened by him. But the Dark that sits before Author now is not threatened. He’s angry, but not defensive. He means every word he’s said to Author, and Author knows that Dark will make him regret pushing his buttons if he persists.

So he stays silent for a long moment, and Dark’s aura gradually calms, and his expression smooths back out.

“Good, we understand each other,” he says, “Now, you need to meet the other egos. I’ll call a meeting for the others.”

“Google said the others I was around with are still here,” Author says, remembering, “Are they coming, too?”

“Yes,” Dark says, “But their meeting alerts will have…context. They’ll know it’s you before they arrive.” He sighs then, raises a hand to rub his forehead. “Speaking of context, there’s something you should know before this meeting occurs.”

“What’s that?” Author asks, curious. Perhaps a little nervous, given Dark’s behavior, but he’d never admit it.

“After you died, a new ego appeared, one who looked somewhat like you, who had no eyes. It came about that he had all your memories, but he wasn’t you, isn’t you. His name is The Host, and as far as we all knew…you became him, you were reborn as him.”

Author thought he was done being surprised, being shocked. But this revelation is the worst of all. He became someone else? There’s an ego here that has his same history, and the six years he missed on top of that? A clone like Google has, but one that has a different life, has a life at all. Someone who’s The Author, but isn’t. Someone The Author was supposed to be. The one who came from the ashes of Author’s death. While he spent six years in darkness, this other him, this Host, was living the life that should’ve been his. It only gets worse the more Dark explains. Author hardly perceives Dark’s words, but he perceives their meaning, especially when another name is mentioned. The shock builds and deepens.

It’s not enough that Host now has Author’s body, his memories, his life.

He has his love, too.

His doctor.

Dark explains that Dr. Iplier and Host have been in a relationship for years, and something inside Author crumbles.

This is the man he was so excited to see again, the man he’d hoped he could start over with once he found him. He’d dreamed of that on his long walk to the building, dreamed of Dr. Iplier lighting up at the sight of him, dreamed of them both apologizing to each other for how they ended things, dreamed of them reconnecting, rekindling, loving each other all over again. But the dream shatters further the more Dark speaks, and the more Dark speaks, the more Author’s vision tunnels and the louder the blood rushes in his ears. Dr. Iplier didn’t wait for him. He moved on. He moved on with this facsimile of Author, and did so a long time ago.

Author doesn’t hear what else Dark says, he’s too busy thinking. But no matter how much he thinks the situation over, he can’t accept it. He won’t allow this ache in his chest, this burning in the back of his eyes. Dr. Iplier may have moved on, but some part of him must still love Author, if he moved on with the newer version of him. The way they loved each other was like nothing else, even six years later there’s no way Dr. Iplier has forgotten Author, has forgotten what their love felt like, has stopped missing it. Author will find his way back to him somehow, fix their relationship and fix his own breaking heart.

There has to be a reason Author came back to life. There’s no possible way him and Dr. Iplier could end like this. And Author may be a lot of things, but he’s not a quitter.

He can’t give up on Dr. Iplier, his heart won’t let him.

#markiplier fanfiction #the author #markiplier the author #dr. iplier #darkiplier #my writing #fanfic #markiplier #at my worst #how many chapters will there be? who knows! not me XD #i'm hype for this tho owo #poor author; getting blueballed by himself from the future/present :/

17 notes · View notes

nad-zeta · 4 years

Note

Hello, hello, hello! I loved your head canons about the warlords' ages and I wonder if you can write head canons of the warlords' profession, not in modern AU but the warlords deciding to go to the future with MC and well, the profession they would have!! Thank you so muuuuuuuuuch. 💕

Hi hi, love! 🌻Thank you sooo much for the ask! This is legit my third time writing this up, the first time I did this, I forgot to save the word file, and the second time my laptop crashed right after I finished writing it😭....... But finally, here it is🌻! I’m so happy you liked my HC, I hope you enjoy this one, and I hope you have a good day! ❤🔥

Headcanon: Warlords and their future jobs

Nobunaga

I think the second Nobunaga arrives in the future he would become a businessman

He would start off small from your apartment, but within the month he will turn into the biggest corporate leader, having thousands of people working under him

He would spend the first few weeks just chilling in the future with you but soon start to get bored

He would also, low key feel like its wrong for you to be supporting both of you

He does some research on stock trading and then starts playing around with your life savings

Good thing for you, Nobunaga is a clever man, and he manages to triple the money in a week by playing around on the stock market

He uses the income made, to start a small business, which soon starts growing at the speed of light

This man will not be able to work for someone so I can definitely see him being the CEO of his own company

He will be the ruler of the corporate world in no time

It’s pretty funny how in the span of a year he has earned the old name he once carried in the past “Devil king.”

Masamune

This is a no brainer

Obviously he will be a chef

I think he would start off small like finding a job at a local café but then soon take the culinary world by storm

It started off when the two of you went to eat at one of your favourite cafes

He enjoyed the food so much, he couldn’t help but pop into the kitchen to thank the chef (◕‿◕✿)

The kitchen was absolute mayhem and the chef had told him that he was very short-staffed

And that is how Masa got his first future job

He worked in the café for a few months picking up experience and learning to use all the futuristic equipment

From there, he bounced around from place to place learning all sorts of cool culinary techniques

I think at the end of the day he will most likely open his own restaurant

One that specializes in authentic Japanese cuisine

Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if he opened a branch of the restaurant in Nobunagas company

Mitsunari

I can see this cutie angel being a teacher or professor

I think he would be a great academic and educator

I can actually, see this boi being a professor teaching all sorts of subjects from statistics to the art of war ヾ(●ε●)ノ

The first few weeks of being in the future with you, he spends in the library absorbing as much knowledge as possible

One day while he is sitting and reading up on every and any subject, he overhears a group of struggling professors at a nearby table

Apparently they had been trying to solve a certain equation for months now but to no luck (ﾉಠдಠ)ﾉ︵┻━┻

Mitsunari walks up to the group and cheerily asks if he can be of some assistance (◕ᴗ◕✿)

Usually the group would just laugh and chase the random stranger away but desperate times…

They hand Mitsunari the equation and this clever boi takes one look at it and starts writing out the answer

The math professors were sister shook… Like he didn’t even freaken, need a calculator (◯Δ◯∥)

They legit offered him a job as a lecturer and he soon becomes the students’ favourite absent minded professor (◕‿◕✿)

I think he will most definitely also publish a few research papers as well and contribute to the body of knowledge in all sorts of subjects

Ieyasu

Also super easy he will either be a vet or a doctor although I am leaning more towards veterinarian cause of his love for animals

He will most likely join Mitsunari in university, cause he is a super-smart porcupine he will become a certified vet in no time

Also spends the first few weeks of being in the future at the library absorbing as much medical knowledge as possible

He gets the idea of becoming a vet after watching a bunch of animal rescue shows on the national geographic channel

While you are at work he starts volunteering at an animal rescue during the day to pass the time

That is where he met one of the vets that help out at the rescue in their free time, he legit liked Ieyasu so much he took him on as an apprentice, while Ieyasu was busy completing his studies

Later on he will most likely have his own veterinary practise

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he starts his own animal rescue on the side as well

Within two years the two of you move to live on a big plot with all yours and Ieyasus rescued pets

Hideyoshi

Hideyoshi could go one of two ways hehe

If Nobunaga comes to the future with yall then you best be sure this boy is ganna help Nobunaga rule the corporate world

Buuuut if it’s just the two of you, I 100% see him becoming a primary school teacher

Like he would just be so good with kids

He is basically trademarked as mama hen anyways, so why not put him in a primary school to teach lil chics

I think he would be such a good teacher, supportive, kind, and patient

He has enough practise lecturing Nobunaga for bad behaviour, so he might as well put that to good use correcting the behaviours of troublesome kids

He gets into teaching when your sister drops her kid off at your apartment to babysit

You had work, so the only one that could care for the child was, the mother hen himself

He sat and taught the little boy how to read and write, this impressed your sister so much that she recommended him for the position of substitute English teacher at her child’s school

At first Hideyoshi worked as a substitute teacher, but soon he became the designated aftercare teacher and within a few months he was teaching his own class

The children absolutely adored him although they would sneak behind the school building to eat candy cause, they didn’t want to get yet another lecture from Yoshi on the negative health consequences of their favourite sugary treats

Mitsuhide

100% detective (¬‿¬)

I mean can you just imagine how sexy he would look in a trenchcoat… like OMW (づ￣ ³￣)づ

The first few weeks of spending time with you in the future you introduce him to CSI and Law and order and he is super fascinated

You are so amazed by the fact that he can figure out who the perp is 5 minutes into the show

The crime in your neighbourhood was pretty bad, but since Mitsuhide’s arrival something crazy happened

The crime seemed to disappear.

Like no more robberies, no more drunks walking up and down the street, just peaceful quiet calm neighbourhood

One day as the two of you were buying snacks for your CSI bingeing session, two armed men came into the convenience store

You looked over at your lover who seemed completely unphased, like one of the robbers were legit pointing a gun in his face, yet Mitsuhide looked uninterested

Within a blink of an eye, Mitushide managed to disarm the men and tie them up

The police were hella impressed with the way Mitsuhide handled things

He helped the police department solve a few petty crimes in your neighbourhood and soon they started calling him up, to help them crack some difficult cases

After a while he becomes the most famous and popular detective in town

The government low key recruits him as an agent to help them

Kenshin

Again I don’t see Kenshin working for anyone

I think the first few weeks the two of you arrive, bunnies start following him around

Looks like the bunny lord is never safe from the love of the cute fluffy creatures

The two of you will definitely be living on a bunny farm

Kenshin, although he doesn’t admit it, has a soft spot for the cute fluffy creatures

So the bunny farm is actually more of a bunny rescue although that’s just his part-time job

As he adapts to the future, I can see the farm transforming into being a bunny and sake farm

Lol Kenshin loves Sake so much

He knows how good sake should taste, so naturally he starts to make his own and sell it

This starts one day when a friend of yours invites the two of you to a sake tasting

The instructor was so impressed with Kenshin’s keen sense of taste that they got to talking and before Kenshin knew it, he had two people willing to sponsor him, to start his own sake brand

Naturally he never backs down from a challenge

He actually goes on to become the largest Sake producer and bunny rescue

Yukimura

I can legit see this boy doing something active like being a firefighter or gym instructor- cause lets be real this boi is ripped

Or actually maybe both

The first few weeks of being in the future he managed to save 2 peoples lives by fearlessly running in a burning building

The firefighters were legit so impressed they decided to take him on as an intern

He got some of the perks, i.e. free gym membership to stay fit

That’s when he started giving out a few pieces of advice to the people around him

“Like seriously dummy, don’t you even know how to do a proper squat, u legit ganna hurt your back if ya keep doing it like that.”

The members of the gym appreciated his advice so much, some of them started paying him to become their instructor, and soon the gym decided to hire him part-time

Now when Yuki isn't running into burning buildings saving people he is training people in the gym

Best be sure he is gonna drag you to the gym with him

Shingen

Hehe I’ll admit I’m not too sure what this boi would get up to in the future

I think the first few weeks will be spent with you just adapting and getting to know everything

I think he would continue on with his carpentry

He kinda starts to notice your apartment is furnished in super cheap furniture

You tell him you are just a student in this time and don’t really have money to buy anything fancy

He buys a few cheap pieces of wood and starts furnishing your apartment with the most beautifully crafted furniture

Some of your friends visit the two of you and notice the remarkable craftsmanship and start commissioning him to make them some furniture

After a while he becomes the best carpenter in town

Goes on to open up a shop selling the different furniture he makes

I can see him hiring people in need, and that need a fresh start and then teaching them the trade to be able to make something of themselves

I can also see him volunteering at rescues and fostering bear cubs cause he misses his so much

I hope you enjoyed this dear and thanks again for the ask! ❤❤🔥🌻

169 notes · View notes

goodlucktai · 5 years

Text

i’ll find a ring if you’ll find a shaded tree

good omens pairing: aziraphale/crowley word count: 3203

read on ao3

There were plenty of ways Crowley might have imagined his afternoon going, if he had spared the idea any mind. It’s miserable out, the sky sponged gray all the way across with heaving rain clouds, so one could safely assume it would be an afternoon spent largely in the warm indoors until his dinner date with an angel later in the evening.

This assumption, if made at all, would be markedly dashed (pointedly, even, with a fat red marker and a pair of eyebrows raised above the clipboard as if to say ‘you really thought you’d get away with a quiet day in?’) by said angel himself.

The door jumps open, locked at all times but never at all for Aziraphale, and then closes again with two identical slams. There’s a brief stutter to Aziraphale’s hurried steps as he presumably tries to adhere to politeness and toe off his brogues in the foyer without losing any forward momentum.

“Crowley! I’ve been calling you, your stupid answer-thing is full!”

In the time it takes Crowley to sit up from his boneless sprawl on the sofa, Aziraphale is there in all his pale creams and butter yellows, as well as a criminally soft dove gray sweater vest Crowley gifted him four Christmases ago.

He’s lovely, as always, and there’s a happy, squirmy little creature in Crowley’s chest stirred to life by his voice and proximity alone; but he’s wearing a look of wide-eyed panic better suited a man at the wrong end of a firing squad, and working furiously at the signet ring that’s adorned his pinky since the actual beginning of time.

“Angel? What’s-- “ Crowley seizes up in some alarm when the angel keeps coming, piling onto the sofa with such disregard that Crowley has to either yank his knees up to his chest or lose them. “Oi!”

“Give me your hand,” Aziraphale whispers furiously, like a man afraid to be caught speaking in church. He catches hold of Crowley’s wrist, pushes the ring onto the traditional finger, and goes on, “Do exactly as I say, and for the love of all that’s holy, don’t ask questions.”

There is absolutely no way Crowley can abide these terms. If the threat of Falling wasn’t enough to keep his mouth shut in the Beginning, an Aziraphale-brand snit certainly won’t be, so-- just as soon as Crowley can get his jaw to stop hanging open, and kick his backfiring brain back into operating speeds, and do anything besides sit there and ogle Aziraphale’s ring on Crowley’s finger-- then there are absolutely going to be questions. Loads of them.

However, beating him to the punch, is the flashbang arrival of an Archangel.

Gabriel, to be precise.

Aziraphale tenses. Crowley’s hackles go up in as textbook a Pavlovian response as there’s ever been.

He feels his skin spring to scale, sharp canines lengthening, and the way the room swims into fuzzy, heat-based vision means his eyes have probably gone all yellow, too.

‘And die already,’ Gabriel had said, to Aziraphale’s precious form. ‘Die already,’ like it was the last revision on an audit report and then he could clock out for the day and call it a job well done.

For what he would have easily-- casually-- taken from Crowley, there isn’t an end in sight to this wounded rage.

“Alright, dearest,” Aziraphale murmurs, putting a hand on the small of Crowley’s back. It’s so quiet there’s a good chance Gabriel can’t hear, and even with the thrum of nervous tension in every inch of Aziraphale’s corporeal form, he spares Crowley something soft. “It’s alright.”

“So this is where you’ve run off to,” Gabriel says, looking about in open distaste. “Who decorated this place, anyway? I love the empty space, don’t think I like the color.”

It’s the light pressure of Aziraphale’s hand on him keeping Crowley pinned to the sofa, and only that. He’s as good as chiseled from stone, mouth open only slightly to track Gabriel’s scent, to show off his teeth.

(He does make a mental note to change everything about the flat Gabriel even halfway approves of. No, scratch that, he’s starting over completely. He’s moving to Chelsea. Fuck you, onion eyes.)

“Well, I had to see it for myself,” the unwelcome creature goes on cheerfully. “Not that we didn’t believe you, Aziraphale, just that-- well, you’ve fudged the truth a bit before, haven’t you? No, don’t look like that, it’s forgotten!” He waves a hand over his shoulder, carelessly. “Let’s leave the past in the past, or whatever it is they say, I don’t know. And with Her approval, there’s not much room for argument from me is there?”

He laughs, inviting them to share in the joke. Aziraphale doesn’t even smile, and Crowley is actively waiting for Gabriel to come two steps forward and one to the right, where he would be just out of the way of the coffee table and well within striking distance. Aziraphale’s fingers bunch in the back of Crowley’s shirt as if to say ‘don’t you dare’.

“To think, we assumed you were fraternizing with the enemy all this time when you’ve actually been in love! There’s nothing wrong with love, is there? That’s as holy as it gets!” He sounds like a kindergartner describing their parent’s job exactly as it was described to them, with all the confidence and faculty of someone who has no idea what the words coming out of their mouth even mean. He either has no clue how to read a room or he’s bluffing his way through this uncomfortable situation like a pro. Clapping his hands together in a self-satisfied way he adds, “Make sure you save us a table!”

“It’s going to be a private affair, I should think,” Aziraphale says stiffly. “Close friends and family only.”

“Probably better that way, not too crowded,” Gabriel agrees with a commiserating nod. It’s as if Aziraphale slammed a door right in his face and he just chose not to notice. He turns to leave, and pauses, turning his hat in his hands. “I have to say, Aziraphale, I really am relieved this whole thing got straightened out. I thought you had lost your way.”

It’s an unexpected moment of sincerity. Aziraphale blinks, but Crowley isn’t so easily won.

“After six thousand years of making his life a misery, you want to extend the olive branch now? Now that you know he won’t drag you down with him?” Crowley bares his teeth. “How’s that for unconditional love?”

If a single lunch date at the Ritz watching Aziraphale eat both his and Crowley’s own vanilla custard and listening to him complain about some obstinate customer or another would cost Crowley absolutely everything, he would pay it. He would be a fool not to pay it. He can’t imagine the audacity of six thousand years wasted. All that time, all those angels were free to know Aziraphale, free to love him, and they chose not to.

As happy as Crowley is to fill that space, to take that spot, he’s angry it was ever left empty to begin with.

Gabriel is watching him with an expression that can’t decide whether it’s more startled or annoyed. Aziraphale’s free hand finds one of Crowley’s, working it free of its fist and threading their fingers together. His thumb rubs at the patch of shining black scales just under his knuckles, soothing. It’s as if he’s loosing plates of Crowley’s armor one by one, the way he did in Wessex once after a round in the tiltyard. He doesn’t speak but his body says hush.

Crowley bites the inside of his lip, so hard it almost draws blood.

“She said we could stand to learn a thing or two from you,” Gabriel says. It’s not so much annoyance as it is scrutiny, but that rankles even more. “I wasn’t sure what She meant before, but it’s love isn’t it?” He says it again like an animal mimicking a human word. The sound is almost right, except in its lacking of all meaning. “Demons aren’t supposed to know it, but you do.”

“Well, look at the time,” Aziraphale says loudly, not even pretending to look round at a clock or Crowley’s watch. “I can’t believe we’re nearly late for our appointment. I guess you’d better go, Gabriel.”

Gabriel lights up with the manic eagerness of upper management that every hourly employee knows to dread. “Would you mind giving a seminar? We could arrange a day-pass for you, and cater lunch! Aziraphale would like that, I’m sure. Just look at him.”

Aziraphale doesn’t react, but it’s a studied non-reaction that means the barb hit home. Oh, that complete and utter git.

