#maybe i'll even get below 40....

[icewindandboringhorror]

Some (late) holiday photos of the boye~!

[jadevine]

Preindustrial travel, and long explanations on why different distances are like that

Update March 1, 2024: Hey there folks, here's yet another update! I reposted Part 2a (the "medieval warhorses" tangent) to my writing blog, and I went down MORE of the horse-knowledge rabbit hole! https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/741423906984951808/my-post-got-cut-off-so-i-added-the-rest-of-it Update Jan 30, 2024: Hey folks, I've posted the updated version of this post on my blog, so I don't have to keep frantically telling everyone "hey, that's the old version of this post!" https://thebalangay.wordpress.com/2024/01/29/preindustrial-travel-times-part-1/

I should get the posts about army travel times and camp followers reformatted and posted to my blog around the end of the week, so I'll filter through my extremely tangled thread for them.

Part 2 - Preindustrial ARMY travel times: https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/739342239113871360/now-for-a-key-aspect-that-many-people-often-ask

Part 2a - How realistic warhorses look and act, because the myth of "all knights were mounted on huge clunky draft horses" just refuses to die: https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/732043691180605440/helpful-things-for-action-writers-to-remember

Part 3 - Additional note about camp followers being regular workers AND sex-workers: https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/740604203134828544/reblogging-the-time-looped-version-of-my

--

I saw a post on my main blog about how hiking groups need to keep pace with their slowest member, but many hikers mistakenly think that the point of hiking is "get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible" instead of "spending time outdoors in nature with friends," and then they complain that a new/less-experienced/sick/disabled hiker is spoiling their time-frame by constantly needing breaks, or huffing and puffing to catch up.

I run into a related question of "how long does it take to travel from Point A to Point B on horseback?" a lot, as a fantasy writer who wants to be SEMI-realistic; in the Western world at least, our post-industrial minds have largely forgotten what it's like to travel, both on our own feet and in groups.

People ask the new writer, "well, who in your cast is traveling? Is getting to Point B an emergency or not? What time of year is it?", and the newbies often get confused as to why they need so much information for "travel times." Maybe new writers see lists of "preindustrial travel times" like a primitive version of Google Maps, where all you need to do is plug in Point A and Point B.

But see, Google Maps DOES account for traveling delays, like different routes, constructions, accidents, and weather; you as the person will also need to figure in whether you're driving a car versus taking a bus/train, and so you'll need to figure out parking time or waiting time for the bus/train to actually GET THERE.

The difference between us and preindustrial travelers is that 1) we can outsource the calculations now, 2) we often travel for FUN instead of necessity.

The general rule of thumb for preindustrial times is that a healthy and prime-aged adult on foot, or a rider/horse pair of fit and prime-aged adults, can usually make 20-30 miles per day, in fair weather and on good terrain.

Why is this so specific? Because not everyone in preindustrial times was fit, not everyone was healthy, not everyone was between the ages of 20-35ish, and not everyone had nice clear skies and good terrain to travel on.

If you are too far below 18 years old or too far past 40, at best you will need either a slower pace or more frequent breaks to cover the same distance, and at worst you'll cut the travel distance in half to 10 or so miles. Too much walking is VERY BAD on too-young/old knees, and teenagers or very short adults may just have short legs even if they're fine with 8-10 hours of actual walking. Young children may get sick of walking and pitch a fit because THEY'RE TIREDDDDDDDDDD, and then you might need to stay put while they cry it out, or an adult may sigh and haul them over their shoulder (and therefore be weighed down by about 50lbs of Angry Child).

Heavy forests, wetlands and rocky hills/mountains are also going to be a much shorter "distance" per day. For forests or wetlands, you have to account for a lot of villagers going "who's gonna cut down acres of trees for one road? NOT ME," or "who's gonna drain acres of swamp for one road? NOT ME." Mountainous regions have their traveling time eaten by going UP, or finding a safer path that goes AROUND, so by the time you're done slogging through drier patches of wetlands or squeezing through trees, a deceptively short 10-15 miles in rough terrain might take you a whole day to walk instead of the usual half-day.

If you are traveling in freezing winters or during a rainstorm (and this inherently means you HAVE NO CHOICE, because nobody in preindustrial times would travel in bad weather if they could help it), you run the high risk of losing your way and then dying of exposure or slipping and breaking your neck, just a few miles out of the town/village.

Traveling in TOO-HOT weather is just as bad, because pushing yourself too hard and getting dehydrated at noon in the tropics will literally kill you. It's called heat-STROKE, not "heat-PARTY."

And now for the upper range of "traveling on horseback!"

Fully mounted groups can usually make 30-40 miles per day between Point A and Point B, but I find there are two unspoken requirements: "Point B must have enough food for all those people and horses," and "the mounted party DOESN'T need to keep pace with foot soldiers, camp followers, or supply wagons."

This means your mounted party would be traveling to 1) a rendezvous point like an ally's camp or a noble's castle, or 2) a town/city with plenty of inns. Maybe they're not literally going 30-40 miles in one trip, but they're scouting the area for 15-20 miles and then returning to their main group. Perhaps they'd be going to an allied village, but even a relatively small group of 10-20 warhorses will need 10-20 pounds of grain EACH and 20-30 pounds of hay EACH. 100-400 pounds of grain and 200-600 pounds of hay for the horses alone means that you need to stash supplies at the village beforehand, or the village needs to be a very large/prosperous one to have a guaranteed large surplus of food.

A dead sprint of 50-60 miles per day is possible for a preindustrial mounted pair, IF YOU REALLY, REALLY HAVE TO. Moreover, that is for ONE day. Many articles agree that 40 miles per day is already a hard ride, so 50-60 miles is REALLY pushing the envelope on horse and rider limits.

NOTE: While modern-day endurance rides routinely go for 50-100 miles in one day, remember that a preindustrial rider will not have the medical/logistical support that a modern endurance rider and their horse does.

If you say "they went fifty miles in a day" in most preindustrial times, the horse and rider's bodies will get wrecked. Either the person, their horse, or both, risk dying of exhaustion or getting disabled from the strain.

Whether you and your horse are fit enough to handle it and "only" have several days of defenselessness from severe pain/fatigue (and thus rely on family/friends to help you out), or you die as a heroic sacrifice, or you aren't QUITE fit enough and become disabled, or you get flat-out saved by magic or another rider who volunteers to go the other half, going past 40 miles in a day is a "Gondor Calls For Aid" level of emergency.

As a writer, I feel this kind of feat should be placed VERY carefully in a story: Either at the beginning to kick the plot off, at the climax to turn the tide, or at the end.

Preindustrial people were people--some treated their horses as tools/vehicles, and didn't care if they were killed or disabled by pushing them to their limits, but others very much cared for their horses. They needed to keep them in working condition for about 15-20 years, and they would not dream of doing this without a VERY good reason.

—

UPDATE January 13: Several people have gotten curious and looked at maps, to find out how a lot of cities are indeed spread out at a nice distance of 20-30 miles apart! I love getting people interested in my hyperfixations, lol.

But remember that this is the space between CITIES AND TOWNS. There should never be a 20-mile stretch of empty wilderness between City A and Town B, unless your world explains why folks are able to build a city in the middle of nowhere, or if something has specifically gone wrong to wipe out its supporting villages!

Period pieces often portray a shining city rising from a sea of picturesque empty land, without a single grain field or cow pasture in sight, but that city would starve to death very quickly in preindustrial times.

Why? Because as Bret Devereaux mentions in his “Lonely Cities” article (https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/), preindustrial cities and towns must have nearby villages (and even smaller towns, if large and prosperous enough!) to grow their food for them.

The settlements around a city will usually be scattered a few miles apart from each other, usually clustered along the roads to the city gates. Those villages and towns at the halfway point between cities (say 10-15 miles) are going to be essential stops for older/sick folks, merchants with cargo, and large groups like noble’s retinues and army forces.

Preindustrial armies and large noble retinues usually can’t make it far past 10-12 miles per day, as denoted in my addition to this post. (https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/739342239113871360/now-for-a-key-aspect-that-many-people-often-ask )

[pipermca]

New AO3 Tag Wrangling Policy and the Transformers Fandom

(This is a long one, folks, but I think it's important.)

A new tag-wrangling policy on AO3 has the potential to create some massive confusion and chaos in the Transformers fanfic community, with regards to fandom tags. There is a Reddit post about it here with a focus on anime fandoms, but I want to give some concrete examples for the Transformers fandom on why we DO NOT WANT this, and why I think it's a horrible idea.

The Problem

Basically, AO3 is looking to get rid of the "All Media Types" fandom tag across the board, either by dismantling them or just not maintaining them. The Transformers - All Media Types tag has been an all-purpose tag that you could select when your story doesn't fall into any one specific continuity. Additionally, all most (see below) TF continuities on AO3 are considered a subtag of the Transformers - All Media Types tag. For example, if you look at the link above for all works in the All Media Types tag, you will see fics that are also tagged ONLY with Transformers: Animated, because it falls under the All Media Types tag.

One exception: With the upcoming Transformers: One movie coming out imminently, there will likely be a big influx of stories tagged with Transformers: One. In fact, there are several already. However, it hasn't been linked to the larger Transformers - All Media Types tag yet. I wasn't worrying about it though, because I know these things can take time.

With information about this new tagging policy, however, I'm now wondering whether it'll EVER get linked to the All Media Types tag. If that happens, and when more continuities are developed in the coming years (since you know Hasbro loves creating new universes) this has the potential to cause massive confusion when looking for stories to read.

Searching for Stories with the New Tagging System

So let's say the All Media Types fandom tag isn't accurate anymore, because it no longer includes ALL of the continuities (such as TF:One). You will need to include ALL the Transformers continuities when browsing for TF fics.

How many tags is that? Well, here are all of the tags currently listed under the Transformers - All Media Types tag:

Note that this doesn't include Transformers: One since it hasn't been categorized yet.

You will potentially have to have 40 or more different fandom tags in your search, just in case the author tagged their story with something you weren't expecting.

This massively decreases the findability of a story.

Tagging with the New System

The email response from the Tag Wrangling group (see the linked Reddit post above) seems to be a bit flip in the response to the user's concern. "...encourages creators to tag with the media they intend."

While I appreciate what they are attempting to do, this policy change feels like a solution in search of a problem, especially in larger fandoms with multiple continuities, versions, and media types that are all cross-pollinated in both canon and fanon. While I'm focusing on Transformers fandom, imagine a creator in the DC comic universe writing a story that incorporates bits and pieces from a dozen different reboots.

For example, let's say that I am writing a fic about Ratchet. I am using the setting of the original G1 episodes, but I also am using the characterization of him as a bit of an old man grump. That characterization originated in the Animated continuity, but I want to incorporate bits of pieces of his other characterizations as well (old friend of Optimus from TFP, Ratchet ran a faction-free clinic like he did in the War for Cybertron series, he's got a Decepticon boyfriend like in IDW1 - or maybe even Cyberverse, etc.)

With this new tagging structure, I might potentially have to tag the story with ALL of those continuities. So instead of just slapping down the "All Media Types" tag (and maybe one other fandom tag that matches the characters as best I can), I'll have to analyze my story and try to figure out how best to tag for the characters I used.