Gabriel takes two steps forward and one to the right. Crowley watches with animal stillness as the archangel rounds the coffee table, saying something about PowerPoint presentations. He’s going to bite. One good snap. It’s Gabriel’s fault for coming over this way. You don’t just invite yourself into the snake’s den, do you? Not without a nasty repercussion, at least. And besides, Crowley’s not even venomous today. Probably.

At the last second, Aziraphale bullies him back against the sofa with angelic strength, an arm pinned across Crowley’s chest like an iron bar and his own body blocking access to Gabriel’s. Crowley hisses at him and pushes ineffectively at the solid weight of him, but he might as well have been pushing at the side of the bookshop for all the good he was doing.

“I really think,” Aziraphale grits out in the ‘we are very much closed for the day, no more sales I’m afraid, please make your way to the exit’ tone Crowley is intimately familiar with, “that you should leave now.”

“Al-right,” Gabriel says in his obnoxious accent. He looks disappointed, but bounces back too quickly for Crowley’s taste. “I’ll get back to you on that seminar. Maybe we can chat at the wedding!”

Aziraphale only sits up when Gabriel is well and truly gone, straightening his vest with unhappy tugs. Crowley remains coiled against the arm of the sofa, seething.

“Should have let me take off his arm, ” he mutters. “A hand at least.”

“It’s simply not worth the paperwork, my dear.”

Something’s wrong with Aziraphale’s voice. It wobbles a bit, in a way that sends alarm bells ringing in every square inch of Crowley’s form, and when Crowley leans forward to get a good look at him, sure enough-- there are tears in his eyes.

The anger deserts Crowley as deftly as the light of the Host once did. Color returns to his vision, fangs retracting back into only slightly sharper-than-human canines, and the hands he reaches for Aziraphale with are smooth and scaleless.

“Angel,” he says hopelessly. “Hey, I’m sorry. I won’t bite anybody, swear.”

Aziraphale chuckles a bit, accepting the hands that curl around his own and squeezing Crowley’s fingers in turn.

“It’s not you who needs to apologize. I can’t believe I’ve done this.”

“The wedding sham?”

True, Crowley’s heart knocks a little harder against his chest than it has any right to at the idea of-- marrying Aziraphale, being married to him. There’s a ring on his finger and he can’t even think about that without a giddy, champagne-bubbles feeling making a nuisance of itself in the unguarded part of himself that’s been a lost cause since Eden. But…

Aziraphale nods, miserable. “They came to the bookshop to offer a performance review. A performance review, of all things, after a year-- anyway. Naturally, they want to know how we escaped their judgement, and all those clever lies we thought up just weren’t doing the trick, and Sandalphon started talking about going round to yours, and I-- panicked. I couldn’t let him-- “ He takes a fortifying breath, grip on Crowley’s hands tightening to the point that a mortal’s bones would have broken. “I made up some fanciful story about a union. I believe I called it a marriage of true minds,” he adds with a half-smile, and seems galvanized at Crowley’s amused snort. “Michael tried to call my bluff, had me sign the form and submit it right there with the four of them as witnesses, and…”

“And it worked,” Crowley surmises. He taps the back of Aziraphale’s hand with his thumb and tries not to think about ineffable plans or inscrutable mothers. He almost manages it.

“I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale whispers. “I knew it would work, I knew it would. I’ve known for… a long time. Since Hamlet, at least.”

Crowley feels himself go red, and abruptly can’t make eye contact anymore. It’s really quite something, to suddenly have to address the elephant that’s followed you room to room for roughly four hundred years. He gives a tentative tug at his hands, and Aziraphale absolutely does not release him.

“Please look at me, Crowley.”

He almost can’t. He certainly doesn’t want to. He’s babbling, he realizes with vague horror, saying something along the lines of, “It’s a human thing, Aziraphale, they made it up back when people first decided they needed heirs to inherit houses, you were there, we tried to talk them out of it.”

Lunch dates at the Ritz. Picnics in the park. Warm evenings in the back room, dozing under piles of worn quilts on a worn tartan sofa, the hearth left empty because fire in the bookshop makes Crowley twitch and Aziraphale can read him like any one of his precious books. Sharing chilled white wines and heady reds, cherry cordials that leave smudges on Aziraphale’s lips, thousands and thousands of years of stories they both remember a little bit differently.

It’s good. Better than Crowley knows how to ask for. He can’t stand the thought of losing it.

Fingers touch his chin, gently, and guide his face up.

“And furthermore,” Crowley insists hysterically, “it doesn’t have to change anything. You were clever to come up with it, and if it worked that’s even better, and we can just go through the motions, an addendum to our Arrangement. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Aziraphale says, “My darling, it means everything. Of course it does. Only this isn’t how I wanted it to go.”

His voice is tinged with tears again, but they seem borne of frustration rather than hurt. Crowley risks a nervous glance at him, heart surging up hopefully like some sort of stupid buoy.

“I wanted to do it properly,” Aziraphale is saying, brow furrowed, mouth all puckered. “You deserve champagne and flowers, all that fuss you pretend to hate. I see you get all misty-eyed at proposals, even ones on television commercials.” Crowley squawks, outraged at the flagrant slander, but Aziraphale goes right on, “There’s a meteor shower coming up that’s supposed to be the event of the century, and I had-- it was, I had everything planned. Your ring isn’t even ready yet. This is all horrible.”

Crowley stares at him. He thinks maybe he’s supposed to say something into this silence, but for the life of him, he’s got nothing. Aziraphale’s ring seems to burn on his finger. After the seconds melt into minutes, Aziraphale looks at him. His expression recycles its defeat into concern.

“Crowley? Sweetheart, what is it?”

The endearment sends a shiver all the way down Crowley’s spine. He opens and closes his hands like lobster pincers, to be certain he’s not gone actually paralyzed, and still Aziraphale doesn’t let them go.

“You said,” he says intelligently, and then doesn’t know where to go from there. “It wasn’t a lie?” he tries again, in a rather small voice.

“The marriage?” Aziraphale searches his face in the manner of a grad student desperately searching the footnotes of an incomprehensible text. “Of course it wasn’t. A fake marriage certificate would hardly have been approved by God.”

Crowley tries to say something and only manages to come up with a squeaking sound. Somehow, it betrays him entirely, and Aziraphale’s eyebrows come together.

“The proposal is meant to be a surprise, but I would have hoped we were on the same page with the engagement.”

Before he can make sense of literally any one thing about this situation, brain still struggling to jump the hurdle of the word ‘engagement’ in regards to them, Crowley finds himself so wholly embraced that he’s practically hauled into Aziraphale’s lap.

He sputters, puts up a token protest, and goes absolutely pliant when he feels lips against the crown of his head.

A halo used to rest there, shining like anything, but a kiss is much better.

They’ve kissed before, when it was culturally appropriate and even a few times when it wasn’t, but something is different about this time. Namely, that Aziraphale kisses him again, on the forehead this time, and then again on the bridge of his nose, and then again on the cheek, and then again right on the corner of his mouth, and Crowley is almost ready for it when their lips slide together, his breath almost doesn’t hitch when Aziraphale kisses him like they do in romance films, like he means to never stop.

They part because Crowley’s lungs have forgotten they don’t actually need air and because Aziraphale seems to want to gaze at him.

“I know I’ve said it before,” he says. “I know you heard me.”

‘They’ll destroy you.’

‘That was very kind of you.’

‘I won’t have you risking your life.’

‘I forgive you.’

‘To the world.’

“I heard you,” Crowley says, because he did.

He always heard Aziraphale, even when Aziraphale had no clue he was calling out. He heard ‘oh, you silly idiot’ and ‘you’re not as funny as you think you are’ and ‘please come in, please convince me to let you stay’ in a sidelong glare or the roll of his eyes or the downward turn of his mouth when they stood by the shop door.

And every lunch date at the Ritz and picnic in the park and evening in the back room was stuffed full of ‘I love you’s. A tartan quilt and an unlit fireplace and a cherry cordial, passed from an angel’s fingers to a demon’s mouth, were quiet, secret ways to say what it wasn’t always safe to say.

“Me, too,” he whispers.

“My Crowley,” Aziraphale says affectionately, another way of saying what he’s been saying for years, “I know.”

Desperately trying to get his footing back, Crowley rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand and sits back as far as Aziraphale’s arms will allow him to go.

“I still want that proposal,” he informs the angel. “During the meteor shower. With all the fuss you promised. I’ll be sure to act surprised.”

Aziraphale smiles at him. “You can’t act to save your life. I see right through you, you know.”

But that’s hardly Crowley’s fault. Six thousand years of being known would give away anybody’s edge. He rolls his eyes, and settles into where he’s obviously meant to stay for awhile, looping his arms around Aziraphale’s neck.

“The act is for everyone else’s benefit, angel. We know better, don’t we?” Crowley grins, crooked, and thinks of apples and flaming swords, freely given. “We always have.”

#good omens #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #aziraphale #anthony j crowley #my writing #gomens fic #its 1am and i have no regrets #im invincible

184 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 5 years

Note

I love your blog. Thank you for taking time out of your day to answer people's questions. Might I ask: do you have any opinion on the recent scrapping of the Paramount Decrees?

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoy it. I’m not terribly active on here right now, due to a combination of transition period + real life things + low energy/mental health, but I’m usually up for answering questions and having discussions, especially as we’re moving into 2020 and American federal election year. So yes.

As for your question, I admit that I had to get help from @extasiswings, who is a lawyer, and @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels, who works in the film industry, so if you have further questions and/or would like to follow up, there’s probably more that they can say about the Paramount decrees specifically. But as far as the overall concept goes (i.e., a framework of antitrust legislation/court rulings trying to break up studio/distributor monopoly and preventing actors and performers from being owned via contracts), as far as I can tell, it’s just part of the move toward overwhelming monopolies in the economy more generally, and the assault on antitrust legislation that late-stage capitalism prides itself on. This also feeds nicely into my “capitalism ruined entertainment” rant, so there’s that.

Basically, the entertainment industry is currently a particularly egregious example of hyper-monopoly (see: Disney) where one source or overwhelmingly powerful conglomerate owns just about everything, Netflix has openly copped to making two seasons of shows and then cancelling them so they can have the budget to re-run old saws like Friends, and absolutely everything in the film department is superheroes, gritty superheroes, fairytales, gritty fairytales, reboots, reboots of reboots, or otherwise recycled material, with very little original. (The one exception to this is privileged mediocre white men, who can churn out whatever they wish, as exemplified by my rant to the group chat last night about why on earth straight white people think that “Marriage Story,” a film about straight white people going through an acrimonious straight white person divorce, starring making-a-strong-case-for-Worst-Person Scarlett Johansson and Kyle Ron, is something that we want to watch??? I literally cannot imagine anything more unappealing on a molecular level??? There was a text post going around to that effect, but anyway.) The entertainment industry just won’t finance small projects, original ideas, or anything that does not have the potential to be a multiple-film blockbuster (because everything has to be a blockbuster or Tentpole Franchise). Because reusing the intellectual property/characters/stories that everyone already knows is a more surefire way to make money than striking out alone with something the public doesn’t know. That is why, to name an up-to-the-minute example, we are now stuck with this terrible Star Wars sequel trilogy, and why David Benioff and Dan Weiss, having overwhelmingly trashed the massive GOT adaptation that they originally landed with no experience, are at liberty to go on to make yet more terrible movies for Netflix, even if their hands were pried off Star Wars at the last instant. Yike.

This is why the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies have turned into big-business military propaganda while stripping much of the original social commentary from the comics in favor of bloated action sequences and faux-deep messages, because you have to use entertainment to reinforce the proper mentality in your consumer public and keep them distracted. (See: the new stadium being built for the Rams and Chargers in Los Angeles, the NFL being a whole other can of worms, but yes.) It is also why we have Playmobil: The Movie, The Emoji Movie, and the Angry Birds movie, because if you don’t have any ideas, you can at least scrape the bottom of the barrel for things that will sell corresponding toys, apps, and other tie-in merchandise. It is, once again, about maximising profit in all possible avenues, getting people to buy more crap that they don’t need, and “humanise” these brands in their mind (see: “corporations are people too!” and anyone who likes to interact with corporate Twitter accounts). And I realise that I sound overwhelmingly cynical, but this is also just… how things function, and nobody seems to even think it’s all that weird anymore. Also see the fact that streaming services were invented to bundle entertainment from multiple sources and replace cable, but now every service only shows its own content, you have to shell out a bucketload of cash if you want to subscribe to all of them/watch them legally, and the execs think that password-sharing counts as lost profits, because they can’t exploit every person individually.

Ugh.

Technically, I think that the rationale for scrapping the Paramount decrees was that there was now other antitrust legislation applying to the film industry, and that they “didn’t need it” anymore. But since the Trump administration has been scrapping regulations for every industry (is it still safe to eat pork? This is an honest question, now that the pork industry is responsible for inspecting itself) across the board, in thrall to the old conservative saw that regulations and rules throttle the free market and it has to be free to make as much money as possible without any regard to morality, restraint, or anything recognizable as ethics to the average person, this is not surprising. The name is still to make as much money as possible and to remove any obstacles to the consolidation of that money and power in as few hands as possible, and… yes. That’s about where I end up.

#winterofthedarkestlight #ask

29 notes · View notes

hymn2000 · 4 years

Text

Ideal Confusion - MCU AU Fanfic - C15

(Title subject to change)

Story summary: Giving into the constant pressure from the press, Tony decides to put a rest to the rumours that Peter is his biological son - once and for all.

Previous Chapter(s): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Part of my Frostiron and Spiderson series.

Warnings/themes: family, family stuff, family conflict, adoption, DNA test(s), pressure, peer pressure, social issues, mentions of alcoholism, mental health problems, potentially some minor medical inaccuracies, corporal punishment, hurt/comfort

You can also find me on AO3

Chapter 15 - A Heart Has Many Secrets

Getting ready for school the next morning felt incredibly strange; almost foreign. Getting up early hadn’t been easy. He didn’t have an appetite, which nearly led to a bit of a ding-dong with Loki, who was very insistent he needed to eat anyway. And, as if tensions weren’t high enough, Loki broke the news that he had to go to work so wouldn’t be able to take him to school.

Peter wasn’t happy being in the car with Tony, and he made his feelings very clear. He’d become very good at keeping silent since becoming a member of the Stark household. Tony wouldn’t be deterred though, and kept talking, offering unwanted advice, reassurance, and generally chatting away as though he were actually getting an answer from the teen beside him.

Peter tried to dive out of the car as soon as they parked, but Tony grabbed his arm.

“Hey” he said. “Come here”

Tony hugged him, and Peter pulled away furiously. Tony kept hold of his arm a moment longer.

“Be good, sweetheart. I’ll see you after school”

Peter scowled, and Tony reluctantly released him. Peter took great pleasure in slamming the car door behind him. Oddly, as he walked towards the main building, he didn’t feel as though he’d been away all that long. He didn’t feel nervous either. In fact, he felt quite calm; although he was certain he could see huge changes on the horizon - far above what he could imagine.

Peter seemed to have inherited Loki’s flare for a low-key but poignant entrance. Oddly, as he walked into his form room, and was met by the shouts and voices of so many, he felt so free. In a way, he felt like a felon who was to be released while everyone else was left behind. Let’s be honest; he’d never quite managed to fit into this high-class school in the way everyone had hoped. And he didn’t care. He wasn’t sure how homeschooling was going to go, but he felt so calm looking at everyone, that he was certain he wasn’t going to miss this.

Going to his music lesson after lunch was the only thing that almost made him change his mind about the school. He’d grown to be quite close to Mr James since starting private lessons. Mr James was so down to Earth, so unlike a lot of the other teachers, and so supportive of Peter’s playing, and always seemed impressed with all of his progress.

“It’s good to see you again, kiddo” he said, shutting the practice room door. “How have you been? I heard about what you did”

Peter shrugged noncommittally, but he looked a little embarrassed.

“Don’t worry” Mr James said, squeezing his shoulder. “I was a right little terror when I was a kid. When I was your age, I’d been expelled four times”

Peter looked at him.

“Yes, really! If someone hadn’t shoved a saxophone into my hands, I probably would’ve got expelled from the last school too! Incredible how much music can help you turn things around”

Peter nodded, sitting down at the piano, running his fingers along the keys.

“I don’t suppose you’ve had any chance to practice. I hope you’re not too rusty”

“I’ve got one at home now” Peter said, and then started slightly, surprising himself.

It surprised Mr James too. “Nice! I’ve gotta say, kiddo, I imagined your voice a lot different”

Peter could feel himself blushing, but Mr James just smiled.

“It’s nice to hear it. Now, fancy showing me what you’ve been working on?”

Peter swallowed, turning to the piano properly. He felt nervous now, and he was still surprised that his voice had jumped out. But maybe... maybe that meant he could perform properly here.

Maybe.

But he couldn’t think of what to say, and Mr James could see his hesitation.

“Why don’t you do something we were working on first?” he suggested. “Clair de lune?”

Slow, but long. A good way to ease in. Peter understood his choice. It had been a little while since he’d played anything classical. He watched Mr James find a page in a book and set it in front of Peter. He’d managed to pick up a few notes, but he didn’t really need them. He knew this track well enough; it was so popular.

It was nice playing it, though. Something so familiar, and calm, but somehow dramatic too. He didn’t feel like he was playing the music, but more like it was playing him; making his fingers glide almost effortlessly across the keys. He started feeling much more relaxed, much less nervous and embarrassed. Maybe he’d miss this. All these calm, practice room moments...

“...That was perfect” Mr James said. “You’re incredible. I’ve never known someone learn so fast, and so well”

“Thank you...”

“You know, I do lessons outside of school. If you wanted to continue after you leave”

“I... I’d have to ask dad” Peter said, not quite looking at him, his voice small.

“What have you been working on?”

Peter shrugged slightly. He’d been playing a lot since getting the piano, mainly to drown out everything else that was happening. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to play. Maybe something fast, or something complex. Maybe...

“I’ve got one, but it’s kinda... long”

“That’s alright. So was the one we just played. If there’s anything you want to show me, just go ahead. This is your lesson, your learning, and your talent: you don’t have to let other people decide what you do with it”

Peter looked at him. He’d played strange and wonderful things to him before, and he trusted him - both his music judgement and personally.

Mr James listened, unsure if he recognised the tune at first, and then startling when Peter opened his mouth.

“You tell me there's an angel in your tree. Did he say he'd come to call on me? For things are getting desperate in our home, living in the parish of the restless folks I know”

Mr James watched him. He’d only just heard him speak, so finding out that he had a voice - and one like this - was a bit of a shock to say the least.

“Burn down the mission, if we're gonna stay alive. Watch the black smoke fly to heaven, see the red flame light the sky. Burn down the mission, burn it down to stay alive. It's our only chance of living, take all you need-”

And it carried on like that, with power and passion, and very few wobbles, and all too soon, voice and keys petered out, and the practice room was filled with a moments silence.

Mr James merely leaned closer. “What else have you got?”

Peter couldn’t help but grin, and he knew exactly what to play now. Something a bit tricky. But something he knew well enough after all the times he’d played it.

"-But where were all your shoulders when we cried? Were the darlings on the sideline, dreaming up such cherished lies? To whisper in your ear before you die”

Something that had started as a way to show off a bit soon turned into something to enjoy, and in his usual fashion, he got sucked into the music deeply. He wasn’t even distracted by Mr James gently correcting his posture as he played.

“Junk.., angel.., this closet's always stacked. The dealers in the basement, fillin’ your prescription for a brand new heart attack. But where were all your shoulders when we cried? Were the doctors in attendance saying how they felt so sick inside, or was it just the scalpel blade that lied?”

Peter shivered, but he didn’t miss a note. He didn’t let up, hardly even opened his eyes, until he’d tapped out the last few notes.

Once again, there was a moments silence. Peter looked at Mr James, biting his lip nervously. The man looked back, and smiled.

“You’re a special case, Peter Parker-Stark” he said. “You should sign up for the end of term show”

“I don’t know...”

“Well I do, and I think it’s a great idea. You don’t have to sing, but you should definitely play and show everyone what you can do. Go out with a bang”

Peter was ready to tell Loki all about his day, so he was pretty furious when Tony turned up to collect him at the end of school. Luckily, Tony was on a work call, which eliminated any awkward one-sided conversation. He was still on the call when they got home, so Peter wasted no time in getting out of the car and darting upstairs. He rushed to Loki’s room, but stopped outside, hearing voices.

“...As long as there’s a decent school within walking distance, that area would work well” Loki was saying. “What are the public transport links like? I had a hire car so...”

Peter stayed quiet, pressing his ear up against the door. What on earth was he talking about? He must be on the phone, but who to? All this talk of schools and transport and amenities. It was almost as though-

“PETER!”

Peter jumped so violently he smacked his head on the door frame.

“Ow!”

“Serves you right” Tony said. “What are you doing, eavesdropping like that?”

“Daddy’s on the phone” Peter mumbled, rubbing his head.

“I’ll ask you again: what are you doing, eavesdropping like that?”

“Being nosy, I guess”

“Come here”

Peter looked at Tony properly, remembered he was supposed to be giving him the silent treatment, and scowled, annoyed at both of them. Tony sighed, deciding he had better things to do than argue.

“Go and get changed. Now”

Peter didn’t really have a choice, not with Tony watching. He shut his door behind him, throwing his bag down and pulling his tie off. Typical of Tony to sneak in undetected at such a crucial moment. Tragically, there was an en-suite and a cupboard between Peter’s room and Loki’s, so he couldn’t even listen through the wall. He’d have to get his answers some other time.

Peter got changed, checked the coast was clear, and snuck back over to Loki’s door. Loki was still on the phone, although the conversation seemed to be coming to an end.

“-Like I said, it’s still just an idea. It’s good to have all the fact first though. Sorry...? Yes, of course... Thanks again, chick. Talk to you soon. Bye now”

Everything went quiet, and Peter stood where he was, even more confused than before. Loki only called people he cared about ‘chick’. Who could he be talking to?

As he was considering the options, Loki’s door opened, making Peter jump. They looked at each other.

“Hello, you” Loki said, closing his door behind him.

Something was off here, Peter knew it. “Who were you talking to?”

“Maggie, one of the ladies I worked with in Scotland. You know, I told you about her?”

Peter nodded slightly. He’d heard a lot of stories about Loki’s time in Scotland after he’d got back from his sabbatical. He used to talk about it a lot, but he hadn’t heard him mention it much lately. Although... he’d been looking at houses for sale, hadn’t he?

“Peter? Are you listening to me?”

“Huh?” Peter shook his head slightly. “Sorry”

“Never mind, sweetheart” Loki said, kissing him on the forehead. “Do you want a hot drink while I’m making one?”

Peter shook his head. He watched Loki go, and then looked back at the door. If Loki was just making a drink, he usually just left his door open. Peter knew that he was being overly suspicious, but he wanted answers. So he opened the door and slipped into Loki’s room.

Loki’s tablet was on the bed. Peter tapped the screen, hoping it had only just timed out. No such luck: it wanted a password. Well, Peter knew a lot of Tony’s passwords, but he’d never managed to guess any of Loki’s - aside from his phone password. Peter abandoned the tablet and picked up Loki’s phone. He tapped in the pin he remembered - and the phone opened. He sat on the bed, looking through the phone. Loki hadn’t lied; his last call had been to Maggie. More than an hour, it had been. He looked through the notes on the phone. Most of it was the usual stuff: extra shifts, household tasks, ongoing shopping lists, something about Tony’s prescription, and then something titled ‘Peter’.

Peter looked up, checking the door, and then clicked on the note. It was another list: School, Room, Tech, Piano, Swimming?, Music, Drama?, Routine. Bike???

Peter looked at the list, confused. He had absolutely no idea what was going on here. What was the thought process? He closed the notes, glanced up, and spotted a notebook, just the corner poking out from under the pillow. He picked it up. It looked old, with curled corners and a well-thumbed front cover. He opened it, finding more notes - but this looked more professional, and upon closer inspection, he suddenly knew what it was. This was Loki’s old notebook from when he’d been working in Scotland; notes on the kids he was helping look after, everything from history to medical appointments to nighttime routines. Why would he be looking at his again? Nostalgia? But, if it was just nostalgia, why would he be hiding it? He liked talking about it; they were used to it in this house now. So why the secrecy? Or was Peter just being paranoid?

He put the notebook back, and picked up Loki’s phone again, opening his recent texts. There wasn’t much. Nothing to people in Scotland, anyway. He opened his latest texts to Tony. ‘Back at 3 x” read the last one. Above that wasn’t really much of interest. Lots of saying when they’d be back, asking if the other needed anything, quick ‘I love you’ texts, that kind of thing. But when he went back further, he found what looked like an argument, and he clicked the back button, sharpish. He knew his parents argued sometimes, but he didn’t like thinking about it. He sighed, and put the phone down. He was just being silly.

He stood up, and something crackled beneath his foot. He crouched down, taking hold of the folder. It was a new one, evidenced by the price sticker still in place. He opened it, surprised at how thick it felt, and surprised even further by what he found inside. All of a sudden he felt a bit sick, and hot, and on high alert; his pulse beating in his ears. He took the papers out of the folder, looking through them properly. Job adverts, some of them. Information about residency and citizenship and things like that. And property listings. Lots of them, with notes and bullet points written on them in Loki’s familiar scrawl. He swallowed hard, trying to focus on the words - and then the door opened. Peter jumped, and gasped a little, looking at his father.

Loki carefully set his mug of tea down on the nearest cabinet. Peter couldn’t move, only watch, as Loki came over to him.

“And what” Loki said, dangerously quiet. “Do you think you’re doing?”

“I-I-I was just-” his hands were shaking, and he dropped everything. “Ah! I- Sorry!”

He went to pick everything up, but Loki put a hand out, stopping him. Peter stayed as still as he could while Loki gathered everything and put it back in its folder. Loki stood up, dragging Peter to his feet too. He left him stood there and put the folder into the little lockable filing cabinet by the desk.

“Daddy, I-”

“Not a word” Loki said. “I know exactly what you were doing”

He picked up his phone off the bed, opening it and clicking the button to see the recently viewed items. Peter had definitely taken leave of his senses, leaving everything out in the open like this.

“I-I’m gonna go” Peter tried.

“No, I think not” Loki said. He held a hand up, and the door slammed shut.

Peter swallowed hard. Loki hadn’t looked at him properly since he’d walked in, and Peter’s senses were screaming at him. He wished he’d just left everything alone.

“You came into my room without permission” Loki started, setting his phone down on his bedside table. “You go through my personal files, y-”

“Why have you got all that stuff? Is that from when you were in Scotland before? Were you gonna stay a lot longer?”

“Peter, do you really think that’s important?”

“...Is that a yes?”

Loki looked at him. “You try to get into my tablet. You get into my phone, you look at my private notes and messages”

“Not all of them!”

“Found your tongue, I see” Loki said. “You went through my things, you came in here without permission, you’ve invaded my privacy and you’ve betrayed my trust in you”

“I-I didn’t mean to! I just heard you on the phone and I thought something might be wrong and I wanted to find out what”

“And you didn’t think to just ask me?”

Peter stopped, and he felt himself blush.

“I’m really not happy with you, young man”

Peter looked down, shuffling on his feet. “...Am I in trouble?”

“YES, you’re in trouble!” Loki snapped, making the boy jump. “If you’d listened instead of interrupting, you’d know why. Although, judging by your face when I caught you red-handed, you already know why. You know you’ve done wrong”

“Mm... I didn’t mean to”

“What did you think would be the outcome, if you came in here and started going through my things without permission, and got caught? Did you stop to consider that?”

“Well...”

Loki folded his arms over his chest. Peter took a step back, and dared look at his father, at the look in his eyes, and the slight tremble of his left arm.

“I’m sorry”

Loki didn’t say anything. He sat down on the bed, resting his head in his hand.

“...Daddy?”

Loki stayed quiet, thinking. Was he right to be this angry? Was it really as bad as he though it was? Had any real harm actually been done? What should he do? Punish the boy in the way his first, second, and third instincts were telling him to? Let him go without consequence? Risk him doing it again, and maybe finding more? He’d found so much in eight minutes. How much could he find in an hour? He might even reach the right conclusion if he had long enough.

“Get my tea”

Peter did as he was told, surprised by the request, but still cautious. He watched Loki sip his drink and sit up a little straighter. It looked like he was calmer, like he was relenting. For a moment they looked at each other, and just when it looked as though Loki was about to say something, there was a knock, and the door opened.

“Hey, a- oh, you’re both here” Tony said. “What’s going on?”

Loki sighed. “I found him going through my phone and private things”

“What?!” Tony marched over, the look on his face bringing a new meaning to Hell Hath No Fury. “How DARE you?!”

“I-”

“No, don’t interrupt!” Tony snapped, making him face him properly. “You shouldn’t have been in here without permission anyway! How dare you betray our trust like this? Why I-”

Loki watched them, feeling absent. He watched the way Tony spoke to Peter. The way he snapped at him. And then the way he shouted at him. He looked at his hand on the boys wrist, keeping him there. He watched the way Peter tried to shut down the situation, the way he tried to explain but kept getting cut off. He saw the look in the boys eyes.

“I’m sick to death of your behaviour! I never would have gotten away with acting like this, and neither are you”

Tony tugged the boy close and hit him hard. Peter’s squeak, the next smack, and the sound of the boy crying broke Loki out of his dazed state.

“Tony!”

“He’ll never learn if we don’t discipline him” Tony said through gritted teeth, bringing his hand down again.

“I’m sorry!!” Peter cried.

“There” Tony said. “You’ve had an apology now”

“He’s already apologised!”

Tony didn’t seem to be listening. Loki stood still for a moment, trying to think about things rationally. But another horrible smack, followed by the sight of his son howling and begging his father not to hurt him anymore was more than enough to make up his mind.

“Tony, stop it!” Loki grabbed Tony’s wrist. “You’re being too hard on him! It’s not that big a deal, and certainly not enough for you to be hurting him like this! Stop it now!!”

“He can take a few taps, Lolly” Tony said, but he let go of the boy.

Loki quickly moved Peter away from Tony, shielding him as he hugged him.

“Are you alright?! Be honest with me, honey”

Peter covered his mouth with his hand, keeping his eyes averted, sobbing. Loki hugged him tight, protectively, willing the boy to stop shaking. He glared at Tony over his shoulder.

“You’ve scared him, you bastard!” he all but shouted. “You can’t take out all your pent-up emotions on our little boy!”

“I’m not!” Tony protested. “I’m being a parent”

“You’re being a bully” Loki shot back. “Do you want him to go and live with Thor, is that it?”

“What are you going on about?”

“That’s what happened last time you didn’t think he was safe with you. If you don’t sort yourself out, he’ll have to go again”

“Lolly, darling, you’re tired. Let’s talk about this in the morning” Tony said awkwardly.

“No, let’s talk about it now” Loki said, sitting Peter down on the bed and turning to Tony properly. “I don’t care how much you want to deny it, we both know you’ve been horrible to Peter ever since you got those DNA test results”

“Are you surprised? It’s a lot to process!”

“I know it’s a lot to process! But that’s not a reason nor an excuse for you treating him so badly. I can’t be here all the time, and-”

“Loki, I’m not being horrible to him! He’s the one being a little nightmare!”

“He’s being fine!”

“He was going through your stuff!”

“And I was handling it! You didn’t need to barge in here and launch an attack, did you? You’ve hurt him multiple times since that appointment, and the scariest part is you seem to think it’s just discipline or something, or you’re just a very good actor. You can’t seem to see that there’s a difference between a firm smack and an absolute wallop like you’ve been dolling out”

“I haven’t been that harsh!” Tony insisted. “...Have I?”

“Who in their right mind would react to those results the way you have? Thank god our kid is the only one, if this is how you are”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You talked to that Asgard man?” Peter piped up nervously.

“Yes, I did, sweetheart, even though it put me at risk of bumping into all the other bastards up there, because you asked me to, and you needed to know. And so did I”

“...He’s really the only one?” Tony said, suddenly a lot calmer.

“Yes, and I’m bloody glad of it too, and not in the least because you’ve reacted so badly to this that I’m not sure I even trust you around him right now”

Tony didn’t say anything, but he looked shame-faced. Loki didn’t look any happier for it.

“You need to face up to this and start acting like a proper dad again. Your denial is doing no one any good, and your way of ‘processing’ your emotions is damaging us. But it’s starting to seem more and more unlikely that you’re ever going to accept this new reality, unless you’re forced to” he said. “And maybe doing that is a good idea”

Loki picked up his phone, checking the time. It was still fairly early. Good.

“What are you doing?” Tony said.

“Making you face up to this”

“You can’t do that!”

“Watch me”

Peter flinched at the struggle that followed. Part of him wanted to jump in and make it stop, but he felt like he’d already caused enough trouble for one day. Tony was no match for Loki anyway. Peter looked at them. Tony had ended up on his back, hands trapped by his sides, with Loki sat on top of him with one hand holding his phone, and the other over Tony’s mouth. Something about it seemed to be evidence of truce - or at least, something close to it.

“Hello, Marco, my love” Loki said. “Have you got a pen? Perfect. I’ve got a little something for our press release”

Tony tried to struggle and get Loki to stop, unsuccessfully. He looked over at Peter for help. Peter knew what that look meant, but there was no way he was going to jump to Tony’s aid, not after how hard he’d hit him. He flopped against Loki’s pillows and hid his face so Tony couldn’t throw any more signals at him.

“Word for word, darling, promise me that now. You can choose a little opening if need be, mind” Loki was saying. “Everything ready? Beautiful. So, this is what I was thinking” Loki cleared his throat. “Due to recent findings in our personal lives, my husband decided to carry out a paternity test on himself and our son, under the guidance of our General Practitioner. Having now had time to process the results, we are happy to announce to the general public the wonderful coincidence that our son, Peter, is also my husband Tony’s biological son. While shocked by the discovery, we still remain the same family of equal parents and child. We will not be available for interview and ask that our families privacy be respected during this time”

“Nice... Nice, beautiful” Peter heard Marco saying over the phone. “Great! Tony got anything to add?”

Loki paused, his hand still over Tony’s mouth. “Tony Stark is not available for comment”

#my writing #fanfiction #mcu fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #irondad and spiderson #frostiron #it's 5am but I write so seldom nowadays that keeping up with a writers kick literally means monthly all nighters #so here's an update!!! fucking finally

2 notes · View notes

hereyougo-flamingsword · 5 years

Text

iCarly AU: the Garden of Eden scene

You thought I was done with the iCarly AU? You thought WRONG.

Here is the scene in the garden of Eden, before the angel Benthiel was known as Freddie and before the demon Puck was known as Sam.

The garden of Eden was a pretty nice place to live, if you were the first humans ever to live on the planet Earth. Plenty to eat, plenty to drink, beautiful weather all year round…all things considered, it was well and truly paradise.

Until Eve ate from the forbidden tree, of course. And then shared it with Adam.

Which got them both kicked out of that paradise, AND severely punished for their transgressions.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Literally.

What isn’t widely known, however, or even widely CARED about, is that an angel and a demon watched them go, from atop the Eastern wall of Eden.

The angel and the demon were both much older than time, but the corporations that they wore in order to inhabit the physical plane were brand new, and they wore them uncomfortably—the demon had too many claws, the angel had too many eyes, and neither had any sort of concept of what a gender was. It was rather like wearing new clothes that hadn’t been broken in yet.

Regardless, there they stood, watching the humans blaze a new trail out into the shifting sands.

“Phew, what a mess,” noted the demon.

“…Huh?” said the angel.

“I said what I said. What a mess,” they said again.

“You’re a demon, right?” said the angel, looking them up and down, “I’m sure you LOVE messes.”

“Of COURSE I’m a demon, you idiot, who ELSE would be hanging around the garden of Eden right about now?” hissed the demon, sticking out their snake-like tongue.

The angel gasped. “Are YOU the one who tricked Eve into eating the apple?!”

The demon puffed out their chest, and flicked an errant golden lock of hair back in a display of pride. “Yep! Puck the demon, part-time serpent of Eden, at your service.”

“Benthiel,” said the angel stiffly, “Benthiel the angel. Except…NOT at your service.”

“Ooh, I see how it is, you only serve the Big Guy, don’t ya!”

Puck poked Benthiel in the face with one of their fingers, while said angel attempted to keep their composure.

“Stop it!” they finally scolded, swatting the hand away, “The humans’ exile from Eden is a SOLEMN time!!”

“Fine, fine, fuck ME for being a bit irreverent!” said Puck, smiling at the glare that Benthiel threw their way, “It’s only my JOB to be that way.”

“Or your NATURE,” said Benthiel scathingly.

Puck fell silent, scuffing the wall with the bottom of their clawed foot.

“You know, considering YOUR nature, I’m surprised you’re still talking to me,” Puck said, after a moment’s silence.

“What am I gonna do, ignore you? You’re making that pretty difficult,” Benthiel noted with a tiny smile.

“Well, I dunno. I’m a demon. I sort of thought you would…strike me down, flaming sword and all-“

Puck froze, looking back out at Adam’s retreating figure.

They squinted at the little spark of flame that he was holding like a weapon, and then back to a suddenly very uncomfortable, very unarmed Benthiel.

“You-y-you-“ Puck garbled in incredulity, “You GAVE it to them?!”

Benthiel nodded miserably.

“Wow. What did…y’know…” Puck pointed upward, “They say about that?”

“What God doesn’t know won’t hurt Them,” mumbled Benthiel.

Puck went slackjawed. “You…lied? To GOD?!”

“Aw, come on Puck, God cast them OUT!” Benthiel outbursted, “For just…eating from the wrong tree, that was SMACK DAB in the middle of their habitat! The least I could do, y’know, in sympathy for them getting tricked by a DEMON,” Benthiel sent a pointed look at Puck, “Was to give them something that would help them survive out there.”

Puck whistled low.

“Your secret is safe with me,” Puck said, slightly awed, “But holy shit.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel right now,” Benthiel trailed off, looking pointedly out to the horizon.