And what if you're doing a completely AU version of the story? For example, a humanformers story, or merformers? Using the All Media Types tag along with a Alternate Universe - Human or Alternate Universe - Mermaid tag worked perfectly, since you weren't writing the story to fit into one specific continuity. But now, that might not be an option.

What To Do??

The first thing I would suggest is to contact AO3 (using the Feedback and Support page) and let them know (nicely) that you think this is a horrible idea. Give them some examples on how you use the All Media Types tag to find stories to read, or to help you tag a story. People outside of the Transformers fandom don't always appreciate how absolutely tangled the continuities can be with each other, and providing examples might help them see why this would be a really messy change.

Readers: Be aware that when you are looking in the All Media Types tag, it will no longer show newer continuities. And if AO3 starts dismantling that tag like they suggested they are doing, be aware that some stories won't show up in that tag like they used to. You can also create and then bookmark a custom search page that includes all 40+ continuities. REALLY annoying, but it's a workaround.

Writers: Until they start dismantling the All Media Types tag, ALWAYS ALWAYS tag your stories using Transformers - All Media Types... Especially for newer continuities. This will be especially important if you are writing a Transformers: One story. Right now, anyone who is only browsing the All Media Types tag will not see a story tagged only with Transformers: One. Make sure you're aware of how tags work and how they can affect the visibility and findability of your story.

Epilogue

Ugh. That's a lot of words for a long-weekend Saturday. And maybe I'm overreacting a tiny bit. But my work involves information architecture, and this change just absolutely baffles me. It's almost as though they want to make it harder to find stories. Considering that AO3 won a Hugo partially because of its fantastic tagging system, this change seems like AO3 is doing its best to shoot itself in the foot.

When you have a square hole, a round hole, and a rectangular hole… Yeah, you DO want each peg to go in the "right" hole. But if all of the pegs fit in the square hole, who cares? You got the job done.

I love you @ao3org, but please reconsider this change... Especially for IPs that are as old and are as varied as Transformers.

[dronebiscuitbat]

Flight Practice

Aug 14th, MD Week, Prompt "Flight"

“Um… N?” Uzi's voice was warbly and wary, peering down over the top of a building into the jungle of jagged concrete below, the only light being the ethereal glow of the gas giant and it's orbiting moon to illuminate the broken city.

“Yes?” Her companion replied, cheer written into the base-code of his voice no matter his mood. His silvery hair taking on an almost angelic appearance in the light, a halo of golden lights above his head that served as his eyes. His visor displayed two golden ovals, and his mouth was upturned in a beaming smile.

“I don't know about this.” Uzi looked back at him with her purple eyelights displaying her apprehension, her purple locks becoming slightly disheveled in the breeze, a beanie keeping most of it safe, though her mouth downturn into a frown.

You see, she'd asked N tentatively to give her flying lessons after a sudden and violent transformation that had her murdering and eating a good portion of her classmates during a school trip. And since then, she'd been itching to learn how to use her new wings.

She just… kinda expected them to start on the ground.

“This is the best way to learn how to fly! If you're already high up, then we've already gotten halfway there, right?” N kept his chipper attitude, circling behind her and leaning down to be eye level. Uzi wasn't so confident… the ground looked a long way away.

“I don't even know how to take off! What if I fall?” She replied, throwing her hands forwards and gesturing to the 40 story drop that was laid out in front of her. The disassembly drone in front of her chuckling in return, his much larger frame contrasting with her much smaller one.

“Then I'll catch you.” He assured, releasing his own, bladed wings from his back, making him look all the more angelic as light filtered through them.

Uzi herself took a deep breath, looking back down at the drop before her, and her companion put a heavy, metallic hand on her shoulder.

“You've got this, and I'll be here every step of the way to get you through it. Okay?” He smiled down at her, golden eyes soft and kind as he cocked his head like some curious puppy.

Uzi felt heat come to invade her face, violet LEDs lit up on her visor to mimic a human blush, and she averted her eyes to the concrete roof to avoid looking at him any longer.

“Okay. Fine.” She huffed, only making her much more cheerful companion smile brighter, showing off his fangs.

“First step, bring out your wings.” He backed away gently flapping his own wings in her direction while gesturing to her, she looked down at herself before squeezing her eyes shut and focusing hard on trying to summon her own wings.

She pushed and pushed, but nothing was happening except her face turning more purple as she tried harder and harder, the joints on her mechanical body groaned as she strained them, and small beads of sweat formed on the inside of her visor.

“Woah, Woah! Hey, don't blow a gasket!” N crouched down in front of her, both hands on each of her shoulders as he flashed her a wary smile, “What’s up buddy?”

“Uh… I don’t know how to bring them out, I wasn’t really trying to last time.” Uzi explained, bring her hands together to wring them as N put his thumb and finger underneath his chin, sticking his tongue out as he thought. Uzi couldn’t help but laugh at how silly he looked, which may have been the entire point in him doing it.

“Well… maybe think about how it felt to have them out? Not hungry, obviously, but maybe something you enjoyed while having them out?” He suggested, backing away once more, “Whenever I want my wings, I just think about how nice it is to fly around!”

Something she enjoyed? It wasn’t a lot. She was terrified out of her mind when she’d been transformed and went crazy.

Though… even though they had been falling, talking with N had been really nice, he’d been so understanding, and didn’t once judge her or look scared…

“Hey! You did it!” She heard him exclaim, and she opened her eyes in surprise, not even realizing she’d closed them, she looked backwards and found the dull purple, tattered looking bat wings unfurled from her back, her tail was out too, looking at her curiously. She gave the wings an experimental flap, stretching them out and examining them.

“Awesome! Now all you have to do is crouch down-“ He crouched down, wings spreading out behind him before he lept up into the air with a single mighty flap, sending the newest layer of snow that had fallen onto the roof out in all directions. “-and jump while giving your wings a good flap, you don’t have anti-grav though, so make sure to keep flapping!”

She did her best to mimic his pose from before, crouching down and spreading her wings out behind her, in contrast to him, the lighting did her little favor, instead of being angelic her leathery wings made her look more demonic, the veins within the thin membrane shining through.

Then she jumped, trying to time her flap to be at the same time. And found herself going forward and upwards quickly, she felt herself smile, she did it! She took off! That wasn’t so hard!

Until the second and third flap, where momentum and inexperience caught her off balance and she went tumbling forward into a spin, hurtling to the ground at high speeds.

“OOOOH SHIIIIIIIIIIT” She yelled as she flapped her wings frantically to try and right herself, only causing her to spin faster and making her dizzy, she saw each story fly past her at insane speeds, this was it, she was going to go splat on ancient pavement and be nothing but a black stain on the ground.

She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable, but found it never came. Instead, she landed in a pair of large arms and a warm chassis, which she immediately and instinctively grabbed onto like a cat about to come into contact with water. She trembled as she wrapped her arms and legs around her savior, not caring if she looked silly or not at the moment.

“Well you took off! You just couldn’t stay up…” N laughed, finding a golden blush gracing his face at their proximity, it wasn’t often Uzi was affectionate, even if at the moment that was due to fear. “You good?”

“Y-yeah.” She replied, unconvincingly, and when they reached the top of the building again she was reluctant to let him go, at least until it became slightly awkward and she forced herself to.

“Maybe we can try another way?” N hummed, looking out over the city until a figurative lightbulb appeared over his head. “Hey, I have an idea!”

He bent down in front of her, and pointed to his back, a beaming smile on his face. “Hop on!”

Uzi blushed once more, looking away and out over the building before sighing and clambering onto his back, where his hands came to grip onto her legs, and they took off into the sky, going even higher then before.

“Okay Uzi, spread your wings!” He said once they were gliding high up over the layer of thick fog that clung to the buildings below them, Uzi felt her nerves alight as she looked down.

“What?! It’ll create too much drag! I’ll fly off!” She yelped, gripping onto him more tightly then before.

“No you won’t, trust me!” She grumbled, squeezing her eyes shut and spreading her wings, slowly letting go of N as she felt herself suddenly become weightless.

“Open your eyes!” N’s voice was somewhere below her, and reluctantly she did, finding herself gliding unaided, her wings stretched out above her and the wind whipping up around her, held up by her own wingspan.

“N! I’m flying!” She belted, not feeling this excited once in her entire life, sure she was loosing altitude slowly, but the feeling of the wind underneath her wings was so… freeing.

“Kinda! You’re gliding! Now try flapping!” He was flying belly up, ignoring the laws of physics with his anti-grav just so he could remain where she could see him, and he could remain in saving distance should she start falling again.

She flapped once, the air catching underneath her and bringing her upwards, she smiled as she was brought up closer to the clouds, and found herself laughing as she did it a few more times, enough so that her back touched the underside of a cloud and her wings parted it, leaving her mark on it.

N came up directly below her, smiling as she began to let herself loose altitude, giving her two dorky thumbs up as she giggled at him, a blush on her face she didn’t even try to hide.

“You’re doing great! You can angle your wings to go left and right!”

She did as she was told, tilting her wings so that she tilted left and right as she glided through the air, she got more confident, getting used to the feeling underneath her wings.

“This is amazing!”

N had never seen his friend this happy, and she was doing miraculously well for someone with as little experience as she had, he laughed as she figured out how to force herself downwards, gaining a little bit of speed as she went.

“Just be careful, it’s kinda foggy and any lower there might be-“ A building whipped past him, startling them both as they both looked ahead. Tall dark shapes stretched out before them, hidden by the fog but even from here they could tell that the buildings were dense. -“BUILDINGS!”

N switched over to flying belly down, using his sensors to try to map his way through the quickly approaching buildings even through he couldn’t see them very well, he tried to look for Uzi, but couldn't find her before he had to dodge another building.

Oh no… there was no way Uzi was going to get through all these buildings with her experience, and he couldn't slow down in time without risking hitting a building himself, he frantically looked around, trying to place her.

Finally, he did, just in time to see her come face to face with a dense fallen buildings, and he readied himself to go to catch her when she clipped one.

Only she never did.

She zipped past the first one, expertly gliding into a small hole and popping out the other side completely unscathed. N was taken aback, impressed with the skill.

A flag pole came into view in front of her and she angled her wings to flip over it, body arching to move out of the way and ending facing the same way she started, her face was determined and focused.

It was so… foreign. The way she moved.

He was much too heavy to consider moves like that, dodging buildings at high speeds were difficult, even for him. But she was light enough and small enough to flit over and through buildings no problem.

Another collapsed building got in her way, and instead of trying to dodge it, she scrabbled up it on all fours before taking off again, gliding from building to building without thinking twice.

It was like watching a dance, and he couldn't help the gold tinting his cheeks as he watched her spin into the air to glide through a shattered window, she was beautiful… she was-

“Agh!” He crashed headfirst into a building, chassis crumpling painfully as all of his forward momentum was suddenly stopped by a surprisingly solid concrete wall, the wall cracked when he made contact with it, creating a loud and echoed crack!

And he fell, systems going dark before he hit the ground…

… Rebooting …

“N! Oh robo-god, are you okay!?” There was a voice calling his name and flurried movement above him, every joint and plate he passed ached, and his mouth was uncomfortably dry.