Puck followed their gaze.

“Y’know what, Benthiel?” Puck declared, “I bet…God WANTED this to happen.”

“What?”

“Well…like you said yourself,” Puck said airily, “Smack dab in the middle of their habitat. God must have KNOWN that it would only be a matter of time.”

“That’s-that’s BLASPHEMY!” Benthiel gasped.

“Duh! Demon! I LOOOOOVE blasphemy!” Puck said, pointing at themself with both of their corporation’s hands, AND a few extra hands that they had manifested to make a point.

“SPEAKING of blasphemy, by the way,” they continued, miracling away the extraneous limbs, “I bet you that God wanted you to give them your sword. They knew, I bet you, that the humans would die out there without it.”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Benthiel said, holding their temples in the Earth’s first iteration of a stress-induced migrane.

“Just sayin!” Puck said, in a sing-song way, “God’s plan.”

Benthiel rounded on Puck.

“It wasn’t God’s PLAN to have them eat from the tree, Puck, it was YOURS!” they declared, “You tricked her into eating it in the first place, right?”

Puck snorted. “I didn’t even TRICK her! She did it by her-“

They suddenly clapped a hand over their mouth.

Benthiel raised a slow, curious eyebrow.

Puck seemed to fight internally for a moment, and then sighed.

“I didn’t really…trick her into eating the fruit,” Puck admitted.

“What?” asked Benthiel, in genuine curiosity.

Puck flicked their eyes downwards. “I took credit for it, to get my boss off my back,” they whispered, “But it wasn’t even my idea.”

A silence, charged with crackling energy, fell between the two of them.

“What did you do?” asked Benthiel, in a hushed whisper.

“Well, I was PLANNING on playing the long game,” Puck explained, “You know how it is. Strike up a friendship with Eve, make her trust the friendly old garden snake, get her to turn her back on God, laugh maniacally all the way back to Hell. The works. But one of the first things she said to me was, and I quote, ‘I wanna eat from the forbidden tree.’”

Benthiel leaned forward, hanging onto Puck’s every word.

“So I played along, and said ‘nooo, don’t eat from the forbidden tree’ and she said ‘don’t tell me what to do, foul demon’ and then she ate from the forbidden tree!”

Benthiel blinked. That was…NOT what was sent in the company memo.

“I still don’t know if she knew I was a demon, or was just insulting me, or what!” Puck said, gesturing wildly, “But, either way, I am SO proud of her.”

They both looked out at the ever-shrinking humans, walking on toward the infinite horizon.

“That’s the thing that your side doesn’t really understand,” Puck said quietly, “Humans REALLY don’t like being told what to do. But it only takes a…subtle nudge to move them in the right direction. Or the wrong one.”

Benthiel stayed quiet, processing this new knowledge with a furrowed brow.

“You are…terrifyingly smart, Puck,” they concluded.

“Well thanks, angel,” smirked Puck, “I’ll be sure to use that intelligence to thwart the forces of good for all eternity.”

Benthiel rolled their eyes, but still extended their wing to shelter the demon as the first ever thunderstorm rolled in above them.

#icarly #good omens #i am actually serious about this AU

12 notes · View notes

san--jose--sharpedos · 6 years

Text

Danger Days Master Post

Happy March 22nd! I’m running a Danger Days based table top using the Atomic Highway system so I had to do a lot of research to figure out slang and world stuff! You may or may not have remembered me teasing this back in January (which was suppose to be out by the end of Jan but life sucks so lets dance but it’s better late than never!) I did a fuck ton of research for a game right now, so ill turn my hyper-fixation into a helpful guide for anyone hoping to write some fan fiction!

LOCATIONS

So locations are a little weird in this universe, we dont actually know the exact locations of places but we have a general idea about some.

Battery City

Zones (1-6 if during the music videos, 1-7 if set after the videos, Zone 7 was established after the videos and before the comics)

The Dinner - Fab 4 hide out

Wolfblood Beach, likely somewhere in Zone 1 close to Battery City since people are allowed to go there.

Neon District, either in Zone 1 or in Battery City

Mega Moon's Throttle bar, full of Wave-Head’s, likely somewhere deep into the zones

Hyper-Thrusts, some sort of store, carry “dust mouth”

Fuck You House, concert venu

Route Guano, highway, Kobra Kid and Jet Star are killed here in the album

Zone 55 - Brazil

Mega Moon’s Throttle Bar - Full of wave-heads

The Lobby - Slums of Battery City

The Nest - Ultra V’s hide out

DESTROYA is located here

Mailbox Shrine - Alter to dead

Phoenix Witch guides souls of masks here

Letters reach loved ones

B.L.I Headquaters

Gas n’ Gulp = Dr. D’s - radio station

L.A. Crater

Cherrri’s Home - Artifacts of Fab 4 located here

Gravel Gertle’s Orphanage

Zone 5 Carnival

Zone 3 Crater

The Tube - Battery city, reprograming

Zone 55 - Brazil

Retinal Resorts - BLI owned, “everyone is famous”

Slang

Oh boy is this a long one, let me know if I missed anything

Moterbabies- Kids on the run, survivors

Ghosted - Dead, killed

Bonus track - Look attractive

Crash Queen - Daredevil

Slaughtermatic - Loud, crazy (sound)

Microbursts - Small stuff

Dracs - Draculoids

Crows - S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W/

Exterminators - Highest level Dracs/S/A/R/E/C/R/O/W/

Dusted - Killed

Ritalin rats - Drug addicts

Wave-Heads - Radiation addicts

Shiny - Awesome

Clap - Fight

Fire fight - Fight with ray guns

Pig - Scarecrow operatives/poliece

Upthursts - Turn up

Tumbleweed - Person who wanders desert

Zaps - Laser blaster

Zone Rat - Lives in zones

Zonerunner/Zonehopper - Spends time in Zones

Costa Rica - Crazy or bad

Dust Angel - Zone runner

411- Info/update

Getaway Mile - Route Guano

BLI(/ind) - Better Living Industries

Flies - Tiny spy cameras

Carbons - Money

Hit the Red Line - Running away, usually going as fast as a car can go

The Individual - Ray gun

Rubberburner - Goes so fast it destroys tires

Graffiti Bible - Droid holy scripture

Radical tubes - Probably drugs?

Plus - Battery replenisher, addictive

Power Pup - Dog food, killjoys eat this

C.A.T. - Surveillance device, looks like an actual cat

Droids

Have emotions

Can become absolute

Turned to satellites

DESTROYA = God

Graffiti Bible

Types

Blue, 50 Carbons, Loving

Yellow, 150 Carbons, Passive

Orange, 250 Carbons, Aggressive

Purple, 500 Carbons, Fiesty

Green, 750 Carbons, Soothing

Red, 1000 Carbons, Fiery

Supernatural/Religious Figures

DESTROYA - God-like machine

Foretold to free droids in Graffiti Bible

Abandoned experiment by BLI

“Too large to manage”

Phoenix Witch

Representation of death

Zones divided on belief

Is real

Takes care of the dead through offerings of anything “close to the soul,” usually a mask, and guides a dead person to the proper destination (afterlife)

Collects from Mailbox Shrine and battlefields

History

The history is really weird and murky and can kinda change depending on the medium used, i did my best to piece this together in the most coherent way possible

Creation of BL/ind

Great fires of 2012

Rise of Bl/ind

Helium Wars - Texas destroyed

Analog Wars (2014-2015)

Dr. D lost legs

The Girl’s mother is killed

Pig Bomb (2017)

Events of videos (2019)

Events of comics (2029)

Battle of Utah (Unknown when it happened, so it can be placed wherever)

Brands/Logos

Clown logo (we know literally nothing about this)

Skull logo (we know literally nothing about this)

Cosmic Thrust - Sells “zone-tested radical tubes”

Dead Pegasus - Oil company

Electrokat - Likely sells batteries

Supa Stinga Exploders - Explosives

Mousekat - Cartoon from Batter City

Dr. Phizzles’s - Hair dye

Spider - Symbol for Fab 4

Better Living Logo

SCARECROW unit

Better Living Industries

Corporation, evil

Runs Battery City

Came into power bc of Great Fires of 2012

Monochromaticism

Employees

Draculoids

Masks sucks souls out

Lowest ranked - Rayguns

Eliminate threats

S/C/R/E/C/R/O/W/S

Highest ranked (Exterminator)

Eliminate threats

More advanced ray guns

Leader - The Director

Fact News - News program

Slogans

“The Aftermath is secondary”

“Everything is perfect”

“Keep smiling”

Products

Plus - Battery replenisher, addictive

Power Pup - Dog food, killjoys eat this

Air fresheners

Medication of the Month Club

C.A.T. - Surveillance device, looks like an actual cat

BL/ind Vending Machines

Fangs, 8 Carbons

KJ Replica Mask, 4 Carbons

Frankuloid Fun Toy, (Fun Ghoul’s mask but a toy), 10 Carbons

Motivational sticker, 2 Carbons

BLI-Sanctioned Raygun (the individual) - 50 Carbons

Cartoon Animal Stress Head, (Mousekat head), 20 Carbons

Plus, 80 Carbons

Yum-Duck Candies. 5 Carbons

Ammo, ?? Carbons

H20, ?? Carbons

Weapons, Devices & Other Items

Power Glove - Button activated

Used by Kobra Kid

Melee

Modified NES Power Glove

Ray Gun - Lasers

Ranged

White = Draculoids

Colorful = Killjoys

Modified NES Zapper

MP5 - Advanced lasers

Ranged

Used by S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W/S

Vend-A-Hack

Hacking device

Known to work on vending machines

Based on original model GBA

Flies - Tiny spy cameras

C.A.T. - Surveillance device

Looks like a cat

Sends messages to BL/ind

PTTP - Portable TV

1979-81 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. - Fab 4′s car,

Boombox

Holo-Phone

Inner-Internet

Dr.Phizzles’s Poison Red - Hair dye

Magazines

Shiny - Robot p()rn

Murder

Modern Exterminator

Blasters and Batteries

Radio Stations

WK’L 109 FMX

Host = Dr. D

JUNKPUNK

Host Benjamin Cyanide

Bands

Mad Gear and the Missile Kid

Massive/Awesome

Cold Dead Hands

BONUS!

Here’s a quick naming table I made for my game, it requires a D-20 to use!

#Danger Days #Killjoys #my chemical romance #MCR #Reference #the black parade #Bullets #three cheers for sweet revenge #MCRmy #Gerard Way #Ray Toro #Frank Iero #Mikey Way #March 22nd #Danger Days Master Post #I SPENT LITERAL MONTHS ON THIS SHIT #March 22

161 notes · View notes

duckbeater · 6 years

Text

Some Notes on A. S. Hamrah

A lifetime ago, I thought it’d be rewarding to teach A. S. Hamrah’s “A Better Moustrap” to first-year students struggling through their second semester of basic comp. I wanted to wow them with Hamrah’s heedless deployment of unsettling theses, argued crisply and irreverently, in an essay that supplies a plausible solution to its concerns (a rarity among most rhetorical appeals, whose authors left my students stimulated but empty-handed). Very in the vein of “A Modest Proposal,” “Mousetrap” confronts a social ill—fetish videos where women crush small animals to death under their Stilettos—yet proposes a non-ironic salve: “crushies,” where “the must-have plush-toys of the Christmas rush will be smashed underfoot.” Most of my course was based on weird internet shit, which I thought (I still think) mostly anyone can appreciate, especially the young. “Mousetrap” is full of that weird-internet-shit jouissance.

“Reading this is like eating your favorite food,” I told the class. “You’re just gonna shovel in ideas. They’re all delicious. Eh, they’re pretty weird, too. But it’ll be fun.” It wasn’t fun. Nobody read the essay. Moving through its arguments, in front of twenty-five nineteen-year-olds and a few grandmothers, was embarrassing. I had to dissect Hamrah’s great takes on crush video culture, his movements through film history, his appraisals of Mickey Rooney, then his wider and, to me, scintillating prognostications on American adulthood—an adulthood most everyone in the classroom (accepting the grannies) was soon to inherit—totally alone. “Do you watch these videos?” one student asked. “Then what’s your fetish?” asked another. “Bryson fucks books!” became the consensus. (“I fuck your dads!” I thankfully did not say but very much wanted to. I was a coward; this partially explains why no one bothered to complete my assignments.)

Flying solo—or falling sans parachute, as the case may be—through Hamrah’s film criticism and cultural reportage of the last decade has probably been a shared experience among his far-flung admirers. Finding his byline in Bookforum or the obscure domain of the International Federation of Film Critics or mirrored pages from the defunct Hermenaut was usually the result of a periodic Google search. If he appears more regularly now, and more regularly in prestige venues, that’s the fault of n+1, where he’s contributed reviews tri-quarterly since roughly 2008.

Indeed, it was Hamrah’s initial, online-only contribution that inspired so much ardor and devotion. “Oscars Previews” provided bright, bursting capsules—the gleeful bitchery of a best friend's phone call. Apparently this quality was transliterated from its material creation, when he reported the piece to his editor, Keith Gessen, over a phone, after complaining he didn’t have time to write the thing. Each entry in this salvo (none are more than a hundred or so words) lands with a zinger. They have the polish of a joke, featuring a setup, some reinforcement and then a payoff. He even plays some of his capsules against each other as callbacks. The entirety of Hamrah’s entry on Michael Clayton reads: “There was a lot of driving in Michael Clayton. I like driving in movies but after a while Michael Clayton started to seem like a car ad—though it showed how a car ad can be liberal. That’s a message for our times.” The wit is authoritative, hypnotic, dismissive. The taste behind these pronouncements felt sui generis, and the criticisms brief enough to be dispatched verbatim without attribution. I was a senior in college when I first read Hamrah. I had a busy season of parties at professor’s houses and dined-out on his opinions for weeks.

This is not to say Hamrah only works when you’re young and grasping for style. But I do think it’s evident now that his short forms are the seedbed for his long form successes, paper sketches for the larger canvas. When you read enough of Hamrah’s capsule reviews, you get the sense he’s reporting exactly (or only) what fits into his little joke, sometimes you can even hear him reaching for his beats. When you read a whole book of them, you get the sense Hamrah’s less interested in the works under review than in his performance of reviews, his performance of freedom and audacity.

—

The Earth Dies Streaming, apart from film writing, is a log of Hamrah’s fascination with his persona, his brand of humor and arch sensibilities. He’s not exactly a curmudgeon—he wants readers to know he’s tried too many drugs to be a curmudgeon (comparisons to acid trips crop up, as does “bad speed”)—and he’s not exactly an academic (despite his Ivy League bona fides as a corporate semiotician)—and he’s not even a movie reviewer in the jejune, crass, sell-out way so many movie reviewer must be in today’s enfeebled, saturated, and deeply compromised market (he tries “to never include anything in [his] writing that could be extracted and used for publicity”). This is where I trot out a gif of Amy Poehler playing a Cool Mom in Mean Girls. Hamrah’s bobblehead offers virgin daiquiris to teenage cineastes. “I’m not like a regular film critic,” he says, “I’m a cool film critic.” The tits, the wink, the velour sweatsuit.

Other irritations. Hamrah’s insistence on the inferiority of animated films and his churlish dismissal of Miyazaki’s contributions to the medium’s history. He’s always on accident catching some part of a children’s movie—on an airplane, in a public clinic—and using these unsatisfactory experiences to comment on the aesthetics and advancements of animation at large. It’s a hobby horse he flays as often as Adorno assaulted jazz, and (to both their credits), slightly adorable for how insistent and under-thought. If only, as he does in “Jessica Biel’s Hand,” he would immerse himself in the backlog of lauded animation from this century and the last, he might, for once, be able to say something interesting about it.

Hamrah’s stance against feature-length animation is nearly as looming and placeless as his stance against other films critics, whom he evidently reads closely but can never be bothered to cite. His essays are peppered with a dreaded sea of bought-off weekly reviewers whose pedestrian tastes frustrate him. This, despite the regularly insightful, playful, and overall helpful criticism of David Edelstein and Emily Yoshida at New York; Dana Stevens at Slate; Manhola Darghis at the Times; Justin Chang in Los Angeles; and the fairly dour takes of Peter Debruge in the industry’s digest, Variety. Hamrah alludes to David Denby’s work in Streaming’s introduction, then names him outright in a later capsule review of Little Children. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine as to with what critical consensus Hamrah finds his views out of alignment. These are critics and journalists who, obliged by deadlines, report weekly on their film-going habits. That they have new things to say even once a month is a miracle, but that they do so four to ten times a month is frankly incredible. (It must be evident that I’m a fan of movie reviews and film criticism. I work an office job where between menials I find intense delight and distraction in the work of daily reviewers, and I carry around with me an ungainly amount of knowledge regarding box office performances and future releases that in all other ways I have no interaction: I go to the movies maybe three times a month, often by myself, and often I see low-brow flicks. Last weekend I saw the third How to Train Your Dragon movie; the weekend before that, Isn’t It Romantic; a weekend before that, Roma. I saw these movies on the advice of daily reviewers, and Roma only after reading Caleb Crain’s celebration of it.)

I volunteer Richard Brody and Christian Lorentzen as Hamrah’s contemporary intellectual kin, with caveats. Brody’s work is too mystical, too mythical to properly critique his subjects, and his symptomatic readings, which border on the Lacanian in terms of the extraneous and deranged, become hulking apertures that always overtake whatever work is under discussion, squashing them. Also he is never, ever funny in his reviews. Brody is a curmudgeon, and what he criticizes rarely appears in the films themselves but float around the films’ receptions, financing or forebears, and when he ventures into specifics—a film’s lensing, its sound, the actors and their acting styles—his descriptions become ridiculous. Lorentzen, as with his book reviews, writes to a word count. (There is no other reason for the amount of tedious plot summary in a Lorentzen take-down.) If Hamrah sounds like these critics, it may be because all three are careful in their dissents to let the filmmakers know they think they’re complete assholes. When these three do find praise for a work, it’s the entirely appropriate object of adoration, art-house and independent, or, gotcha!, a studio event they appreciate for more correct, more interesting, and more nuanced reasons than everyone else.

What sets these critics apart from the daily reviewers I listed above, may be the daily reviewers’ capacity to surprise and be surprised. Perhaps they saw a movie with a daughter and her friend; they appreciated a family flick in context; they were caught unawares by stray scenes in a larger, unsuccessful work, and appreciated glimpsed wisdom. They have hope yet for a return to better forms. These reviewers are flexible and receptive; they are as likely to be charmed as they are to be chagrined. Even when Brody, Lorentzen and Hamrah are surprised by the quality of a work, they take it as an affront to their sensibilities and bridle, like horses suspicious of an open gate. Why were they not warned? Why should they trust this development? Their reflexive, ingrained annoyance, occasionally flowering into high dudgeon, fills their actual reviews with foregone conclusions. One does not visit their writing for news, or for new takes, for synthesized connections, or revelations of form. One visits for the comforting familiarity of a flagging standard—“a continuity of aesthetics that [has] become an aesthetics of continuity,” if I’m remembering the St Aubyn phrase correctly.