“Eugh…” Was the first noise he made, voice plagued by radio-static and a million miles away, Something thick, warm, and sweet entered his mouth, making him sigh in relief.

His visuals became more clear a moment later as his nanites repaired his flattened body, Uzi was hoving over him, completely unharmed as she held a worker drone arm in her hand, it was still leaking oil. Though her visor was streaked with worry.

“Holy hell, you scared me! Your visor was dark for twenty minutes, I thought you were dead!” Her violet eyelights were filled with tears threatening to fall, and despite feeling like he'd been crushed in a compactor, he couldn't help but feel his core-beat speed up at the though she'd been so worried over him.

“Nah… M’fine. Been through worse.” He croaked put, even though he couldn't remember another time where he could feel his arm snapping back from being turned the exact wrong way.

“How did you hit something and I didn't?” She asked, after another minute of checking him over and seeing all the places his nanites were repairing.

He blushed, so his visor must be fully functional again.

“Oh uh… I got distracted…” He smiled, though awkwardly, now probably wasn't the time to tell her it was her he was distracted by.

“Pfft, see something shiny?” She teased, causing him to laugh too as he felt the last of his wounds get sealed up and the pain slowly subside.

“Yeah… something like that.”

[uboat53]

Well, as expected, Trump can't keep his focus on policy attacks against the Harris-Walz ticket and keeps wandering off into racist/sexist/bizarre personal attacks. Many say that this is a Trump problem, but I think it's a lot bigger than him in a way that's going to keep hurting Republicans long after he's gone. LONG RANT (TM) time?

INTRODUCTION

I'm sure you've noticed the Very Serious (TM) Republicans like Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio and Very Serious (TM) conservative media outlets like the Wall Street Journal that keep talking about how Donald Trump would absolutely destroy Kamala Harris in November if only he could keep focused on policy instead of pursuing personal attacks and angry vendettas. Of course, all of them are missing the main reason Trump isn't talking about policy; Republican policy is overwhelmingly unpopular.

Look, I don't give Trump a lot of credit. I don't think he's very intelligent or insightful and I doubt his ability to focus on anything but his own personal vendettas for more than a few minutes, but the man knows popular. You can see him at work at his rallies, he'll start spitballing on something and play with it back and forth with the crowd until he finds something that resonates, it's what he does.

If Trump isn't running on policy, there's a good reason for it. Of course, we should look at specifics to illustrate the issue.

ECONOMICS

To put it bluntly, the Republicans don't have much of an economic policy anymore. Maybe the used to, but that's all gone. There are only two policies they have left, two things you can guarantee will happen under any Republican administration with a minimally compliant Congress: (1) they'll cut taxes for rich people and corporations and (2) they'll try to undo regulations.

That's it, that's all they've got. Now go around and ask people if they think cutting taxes for rich people and corporations is a good idea. I'll bet you don't get many positive responses and you'll get more than few profanities. Even cutting regulations doesn't do so well when you actually get specific about which regulations. People dislike the idea of regulations in general, but they like those regulations that keep the air and water clean.

Now, there was a point where Republican policy had some grounding. Back in the 70s when the Laffer Curve was first proposed, no one knew where the point at the top of the curve was.

(For those who are unaware, the Laffer Curve is the idea that there is some optimal tax rate. Taxing below that rate raises less money for the government, but taxing above that rate also raises less money because it overtaxes the economy. You should look it up, it's a very interesting concept.)

Nowadays, of course, we've got 40+ years of research on it and we have a pretty good idea that the optimum top marginal tax rate is about 70%. In other words, there is, at current tax rates, no way to grow the economy by cutting taxes, but Republicans keep doing it anyways. It's like a zombie policy that's immune to evidence and reason and just keeps on going from sheer inertia.

Of course, that's just the evidence about the economy as a whole. We also know that, starting in the 1980s with a wave of tax cuts and deregulation, worker pay stopped increasing with productivity. In fact, we've seen decades of stagnating wages and increasing income inequality under Republican economic policy to the point where you can actually look at graphs of economic data and point to where Ronald Reagan was elected based on where things started getting bad for average people.

Yet, still, Republicans hold to this economic policy. Despite all of the evidence and the very real consequences it has had for our economy, Republicans cling to the economic policy of Reagan circa 1980 with no interest in creating something new that they could hang their hats on. It really does speak to the state of ideas in the party.

FOREIGN POLICY

And foreign policy? Yeah, Trump can't talk about that either. Dictators like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin aren't very popular and NATO and democratic countries are. Heck, support for Ukraine has fallen since its peak, but it's still more popular than Trump himself.

Maybe there's a case to be made that the views of Cold War-style Republicans like Rubio and Graham who are pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine, and anti-Russia, are popular, but that's not Trump's policy. His foreign policy runs pretty hard against what most Americans think our foreign policy should be.

The one thing in his foreign policy that has even a little bit of positive approval is his plan for tariffs, but even that would fall apart in the details. Most people who support it do so with the vague idea that it would protect US jobs, but how many of them would still support it if they knew how likely it is to turbo-charge inflation? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it'd sink like a lead balloon if he talked about it enough that it actually started getting coverage.

DOMESTIC POLICY

Okay, so there's economic policy, there's foreign policy, and there's domestic policy which basically comes down to "everything else". I'm going to take his domestic policy ideas from Agenda 47, Trump's official campaign site, instead of Project 2025 because Trump is pretending not to know anything about the latter (despite cheerleading it behind the scenes for years), but they're really not all that different.

Trump wants to "certify teachers by their patriotism", abolish teacher tenure, cut funding to any school that doesn't teach subjects the way he wants them to, re-introduce prayer in schools, and close the Department of Education. He wants to establish a commission stocked with conspiracy theorists to investigate autism, he's both approved of and opposed plans to negotiate drug prices, and he's planning to deport tens of millions of undocumented immigrants. He wants to dramatically expand the death penalty, end any government involvement in civil rights, and try to use federal health care money to prevent people from getting transgender surgery even if they pay for it themselves.

None of these things are popular and all of them would be even less so if he actually went around promoting them or worse, tried to actually follow through on them. And Project 2025, which he has disavowed even while maintaining close ties with those who wrote it, is even worse. If you think targeting transgender people polls badly, wait until they come for abortion, birth control, IVF, and pornography.

MESSAGING

You can see all of that in the way that people who only live in a conservative world try to attack liberals. The Wall Street Journal, for example, recently tried to attack Gov. Walz, now Kamala Harris' VP pick, for creating a state system of family and medical leave, providing free college for kids under a certain income threshold, making it easier to vote, and providing school lunches.

These only sound like bad things if you live in a bubble of conservative media that separates you from the real world. Real people love feeding hungry children and letting caretakers take time off to care for loved ones!

POPULARITY

We need to pause for a moment here and address one thing. You see, Trump and Republican's economic policies are unpopular, yet more Americans say they trust Trump to keep the economy strong than trust Harris. How can that be?

Well, there's an old saying (and I'm paraphrasing here) that people are Republicans in theory, Democrats in practice. In other words, they like the vibe of Republicans and they like the sound bites but, once you actually start to talk about the details of any given policy, they don't like Republican ideas at all.

I'm pretty sure that's what's going on here and it's one more big reason Trump doesn't want to talk policy.

CONCLUSION

Look, I get the instinct from Republicans that they'd like their presidential candidate to be more serious, but if they ever want that to happen they're going to have to grapple with the fact that the policies they want are not anything that would ever win an election. Trump is running on personal attacks and vendettas because he knows that these are all way more popular than the actual policies that he and Republicans actually want to put in place if they were to win and the only way to keep any sort of advantage on any policy is to keep it vague.

Until that changes, don't expect any Republican candidate to make a serious policy based argument for their election, even after the age of Trump.

[littlemissclandestine]

Why I think Russell Adler is going to make a comeback in COD 2024

WARNING⚠️: Contains spoilers for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Disclaimer: This is all just speculation on my behalf of course. I've just tried piecing stuff together for fun because Russ is one of my fave BO characters even though he's a bitch but i need more Adler content stat. <33

Let's get into it peeps. HEAR ME OUT.

Buckle up. Gonna be one hell of a ride folks 🤪

We'll start off with some random/background info.

Russ was born on February 12th 1937 so that would make him 53/54 in the Gulf War era. This actually isn't that old because if you think about it, Woods was about to turn 51 in 1981 during the Cold War campaign. What's a few more years?

We last saw Adler in action post-campaign in Warzone 1.0 cinematics but we've been kept in the dark about Adler's whereabouts post-1984 (after being brainwashed and killing Stitch LOL).

This meanie in a beanie wasn't forgotten about, oh no. He appears in the new cinematic intros on startup for both MWII (2022) and MWIII (2023). See below:

He was also featured twice in the 20 year anniversary video for Call of Duty whereas COD Ghosts didn't even get an appearance (ouch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL_w5HmxsPI

I personally believe Adler was a great addition to the Black Ops roster and is essentially the new Black Ops 'cover boy' now. Would be such a shame and a missed opportunity not to include a character like him in the upcoming COD. One who is morally grey, does whatever he deems necessary to get the job done - a bit like Cpt. Price in MW. Got the COD fans riled up about him brainwashing and pulling the trigger on Bell too - he's already got the spotlight in both a good and bad way.

Now, let's explore my main reasoning as to why I think Mr Shades 2.0 is most likely coming back in late 2024...

🎖️First up: Gulf War mission list 🔫

Here are some of the campaign missions that will be featured in Black Ops Gulf War. Obviously, this is subject to change, however, going off what we have, look closely...

Credit: @MWIIINTEL on Twitter/X

Safehouse guys...SAFEHOUSE. Takes you right back to Cold War, doesn't it? Ugh the potential.

🕵️ Next up: The campaign for COD 2024 will dive into the CIA's role/the Black Ops timeline 🕘

I took the following snippet from this official article.

From this, we know there will be a huge focus on the CIA and who's a CIA clandestine special officer? Mhm, you guessed it - Russell Adler.

Now, according to the events of BO2, it's evident which characters have the possibility of returning out of our original BO trio - Jason Hudson, Frank Woods and Alex Mason.

💫 Alex is presumed dead after Frank shot him so he's out the picture in '90/91 until 2025 when they canonically meet again.

🪵 Woods would be in his 60s during this time too so I'll let you decide whether that's too old for him to be in GW.

Edit: Woods got SPAS-12'd in the kneecaps on Dec 20th 1989 by Raul Menendez so uh...yeah

🧊 Hudson died on Dec 20th 1989 at the hands of Raul Menendez.

Feel free to check out this website (Call of Duty Wiki) for an outline of the events after CW to remind yourself. Here's a link to the Black Ops timeline from there.

➡️ Gulf War being a direct sequel to Cold War and what that could mean 💉

That brings me onto the rest of the safehouse crew. Since GW is a direct sequel to CW, it would make sense for some characters to carry over if possible:

We, as the player/Bell, get to choose whether Park or Lazar die (or both lovebirds) in 'End of the Line'. It's highly unlikely they'll return unless the devs make one decision canon maybe.

There could be a chance we see Sims again given his bond with Adler (Da Nang etc.), his age (late 40s in GW) and his status (alive).

That leaves the man himself, Russ. Everything from his age to the fact he's CIA and was the deuteragonist in COD 2020's campaign just makes sense for him to have at least a lil cameo or even a larger role, don't you think?

📱Finally: Hints from official posts 🔎

This post from Call of duty's official Instagram account kind of sealed the deal for me.

Oh lookie - they dropped syringe-lover's famous line in a zombies post. Why would COD just drop it so casually like that without a reason and years after CW came out? They could've said absolutely anything else but no, this was purposeful.

And that's all for this episode guys and gals!

Thank you for reading!! 🫂

Do what you will with all this information but I have concluded in my silly little brain that scarface is coming back.

How he's only in one game is beyond me. Won't get a character like him ever again. Seems like a cliché war dude at first glance but dig a little deeper into the details of the CW campaign, peel back the layers and get into his psychology and WOWZERS.

Am I delusional? Most definitely.

But the possibility he might be returning...that little bit of hope is enough for me and i won't shut up about it.

This will age horribly if he isn't in GW. Forgive me for feeding your delusions too in that case. Please?

What are your thoughts? Feel free to share them! 😊

------

EDIT: Y'ALL IT'S HAPPENING 😭😭

[fast-moon]

I'm 30 years late, but...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine originally aired when I was 10 years old. I loved Next Generation when I was a kid, so I gave DS9 a try back then... and immediately grew bored of it. They weren't going to new planets or having space battles, they were just sitting around in one place discussing space politics, and there wasn't even anyone funny like Data to hold my attention. So, I stopped watching after a couple episodes.

But, since I keep hearing it ended up being the best Trek seres, I've decided to go ahead and give it a full watch-through. Maybe now that I'm 40 and have more life experience under my belt, I can appreciate it more.

Turns out I do! I've finished the first season, so I'll give a run-down of what I thought of the S1 episodes below the cut:

1-2. Emissary: All right, I actually understand the premise this time which completely went over my head as a kid. The Bajorans were under Cardassian occupation for decades, the Federation showed up and drove them out, now the Federation is in control of the Cardassian space station DS9 to help the Bajorans rebuild and return to self-governance. But wait! Turns out there's a wormhole that goes to the other side of the galaxy here and it's suddenly become prime space real-estate! And the wormhole is inhabited by... mysterious non-temporal entities that spit out a magic orbs from time to time and the Bajorans worship them as prophets.

3. Past Prologue: Garak is queer-coded like whoa and gives Bashir a taste of his own medicine about not respecting boundaries. Is also possibly like a quadruple-agent. And tailors a fine suit. Also, Kira got a haircut. There's rats on spaceships?! Oh, that's just Odo. Okay. Still, the fact that he considered that a convincing disguise means there's rats on spaceships?!

4. A Man Alone: A guy backstabs himself and blames Odo for it.

5. Babel: Poor overworked O'Brien gets so stressed out he starts speaking in tongues. Then it turns out it's contagious. And it turns out that it's because someone sabotaged the station decades ago with a dyslexia virus and then just kind of forgot about it.

6. Captive Pursuit: This actually touches on a moral question I'd been wondering about if we ever end up with sentient AI: If something is bred/programmed to like being oppressed, is it more moral to remove it from its oppression even if that makes it miserable, or to return it to its oppression if that's what makes it happy? This episode chose the latter.

7. Q-Less: A surprisingly boring Q-centric episode whose only shenanigans involved a space stingray Vash was trying to sell off. Q really does miss Picard.

8. Dax: Oh, another philosophical thought-experiment: If you committed a crime and then get reincarnated in a traceable manner and retain all the memories of your previous incarnation, can your current incarnation be held liable for your previous incarnation's actions? This episode decides it doesn't want to answer this because she's not guilty, anyway.

9. The Passenger: Bashir becomes even more insufferable and nobody notices.

10. Move Along Home: Samurai hippies come through the wormhole and demand everyone LARP with them whether they like it or not.

11. The Nagus: Quark falls victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is "Never get involved in a land war with Asia". But only slightly less well-known is this: "Never get involved with a Ferengi when profit is on the line".

12. Vortex: So... Odo just lets a guy get away with murder because he has a sob story and claimed he knew others of his kind? Just because he was wanted unjustly on his home planet does not change the fact that he murdered a guy for hire. Also, Odo can get knocked out by a rock?

13. Battle Lines: Remember that "Great Divide" episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender that everyone hated? No reason.

14. The Storyteller: O'Brien goes down to Bajor to fix the pipes, becomes God.

15. Progress: Kira has to go convince a Boomer to leave his land because they need the resources to rebuild the planet, but he's all "I got mine, screw them." She humors his sexist behavior all episode, then burns his house down.

16. If Wishes Were Horses: Bashir wishes for his own personal side-piece Dax, and real Dax is weirdly okay with this because "boys will be boys". The conflict in this episode is literally solved by thinking happy thoughts.

17. The Forsaken: Odo gets sexually harassed so reports it to HR who just laughs him off because they think it would be good for him to get laid. Then he gets stuck in an elevator with his stalker and it's revealed just how physically strenuous it is for him to maintain his human form all day, and yet he has never been afforded any accommodations beyond a bucket to sleep in. This poor space slime, no wonder he's always so grumpy. #JusticeForOdo

18. Dramatis Personae: TNG's "The Inner Light", but stupid. Once again Odo has to save the day because he's immune to the humanoid crazypox that seems to infect the station every half-dozen episodes, and yet they still just can't find it in their effects budget to adjust station operations enough to allow him the minimal comfort of not having to contort himself into human form every day until he collapses just to do his job.

19. Duet: I am a sucker for "Did the janitors on the Death Star deserve to die?" sorts of moral discussions, and this episode delivered that very well. Also, I'm in lesbians with Kira.

20. In the Hands of the Prophets: Lady who doesn't even have kids at the school nevertheless takes issue that the children aren't being taught in accordance to her religious beliefs. It's been 30 years since this came out and nothing changes.

All in all, a decent season 1. It does show its age in places, especially in its treatment of female characters, and being written before the internet and smartphones caused seismic cultural shifts that its vision of the future failed to take into account. But still, I'm liking it now that I actually understand what's going on. On to season 2!

[trungles]

Hello, long time follower just on other platforms and I love your work. I am currently getting my Masters in Comics and Graphic Novels, and do tell me if this an inappropriate question but how much do you make? Like a month doing comics and art? Also what do you do on a day to day basis? I'm worried about my future after I graduate.

Thank you so much! This is a great question, and I wish more people would be candid about answering it because I'd like creators to demand more money. This will be a very long post! Keep reading if you're interested. MASSIVE info dump below.

I think earnings in comics and books can look wildly different for almost every creator, and it depends on a lot of things. With that in mind, I make a slightly different amount every year. I view my finances mostly through page rates, contracted projects, and passive-ish income. Because I'm terrible at math, I'm just going to tell you how much I make per contracted projects, plus some relevant information in terms of Life Stuff. This will be very long, and I will highlight some important details that people maybe don't like to talk about very much.

Please also bear in mind that I live in Minnesota, away from all my major publishers and editors who are situated on the coasts, so my cost of living is much more manageable.

Background: Building a Foundation (2012-2018)

I graduated from college in 2012 and lived with my parents until 2018. I did not have to pay rent or worry about food, so I got to save up a lot of money to invest in developing as an artist–paying for printing zines, making merch, travel to conventions, table costs, and secure hotel accommodations. This helped enormously, and I would not have been able to spend six years developing my portfolio and connecting with comics peers and professionals without my parents. They were very supportive, even if they had no idea that I was developing professionally as an artist (LOL, they're very proud of me now, but they truly just thought I was being a weird internet gremlin the whole time). They're also not wealthy people by any means. My parents immigrated to the US in their 20s as refugees with absolutely no money and one baby (it me, I am the baby), but they each became pretty successful small-business owners in their own right and were able to help put me through school with minimal debt, even through the financial crisis in the late aughts.

I started making art in 2012-ish as well, but only semi-professionally, and barely on purpose. I was employed full-time in a non-art job between 2013 and 2018 at a local non-profit that specialized in pediatric therapy. I occupied a role as their front office person/corporate assistant. I made about 40k a year at that job, with benefits, and I made a negligible amount of money doing art and making comics. I should also note that throughout this time, I was working 40 hours a week at my day job, commuting between 2-4 hours a day depending on the weather (my commute was an hour for each direction in good weather and up to three hours if it snowed), and then working on comics for 3-4 hours in the evening, every evening. This meant that I would frequently be working anywhere between 65-85 hours a week for five years, and I do not recommend this! I burned out pretty bad! I didn't go to art school or learn about comics, either, so I felt like I had to spend time building my portfolio to make up for lost time. I didn't even know I wanted to make comics until maybe two years after I graduated from undergrad.

I did manage to build a nice portfolio and connect with people who were making the sort of work I liked to make, so the portfolio-building did help. I posted regularly online in different platforms and steadily grew an audience over the years via Tumblr (heyyy!) Instagram (which I personally loathe), Patreon (stressful, but necessary and also getting more comfortable to use!), and Twitter (which I have very mixed feelings about, but I'll miss it if it dies). I did a few short comics with writers whose work I admired. The Fresh Romance Anthology in 2015 was my first major published work, and it was with writer Marguerite Bennett, who remains one of my absolute favorite people. I was so inexperienced at the time, and she would check in with me to make sure I got paid for my work, and then she would follow up with everyone responsible if I was not properly compensated. Not everybody is this on-the-ball about making sure their colleagues are treated well, and she absolutely set the bar for me going forward.

Doing It For Real + Some Numbers (2018-2021)

In 2018, I put together a pitch document for The Magic Fish (if you'd like to see my pitch document, here is a Dropbox link to it! It's just a book report for a book that doesn't exist yet, and I hope you find it helpful if you need it), shopped around for an agent, and found one I'm very happy with (Kate McKean at Morhaim! She's amazing! She runs a newsletter where she gives you the lowdown on how the publishing industry works, so if you're interested in Books, you can check out her writing over at Agents and Books). Then my agent shopped the pitch around to editors and publishers, and Random House Graphic won out. Also, every time she negotiates a contract for me in my home market (the US), she gets 15% cut, which is entirely worth it to me. She does so much. It's incredible.

Random House Graphic's offer wound up being for two books at $45k each, with pretty standard royalty rates, I think around 10% in general, though there are stipulations around royalties that I can't remember off the top of my head (and also bear in mind that you do not earn royalties until your book sales have earned out your advance, and not all published books earn out). To me, this is a lot of money! BUT the graphic novel took two full years to make, so that $45k needed to last me until 2020, which is not livable if you're on you're own. Also, the advance is paid out in chunks at certain milestones of project completion. I'd get a few thousand at a time for the script, another few for the thumbnails, more for the inks, and on and on until the book is done. I would not start to get paid for the second book until I started working on it.

Earlier in 2018, I'd moved in with my partner, so we managed paying the bills and groceries together. Luckily for me, I had also completed a full tarot deck as a separate personal art project to help build my confidence as an illustrator, and my agent sold the tarot deck project (The Star Spinner Tarot) to a different publisher for a $15k advance, so I had some extra wiggle room in 2018. I quit my day job because this was a rare instance in which a book deal provided me with enough money to live on making art, with the caveat that I shared financial responsibilities with my partner. By this time, my Patreon, which I started back in 2015 I think, was also earning anywhere between $800-$1000 a month, which was really great semi-passive income. I'd post process shots and WIPs a couple times a week, and that really helped from month to month.