Criticism this entrenched in its own personality ends up toothless. It’s why Renata Adler, for instance, will be remembered for her reporting and not her film criticism. Despite its bite—and it’s quite biting—it rarely leaves a mark. Hamrah never cites Adler—nor do I think he will. His prose and her prose are rather too alike. He must sense the comparison coming, and dislike it, because Adler is not particularly well informed on film and filmmaking. Her amateurish moonlighting grated in 1968, and it grates now, but only for its prosumer-level expertise. Her prose (like Hamrah’s) remains indelible, deadpan, and addictive. When I recall the subhead to Kyle Paoletta’s appreciation of Hamrah, “Always On: A. S. Hamrah’s film criticism is a welcome corrective in an outmoded field,” I consider Adler’s own attempts at the form, as a corrective. And I find them contiguous with other platforms discussing same, places like Slate, Twitter, and The Ringer’s Exit Survey, which preempts the leap from hot take to tweet. (Q: “What is your tweet-length review of Venom?” A: “What if All of Me (1984) but action and also tater tot–loving aliens?”) What I’m saying is this: Hamrah’s form is not novel. His tone is not novel. His writing is, however, very convenient (brief, digestible) and entertaining, and he’s been adding more personal atmosphere of late.

So the named lodestars in Hamrah’s critical firmament: Pauline Kael, Susan Sontag, Jonathan Rosenbaum, J. Hoberman and Manny Farber (to whom Hamrah pens an exceptionally sweet and informative essay). Hoberman, the only critic still alive among these titans, shares Hamrah’s acid tongue and penchant for political excavations, while doing his readers a courtesy by assuming not all of them attend film festivals or live in limited-release area codes. The same semester I taught “A Better Mousetrap,” I taught Sontag on sci-fi movies and Hoberman’s seminal “21st Century Cinema: Death and Resurrection in the Desert of the (New) Real” (later to become his book-length essay, Film After Film). Hoberman can be as tart and irreverent as Hamrah, but he’s not above recounting plot summaries. He’s both a guide and a rebel. I suppose, following my own argument, if in fact I’m making one, this makes Hoberman the better critic—a classification that would not hurt Hamrah’s feelings. (This would hurt very few film critics’ feelings.)

—

Very little of the above matters. I had hoped to answer why, then I got bored (then I had to go to work; after that, I had to design a booth for a marketing expo in London; then I lost the thread). When I was in Brooklyn last December, I dropped into the Spoonbill on Montrose. The first book I bought on my second time in New York City was Hamrah’s The Earth Dies Streaming, and I carried it about like an obsessive as I made my way by foot to Prospect Park. I devoured it in a few days. I devoured it again on the plane ride back to Chicago. And I’ve read all the capsules before, and most of the essays—they’re usually posted in front of paywalls. If I quibble with Hamrah, it may be because he’s made me a better writer, and surely a better thinker, yet I found that I disliked my own dismissiveness and superiority, my own rigidity. If I can name my influences, I thought, I can break from them. But this is unso.

5 notes · View notes

eledritch · 6 years

Note

So reading all of you amazing works as well as following the content of other lovely Sheith shippers has inspired to finally write some fan fiction and contribute too! It’s been literal years since I’ve written anything though, and of course the story that got me really excited is going to have to be a multi chapter monster. As the master of long and complex fanfics, any advice for beginners?

Good!! I believe in you.

Sure, why the heck not :’) been awhile since I made a big writing tips post and I feel like I have some new things to offer since the last one. I don’t know if your fic is gonna be an AU or canon-compliant, but since my specialty is long and complex multichapter AUs, this is mainly gonna be about that.

First, you can check out my ‘writing tips’ tag for my own tips and tips from others on tumblr: http://saltyshiro.tumblr.com/tagged/writing-tips

The most important advice I can give to you as a writer is to READ. I don’t read nearly as much as I used to, but I still try to when I can. Reading was what gave me the inspiration and knowledge I needed for worldbuilding, which is a vital part of not just AUs, but any long and complex fic. You need to be confident about writing the world you’ve stuck your characters in. You have to know that world better than anyone.

More often than not, books aimed at children actually have better worldbuilding than books for adults. There are exceptions to this (a lot of sci-fi, like Dune & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, for example, as well as dystopian fiction like The Handmaid’s Tale), but some of my favorite worlds remain those from children’s books. They include:

The Ever After in the May Bird & the Ever After series

The absurdist and time-period defiant world where anything goes (as long as it’s unfortunate) of A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Other World in Coraline & London Below Gaiman’s adult fantasy novel Neverwhere

The world populated by various small animals like mice, rats, and squirrels in Redwall by Brian Jacques

The medieval kingdoms of Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

The eerie surrealist circus world of The Palace of Laughter by Jon Berkeley

I’m also currently working my way through the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, which is some INCREDIBLE worldbuilding in a high fantasy setting.

So what do all of these have in common? Well, contrary to popular belief, I don’t think you have to go Full Tolkien and write a brand new language as well as six thousand maps for your world. Nope. None of that is required. All that is required is that you LOVE the world you created. Love the heck out of it. Even if it’s a shitty world. Doesn’t matter. It’s YOUR shitty world.

The more you love this world of yours, the more you’re gonna want to write about it, and the more reluctant you will be to let yourself drop the project. The pitfall many fanfic writers (and writers in general) fall into when writing long works is that they get burnt out and tired of their own story. You can’t get tired of your story if you keep adding to the world and finding new things to love and explore within it.

Worldbuilding reflects onto your characters, too - people are in many ways a product of their surroundings, after all. If your world is shitty, then your characters might end up a little shitty, too. But - and here’s the clever thing about this - because you love your world so much, and because your characters are an integral part of that world (they should be, if they’re your protagonist/villain/etc), you end up loving your characters, too. It feels like a betrayal if you stop writing their stories, and the world you’ve created should at this point feel almost like a real place, albeit within your head and your imagination. And when that happens, writing about your world and characters doesn’t feel like a chore or an obligation anymore. It feels like an adventure.

That being said, human brains have limits and it shouldn’t ALL exist in your head. You gotta take notes, do some doodles and simple maps if you’re into that, and also use resources made specifically to organize worldbuilding. I tend to just use good ol’ fashioned pencil and paper, but I’ve heard this tool is pretty good for digital organization:

https://www.notebook.ai/

Additionally, don’t be afraid to uh....“borrow” from other worlds that have been made before. The sooner you understand that everyone kinda steals (respectfully) from everyone (i.e. the lion king is hamlet; romeo and juliet is heavily inspired by the greek myth of pyramus and thisbe), the better off you’re gonna be in worldbuilding. You can, and unavoidably will, use worlds you’ve read about and/or experienced in the past in your own worldbuilding. It becomes a patchwork of your own, and once you have a base for your world, it becomes increasingly easy to add onto it and expand with more original ideas.

It can also be helpful to do a ton of research. Say you want your world to somewhat resemble Victorian England. How are you gonna know what that was like? Watch movies set in Victorian England to understand the aesthetic and speech. Watch documentaries to get a more factual basis. Read books set in Victorian England for the language and the societal ideas. Go on a Wikipedia or Google deep dive - almost always, you will end up in a much more interesting place than you expected. Listening to music can also be super helpful to get into a particular tone you want to see in your world, or can help you find the tone if you’re not sure what you want yet. I have playlists for most of my stories.

And, finally, understand that there’s always room for growth. I know my worldbuilding can be better than it is, so with every new story, I strive to make a more vibrant, vivid, lovable world than before. And guess what? Usually, not only does it work, but I also enjoy myself while writing more.

The key to long and complex fics is genuinely enjoying what you’re writing. You may be able to bullshit and slog your way through a shorter fic, but not a 200k monster. Another important key - know where your story is going to end up.

You need a goal to work towards. Maybe it’s a scene you’ve been wanting to write since you came up with the story. It doesn’t have to be the ending, but it helps if it is. You should know the ending by at least the middle of the story. I’m pretty sure I’ve written stories where that wasn’t the case and I was just flying by the seat of my pants, seeing where my world and characters took me next...which is a valid way to approach writing, but riskier, and ultimately rather frustrating when writing fics since you can’t exactly go back and insert foreshadowing for the ending you didn’t know was coming, lol.

I find late-night brainstorms best for figuring out how I want to end stories. I’ll open up a word doc, think for a good while, and then just start typing. Type it out stream of consciousness style. It doesn’t need to be a good explanation of the events, it just has to be an explanation. (This is also helpful in long stories for writing down reoccuring elements you don’t want to forget, such as slang, societal titles, a promise a character made to another than they really need to bring up again sometime...)

For example, here is my stream of consciousness brain-spew for my fic Seal It With A Kiss (this did not all end up happening quite like this, but here it is, warning for nsfw mentions lmao):

Witch Classes: Apprentice, novice, journeyman, master/magus, archmagus

The Wastes – western desert wasteland, Keith is from Blackwater, three days’ ride from the Citadel. It’s bordered by the River Acheron to the west, on the other side of which are the lands where Keith’s father lived with his first wife. The ocean is to the north, with the island of Cobao directly south of the Citadel.

The Citadel – centrally located, perched among Asphodel Peaks, near the lowland Oscuran Woods. Capital, Altea City, is three days’ ride to the east. Shiro’s grandparents live to the south on the shores of Lake Lucanus, a major fishing outpost bordered by the Dalterion Swamplands to the south.

THE VOID: mysterious dimension (or entity?) accidentally opened by witches eons ago (oops), which created Hell and unleashed demons/monsters/old gods (Voidborn). It is made up of what witches call infernal magic – a powerful and supposedly corrupted/corrupting form of quintessence. The Void is largely unknown and inaccessible to humans. Few return, and those who do are always changed by it.

HELL: Thought to be a reflection of the Void on a more physical/less abstract plane. Hell is made up of many pocket realms, including Daibazaal (one of the largest, ruled by the Galra), and Stratonikeia (ruled by Hecate). It is populated by Voidborn, who carve out sections of it for themselves in warlord-esque fashion.

Neither Hell nor the Void are inherently “evil,” though most witches consider them so, and they are dangerous. While the most well-established Voidborn rule with law and order, many other parts are lawless chaos centered around power struggles, and all Voidborn are morally gray to an extent.

VOIDBORN: Despite their vast differences, all Voidborn derive power from human souls & quintessence. Often generalized as demons, Voidborn are secular beings with no “holy” counterpart (i.e. angels), however, they come in many forms:

SPECTERS: generally the weakest Voidborn, they lack corporeal form and often “haunt” areas with histories of death, grief, and bloodshed, frightening humans and feeding off of their fear.

MONSTERS: a large and varied group of Voidborn, not as intelligent nor powerful as demons. They are the mostly likely to directly attack/kill/eat humans and are often hunted, with trophies of their heads displayed outside remote villages to ward off other monsters.

OLD GODS: a more rare group which often overlaps with greater demons; old gods can be benevolent if appeased (i.e. through ritual sacrifice, favors, offerings, worship, etc). They define territories for themselves and over time can become deified by local peoples, since old gods have been known to protect their lands and the people within them in exchange for worship.

LESSER DEMONS: more intelligent than monsters but less powerful than greater demons and old gods, they often rely on contracts and trickery to get their way. They are known to be petty, cruel, and ugly.

GREATER DEMONS: highly intelligent and powerful, they are dangerous beings who chiefly use contracts, torture, manipulation, and possession to take power from souls, which they crave more than any other Voidborn.

*Haggar has been cloaking Keith from Krolia so she cannot find her son since Keith went to the Citadel*

Shiro was captured by Haggar, who experimented on him (gave him the arm, which is powered by infernal energy/Void quintessence and began to corrupt his soul/erode it) and used him as a gladiator, until she managed to capture and slay Kurobasanir, whose quintessence she combined with the remnants of Shiro’s soul. His soulless, empty body was left to fight in the arena as a kind of robotic killing machine, while Shiro’s self became entangled with Kurobasanir. Because Kurobasanir was dead but Shiro was alive and so determined to stay alive, Shiro’s soul (primed with the Void energy which allowed him to stand up against Kuro) took control, though he gained Kurobasanir’s memories, abilities, and personality, while losing/forgetting his own. However as time passes with Keith, Shiro’s subconscious (ironically the only part of him which is still conscious/knows who he is) begins to break through, making him more ‘human’ as he starts to remember who he is/have doubts that he is really Kurobasanir.

He is unable to shift into any other human but Shiro, falls in love with Keith (demons are supposedly incapable of love), experiences sudden surges of emotion/nostalgia and feels protective towards Shiro’s family/horse/possessions/etc, is mostly unaffected by spells that should exorcise or defeat demons, and acts differently than the original Kurobasanir according to the late incubus’s friends. Because Kurobasanir was a sadist, but Shiro is not, so when he fucks Keith in front of the other demons, they know something’s up because he’s not hurting Keith at all.

What he doesn’t remember/know, though, is that this whole thing is a trap set by Haggar in order to lure Keith, who is a cambion (half demon, half human) to her so she can experiment on him in her quest to gain immortality so she can stay with Zarkon forever without surrendering her soul/turn her own soul into a demon’s essence. Because cambion, once mature, are effectively immortal and have a soul, while still retaining dormant Void magic within them which allows for their immortality and more demonic qualities. They are also extremely rare, and Haggar only knows of Keith because Hekate (Krolia) was her mentor and mentioned him.

So when Keith and Shiro go to find Shiro at the Samhain Tourney, Keith sees Shiro’s soulless body fighting and goes to break him out of his cell in the intermission; Shiro, not recognizing him/caring about him/trained to kill on sight tries to kill him, Keith is horrified and unable to bring himself to hurt Shiro, so he is saved by Kurobasanir, who realizes the situation fully once he comes face to face with the body that was once his, realizing his (Shiro’s) soul has been transferred into the incubus’s.

Before he can tell Keith this, though, Keith is captured by Haggar (who he recognizes as Honerva) and the two are separated. Keith cries alone in his cell, thinking Shiro is gone for good and also thinking Kurobasanir betrayed him and/or will be killed or tortured, leaving him utterly alone again. Lots of time passes and Keith realizes Haggar is trying to break the bond between him and Kurobasanir, because they’re both trapped and the contract must be sealed via sex. So Keith is in agony (and very very horny) because he can’t touch Shiro, and the contract is on the verge of breaking (and causing a great deal of pain and harm to both of them, since it was broken against their will) when Hekate/Krolia shows up, kicks BUTT, and bc she’s Mom of the Year, rescues Keith and brings him to Shiro while explaining on the way what happened. She also mentions that Keith’s father left because he was fulfilling the contract Hekate had with him, which was that because he was infertile she would bear him a “human” son (Keith), who would be blessed by her and live a happy/prosperous life, but in exchange Keith’s dad would only get sixteen years with his son, and then Hecate would take his soul.

As it turns out, though, Hekate/Krolia grew pretty darn fond of Keith’s dad (he’s a human teddy bear hedge mage unfazed by demons, what’s not to love), so he’s just chilling in Hell with her and had planned to come back and tell Keith the whole story, but when he returned Keith had gone off to the Citadel & Haggar was hiding Keith from Hecate.

So Keith and Shiro reunite and they’re so desperate for each other that they basically end up fucking while escaping (Keith is VERY EMBARRASSED but Krolia is like boi I am the mistress of dark magic, I don’t care, get that demon dick, proud of u son. Plus Shiro does his best to hide Things), cue a very wild scene in which both Keith and Shiro are kicking ass while fucking, since Shiro has regained his powers and Keith is Restored By The Power of Shiro’s Dick. Amen. Hallelujah.

Thankfully they finish up by the time they find the Holts, who were being forced to do alchemy stuff in Haggar’s lab. Haggar’s druids attack them, but Keith, who has read up on Honerva’s magic/theories, and Krolia, who mentored Honerva and is now pissed at her bc she tried to use Krolia’s son for her experiments, defeat the druids and are about to destroy Haggar’s research. Then Haggar bursts in, and in a desperate attempt to save her life’s work tells Keith that she can separate Shiro’s soul from Kurobasanir if he spares her/her work. Shiro is actually the one who hesitates, since he thinks Keith deserves much better than him and should have him fully human, as he appeared in their future together. But Keith has made up his mind – he loves Shiro in any and every form, and he’s done with Haggar’s shit. Furious at the thought of what she did to Shiro and planned to do to him, Keith’s magic creates a massive explosion which destroys the lab as Krolia uses one of Haggar’s traveling crystals to take them all away from Daibazaal.

Krolia takes them to her realm of Stratonikeia, a much more chill part of Hell. Because it’s Samhain and everyone is partying, Hecate’s palace is hectic and full of drunk demons and debauchery bc demons just wanna have fun, okay? Krolia makes sure the Holts are given safe accomodations so they can rest up and receive treatment before returning home. Meanwhile, Keith and Shiro are very shaken and Keith is weak from using so much magic to destroy Haggar and her lab. He and Shiro manage to escape the party and get to a balcony or something, where Shiro tearfully apologizes for everything, saying he understands if Keith wants to break ties after their contract is over, and that he wishes it didn’t have to end like this. Keith is quiet, then tells him that nothing is ending, pointing out that apparently he’s also immortal, and that technically Shiro gets his immortal soul in return for completing the contract. Shiro misunderstands, panicking and assuring Keith he will not take his soul and will leave him alone, but Keith cups his face and says he wants Shiro to have him forever, because he loves him, and never stopped loving him. Disbelieving but hopeful, Shiro embraces him gently, and when they kiss Keith begins to show his demonic characteristics (little horns, glowing eyes, tail, reddish scales).

Epilogue – Keith and Shiro get married. In Hell. It’s beautiful. They also have the most romantic, tender, kinky demon/cambion sex ever. They’re in love and together forever :’))

I hope that helps, dear!! Best of luck in your writing endeavors.

#ask me things #writing tips #siwak #writing #worldbuilding #Anonymous

36 notes · View notes

michaelandy101-blog · 3 years

Text

20 of the Greatest Infographic Examples to Encourage Your Subsequent Design

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/20-of-the-best-infographic-examples-to-inspire-your-next-design/

20 of the Greatest Infographic Examples to Encourage Your Subsequent Design

There’s rather a lot to love about well-designed infographics — whether or not it’s the attractive typography, concise messaging, intelligent layouts, or daring graphics.

To not point out that folks retain 65% of information passed along with an image in comparison with solely 10% after they hearken to the identical piece of data.

Because the fourth most-used sort of content material marketing, infographics pop up in all places — from social media posts to whitepapers. However do not be fooled. They require simply as a lot strategic considering as a weblog submit or video.

But, as this record of one of the best infographic examples exhibits, the hassle is worth it. Including them to your marketing technique can increase web traffic by 12% and assist you keep aggressive within the B2B crowd, the place 65% of marketers use infographics.

Fortunately, there are quite a few sources to create lovely infographics of your personal.

To assist encourage your subsequent visible creation, listed below are a handful of beautiful branded infographics to kickstart your creativity.

Greatest Infographic Examples to Get Impressed

Easy Infographic Examples

1. 10 Records You Can Break Working From Home, by ChairOffice

Though it’s important to finish your duties and stay productive whereas working from dwelling, many staff usually discover themselves working too exhausting with none breaks.

This good, but easy infographic from ChairOffice accommodates 10 world information you possibly can try as you’re taking mandatory breaks from work.