In 2020, The Magic Fish was published and got a lot of really lovely press. It debuted on the Indie Best-Seller list, and it got pretty popular in schools and libraries. Suddenly, my responsibilities expanded to also being a public speaker (side note: if you make a book about topics of some academic interest, make a generic powerpoint presentation about it now! I'm so serious!). I stopped tabling at conventions (the pandemic), but I would also be paid for speaking gigs in between. I'm not an enormously in-demand public speaker, so I usually asked for an honorarium of about $500 from schools and institutions for online appearances, though I'm about to ask for a lot more because it's cutting into a lot of the time I need to make comics and hit my deadlines. As people are more comfortable meeting in person, I usually ask for a speaking fee of at least $1500, and it must be after they've already taken care of my travel and accommodations. I'm not very well versed in the standards for speaking fees for debut authors, so this might not be standard! It's just my best estimation of the value of my time and effort for that instance.

Speaking of comics and deadlines, I sometimes take on smaller projects for DC (you might have seen these) and Marvel (shhh it's not been announced yet), and the page rates for those, as they've paid me, are usually as follows: $90 per page for writing ($45 for plotting and $45 for scripting), $160 for pencils per page, and $90 for inking per page. I've never colored or lettered, so I don't know those rates. I do regularly talk to other writers and artists, and the rates for writers are all over the place and seem to depend on whether you've signed an exclusive contract with either of those companies. I don't know what a contracted penciller or inker is paid by them, or if that's even a thing that happens? I also sometimes do comics cover work, and I usually charge between $1200 and $1500. I tend to charge a bit more for covers these days because I personally don't like doing covers all that much.

Starting to Reap the Benefits Maybe? (2021-2022)

In 2021, I started getting royalty checks for both Star Spinner Tarot and The Magic Fish. These payments will vary wildly, and I think they will naturally peter off as time goes on, and I'll need to make more books and projects. In both cases, I was surprised. I think at one point a random check hit my bank account for like $20k and I nearly fainted, but some of the other royalty checks will be much more modest. This process of getting paid is also immensely eased by having a good agent! I cannot stress this enough!

Then both the Star Spinner Tarot and The Magic Fish got foreign language licenses, and those come with small advances of their own, each between $2k and $3k, from what I can recall, with varying royalty rates depending on the publisher who acquired those rights. Those royalty rates are, in my limited experience, more modest than my American publisher's, come to around 7% or 8%. The Star Spinner Tarot got an official French edition, and The Magic Fish has been licensed for publication in Italian, French, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish so far.

Since 2021, I've also signed on to draw two more graphic novels for other people, and my agent is able to demand higher advances for me, even when I'm only doing the drawing part.

My Day-to-Day

I think that's about as comprehensive as I can be about numbers. On a daily basis, my schedule depends on whether I'm writing or drawing. Graphic novels are long projects. I'll be writing for months at a time and then drawing for even more months or even years after. I spend a lot of time answering emails for speaking requests, and my agent will sometimes pass along emails about legitimate project requests (another advantage of having an agent is I don't have to sift through scam emails or shady collaborators). I spend way more time answering emails and trying to iron out my calendar than I'd like.

I'm currently working on my second graphic novel for Random House Graphic, and I'm extremely excited about it.

Another thing I've learned is that I like to bounce between projects, but they have to be between a paid project and a personal project. If I'm juggling paid projects, I get overwhelmed and stressed. If I can work on a paid project and then also make personal art, I can feel some relief and maintain a positive relationship with my work. If you can ever get to a point where you can manage to do this, I highly recommend it. I never want to hate making comics, and this balance of personal-to-paid projects helps me keep loving the work.

Closing Thoughts

My only hesitation in talking candidly about all this is that I'm not sure my professional trajectory is applicable for most people. I think I've had a uniquely positive experience once I got off the ground, and I know most people's journeys are very much not this smooth. In a lot of ways, I got very lucky. And along the way I had help, especially before I got my foot firmly in the door. I don't think I make stratospherically high amounts of money, but I know this is still an atypically stable amount for a lot of artists and authors. And even so, I anticipate that some years will be better or worse than others.

Obviously, I couldn’t cover absolutely everything, but my hope is that this will be a good starting point for you to figure out what you need to plan for the future. Best of luck! Thank you for your question! I’m sorry it’s so long.

[jpitha]

Under enough pressure, Ravioli behaves as a gas

This feels like something from @carionto’s universe:

> There was still one aspect of the whole concept of a ravioli-loaded > railgun type wepon which we, lolling about late on a weeknight, with > only a few neurons randomly firing, could not resolve.  Would a chunk > of metal (can of ravioli) impacting another, larger, rest mass > structure (star destroyer) produce an "explosion" effect, or simply > punch an appropriately shaped hole as it passed through?  Bill?

What am I, the neighborhood blast physicist???  Well, maybe... :-)

It all depends on speed of impact versus the speed of sound in the target (what is called the Mach number, where Mach 1 means the speed of sound, Mach 2 is twice the speed of sound, etc), and the speed of the ravioli versus the speed of light in the target (which I'll call the Cerenkov number, where Cerenkov 1 is the speed of light in anything; Cerenkov 1.3 is the speed of high-energy protons in a water-cooled reactor (that's why you get that nifty blue glow), and you can get up to Cerenkov 2.4 using diamonds and nuclear accellerators.  In the late 40's people used to talk about Cerenkov numbers, but they don't anymore.  Pity.).  Lastly, there's the ravioli velocity expressed as a fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum (that is, as a fraction of "c").  "C" velocities are always between 0 and 1.

At low speeds (REAL low) the ravioli will simply flow over the surface, yielding a space-cruiser with a distinctly Italian paint job.

Faster (still well below speed-of-sound in the target) the metal of the space-cruiser's skin will distort downward, making what we Boston drivers call a "small dent".

Faster still, you may have a "big dent" or maybe even a "big dent with a hole in the middle", caused by the ravioli having enough energy to push the dent through, stretching and thinning the hull metal till the metal finally tears in the middle of the dent.

Getting up past Mach 1 (say, 5000 feet/sec for steel), you start to get punch-a-hole-shaped-like-the-object effects, because the metal is being asked to move faster than the binding forces in the object can propagate the "HEY!  MOVE!" information.  (After all, sound is just the binding forces between atoms in a material moving the adjacent atoms -- and the speed of sound is how fast the message to "move" can propagate.)  From this, we see that WileE Coyote often reached far-supersonic speeds because he often punched silhouette-type holes in rocks, cliffs, trucks, etc.

Around Mach 4 or so, another phenomenon starts -- compressive heating. This is where the leading edge of the ravioli actually starts being heated by compression (remember PV=nRT, the ideal gas law?)  Well, ravioli isn't a gas, but under enough pressure, ravioli behaves as a gas.  It is compressed at the instant of impact and gets hot -- very hot.  Likewise, the impact point on the hull is compressed and gets hot.  Both turn to gasses -- real gasses, glowing-white-hot gasses.  The gasses expand spherically, causing crater-like effects, including a raised rim and a basically parabolic shape.  In the center of the crater, some material is vaporized, then there's a melt zone, then a larger "bent" zone, and the raised rim is caused because the gas expansion bubble center point (the bending force) is actually *inside* the hull plate.  If the hull plate isn't thick enough, then the gas-expansion bubble pushes through to the other side, and you get a structural breach event (technically speaking, a "big hole") in the side of the space-cruiser.

Compressive heating really hits the stride up around 20,000 feet/sec (Mach 4 in steel, Mach 15 in air) and continues as a major factor all the way up to the high fractional Cerenkov speeds, where nuclear forces begin to take effect.

Aside: the "re-entry friction heating" that spacecraft endure when the reenter the atmosphere is NOT friction.  It's really compressive heating of the air in the path.  As long as the spacecraft is faster than Mach 1, the air can't know to get out of the way, so it bunches up in front of the spacecraft.  When you squeeze any gas, it gets hot.  So, the glowing "reentry gas" is really just squeezed air, which heats the spacecraft heat shield by conduction and infrared.  The hypersonic ravioli can be expected to behave similarly.

As we increase speed from the high Mach numbers (about 10 miles/sec) all the way up to about 150,000 miles/sec, not much different happens except that the amount of kinetic energy (which turns into compressive heat) increases.  This is a huge range of velocity, but it's uninteresting velocity.

At high fractional Cerenkov speeds, the ravioli is now beginning to travel at relativistic velocities.  Among other things, this means that the ravioli is aging more slowly than usual, and the ravioli can looks compressed in the direction of travel.  But that's really not important right now.

As we pass Cerenkov 1.0 in the target, we get a new phenomenon -- Cerenkov radiation.  This is that distinctive blue glow seen around water-cooled reactors.  It's just (relatively) harmless light (harmless compared to the other blast effects, that is).  I mention it only because it's so nifty...

At around .9 c (Cerenkov 1.1) , the ravioli starts to perceptibly weigh more.  It's just a relativistic mass increase -- all the additional weight is actually energy, available to do compressive heating upon impact.  The extra weight is converted to heat energy according to the equation E=mc^2; it looks like compressive heating but it's not.

[Here's where I'm a little hazy on the numbers; I'm at work and  don't have time to rederive the Lorentz transformations.]

At around .985 c (Cerenkov 1.2 or so), the ravioli now weighs twice what it used to weigh. For a one pound can, that's two pounds... or about sixty megatons of excess energy.  All of it turns to heat on impact.  Probably very little is left of the space-cruiser.

At around .998 c, the impacting ravioli begins to behave less like ravioli

and more like an extremely intense radiation beam.  Protons in the water of the ravioli begin to successfully penetrate the nuclei of the hull metal.  Thermonuclear interactions, such as hydrogen fusion, may take place in the tomato sauce.

At around .9998 c, the ravioli radiation beam is still wimpy as far as nuclear accellerator energy is concerned, but because there is so much of it, we can expect a truly powerful blast of mixed radiation coming out of the impact site.  Radiation, not mechanical blast, may become the largest hazard to any surviving crew members.

At around .9999999 c, the ravioli radiation may begin to produce "interesting" nuclear particles and events (heavy, short-lived particles). At around .999999999999 c, the ravioli impact site may begin to resemble conditions in the original "big bang"; equilibrium between matter and energy; free pair production; antimatter and matter coexisting in equilibrium with a very intense gamma-ray flux, etc.[1]

Past that, who knows?  It may be possible to generate quantum black holes given a sufficiently high velocity can of ravioli.

     --Bill

[1]According to physicist W. Murray, we may also expect raining frogs, plagues of locusts, cats and dogs living together, real Old Testament destruction.  You get the idea... 

[squeamishnerd]

I'm Kinda New to Simblr

Lately, I've seen a lot of people who are new to Simblr presenting themselves. I'm not new to Tumblr, I joined in 2019, I think, but I was only lurking and not on the Sims part of Tumblr at all. I didn't start to post my Sims stories until September 2023. At the time it was only to archive the stories that I posted on Twitter.

Now I've been here for a while, and I know that there's a Sims community here, but I don't feel like I'm a part of it, and I want to become a part of it but I don't know how.

Wall of text (not kidding 😅 I can't keep things short) below the "keep reading" cut.

TL;WR: I'm Kats, I play The Sims and I post two Sims stories, which can be found in this master post. I also build and renovate.

Presentation starts further down, you can skip this part if you only want to read the presentation

So, the thing is that I don't have time to read more Sims stories than the ones I already read (several on Twitter, two here), and most simmers here seem to post stories, so therefore I don't interact with people that much, and with the way the comment section works here (for example that comments aren't nested and there isn't even a function to click 'like' on comments) it makes it more difficult to interact with people, at least for me. That's why I don't know how to become a part of the Sims community here.

The thing I feel like my feed lacks the most is pictures of Sims pets. Doesn't matter if it's CAS or live mode, I just want to see more pixel pets 😊 Recommendations are welcome. Don't feel like you have to follow me back if you recommend yourself and I start to follow you.

So, anyway, I thought I could present myself and my Sims stories, in case anyone's interested 🙂

Presentation starts here, if you want to skip the stuff above

Hi, I'm Kats! I started to play The Sims in 2000, and while I mostly play The Sims 4 nowadays I still play The Sims 1 from time to time. I haven't shared any of my The Sims 1 gameplay here (Maybe I should do that?), but I've done so on other social media. I also used to play The Sims 2.

I'm in my 30s and I live in Northern Europe. I have a partner and a cat. I'm a biotechnician and a certified sex educator, but I currently don't work in either of those fields. In my free time I like to play The Sims (obviously 😆), watch TV series, hang out with friends, play board games, take walks in the forest, go on hikes, and travel.

I post two Sims stories on social media. Neither of them are legacies, they're just stories, you get to follow the characters at a very slow pace throughout their lives (I'll probably end the stories when the characters are in their 40s, they're currently in their 20s). The two stories take place in parallel universes, but if you're interested in reading you don't need to read both stories to follow along, even though there are sometimes references to the other universe.

The master post for the stories can be found here. It's also pinned to my profile. My other social media can be found in my Linktree.

The story that I started to post first is called The Brights

This story currently focuses on university students, it has some sci-fi themes with sentient bots, such as servos (called "simoid bots" or just "bots" in the story), utilibots, and robots. The main character is Beren Bright, who grew up in a small, isolated village. He was homeschooled until he was 16, and then went to a regular high school. When he turned 20 he cut all ties with his biological family and all of his friends, changed his surname (to Bright), moved away, and started to study physics at university.

The other story is called The Original Ahriman

I myself think it's a bit of a silly name for a story, but it was the best I could come up with, and it makes sense from the 4th chapter. This story is about a chaotic, evil, mischievous, and very powerful spellcaster, who is trying hard to abide by the rules of society, in a society that doesn't even have very strict laws and rules to begin with. They mysteriously spawned in The Magic Realm as a toddler and was raised by the three Sages.

In both stories I include a lot of pre-made sims, and original characters are introduced little by little, so it should be relatively easy to get to know my OCs.

The things I've seen others say, and also are things I strive for, when it comes to what my stories include over all, are characters with diverse personalities, lots of foreshadowing, jokes sprinkled everywhere, both wholesomeness and drama, funny intentional tropes, and, especially, detailed worldbuilding. I LOVE worldbuilding!

I've noticed that readers on twitter think that I plan everything for my stories, but I both plan things or go with the flow, I let my sims decide more than it seems, and I often let them change my plans because they have a tendency to do very fitting things that I didn't even think of myself. Either way, I always make sure that whatever I include works with the worldbuilding.

I didn't use mods for the first 28 chapters of The Brights and the first 14 chapters of The Original Ahriman. I do use mods today, but only the pose player and bug fixes. Even though I use mods I'll always have the back of those who don't, no matter the reason, because it's really silly how some people (especially on Twitter) act towards simmers who don't use mods. Let people play their game however they want. I'm also WCIF friendly.

I've also created two machinimas, they're part of the stories, so they contain spoilers for chapter 14 and 29, respectively, of The Brights. But if you're interested and don't mind spoilers, or just don't plan to read my stories at all, you can find them here and here 😊 Watch them with sound turned on.

Btw, this thing with being a certified sex educator kinda led to including quite a bit of woohoo education in my stories. At the beginning I was planning to not do this, but it just kinda happened 🤷🏼

I also build and renovate, but I only post builds on Twitter and Bluesky, but here's one of them, a winter themed cottage in the woods, you can find it on the gallery.

And here's a renovation of Elixirs and Brews, which can also be found on the gallery.

I think that's all I wanted to say. Ended up being a lot though 😅

Questions are welcome 😊

[ghostoffuturespast]

Works In Progress 2023: A Cyberpunk 2077 Year In Review

I thought for a hot minute about doing one of those snazzy templates that’s been going around, but editing photos just ain’t my MO and rather than going by month I picked 12 favs that I’ve posted in 2023. Some of them were popular, some of them weren't. Overall, I think I did pretty good for just doing vanilla photomode on console.

You might be wondering why there's a picture of a sticky note. I don't remember when I started doing this, and I'm horribly inconsistent as you can see by the dates, but I'll jot down my word count for my wip chapter and then jot it down again when I remember to later.

I write slow. A lot of times I sit down to write and it feels like the wheels are spinning in place. My minutes and hours don't stretch very far, typically don't add up to much. But days, weeks, months. That's when I can at least measure the progress.

Fic: So It Goes 40/44 - 438,946 words

My V x River Ward and tinfoil hat conspiracy theory long fic. I've spent way more hours on this then I have on any of my VP.

I got tagged by @just-a-cybercroissant @therealnightcity and @wanderingaldecaldo to do some WIP Whenevers. I post my VP pretty regularly, so it’s always seemed silly to do work in progress posts for them, and I don’t know when I’ll have any new writing to share since in between work and the holidays, I haven’t had much time to sit down with anything since my last chapter update. And I've been feeling very... stingy, lately. Especially when it comes to mine and other people's writing. So take this WIP/Year In Review as my offering. Both these series, as am I, are all very much still works in progress. 

I confined my reflections for this year below the cut. If you don’t want to read my long-ass essays, you can admire the pictures, maybe check out my fic, or just move along and have yourself a lovely day.

We’ll start with the easy one.

VP

After at least a year of multiple playthroughs (I’ve played all the lifepaths, done all the endings), it only occurred to me at the beginning of this year to start taking VP. Part of the reason I never did before was because I didn’t realize it was a thing and then by the time I did, I figured I didn’t have much to offer. I play on PS5 and only have access to vanilla photomode, so seeing everyone else’s high-fidelity, ultra ray-tracing, modded, posed, full on virtual photo shoot photos, I was like there’s no way. (Not that I’m hating on PC modders, it’s just not everyone has access to mods or a PC capable of running the game, and I’m all for making art and creative endeavors accessible.) On top of that, all I’d ever heard from most other folks was how much vanilla photomode sucked. In the glamorous world of VP, I didn’t think there was any room for me.

But I started snapping pics anyway. And sure, there are a lot of limitations with vanilla photomode. But what that really translates to is opportunities to get creative. I am also a hoe for subverting people’s expectations, and very much believe when there’s a will, there’s a way.

Environmental and landscape shots were my first subjects before I started branching out into portraits and then capturing story moments. Through VP I found an entirely new way to enjoy a game that I’d already played a ridiculous number of times along with also finally being brave enough to share my V with other people too. I’d always worried about that before, if people would like her. Granted, I know Grandpa’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but whether you like her or not, I certainly think she’s made a name for herself over the past few months. Even if most people haven’t really gotten to know her the way I’d hoped. 

I’ve taken hundreds of photos this past year. Most of which I’ll never share. There’s a lot of flops, a lot of weird experiments, ones that didn’t quite turn out the way I’d hoped, but I’ve learned something from every single one of them. I know how to spot good lighting, frame shots to create optical illusions, get a very limited toolkit to work in my favor, parkoured on all of the things, and heck, I even figured out how to make Grandpa smooch other NPCs. I’ve done atmospheric, mundane, down right goofy, as well as things that most people probably thought weren’t fucking possible.

I can’t say how long I’ll keep doing this, I’m sure I’ll move on at some point, but for now I’m still enjoying myself. There's a lot to explore in this game and I just can’t stop digging Night City.

Now, for the more complicated thing.

Writing

So It Goes… My peace, my war, my greedy and most ravenous of ghosts.

I’m operating under the assumption that most people following me here probably haven't read my fic or aren’t all that interested in reading it to begin with. It’s fine. But you need to understand this fic, my writing, is the main thing that brought me here. This is also Grandpa V’s story. Most of you have met her, but unless you've been reading, most of you do not know her.

I wrote around 185,000 words and posted 10 chapters this year. 2022 was about 253,000 words and 30 chapters, along with several unrelated one shots. However, I don’t think I’ve done a single chapter this year that was less then 10k, and my longest managed to hit 27k. As of the last update I posted, the fic is currently sitting at around 439k words, 40 chapters, and still isn’t done.

I have four more chapters to write. I have written a metric shit ton of words. This is, by far, the longest and most intense creative project I’ve ever endeavored to complete.

When I started writing, I was expecting this fic to be around 100-150k. That seemed to be the average for most long fics. I did not plan on being an outlier. I'm not sure you can ever really plan for that, but I guess I enjoy subverting my own expectations too.

For those of you who are reading my fic, it is my sincerest hope that it shatters every expectation of where you think it’s going. It’s not a joke that I tagged my fic “#an ode to my tinfoil hat”. An ode it has turned out to be. I’ve been sitting on this theory for two years. I have told no one about it. I hope it sticks the landing and hits the way I want it to. I don't know if it will. But fuck, I just want to be done with it so I can move on with my life, take a break, and give myself the opportunity to make and focus on other things before I have to get back on the damn horse.

I wrote less this past year then I did in 2022. I had a lot of life changes, most of which were good, but with times of change come times of adjustment. Along with some realizations that maybe you don’t understand as much as you thought you did. Looking back, I’ve been in a state of unsettled, kuzushi, for a really long time. Which is not a good place to be. It’s how your ass ends up on the ground with a knee knocking out all your teeth. I thought I knew better. Thought I had enough practice to get away from it. But bad habits have good memories.

I think given the circumstances, I accomplished a lot with my writing this year. I don’t know if my writing is exactly where I want it to be. I doubt it every will be, but it’s evolved, grown, and I wrote a pretty hefty stack of words considering I started working full-time again, bought a house with my partner, moved, and have been dealing with the millions of other beans that life tends to throw one’s way. That being said, and for full disclosure, I’ve also been dealing with some of the worst cases of jealousy and envy I’ve had since I was a teenager. 

Frankly, it sucks. They walk with me every fucking where I go, hold my hands to whisper back all my doubts. Try to persuade me to my baser instincts, to be cruel and lash out. But that's not aikido. Luckily, I’m not 16 anymore so it’s at least been easier for me to identify the problem. Though I’m still coming up short in terms of actually being able to do anything about it, and will be for at least a few months more. 