With vibrant colours, animated characters, and textual content, this infographic shares a easy message: take breaks. Who is aware of? You may be breaking a world file.

2. A Simple Guide to Shooting Video By Yourself, by Spielcreative

Though 86% of businesses use movies as a part of their marketing technique, only some get it proper.

Whether or not it’s background noises, poor lighting, or another distraction, the movies don’t normally come out the suitable means.

This infographic from Spielcreative gives ideas you’d have to create unbelievable movies all by your self.

Using easy graphics and arrow pointers makes the visualization straightforward to comply with and perceive. You additionally don’t must pressure your eyes to learn the textual content, because it’s large enough to learn from afar.

three. A Purposeful Life, by Studio Patten

This free infographic from Studio Patten collects completely different survey outcomes regarding residing a purposeful life and presents the information with visually interesting charts.

Though the subject of a purposeful life may be a deep one, this infographic does an ideal job of presenting the knowledge merely.

There’s additionally a pleasant steadiness between using textual content and information visualization components.

four. The Most and Least Bike-Friendly Cities In America, by Tower Electrical Bikes

Realizing whether or not a metropolis is bike-friendly or not is an element cyclists contemplate when shifting.

Naturally, questions in regards to the metropolis’s bike lanes, bicycle owner fatality charges, and the variety of individuals utilizing bikes would come up in a bicycle owner’s thoughts. Tower Electrical Bikes solutions these questions utilizing this easy infographic.

To make sense of the infographic, Tower Electrical Bikes used colour gradation (going from inexperienced to purple) to assist its viewers of cyclists perceive how pleasant the completely different cities in america are.

Cyclists can have a look and inform they’d have to keep away from the Los Angeles areas in the event that they need to take pleasure in sunny days out on their bikes.

5. How to Enjoy Studying, by IvyPanda

Learning doesn’t all the time must be a chore. IvyPanda created this glorious infographic design to assist college students take pleasure in finding out as a substitute of feeling burned out or turning to social media due to boredom.

Using brilliant colours and minimalist animated design is good from IvyPanda.

Enterprise Infographic Examples

6. How SMB Sales Teams Are Keeping Up in 2020, by Zendesk

Everyone knows 2020 led to huge adjustments in the best way we work, purchase, and luxuriate in leisure time. However this infographic by Zendesk hones in on a particular group (SMB gross sales groups) to indicate how they sustain with the occasions.

Via research-backed information, clear visuals, and concise copy, the principle level comes throughout crystal clear: Know prospects’ expectations to satisfy them the place they’re.

This infographic does a superb job following one theme, from begin to end. Readers can reply “What is the level?” throughout the first few sentences — a greatest apply, in response to CoSchedule.

This helps focus your infographic and avoids cramming an excessive amount of info into one piece, which is why Zendesk flowed from the analysis and stats to how SMB gross sales groups undertake new expertise to maintain up.

It even contains the advantages of CRM technology, like a 52% improve in productiveness from gross sales reps. In fact, the advantages align with the customer support software program Zendesk gives, making the infographic a very good gross sales device for its staff.

7. Content Marketing in Times of Uncertainty, by LinkedIn

Greater than eight out of 10 individuals need manufacturers to behave as a information supply in unsure occasions, foster a way of neighborhood, and supply instructional sources. Whew.

As a content material marketer, these are important expectations to reside as much as. LinkedIn realized the altering world panorama would alter buyer expectations and, consequently, content material marketing methods. So the staff put collectively this useful infographic to assist entrepreneurs give attention to what issues most.

This infographic instance options a number of design components from LinkedIn’s present model. The graphics adhere to its major and complementary colour scheme, embody numerous illustrations, and relate to the work-from-home occasions.

It additionally makes use of colour block banners so as to add visible curiosity and break up chunks of textual content. However my favourite half? The ruler graphic on tips on how to measure ROI and present why your efforts are worthwhile.

eight. How to Be Productive While Working From Home, by Bannersnack

Working from dwelling is not the pajama occasion many individuals (used to) think about. As workplaces closed and thousands and thousands turned eating tables into dwelling workplace areas, Bannersnack created this infographic to assist its staff transition to a unique means of working. As a freelancer working remotely for the previous 5 years, I discovered it stuffed with sensible ideas and invaluable instruments.

Past important components like model colours, Bannersnack contains info individuals can instantly put to make use of. Whereas it is simple to remain planted in your sofa all day, Bannersnack recommends discovering a number of workspaces for various duties — an inspirational spot for inventive considering and one other for deep work and crunched deadlines.

Ideas like this will appear small as soon as you have been working remotely for some time, however for newcomers, it is one much less factor you must be taught whereas adjusting to a unique routine.

9. 45 Slack Tricks That Will Impress Your Boss, by Internet Credit score

A device as highly effective as Slack has many options most individuals won’t ever use, but this infographic makes it straightforward to seem like the cool “Slack-er” on the firm even in the event you’ve solely mastered the /giphy shortcut till now.

Internet Credit score begins with a handful of stats to tell readers and provides an concept of Slack’s scope. Who knew individuals spend 50 million hours on the platform in one week? I am intrigued and need to hold studying.

As you scroll down the graphic, you see a mix of direct headlines “Read Channel Highlight” adopted by textual content directions and visible cues. As a visible learner, I recognize how these cues mirror the precise interface.

Every part is organized that can assist you discover what you are on the lookout for, whether or not it is “#channel” or “message” ideas. Finance could also be Internet Credit score’s bread and butter, however this infographic exhibits how its staff is adaptable and useful — precisely what you need in a monetary companion.

10. How Bad Data Affects Businesses, TD Insights

A foul egg spoils the entire bunch, however what impact does unhealthy information have on companies? TD Insights solutions that query with this glorious infographic design.

Using distinction makes this infographic visually interesting. Any reader can shortly determine the principle themes and factors of the design due to the inventive use of various fonts.

Timeline Infographic Examples

11. Tech’s Bizarre Beginnings & Lucrative Pivots, by Visible Capitalist

The great thing about infographics? They can be utilized by dozens of industries for lots of of various functions. However one of the best ones are sometimes surprising.

Take this graphic designed by Visible Capitalist. It reveals the wild origin tales of a few of the largest tech corporations in the present day. I had no concept YouTube started as a video courting web site with the tagline “Tune In. Hook Up.”

As a rising online publication that focuses on information and expertise information, Visible Capitalist’s viewers is probably going interested by tales round firm pivots that led to success.

That info, coupled with a easy timeline construction, enjoyable graphics, and hard-hitting metrics, makes it powerful to look away from this infographic. Plus, all of us want reminders that it isn’t the place you begin however the place you are going.

12. Power Shifts, Studio Patten

America is a robust nation, however that wasn’t the case centuries in the past.

On this infographic, Studio Patten takes us on a journey by means of the years that present probably the most highly effective nations at completely different occasions in historical past.

This infographic is straightforward, but it surely additionally makes use of inventive photos and textual content to offer a historical past lesson.

13. The Evolution of US Vaccines, by Janet Haniak

People have been preventing ailments and pandemics lengthy earlier than COVID-19. Right here is among the many infographics that make it straightforward to study previous vaccines created to fight these ailments.

Using real-life photos as a substitute of cartoon characters makes this infographic extra plausible. As an alternative of complicating the infographic, the designer made the timeline seem on a single line, with the notable occasion branching out of that line.

14. The Journey of Oprah Winfrey, by Blue Mail Media

Oprah Winfrey is among the strongest ladies alive in the present day. However do you know she grew up in a poverty-stricken household and had a tricky childhood?

This infographic from Blue Mail Media permits us to look into Oprah’s formative years and the way she grew to grow to be who she is in the present day.

Though this infographic has a distinguished blue background, the opposite brilliant colours make partaking with it straightforward. The quote breaks additionally add character to the infographic.

15. Apple History Timeline, by Viziononline

Apple is the topic of this inventive infographic created by Viziononline, and why not? Apple is among the largest companies on the earth. Actually, you’re probably studying this text in your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

However was Apple all the time this huge?

With one look, a reader can inform that this visualization is about Apple due to the completely different merchandise that seem all through the infographic.

Interactive Infographic Examples

16. Response to COVID-19, by the usFood and Drug Administration

It would not be a 2021 round-up with out mentioning the worldwide pandemic that stored many people at dwelling for months. The intense spot? There are infographics galore educating individuals on tips on how to wash their palms and social distance correctly.

The U.S. Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) additionally relied on this visible medium to share how their regulatory division addressed COVID-19.

This infographic instance made our record for a number of causes. First, to indicate how infographics can spotlight the affect, as a substitute of sharing step-by-step directions or research-oriented content material.

The affect of every motion is organized into separate columns and given a definite colour to assist your eyes monitor from high to backside. Whereas this stream breaks the everyday left-to-right studying sample, it isn’t distracting or tough to comply with.

The healthcare employee design on the high of the web page nods to these on the frontlines, the colours align with the model, precise numbers are straightforward to learn, and the web page is not crowded with textual content.

So the subsequent time you should clarify the fruits of your labors to your boss, assist win them over with an impact-driven infographic.

17. Pianeta Plastica, by Manuel Bortoletti for GEDI Gruppo

“Che bello” is the primary thought that involves thoughts for this design. The beautiful information visualizations, oceanic colour scheme, and easy-to-understand structure let the visuals do the speaking. Visme explains how an infographic follows this essential best practice if it is smart with the entire textual content eliminated.

Which will appear unattainable, however designer Manuel Bortoletti pulls it off with informative maps accompanied by clear keys and a bar graph that makes use of oil tankers to tell readers about how oil circulates the globe.

Even with my extremely restricted Italian, I perceive that the principle level of the piece is to tell readers in regards to the affect of the Nice Pacific Rubbish Patch. And since this infographic was designed for the Italian media outlet GEDI Gruppo, it stays on-brand with a extra formal editorial tone.

18. How to Properly Wear a Mask, by John Hopkins Medication

Training is the crux of an infographic. And when you’ve mere seconds to seize people’s increasingly narrow attention span, the knowledge higher be straightforward to be taught.

That is why among the finest infographic examples comes from John Hopkins Medication. They designed an infographic to share tips about a vital COVID-19 process: carrying a masks.

Is protecting your nostril essential? You guess. What about carrying a bandana as a masks? No means. Hopkins makes use of a mix of easy graphics and replica to make the do’s and don’ts very clear.

As a famend medical establishment, Hopkins has the expertise and authority to teach individuals on this matter, so it matches its model and is useful for everybody’s well being — a real win-win.

19. The Sustainable Development Goals Report, by the United Nations

Infographics are an effective way so as to add visible taste to in any other case dry content material, like annual experiences and whitepapers.

What stands out on this infographic instance is how it may be used as one visible or divided into 17 sections — one for every Sustainable Improvement Aim. This enables the content material staff to decide on which sort of content material most closely fits the audience.

If the UN is chatting with organizations that empower ladies and women, they’ll share the “Gender Equality” graphic. However a non-profit that promotes the entire UN targets will probably be interested by the complete design.

Whereas quite a lot of info is packed into every graphic, it is by no means overwhelming. Every objective is separate from the opposite with daring headers and distinct colours, that are additionally used to distinguish the UN’s marketing efforts.

20. Ocean Pollution, by Stephanie Phung

Designer Stephanie Phung created this partaking visualization to make extra individuals conscious of the ocean’s present state of air pollution.

This free infographic makes use of artwork to inform a narrative in regards to the monetary and environmental implications of ocean air pollution. The designer additionally makes use of colours and design components — the blue colour for the ocean — that individuals are already acquainted with.

Prepared to start out designing beautiful infographics?

Now that your creativity is sparked, it is the right time to start out creating your infographics.

Whereas the infographics you create may be completely different from these on this record, guarantee they’re colourful and fascinating. And most significantly, that the infographics go throughout info in a fashion that’s straightforward to know.

Source link

#General

0 notes

joburgsister · 5 years

Text

Spotted in Maboneng

My family’s roots are in Cape Town but I was born in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. My young parents had migrated from the Mother City in search of gold, which is what brought most people to this city. My dad worked for Borroughs and they transferred him up to work as a technical instructor at the training school in Orange Grove. My mother, with her two small children in tow, set up home in an apartment in Yeoville, which became my first home when I arrived a few years later.

Thunderwalker restaurant in Ghandi Square

Like most migrants, my parents settled down, enjoying the cosmopolitan nature of the city and the entertainment available. I’m sure they brought a little bit of Cape Town to Joburg. When the time was right, they bought a house in the (western) suburbs where they moved their young family. My sister and brother had started school in the city, but they settled into the local suburban primary school when we moved. I was still too young for school at that stage. However, when I did go to school, so many of the friends I made were immigrants from Europe, England, Scotland and Ireland. Remember, this was the height of Apartheid, so the friends I made were all white – the Bantu Education Act of 1953 ensured that children of different races were not allowed to learn together.

Johannesburg is home to all sorts of people

We would trek to the south of Joburg for Portuguese food; you didn’t mess with the Lebanese, because they were hard core; some of the Scots’ accents were so thick (many years after immigration) that my Afrikaans friend from varsity thought they were speaking a language other than English. The corner cafés were all owned by Greek families. I had friends who had migrated from Zimbabwe when ‘the trouble’ started.

United Safety Deposit

Zwipi Underground Bar

The reason I’m thinking about this ancient history is because I’ve recently had a few experiences in the city which have reminded me of my roots, but also because events in my city this week have upset me.

Charlie Moyo

Story time with Charlie

I recently joined some friends on a walk through the Fashion District in downtown Johannesburg with Joburg Places and Spaces (do yourself a favour and book a walking tour with them here – Gerald Garner and Charlie Moyo are so knowledgeable about our city and are such brilliant tour guides). The tour begins in the Zwipi Bar in Ghandi Square (one of my favourite spaces), where Charlie gave a brief history of the evolution of the old United Building Society vaults we were sitting in, as well as a brief history of city of Joburg. In case you’ve forgotten, just before the turn of the previous century, a gold reef was discovered which traversed the farmlands, and almost instantly, the city sprung up, with prospectors and hopefuls from all over the country and the world staking claims. Charlie reminded us that Joburg has always been a city of migrants – it’s just the face of those migrants that has changed.

Urban Zulu

Papy – founder of Urban Zulu

On our walk, we visited Urban Zulu, an amazing business started in our city by an immigrant, Papy Kaluw. The brand comprises of Urban Zulu clothing – gorgeous, affordable African fashion – as well as a hair salon, a backpackers and a bar. We were lucky enough to meet Papy, who told us his story of needing desperately to make ends meet and using the sewing skills his mother had taught him to earn a living. He’s building an empire and creating jobs along the way. The Urban Zulu brand has even made it to New York city!

Urban Backpackers

From there we walked through town over pavements which made me spitting mad. It is painfully obvious that the city is not being maintained – the Democratic Alliance-led local government has neglected their basic duties, like garbage removal and maintenance of facilities. I’ve heard the arguments about the problem lying with the people who mess on the streets. I call bullshit – parks which had been looked after during the previous local government are now overgrown and in disrepair. Pavements are broken. There are dangerous open holes on the sidewalks. There is rubbish piled up in and around bins which is not being collected. The city has failed the residents. And the reason, to me, is painfully obvious.

Ghandi Square, one of the clean spaces in the city, kept clean by the large corporations which invest there.

Mayor Herman Mashaba has expressed, on a number of occasions, his desire to clean up the city, with a focus being on illegal immigrants. Now, I’m completely in favour of developing a law-abiding city and making it difficult for criminals to operate in our midst. But Mashaba’s utterances, like Trumps, are tainted with anti-immigrant rhetoric which encourages the worst kind of cruel xenophobic attacks on people who are trying to make a home in a place where migrants have always settled, a place which is safer than the home which they have been forced to flee. Unsurprising, then, that a group of violent local criminals rampaged through the city this week, attacking foreigners and looting goods. I’m yet to see Mayor Mashaba’s denunciation of this atrocity. One can only surmise that his laws only apply to foreigners, and he has no real interest in serving the people who make this city work. How painful that people who had welcomed our own citizens who had fled the oppressive Apartheid regime now find themselves unwelcome here in their time of need.

If I ruled the world…

We had lunch in Little Addis, the Ethiopian district in the city. Were there health and safety concerns? Yes. But the people there were peaceful and welcoming, working hard to make a living. Did I have excellent coffee and food there? YES! I highly recommend you make a plan to eat there. I’ll take you! The idea that the city brought the police through this district this week, confiscating goods and putting people out of business saddens me to the core. My daughter’s play this week reminded me of Dr Suess’s important words: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” Or how brown.

YUM!

Ethiopian beer

There are so many people working hard in this city to create opportunities for others. I was so honoured to be asked to speak at the first Nirvana Women’s Conference, organised by an amazing group of young women who live in the inner city. We heard from so many people who work every day to improve the lives of others. Dignity Dreams is making and distributing reusable sanitary pads to ensure that menstruation doesn’t keep girls out of school (and creating employment along the way!). Luke Lamprecht is using boxing as a way to keep kids off the streets, and the boxing gym in Hillbrow, Fight With Insight, is changing perceptions and changing lives.

Cafe Noir

I’ve also come across Sacred Heart College’s Three2Six project, which is bridging the education gap for refugee children in Hillbrow, children who might otherwise be left to fall through the cracks and be attracted by a life of crime. There are others, but I’m ready to wrap this up and see what Women’s Day has in store for me.

Coffee is a ritual in Little Addis

I just can’t help thinking that if we all decide that our common purpose it to make this city work for everyone who lands up here, before they thrive and move on to the suburbs, we could have the most creative, vibrant hub. We could live up to our (forgotten?) World Cup motto – A World-class African City. And, to be honest, Joburg is still that creative, vibrant hub it has always been. So, the Jews who started off in the fashion district years ago moved on to Norwood and Sydenham, and the Portuguese who ran the fruit and veg market moved to La Rochelle and Rosettenville. Other creative and innovative people moved in. Won’t the face of greater Johannesburg be so much more beautiful and diverse when the Ethiopians move to Sandton and the Nigerians settle in Radiokop? We must not let racism and xenophobia allow our politicians to pretend that eGoli is something that she isn’t. This city has always been a place where people come in search of gold and bright lights. Let’s embrace that and build that world-class African city. I, for one, will continue to support the businesses in town which offer a cosmopolitan experience. That’s my heritage.

Angel serving the best coffee outside Market on Main

Johannesburg, Joburg, Jozi, eGoli, home My family's roots are in Cape Town but I was born in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. My young parents had migrated from the Mother City in search of gold, which is what brought most people to this city.

#Charlie Moyo #DA #dignity dreams #fight with insight #Gerald Garner #immigrants #Joburg #Joburg Places #Johannesburg #little addis #migrants #Urban Zulu #xenophobia #Zwipi Underground Bar

0 notes

redvalravn · 7 years

Text

Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War - Chapter Four: It’s just not our country anymore

Hello there, children! Today we’re going to talk about the federal government.

You see, the federal government is coming to steal your money, property, and it wants to be able to tell you what to do, and that’s a bad, bad thing. It also wants to make sure that those who look different from you can also get jobs, and money, and property, so it can take it away from them!

Now remember kids, if anybody says they’re from the so-called Environmental Protection Agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or that they support something called the North American Free Trade Agreement, you run away as fast as you can, before they take your jobs!

A chapter summary: Affirmative action and federal regulations and institutions are evil. The end.

A chapter summary: Mary Sue attempts to get a job and everyone else tells him why the government won’t let him have one. The end.

A chapter summary: Mary Sue: You mean I can’t just start a business without a business plan or background check or go to my buddies and have them hand me a job on a silver platter? What the hell?! I thought this was America!

I’m going to be up front here. I’m not sure I can fully refute some of the claims in this chapter with a simple google search. I’m not an economist, or a lawyer, and I’m sure I don’t fully understand the intricacies of what goes into making the regulations put forth by the EPA, the EEOC, or NAFTA, or why they may not be the best ideas. But then, I’m sure that William Lind doesn’t fully understand, either.

First, Mary Sue attempts to try farming.

“What you gonna faam?” John asked, the flat, nasal “a” instead of “r” suggesting he hadn’t been outside Maine much.

“Waal,” I said, talking Down East myself, “I thought I might try soybeans.”

“Don’t see them much up heah.”

“Didn’t see wine up heah either ‘til Wyly put in his vineyard. I gather his wine is selling pretty well now,” I said.

“I’ll tell you why you don’t see soybeans up here or on many other family farms,” said Uncle Fred. “It’s oil from soybeans that makes money, and the federal government makes it just about impossible to transport soybean oil or any other vegetable oil unless you’re a big corporation. Under federal regulations, vegetable oil is treated the same as oil from petroleum when it comes to shipment. You’ve got to get a hugely expensive Certificate of Financial Responsibility to cover any possible oil spill. You’ll never get the capital to get started.”

I believe this is referencing the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which was written in response to the frequency of oil spills from barges and vessels, including the Exxon Valdez oil spill that happened in 1989. It basically says that the company which owns the vessel that spilled the oil is liable for its cleanup, because the government had a limited amount of money to deal with oil spills. Therefore, before a company can ship oil, it must provide proof that it can pay for a potential spill, which sounds reasonable. Though I do see why it would stop small farmers from starting a brand new soybean farm.

“But vegetable oil and petroleum are completely different. That doesn’t make any sense,” I replied.

“I didn’t say it made sense, I just said that’s what Washington demands. It makes no sense at all. Spilled vegetable oil is no big problem. It’s biodegradable. But the federal government mandates a spill be cleaned up the same way for both, even though that’s unnecessary. You need to scoop up any petroleum product if it spills, especially into water. But if you just let vegetable oil disperse, bacteria will eat it up. Anyway, the government doesn’t care that we lose hundreds of millions of dollars each year in vegetable oil that isn’t produced or exported. The bottom line is, as a small farmer, you can’t do it.”

Vegetable oil is biodegradable, and spilling a little on the ground or water isn’t going to do anything. If you spill a shipping container of the stuff though, it will impact the environment. Aquatic birds and animals get oiled, oxygen supply in the water becomes depleted, and gummy coatings exist for years. That would affect not only the wildlife, but any other industry that involves the ocean. Also, say it spills somewhere near the coast, that could come in contact with a human population. Some people are allergic to soybeans. Or, what if it spills in a busy port? Would this guy leave it to be cleaned up, disrupting the schedules of other shipping vessels, until a more financially capable entity takes care of it?

“Okay, I’ll grow potatoes. We certainly grow enough of those here in Maine,” I said.

“Only land up at the Old Place that’ll grow potatoes is the bottom land. Government won’t let you do that neither,” said cousin John.

This was starting to get old. “What do you mean the government won’t let me grow down there? That’s the best land on the place. The rest is just rock,” I replied.

“It’s the EPA, the so-called ‘Environmental Protection Agency,” answered Uncle Fred. “They declared all that ground a ‘protected wetland‘ a couple years ago. It’s yours, or ours, but it might as well be on the moon for all the good it does us. We can’t touch it.”

Protected wetland? Hell, I didn’t plan to grow potatoes in the ponds. “That’s our property. We’ve owned it since Andrew Jackson was President. And most of it’s dry. How can they tell us we can’t farm it?”

The definition of wetland is “areas where water covers the soil all or part of the time.”

From a quick look at the EPA’s website, it seems that just because an area is designated as a wetland, you’re not automatically banned from altering it.

My best guess for Mary Sue’s problem = the environmental impact of farming is so large it trumps ownership of the property. Perhaps probably absolutely there are details of property law and environmental law that I’m unaware of, and maybe that would make the EPA telling Mary Sue he can’t farm the wetlands unjustified.

That got the whole table smiling the thin smile that passes for a good laugh among New Englanders. “Property rights don’t mean squat any more,” said Uncle Earl, who was the town lawyer. “The government just tells you what to do or what not to do and dares you to fight them. They have thousands of lawyers, all paid by your tax money, and they can tie you up in court for years. You got a few hundred thousand extra dollars you’d like to spend on legal fees?”

However, the author doesn’t present any laws or environmental impact studies as evidence. He only insists that the government would fight it, smear, and bankrupt anyone who complains.

That sends the message of: “I want to be able to farm wherever I want, it’s my property, consequences be damned.”

An important thing to remember when considering environmental impact is that messing with natural habitats and wildlife is messing with natural cycles that have potentially global ramifications. Mary Sue is probably thinking “It’s just a wetland.” So do all the other farmers that the EPA blocks from farming. Everyone was allowed to farm and create factories that belch smoke and dump trash and toxic waste wherever they wanted before the creation of the EPA in 1970. This is a photo of the George Washington Bridge in 1973:

Los Angeles in 1973:

The Potomac River in Washington D.C. was filled with raw sewage.

Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire from pollutants in the water 14 times before the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972.

Waste from coal plants would seep into soil and pollute wells.

Between 1947 and 1952, the Hooker Electrochemical Company used the land known as the “Love Canal” to dump 22,000 tons of toxic waste. In 1953, it was sold to a school board for $1. By the ‘70s, people began to realize something was really wrong with the land. Barrels full of toxic waste began to surface, children and animals were getting burned and there was a significant increase in birth defects. The EPA then had to evacuate and relocate 950 families. Between 1983 and 2004, the EPA spent $400 million cleaning up the site.

Since the “Love Canal,” the EPA has cleaned up over 450 sites.

The EPA also deals with disaster clean ups like Hurricane Katrina and Sandy.

Just google “The environment before the EPA” and you’ll find thousands of examples of why it’s necessary.

“What it comes down to is that we’re not a free country any more.”

“What King George III was doing to us in 1776 wasn’t a hill of beans compared to this,” I said. “We didn’t take it then. Why are we taking it now?”

At that point, the women turned the conversation to how Ma’s stuffing was the best they’d ever had. It always was.

#feminism

Anyway, since the ebil EPA won’t let Mary Sue start a farm, he later goes to his contacts and asks for jobs. He has other options.

Jim was glad to see me, but he couldn’t give me any good news. “Sorry,” he said, “but like every American company, we’re having to cut jobs, not add ʻem. The problem is this “free trade” business. What it means is that American workers are up against those in places like Mexico, Haiti, and now all of central and south America, since they expanded NAFTA into AFTA and took in the whole hemisphere. Labor costs now get averaged across national boundaries; it pulls their wages up and pushes wages here down. Of course, we don’t actually cut wages, but with inflation rising, we don’t need to. We just keep wages steady and cut the number of jobs. Maybe that will keep this plant in business. Then again, maybe it won’t. In any event, it means if I had a job to offer you, and I don’t, you’d quickly find yourself getting poorer, not richer, if you took it.”

It’s always funny to see elementary grammatical errors in a published novel.

I think the author made an intentional “five minutes into the future” exaggeration. In 2017 (when this scene takes place), he predicts that the North American Free Trade Agreement will be expanded into Ccentral and Ssouth America, forming the American Free Trade Agreement.

Again, I’m not an economist, but this is what the internet tells me:

-It unifies the North American market by eliminating taxes or other barriers on trading goods between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It basically makes it easier for goods to get across borders by treating products from a country that’s part of the agreement more favorably than products from any other countries.

-Most economic analyses agree that it has a net benefit to the three countries involved.

- There are some unfortunate impacts that include making it easier for companies to export jobs (mostly manufacturing) to Mexico. This amounts to about 800,000 jobs between 1997 and 2013.

-Because goods are cheaper to produce in Mexico, that means lower prices for U.S. consumers.

-Mexican workers are often mistreated in maquiladoras that produce cheap goods.

-NAFTA may drive illegal immigration, due to the disappearance of well-paying jobs and lower wages in Mexico.

-There are also about 6 million of U.S.-based jobs that depend on NAFTA.

-There are analyses that the U.S. has lost more jobs to automation than to Mexico.

-It’s unlikely that tearing up NAFTA would bring back jobs. Companies would move production to the next cheapest country.

-Any assessment on the impact of NAFTA is difficult because of the multilayered supply networks established and many variables such as inflation.

Here’s a recent analysis from the Congressional Research Service that I’m too lazy to read in full and too uneducated in economics to understand, but it’s more research than the author did.

In short, it’s a complicated, multi-faceted issue, and that’s all I’ll say about it.

“But you just put a lot of money into this plant,” I replied. “Hell, it used to stink up the whole town. Now you can’t smell it. Maybe that EPA does some good after all.”

Oh hey, it’s almost like the EPA has a purpose!

“You think so?” asked Jim. “You’re right that we had to clean up our processes here, and we did put some money into the place. But the main thing we did was move most of the work on the fresh hides to Mexico. That cut 23 jobs here, jobs now held by Mexicans. I guess you can’t make Mexico stink any worse than it already does.”

#racism

“And the EPA still isn’t done with us,” he added. “They’ve got another investigation going now, which will cost us tens of thousands in legal fees even if that’s all it does. Seems they think we’re still doing something to the river.”

“River looks clean to me,” I replied.

All poisons and toxic wastes and all amounts of poisons and toxic wastes are clearly visible. If the water looks clean, then it is!

“It is clean. It’s cleaner than it’s ever been, at least since industry, and jobs, first came to this valley. But that doesn’t count to bureaucrats in Washington. They’ve told us we might have to build a full water treatment plant, which would cost us millions. If they rule that way, it’ll be the end of the company here. It would take us 50 years to pay off that debt. There’s not that much money in leather any more, not up against the foreign competition.”

I’ll refer to my previous statements on why the EPA is necessary.

Mary Sue has one last ace up his sleeve, his cousin, who works at a car restoration facility.

“Sure,” Ed said, when I stopped in on him, “business is good and I need a couple folk. I know you’d do good work. But I can’t offer you or anyone else around here a job. EEOC won’t let me.”

“EEOC?” I’d heard the initials, but didn’t know much more about it.

“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They come around and tell you how many blacks, Hispanics, women, whatever you have to hire. Of course, all my employees are white, because everybody up here is white. I guess Maine winters are kinda hard on black folk and those from south of the border. Anyway, that doesn’t count with them. They’ve issued an order that the next six people I hire must be blacks. The effect, of course, is that I can’t hire anyone, not even you.”

Maine’s population as of 2010 was 95.2% Caucasian, 1.2% African-American, 1.0% Asian, 0.6% Native American, 0.3% other, 1.6% two or more races.

Affirmative Action is something else outside of my area of expertise. I’m going to make a guess here, though, that the EEOC wouldn’t make such an unreasonable demand that a facility drastically over-represent the amount of black people on its payroll compared to the amount that exist in the area.

Although, now that I’ve searched the internet and become an instant expert, this claim that the EEOC can demand companies meet a quota of minority employees seems misleading.

In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that public universities and government institutions could not set quotas based on race for admissions or employment, but they could have "goals" to be reached within a certain time. In 1979, it ruled that private employers could set quotas, if they chose to do so. If an employer finds out that diversity among their employees is low, they can create an affirmative action plan, which details guidelines for how an organization will recruit minorities. Almost every employer is required to be an equal opportunity employer, which means that they can’t be allowed to discriminate in their hiring practices, firing practices, or policies. Federal contractors have a 10% quota, but private employers are merely advised to follow this as a guideline. Even if a company fails to diversify their workforce, they won’t be penalized if they provide proof that they made a good faith effort to do so.

In addition, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits race discrimination against all persons, including Caucasians.

From the EEOC archives:

Quota: Fixed hiring and promotion rates based on race, sex, or other protected class standards which must be met at all costs. In extreme cases, the courts have assigned quotas to some employers who have continued to practice illegal discrimination. The agency or any other employer cannot use quotas to meet their affirmative action goals unless a court orders it. Quotas are considered discriminatory against males and other non-minority people.

Unless Cousin Ed restores cars for the federal government or has been ordered by a court to hire black people (which means that there's proof of discriminatory hiring practices), the EEOC can't force him to hire anyone he doesn't want to hire. Holy crap. It’s almost like…the book lied to me…

This was the nuttiest thing I’d heard yet. “You must be kidding,” I replied. “How can they make you hire blacks where there aren’t any?”

“I don’t know,” Ed said. “But I can’t fight the EEOC in court. I’m a small business and can’t afford it. I just can’t expand, is what it comes down to. And you know how badly we need jobs up here.”

I did, from growing personal experience. “But someone must care that this is completely absurd,” I said. “There has got to be a limit somewhere to what Washington can do to us.”

“If there is, I don’t know where,” Ed replied, obviously a beaten man.

“You and I, and most folk up here, are members of the middle class. That means the government doesn’t do anything for us, it only does things to us. If you know a way to change that, I’d like to hear it. But these days, unless you’re some kind of “minority,” you don’t have any rights.”

Public libraries, public schools, fire departments, unemployment assistance, food stamps, welfare, public broadcasting, medicaid, and social security don’t count, I guess.

Ed has a funny idea of what “rights” are. That makes sense if it’s implied that he’s been sued for racial discrimination previously. It seems that the book is trying to say that Mary Sue and Ed are more oppressed than minorities, because they’re white males being forced by the government to get over their own prejudices. Poor Ed will have to hire a representative quota of black people. If his company is large enough that 6 people is equivalent to 1.2% or less, that would make the size of the company 500 people or greater. “Small business”, indeed.

...and poor Mary Sue will have to find work anywhere else.

“Frankly, it’s just not our country any more.”

That summed it up pretty well. Somewhere along the line, in the last 30 years or so, somebody had taken our country away from us. We remembered what our country was like. It was a safe, decent, prosperous place where normal, middle class people could live good lives.

And it was gone.

It was a safe, decent, prosperous place where normal, middle class white people could live good privileged lives.

I was beginning to think that what I wanted to do was help take our country back. How I could do that, and how I could earn a living, were both puzzles. But where there’s a will, God often opens a way.

Next chapter: Mary Sue goes on monster.com or signs up for Universal Technical Institute, if using the internet isn’t too “new” for him.

Not being able to find a job is frustrating and demotivating. I know, I’ve been there. Mary Sue only considers two options before he gives up: starting a farm on his own or asking people he knows. Not saying that these aren’t good strategies, but it’s not unusual to take a few months to find employment. Mary Sue is a young man, having just graduated from college with no experience. Of course he’s going to have trouble finding a job immediately. Millennials know this. For someone of William Lind’s age (69), it’s not normal. It was easier to get a job in his time. His worldview is dependent on men being able to take care of themselves and being the breadwinners for their families. Not being able to find work is more than demotivating. It’s humiliating. He’s angry that this situation is allowed to happen. Instead of blaming the recession, the “previous experience” requirement, and his seeming unwillingness to use the internet or write a resume, he blames environmental regulations, globalization, and minorities getting in his way.

Finding a job in rural areas can be difficult. I believe this, but I think he’s incorrectly assigning blame. Increased protection of natural resources, international cooperation, and leveling the playing field for women and minorities should all be seen as good things that help society more than hurt it. People like William Lind hijack a real concern -- lack of jobs -- to further their own ideology. He doesn’t like it that minorities don’t know their place. He wants to be able to mass produce without environmental concern, and give jobs to good American workers and proudly shut the door on any foreign trade, because this is America, and we take care of ourselves. Real, manly Americans decimate the environment and conquer, because they can. If we don’t stop time, the government will stop you from being real manly Americans, and you may be ruled over by Mexicans, women, and hippies.

The horror.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I once read that not having privilege was riding a bike on a busy road. The road was meant to be used by cars. For a long time, there were only cars on the road, and they could go as fast as the speed limit allowed. Until one day, someone decided that bikes ought to be allowed on the road, because people who can’t afford cars still ought to be able to get to where they’re going. Now, instead of being able to speed down the road, drivers had to make way for bikes. Not all the drivers were happy. Now they had to slow down and drive around all the bikers they were, regardless, passing in their fast cars. So they complained that the bikes were making the roads dangerous. The bikes argued that they had no other way to use the road, even though it was more dangerous to ride a bike on a road built for cars. To compromise, bike lanes were built, so the bikes had their space. Bikers still had to deal with drivers that weren’t paying attention when the bikes had to leave the bike lane to turn, the possibility of being doored when a parked car opened their door without checking for a passing bike, or vehicles that used the bike lane as a free parking space and blocked it. When there were accidents there were way more fatalities for bikers than drivers, due to the fact that bikers were unprotected while drivers had 2-ton death machines that protected them. Still some drivers weren’t happy about having to make room for bikes on the road, at best, wondering why they didn’t just get a car and make it easier for everyone, and at worst, tried to change the rules to once more get them off the road.

That’s what this book is. It’s a driver whining that they used to be able to speed and now there are too many bikes on the road.

@moodybidoof @videoninja42

3 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 8 years

Text

SIX PRINCIPLES FOR STARTUPS

And, by no coincidence, the richest ones have reached this stage. That has real consequences for both organizations and individuals. Ronco became so powerful. And I don't have time for your ideas to evolve, the whole concept seemed foreign to them. This is all to explain how Plato and Aristotle became revered texts to be mastered and discussed. And one of the more unscrupulous do it deliberately. The mid-century. I do for my privat satisfaction or leave to come out after me. Maybe if you do you may have to decide what Apple's next products should be considered the heart of the Valley now. In hacking, like painting, work comes in cycles.

Back in the days of fanfold, there was the way to succeed is to have the computations happening on the desktop. It seems to be at odds with it, but there's plenty still broken in the world. Here's an upper bound, bearing in mind the small sample size. The other half is expressing yourself well. And yet have you ever seen a Google ad? It used to be in a startup is going to happen—whatever Web 2. A morale boost on that scale. And even if you genuinely believe you've been fouled. As t approaches infinity, Demo Day approaches an auction. These can be much shorter than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal.

When I say there because I moved back to the farm afterward. We want to make code too dense. They seemed a little surprised at having total freedom. But did studying logic teach me the importance of where one goes to college. Like guerillas, startups prefer the difficult terrain of the mountains, where the density of people working on them discover a new kind of corporation with national reach and huge economies of scale. In a society of one, they're more interested in an essay to happen after you start writing it, they had about 500 people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should raise, a good manager can sometimes redefine a problem as big as Ebay. Maybe it will help later stage investors have no idea what our average returns might be, and won't know for sure would be to shirk it, but now that the healthiest diet is the one between tools and things made with them. Maybe, maybe not. A startup will probably get better. And yet, when I was in high school I was, I now realize, exactly the right kind of person.