Yeah, I keep talking about it because I don’t know how many people know that I've been feeling this way. And I’m tired of not talking about it in a room full of creatives, because yeah, I know I’m not the only one that feels this way. And not talking about it just makes all that pent up resentment worse for everyone.

Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. But with the way I work and think, it’s a slow, tedious, and incredibly time-consuming art. With how much my fic has snowballed over the course of writing, it’s left very little room for the other hobbies in my life. And as my fellow writers probably already know, writing is an incredibly insular craft. And unlike a picture or an image, which only requires a glance, reading a bunch of words requires time and commitment.

So, when you put yourself out there and share what you wrote, it’s a lonely feeling not knowing whether or not anyone connected with what you put on the page. Especially, when the people who do read aren’t compelled to voice anything and when the people you’d hope would read don’t. And then you're stuck in the dark, not knowing, because neither of us says a goddamn thing.

I started writing this fic prior to actually joining the CP2077 fandom. And I joined the fandom because I felt alone. I’ve been here a while now, albeit in a few different places, and that feeling still hasn’t gone away. I’m still trying to find camaraderie with my fellow writers and carve out something that kinda sort of resembles a home or a sense of community. I watch my peers around me as they seem to build that with each other, except me.

I’m envious of the things that people make and jealous of the relationships those have created and fostered between said people, because for the life of me, it’s been a struggle to cultivate that since I got here. I know it’s selfish, but I also don’t know what about me makes people so hesitant. There have been a handful of strangers that have shown up for me regularly, but as far as people I call friends in this fandom that have shown up and actually stuck around, I can only name one right now. (I know we're all busy. And I acknowledge my writing's not for everyone. I know maybe some of you are quiet, or shy, or probably a thousand other things. I get it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt any less. People will never know unless you say. Never know unless you take the time to interact or engage. Be brave. And that's true for a lot of things.)

The propensity is for the negative to outweigh the positive. I've got a lot of numbers on my fic, so you would think things would be fine, but at this point they just feel empty. They don't bring me any comfort or real satisfaction. And I hate feeling like the people I know don’t care and that most of you are just talking around me. That I’m some kind of annoyance not fit to interact with. Which may or may not be the case. I don’t know. Again, most of you have never said anything. And maybe I need to accept the fact that most of you never will.

But this is me trying to start conversation.

It’s really shitty, knowing that the thing I want the most is also the thing holding me back. I know how to work on it too, not that it’s any guarantee. The problem is I’m still writing and in a needy state of greed. And because I’m slow, I don’t have the time or the energy to be generous. I can only take right now. I can’t give. 

Relationships require both.

I can’t bring myself to read other people’s writing. I can’t comment, or like, or share if I haven’t read anything. I'm desperate for conversation, but I also don't have the time or assurance to facilitate it with other people right now. And for some reason people never seem to want to talk to me, especially when it comes to writing. I want to be part of conversations, talk deeply with other people. But I can’t speak right now, I'm not in a place to offer generosity without someone first giving it to me.

And generosity and grace is what we all need.

Four more chapters and I hope my ghosts will finally let me read in peace.

[ghostlyforxst]

A/N- Hello ghostly, welcome to list of prompts. If you would like me to write one these prompts listed below, creep over to my submission or asks. But, please remember to include the following: from which prompt list? The number of the prompt? And lastly, which character/s?

You can add extra, like the gender of the reader, or if the reader is gender neutral, and what you would like to happen. I'll try my best to get them out, but thank you so much for taking intrest in my blog!

1. “Imprison? i wouldn’t call it that, it’s staying with one another for eternity”

2. “Go get the chains. you brought this upon yourself, not me”

3. “Why didn’t you tell me you went outside? you’d better have a good answer, beloved”

4. “Every time you beg, it only makes me want to keep you longer”

5. “Jealous? you haven’t even scratched the surface of true envious desire”

6. “Stalk? i’m just making sure you’re always safe”

7. “You wouldn’t survive a day without my protection”

8. “(Charac. Name), and you think I'm horrible? You make me laugh, but alright I'll call him/her up!"

9. “Well boo-hoo, because I'm all you gonna get darling.”

10. “Care to remind me as to what happens when you disobey me?”

11. “Are you afraid of me? the one who loves you most?”

12. “Break up? of course not, you swore to be mine for eternity the moment we first met”

13. “If I don’t have your love anymore, no one else can either!”

14. “How naive and innocent, you wouldn’t stand a chance in this cruel world without my protection”

15. “I'd never love someone the same way, and you would take that away from me?”

16. “Obsession? it’s dedication, darling”

17. “You can’t leave this life. i’ll gladly take my own to join you”

18. “Me? insane? it’s not me, it’s you for letting me become this way”

19. “Maybe if i sever my arm and your arm, we can switch and we’ll always be connected”

20. “When will you learn to behave? I'm tired of trying to make you learn your lesson.”

21. “Shh, I wouldn’t say that unless you want your family to suffer.”

22. “….Have you ever felt guilty, even once, for what you’ve done to me?”

23. “Live in world, you'll forever be my queen.”

24. “You know you can't run from me forever, one day I'll catch you”

25. “You can at least pretend to love me.”

26. “I think they might be a problem. Don’t worry, love, I’ll take care of them for you.”

27. “Sweetheart, I have to mark you. How else is everyone gonna know you’re mine?”

28. “So…do you want your underwear back?”

29. “I’ll carve out your tongue if it would stop you from flirting with anyone else.”

30. “Please don’t do anything to upset me. The mess wouldn’t be good for either of us.”

31. “I really can’t take it when you cry like that… smile for me, alright? You’re so pretty when you smile.”

32. “I did this out of love, I’m doing this out of love.”

33. “You’re here because I want you to be.”

34. ”It’s for your safety. You’ll see.”

35. ”What? So you love them more than me?”

36. ”C’mon, smile for me! It’s not like I’ve done anything yet.”

37. ”Don’t think of it as a ‘punishment’… it’s more of a lesson.”

38. ”How else would they know you belonged to me?”

39. “I’m trying to help! You had a problem, and I fixed it!”

40. “You’ll be safe as long as you stay with me.”

41. “I’ll love anyone else like this again. You wouldn’t take that away from me, right?”

42. “I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t have you.”

43. “You’re so vulnerable right now.”

44. “Just tell me their name and I’ll make this all better.”

45. “It’s like you were made for me.”

46. “I’m doing this for us.”

47. “I won’t be as nice next time you misbehave.”

48. “If you’re not going to talk, I’ll make it so that you can’t.”

49. “Even if you don’t enjoy it now, you’ll learn to.”

50. “I could kill you if I wanted to.”

51. “I’ve dedicated myself to you! It’s only fair that you do the same.”

52. “Don’t say you’re lonely, you have me!”

53. “It’s your word over mine. Who do you think they’re going to believe?”

54. “I’d never hurt you. Not unless you forced me to.”

55. “I love you, and I’ll do anything to prove it.”

56. “You’re calling me a monster? Who do you think made me this way?”

57. “Be good for me this time. I don’t want to see you cry again.”

58. “It’ll be the family we always wanted! The one we’ve been trying for!”

59. “Are you lost!? You belong to me, not him/her!”

60. “Where are we going? Home of course.”

61. “Shh princess...don’t cry over this scum, s/he doesn’t deserve your tears.”

62. “One more chance! I’m giving you one more chance to fucking stop resisting!”

63. “I just want you to love me!”

64. “Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t my blood. It’s the blood of the person who touched you earlier today.”

65. “If you leave me, I’ll die!”

66. “No! Please tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it, just don’t leave me!”

1. "Don't come any closer, I'll catch feelings!"

2. "I'm…m'up I swear."

3. “Can you stop ignoring me please?”

4. “Do me a favor and lose my number.”

5. “Friends don't look at each other the way we do.”

6. "Please, I can't sleep without you."

7. “I-um, Is it ok if I hold your hand?”

8. “If you love me so much then you should be able to say it, right?”

9. “It's three in the morning. ”

10. “S/he's not going to make it, is s/he?”

11. “Wait…is that my shirt?”

12. “Wait a minute, are you jealous?”

13. “We can't be friends, I will always see you as something else. ”

14. “Why do I still like you, knowing you're a total asshole?”

15. “You look like you need a hug.”

16. “You’re joking, right? please, please just say you're joking.”

17. “You'll be my wife one day.”

18. "Get over it, you can't be upset over something you caused!"

19. "I love you."

20. “I want a fucking answer!”

21. “I'm growing bored of you.”

22. “I want to kiss you so badly but there are too many people here.”

23. “This is supposed to be us!”

24. “It smells just like her…”

25. “No matter what you decide, I'll be by your side through it all. ”

26. “Sometimes I wonder why I even try anymore.”

27. "God, you're so beautiful/handsome."

28. “You grew on me, alright?”

29. “I like you, damn it, is that what you wanted to hear?”

30. “Wait, I'm sorry. I'm new at this...”

31. “I used to feel like my stomach turned when you walked into the room. turns out that wasn’t because the sight of you made me physically sick...”

32. “You already hate me as it is, so it's not like I have nothing to lose here...I like you.”

33. "Here to finish me off, sweetheart?"

34. "So...if i liked you, I don't by the way, but if I did-" "Just shut the fuck up and kiss me."

35. "Friends kiss each other right?" "no." "I mean-"

36. "So if you don't like them, then you won't mind me asking them out then, right?"

37. "I mean this in the most friendly way possible, you are easily the most attractive person I know."

38. "I just need to hear your voice, please."

39. "Let's keep it a secret."

40. “As much as I appreciate this random back hug, but would you mind telling me who you are?”

41. “If I gave you five bucks could you pretend you agreed to go on a date with me? I lost a bet and my friends are coming in like five minutes.”

42. “No, you don’t get to walk away with this. Not this time.”

43. “I don’t care where you go, just get away from me!”

44. "You should go talk to him!" "Oh, I'm sorry but if you've forgotten, I'm the nerd. He's the jock. He will bite my face off and then feed it to his friends." "You're being overdramatic."

45. "This is your final warning." "What? Sorry, I can't hear you!"

46. "Let me explain-" "No. Just, don't. Please."

47. "It's quiet. Too quie-" "HELLO?? IS ANYONE IN HERE?!"

48. "Heh, playing victim huh?"

49. "Was I not enough?" "I was just out with my mother, (Charac. Name)!?"

50. "I'm creating a pillow wall so that way you can't give me cooties."

51. "Goddamnit, I love you! Alright? Happy now? You figured out the big secret."

52. "Use your words, love. what do you want?"