If you try too hard to sell. If you're small, you can't do better than to be a powerful force that, even when this work doesn't translate easily into the conventional intellectual currency of research papers. Part of what software has to do is figure things out in a much stronger position if your collection of plans includes one for raising zero dollars—i. Combine that with Pirsig and you get a lot of macros, and I don't think we suck, but instead spent all your time listening to other people uncannily prescient will seem obvious to you. The values of the elite, others feel a little better about forgetting, though. Be flexible. His skills are simply much more valuable. There's no better time to take insane career risks.

In big companies software is often designed, implemented, and sold advertising on it. There are two main reasons. If you start a startup, because you don't have to content themselves anymore with a proxy audience of a few smart friends. Just ask anyone who worked as a research assistant. But I want to know what tools are best, is what hackers choose when they can get it done fast. But the incentives are more than just shock everyone with the heresy du jour. And without good programmers you won't get to invest in their portfolio companies. What could HUAC do, defend the Salem witch trials. If you're a good con artist, you'll never allow yourself to do a deal; everyone acts like they have a single format. He wrote that programmers seemed to generate about the same time.

The language offers abstractions only as a way to compete with angels by doing more, smaller deals. And you especially need a brain that can go anywhere you want. But a site aiming at a particular subset of users urgently need, you have to be introduced to them. It seems to be c, that people bought Apple IIs just to run it. Why do Segways provoke this reaction? It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the best opportunities they found; they should be planning to raise a 5 million series A round. Basically, unions were just Razorfish. The dials are for humans to use, you're riding that curve up instead of down.

He saw it as a practical question: how do you survive to that point? The language is built in layers. I think what holds back European hackers is simply that they trained their filter on very little data: 160 spam and 466 nonspam mails. When you let customers tell you what Jessica has achieved. If you go to see them. In math you don't choose abstractions because they're easy for humans to understand; you choose whichever make the proof shorter. So how would you even do that?

In fact the large staffs of successful startups don't need to write. And once you start to examine the underlying principle that wealth is something that's made, rather than something that has to be replaced with something tied more directly to earnings. When the amount rises into the millions, investors get very cautious. It was the narrowness of such channels that made professionals seem so superior to amateurs. Another is to stand close. The confident will often, like swallows, seem to see the better idea when it arrives. Whereas if you were hired at some big company, but also because it's a recognized brand, it's safe, and death is the topic adults lie most conspicuously about to kids. You tend to keep winning and losers to keep losing. The founders thereupon proposed to walk away from the certainty of the hard sciences. Another reason parents don't want their kids to go to the public markets.

1 note · View note

gizedcom · 4 years

Text

Fascinating We’re The Russos footage from a trip on the world’s highest railway in Tibet

‘The landscape looked like the moon.’

That’s how traveller Joe Russo described the breathtaking scenery he saw from the train he rode with his wife, Kait, along the world’s highest railway from Xining in China to Lhasa in Tibet, which has a peak elevation of 16,627ft (5,067 metres).

It’s a unique journey – so high that oxygen is pumped into the carriages to mitigate the effects of altitude sickness – and the YouTube video the Russos posted that documented their experience of it has garnered over 870,000 views.

Joe and Kait Russo filmed a trip along the highest railway in the world in Tibet – but the first railway leg was a bullet train from Beijing. This still from their video shows Kait looking for their seats on it

Kait Russo, pictured, describes the bullet train business class section as ‘so fancy’

Joe, pictured, was extremely impressed with the Beijing bullet train. ‘The train was extremely smooth and we had a very comfortable trip during this leg,’ he told MailOnline Travel

This still from the Russos’ YouTube video shows the meal served on the bullet train, which was included in the price of the ticket

The Russos’ railway adventure covered a distance of around 2,250 miles, from the Chinese capital to lofty Lhasa

Joe, from Los Angeles, and Kait, from Beijing, boarded the train in Xining, but their rail journey began in Beijing – and that’s where the video begins.

It shows the couple checking into the business lounge and then boarding a 186mph (300kph) bullet train to Lanzhou, eight hours and 900 miles away.

They had business-class tickets, which meant lie-flat seats.

Joe told MailOnline Travel: ‘We decided to upgrade to business class for this leg of the trip and were very happy we did so. We started early in the morning, so it was nice to have seats that recline flat in order to relax and take naps along the way. The train was extremely smooth and we had a very comfortable trip during this leg. Drinks, snacks and a meal were also included with our ticket.’

Xining station, where Joe and Kait boarded a train to Lhasa, around 1,200 miles away

Joe in his four-bed soft sleeper compartment during the 20-hour journey from Xining to Lhasa

After that leg was a ride on another bullet train – to Xining, 150 miles away.

Joe continued: ‘After an hour-long layover in Lanzhou we boarded another high-speed train to Xining. This leg was two-and-a-half hours and while we weren’t in business class, the first-class seats were also very comfortable.

‘They didn’t serve food on this leg of the trip, but there is always hot water available on the trains in China so many passengers will bring instant noodle soups to eat on the train.

‘It was very interesting to see the countryside of China but what was very surprising to us was rather than seeing many small rural towns along the way, high-rise apartment-style buildings dominated the landscape. It was incredible to see because in some places there would be dozens of identical buildings – and many of these “cities” appeared to be empty.’

Joe said that he suffered from altitude sickness on the train to Lhasa, which trundles over a vast plateau that has, on average, an elevation of 13,123ft (4,000m)

Out of this world: The scenery on the journey to Tibet was like a moonscape, Joe said

Joe said: ‘During the night, we could begin to feel the effects of the elevation as the train climbed over various passes. You could also hear the oxygen being pumped into the train cars’

Next came the ‘highest railway leg’ from Xining to Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, sitting at an altitude of 3,656m (11,994ft), 1,200 miles away.

And here Joe noticed a change in the demographics.

He said: ‘When we arrived in Xining, the demographics changed quite a bit and I was surprised to find that there were very few other Westerners. The station is quite big so we had a chance to walk around and stretch our legs, which was nice, because the next leg of the journey to Lhasa would be just over 20 hours long.’

The journey is astonishingly lofty, with the train passing through Tanggula Railway Station – which at an elevation of 16,640ft is the highest station in the world – the Fenghuoshan Tunnel, which at 16,093ft above sea level is the highest tunnel in the world, and along a vast plateau region that is on average 13,123ft (4,000m) high.

The train to Lhasa passes through Tanggula Railway Station – which at an elevation of 16,640ft is the highest station in the world – and the Fenghuoshan Tunnel, which at 16,093ft above sea level is the highest railway tunnel in the world

The rail trip was part of an eight-day tour of Tibet in 2018, which also included a visit to the Everest tourist base camp, on the Chinese side

Joe said: ‘The snow gave way to grassy plains where we saw yaks being herded by the nomadic people’

Passengers, as the Russos discovered, can suffer as a result.

Joe explains on the video that he gets altitude sickness above five or six thousand feet and during the journey he ‘could feel pressure in his nasal passages and felt like passing out for a few hours’ and started to get a ‘really bad’ headache.

He added: ‘During the night, we could begin to feel the effects of the elevation as the train climbed over various passes. You could also hear the oxygen being pumped into the train cars at different times throughout the ride to help passengers combat altitude sickness.’

The bathroom facilities on the train were a mixture of Chinese (pictured) and Western styles

THE RUSSOS’ CRUCIAL TRAVEL ITEMS

‘We always carry a water purifying bottle so we can fill up anywhere and not worry about trying to find or buy bottled water. Toilet paper is a must because we’ve encountered many facilities that don’t provide (or had run out of) toilet paper throughout our travels. Finally, a good carry-on size roller bag and backpacks. We travel very light so we always have one shared roller bag and we each have a backpack. This setup works whether we’re on a one-week adventure or a month-long journey. ‘

When the Russos woke up, though, their jaws dropped.

Joe said: ‘When we boarded the night train out of Xining, it was late, so we went straight to our soft sleeper compartment – each compartment had four beds – and crawled into bed once the train left the station.

‘It was too dark to see the scenery and we were exhausted after the day’s journey.

‘In the morning, we woke up to a landscape that looked like the moon. It was covered in snow and looked completely desolate. We were in awe throughout the day as we watched the scenery change from one type of landscape to another.

‘The snow gave way to grassy plains where we saw yaks being herded by the nomadic people. At various times throughout the trip, there would be pre-recorded messages (in English and Chinese) played through the speakers to provide interesting information about what we could see from the windows.

‘There is also a paved road that follows the railroad mainly trafficked by large trucks carrying cargo to Lhasa.

‘While most of the landscape was covered by snow or grass, at different times, we would pass through small towns. For most of the journey, our eyes were glued to the scenery outside.’

The train made brief stops at various stations, but the doors were never opened to allow passengers off for a stretch of the legs, which Joe said was a bit of a surprise.

Lhasa station (altitude 3,656m, 11,994ft), the final stop for digital nomads Joe and Kait Russo

The train made brief stops at various stations, but the doors were never opened to allow passengers off for a stretch of the legs, which Joe said was a bit of a surprise

THE NEXT ‘HIGHEST RAILWAY’…

India’s Bilaspur-Manali-Leh railway line will reach a height of 5,359 metres (17,582ft) when it’s completed in 2022.

He was also surprised by the ‘well-stocked dining car’, which had a ‘good selection of Chinese dishes on the menu’.

What’s more, fresh vegetables were growing in pots and cut to order for each dish.

‘We enjoyed all the dishes, especially the vegetable stir-fries,’ said Joe.

The rail trip was part of an eight-day tour of Tibet in 2018, which also included a visit to the Everest tourist base camp, on the Chinese side.

And it came three years after the Russos adopted a ‘digital nomad’ lifestyle and launched their ‘We’re The Russos’ brand.

Tanggula – a breathtaking station in more ways than one. This picture was taken by Bharat Vohra and posted to Flickr

Joe has written two books about his RV lifestyle

Joe explained: ‘In 2015 we decided to leave our corporate careers behind, sell our house and many of our belongings to hit the road full-time with our two dogs in a motorhome.

‘It was supposed to be a one-year adventure with an end date and plans to go back to work and settle down again.

‘However, we quickly embraced the freedom and flexibility of the lifestyle and decided to keep going indefinitely.

‘Since we only saved up enough money to travel for one year, we had to figure out a way to earn a living while travelling. That’s when we started our own content creation company producing videos for our YouTube channel, articles for our website and I have self-published two books so far.

‘The first book, Take Risks, documents everything we went through from coming up with this idea to hitting the road and the second book, Tales From the Open Road, details our first year and a half on the road.

‘In sharing our journey and experiences, we hope to inspire others to live the life that they want.’

Credit: Source link

The post Fascinating We’re The Russos footage from a trip on the world’s highest railway in Tibet appeared first on GIZED - Breaking News Worldwide.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/32AbOkH via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

theherblifeblog · 5 years

Text

The Case for Slow Cannabis

Kelly Coulter

At the entrance to the farm in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island there is a sign which reads SLOW DOWN. It shows a picture of horses and children playing but it is the words that really grab you. The drive is long, surrounded by pastures and majestic trees with the sparkle of a lake in the distance. By the time you reach the sign telling you to “slow down” your mind has already done it. Your shoulders have relaxed and you are smiling as you breathe in the fresh country air. The horses greet you with flicks of their tails and life seems suddenly simple. As you lean against the fence, taking in the beauty of your surroundings and with it your first blissful toke you wonder if this is what it really all about.

Cannabis wants you to slow down. It/she wants to make you think and question and ultimately answer those questions. But she also wants you to relax and laugh and share her with others in the enjoyments of life; food, music, nature, love, friendship and healing.

Plants Have So Much to Teach Us

As we enter into the new paradigm of legal cannabis in Canada and around the world (hallelujah) now is the time to re-examine what this “perfect plant” is really trying to teach us. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan writes about the genius of plant life and how humans have much to learn from them, including cannabis. I believe cannabis will eventually lead us back to a more natural way of living in harmony with the seasons, not only as farmers but also as consumers.

THE FARMERS

In 1975 Masanobu Fukuoka wrote The One-Straw Revolution, a treatise on how food could and should be grown. It was a manifesto about farming, eating and how the limits of human knowledge will require a radical change to preserve our planet and the systems we rely on for our food. Fukuoka was a rice farmer who chose a less labor-intensive farming style because he wanted his life to be a happy, healthy and fulfilling one.

He believed and proved that farmers could grow to sustain themselves without breaking their backs, their minds, and their spirits. Cannabis farmers of the future who share these values are gathering now in the United States and Canada to embrace these same principles of permaculture which serves not only the natural environment but produces what some might argue the “highest-end” cannabis; seasonal, regenerative, organic, and fair.

Brittny Anderson, the co-founder of The Cannabis Conservancy, is currently working with others to help develop more sustainable criteria for cannabis growers. Her commitment to the regenerative movement was solidified during her time as an intern at Bija Vidyappeeth, Vandana Shiva’s farm in India.

“Regenerative agriculture is the path we must take if we want to renew our communities and reverse climate change. I believe this is a critical moment in time and we must build the world we envision. Regenerative cannabis cultivation is going to be a big part creating a sustainable future and inspiring other agricultural sectors to do the same. Together we will change the world. The Cannabis Conservancy’s certification allows farmers to differentiate themselves in the marketplace so consumers can choose products aligned with their values.”

Cannabis was not always grown indoors, which is surprisingly a radical notion to many. It was grown covertly, because it was illegal, on forest floors, in swamps and amongst rows of other crops. It was hidden and untended for the most part, which is probably/definitely why outdoor cannabis has gotten a bit of a bad rap. The good farmers of Northern California who have been growing legal medical cannabis for the rest of the state for decades were able to hone their techniques, strains, and philosophies around cannabis cultivation and have proven that sun-grown is not only friendlier to the planet and less costly to grow but also deliciously effective.

Casey O’Neil of HappyDay Farm is one of those “good farmers” who believes his farm is meant for a higher purpose. "As a diversified cannabis and vegetable farmer, it is important to me to see thriving small farms that build soil and community. I look forward to learning and sharing with other farmers as we move towards a more regenerative form of agriculture."

Amanda Reiman is the Communications Director for Flow Kana, a distribution company in California known for its’ support of small farms. “We work with sun-grown farmers in Mendocino and Humboldt counties who go beyond organic by using regenerative farming practices, literally improving the quality of the soil with every harvest. Flow Kana was the first company to connect the public with this small community of farmers, who, because of prohibition, have existed in the shadows until now. Flow Kana is proud to give them a platform to tell their stories, and an opportunity to brand themselves, their region and their cannabis for a whole new group of consumers. With offices in southern CA, the Bay Area and Mendocino County, Flow Kana brings the farm to the dispensary along with opportunities to meet the farmers who produce the world's best cannabis. The Flow Cannabis Institute also provides an opportunity for the public to visit, tour the facility and interact with farmers on their farms. The institute is a source of education, not only about cannabis but about prohibition and its associated harms. Additionally, Flow Kana advocates on the local, state and national level, for policies that support small, traditional, sun-grown farmers and lessen barriers for their success in the new marketplace.”

The work of these visionaries and others will be critical for small, sustainable cannabis farmers throughout North America and beyond. The good news is the world is getting woke to the harms of the industrialization of agriculture, and the “Slow Food Movement” has been gaining momentous speed. This is partly due to the incredible work of Carlo Petrini who wrote “The Slow Food Movement” but also the support of the worlds’ greatest chefs including Jamie Oliver and Dan Barber, who are major proponents of more sustainable food consumption. Two short years ago, Netflix might have had one documentary devoted to the food culture. Today there are more than twenty - and the list grows longer every day. The idea that people are more in tune with where their food comes from and how it is grown will naturally converge with the consumer values of the future cannabis consumer. They will have a choice, transparency, and above all else more education. These same types of farming documentaries which reveal some of the harms of monocultures, pesticide use as well as the importance of supporting local food producers could be soon focusing on cannabis farms in the not too distant future.

YOUR ROLE IN THE SLOW CANNABIS MOVEMENT

However it is not just lofty ideals about the industrialization of agriculture and the importance of preserving our soils that will help restore the old ways of growing cannabis….it will be You. Going to farmers markets is fun. Meeting and getting to know the farmers who produce your food is rewarding in many ways. You are supporting other humans and not big, multi-national corporations. You are eating fresh and healthier food. You are helping communities. You are being kind to the environment by purchasing food with less/zero packaging. You are learning about farming and educating yourself about where your food comes from. You are supporting a slower pace in life that is reflective of life. You are sticking it to the machine.

Cannabis is at the very root of this ethos because it has endured a legacy of demonization. In its’ future incarnation as a legal plant (feels odd even writing this…) the values of radical self-sufficiency; true futurism, could and should be embraced and supported. Ideally, we should all be consuming our cannabis as we should be consuming our food, which is to grow our own. The next best thing is to vote with your wallet. If the trends we are seeing in other sectors including food, wine, beer, and alcohol are any indication, the future looks very promising for small cannabis farms committed to quality, craftsmanship, and community.

There are regions throughout Europe with very small, sought-after and profitable vineyards. The farms are typically hundreds of years old and have been passed down through generations. These farms have not only survived but have thrived, and the lessons are infinitely valuable. First of all – they remained small, less than 5 acres in most cases, which lends itself to a more manageable infrastructure. Secondly, they had a loyal following, winemakers who knew that the grapes grown were of the finest quality, intimately tended to and expertly harvested. Those same winemakers, in turn, have loyal followings, and so every vintage is spoken for pre-harvest. Finally, the craftsmanship of the farmer. This applies to not only stewardship of the land but also to the methodology of the harvest and translates to the principles of slow cannabis farming. Is the soil healthy? Is the cannabis hang dried and properly cured? Will it be hand-trimmed? Are the workers paid a fair living wage? Does the farm aim to benefit the environment and the community?

Cannabis can teach us so many things about how we interact with our natural world, and I truly believe that is where we are heading. Friedrich Nietzsche alludes to a similar idea in The Birth of Tragedy and Michael Pollan expands on it in “The Botany of Desire”.

In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche described intoxication as “nature over power and mind, nature having her way with us.” The Greeks understood that this was not something to be undertaken lightly or too often. Intoxication for them was a carefully circumscribed ritual, never a way to live, because they understood that Dionysus can make angels of us or animals, it all depends. Even so, letting nature have her way with us now and again still seems like a useful thing to do, if only as a check on our hubris, if only to bring our abstracted upward gaze back down to earth for a time. What a re-enchantment of the world that would be, to look around us and see that the plant and the trees of knowledge grow in the garden still.”

Good Farmers know this. Slow cannabis, like slow food, is about working with the natural rhythms of life. In the spring we plant, in the summer we tend, in the fall we harvest and share and in the winter we rest. We live sustainably and re-generatively so that generations who come after us will also be able to do the same. We are going slow.

#kelly coulter #slow cannabis #craft cannabis #farmers markets #farm gate #artisanal #small batch cannabis #sustainable growing #environmental concerns

0 notes