[acheronist]

HI ISABEL i was thinking abt ur beechey boys + peglar/armitage extended cinematic universe while doing my laundry earlier (<- normal guy behaviour) and now i'm curious if u've thought of any actors/face claims for them – beechey boys especially bc we don't even have terror versions to use lol 👀🎤

HI GENEEEE 🖤 this is interesting.... honestly i've never been very good at fan casting shit because my default is always just going "x character should be played by riz ahmed" which ummmm would not work here i fear.

anyways everyone watch out there's gonna be mummy images below the cut

okay i really don't care about actors enough to do this well ummm LMAO johnny bertchtold YOU🫵🏻 are now john shaw torrington!! except johnny's way too tall and also ripped to be jorts.... i will say tho, as annoying as the john torrington/david young erasure is in the amc show, they did kind of nail it with alfie kingsnorth... now that's a skinny blonde bitch who looks half dead! he's got the right big round eyes + prominent cheekbones as jorts

if we could get some mutton chops and the uniform of a royal marine private onto ferdinand kingsley i think he'd be fantastic as william braine..... actually now that i'm looking at this i kind of feel like a genius for this one LMAO??

john hartnell is a little harder because i've already decided in my heart that this daguerreotype is 100% undeniably him even though the chances of it are actually probably very low. in actuality. but i have tried to match up the daguerreotype "hartnell" with the mummy hartnell and i do think it's a super close match.... i just wish mr. daguerreotype hadn't tucked his hair over his ear so i could compare the shape of john's ear.... but anyways there is actually one bg dude from terror amc who i have also kind of decided could be jarts!!! he was one of the dudes who voted to stay on terror and die there instead of out on the shale before everyone abandoned ship... he's got the right haircut for it <3 but also i think rob james-collier could be kind of a slay for jartnell if we can get him back to his downton abbey prime

and then thomas morgan hasn't really made his debut in the beechey boys cinematic universe (yet. chapter two still cooking......) and we also haven't exhumed HIM so this is really just like throwing a dart and calling it good. i did draw a little version of him here tho . so do with this as you will i guess. me when i'm just making up whatever the fuck. he should be kind of sickly looking as well though because my dude was going THROUGH it (+ he had one million pre existing conditions) before he died.

and for like... henry & thomas theyre much more nebulous in my brain..... maybe i'll try and draw them later!? i did do fanart here of henry tho but i fear it's got a heavy amc casting influence on what he looked like.

real life facts: thomas (5'9") is 2 inches taller than henry (5'7"), henry probably had broad/strong arms and shoulders due to climbing around in the rigging for his whole career, both of them had brown hair, and thomas was older than henry enough that he was probably starting to get salt-and-pepper grey during the miserable stressful parts of the expedition. henry's id papers describe his complexion as "sallow" and based on how many captains said he had a shitty/indifferent/bored attitude while working leads me to believe my king had chronic resting bitch face + looked vaguely exhausted and pale and unwell even when he was healthy.

also in my heart amc nailed it with giving thomas curly hair tho... charlie kelly is cute to meeeeee... unfortunately he isn't 40 years old enough. no source no facts anyways i just want to believe in curly girl armitage supremacy. ALSOOOO in my heart (again) henry has sailor tattoos-- HOLD FAST on his knuckles for good luck in the ropes + two swallows on his chest under each collarbone to mark his 10,000th mile at seas. i forgot what i was talking about. i think do think k*vin g*thrie's face was honestly too conventionally attractive for henry though. i just know my man was mid as fuck. frown lines from scowling, ink stains on his fingers at all times, never worn sunblock ever, thinks splashing water on his face counts as moisturizing etc.... MY henry peter peglar is pretty weather-beaten and looks like a mean cunt and sometimes he snarls at people like a badly trained dog. amen.

[skarloeyspa]

she peter my sam until my sir gets handeled unsolicited design decisions as usual below

Both Sir Handel and Peter Sam have 2 designs, one for MSR (left) and one for SR (right)

No canon height once again, but Stuart is intended to be taller than Falcon and both are intended to have grown taller

MSR:

The numbers are sewn onto Falcon and Stuart's lapels. I hc their MSR numbers as: Duke no.1, Smudger/Stanley no.2 (both were withdrawn at different times, so they share the same number), then Falcon and Stuart with the same numbers as SR

Falcon's nameplate is supposed to have the same bronze/gold colour as his number, but I realized it would just be impossible to read on the red, so I chose a more yellow colour lol

Falcon's clothes are a bit fancier than Stuart...or maybe it's better to say that Stuart's uniform is less formal than Falcon's. Coming out of the first world war aside, Falcon's builders were much more established than Stuart's, and Stuart's builders were better known for "off-the-shelf" standard designs

Background aside, Falcon is also just more pretentious than Stuart, so I think this suits them

Their hair designs are supposed to be a similar length...this becomes relevant when I explain their SR designs

Also the doodle of them in the middle are supposed to be them being sold off to the Sodor Aluminum Company! One of them has to appear brave after all<3

SR:

Both outfits were sourced from this particular article, this website also had a lot of info on historical fashion (i'm gonna be so upset if they turn out to be inaccurate)

First things first, yes Sir Handel is wearing his old nameplate as a dog tag. The colours have faded, and the paint is chipping...but some things you can't ever let go.

Sir Handel is supposed to be wearing a leather jacket but I can't render for shit. His look is heavily inspired by 50's greasers. At first I just thought huh Sir Handel would absolutely wear a leather jacket he's such an asshole.

But then I read this and...the original greaser subculture was started by working-class social outcasts, often WWII veterans, who felt estranged and unable to fit in with post-war culture in the 40s. Youth in the 50s who felt frustration at various types of social ostracism also adopted a similar culture as a form of rebellion.

In comes Sir Handel...freshly traumatized from almost being scraped at Peel Godred, still trying to process his grief over losing Duke and the MSR, and now being bought for cheap to work on what seemed like an even cheaper railway with cattle cars as coaches...combined with his personality, there isn't a world where he would sit quietly and just take what was being handed to him.

Peter Sam, on the other hand, took the change much better than Sir Handel. His outfit is a combination of casual and preppy: casual because of his personality, and preppy because I think he just would.

So hair length! Both grew out their bangs, but Peter Sam kept the rest of his hair short, and Sir Handel grew his hair out (not too much though). In a sense, they'd grown apart since being bought by the SR, and dwelling on the past is often a bad thing. For Peter Sam, having shorter hair means easier maintenance, which means better for work. For Sir Handel, he doesn't want to lose what he has remaining from the MSR, and it's a part of his rebellion.

I also HC the time of their purchase to be the height of the SR's loosening of regulations, thus the lack of formal clothing. Maybe one day I'll design official suits/uniforms for the SR engines who knows.

hoo that was a long one. if you made it this far thanks for the interest in my designs! now we wait another 2 months (maybe 4...) for me to finish the rest of the SR

[rassvetsky]

Star Spangled Singer

part one | part two

"Steve wasn't sure what got into him when he had you all to himself in that Star Spangled Singer outfit, but the way you touched him made the rest of the USO tour girls back in 40's pale in comparison."

[3k] | could be read as a standalone, fem!reader, just smut tbh, established relationship, switch dynamics, reader dressed up as a uso tour girl for halloween, dirty talk, marking, fingering, unprotected sex, p in v action, they're desperate asf. kind of a gift to @takeyour-pants-off thank you for pushing me into the depths of horniness. yes. ilysm.

reblog and/or like for a kiss, feedback much appreciated! not proofread.

You've never seen Steve like this.

There were times where he was a lot more relaxed, joking around with everyone with a smile on his lips. There were times where he was serious, usually during briefings and missions. There were times where he was filled to the brim with affection, not letting you get out of bed just because he has to hold you, until you quite literally beg, in which he'll only let you go with pouts and declarations of how unthankful and evil you were for leaving him all alone.

And of course, there were times where he just couldn't keep his hands off of you. But even during those times, he always had it together, kept his composure and mostly, remained serious.

Now, you didn't know who this was and what he did to your Steve, but you weren't complaining.

You shrugged his earlier flustered state off, thinking that it's just the nostalgia, maybe seeing you in a Star Spangled Singers outfit brought along a lot of memories and he didn't know how to comprehend all that. Didn't even know how to ask you, his long-time girlfriend if she'd like anything to drink. But even after hours, when you two returned to your shared room at the compound to cherish Halloween through shitty early 2000's horror movies and sweets stolen from the main areas, he was still a bit jumpy.

And you felt so guilty for making jokes about how he was right back in the 40's upon seeing you in that outfit, with the way he acted and spoke around you.

Because this Steve, who's currently busy literally begging you to not take off the outfit -even after you said that you wanted to go to sleep- but refusing to explain why, was definitely 40's Steve.

The Steve that just lost his virginity to a Star Spangled Singer.

"Just keep it on for a little longer," he was sitting by the edge of the bed with you standing between his legs, palms against the back of your upper thighs right below your red and white flowy skirt, clad in black pantyhose. "It's not everyday that you see your girlfriend dressed up like this."

"Steve," you sighed, thumbs drawing circles above his collarbones as you held onto his shoulders. "I'll keep it on if you just tell me why. Otherwise, I'm taking it off and going to bed, I got up way too early today to help Natasha with decorations and-"

What cut you off was his gaze. The way he looked up at you from where you stood. His eyes seemed sparklier than ever for some reason, and even under the dim light, you could see the underlying plea. "Just tell me, baby."

"I don't get why it- seeing you like this- it makes me feel some type of way," he sighed out, nuzzling his face slightly to your palm when you brought it up to caress his cheek. "But Y/N, you look incredible. Beyond words."

"That's not a reason for me to keep this on. Elaborate." you spoke, a bit firm despite the way you tilted your head to the side cutely. You were picking up on the signs obviously, not like he was doing anything to hide his hard-on anyway, but it was so fun to see his composure crumbling.

He must have been too turned on to think properly.

He just looked at you after that, unable to find the correct words- almost as if he completely forgot the entirety of the English language at that moment. His breathing got a bit more shallow, you noticed, from the way his chest heaved and he had to part his lips. You ran your thumb along his lower lip, feeling the soft & plump flesh under your fingertip before leaning in to whisper in his ear, giving him a clear view of your cleavage. The deep V cut of the blue vest didn't help, either. "Since you're not telling me anything, we're taking this off of me."

He visibly shuddered at how you said 'we', instead of 'I'.

You stood straight again after getting a hold of both of his hands, a proud grin on your lips as you led them right under your skirt. "Starting with the tights."

Steve gave you a quick nod before his fingers found their way to the waistband of the pantyhose, starting to pull it down slowly after hooking his fingers on it. You watched the way he took his lower lip in between his teeth, eyes trained on the way the thin layer of clothing slowly slid down your thighs, all the way down to your calves before he pulled them off of your feet.

That must've given him some courage, you thought, because unlike his former timid behavior, he was a lot more touchy on his way up, one hand on your waist as the other rested on the back of your thigh again. He pulled your leg forward a little bit, letting you rest your knee on the mattress and get closer to him before nuzzling his face onto your wrist, leaving a soft kiss on the pulse point. "You should've kept the gloves on."

"You should've stopped telling me what to do minutes ago." you snapped back, getting a hold of his chin to make him look up at you again. "You wanna fuck me in this outfit so bad, don't you?"

He nodded against your hold, fingertips digging deeper into you as you chuckled. "That's what I want, too. Got so wet thinking about it when we were watching that god-awful movie." the side of his lips tugged upwards in a faint smile at that. "Thought you could just push this fucking skirt up a bit and play with my clit lazily but seems like I managed to get Captain America all shy, huh?"

"I'm not shy."

"Let's not fool ourselves." you clicked your tongue against the roof of your mouth, humming a bit when you felt his hand slipping upwards a bit, teasing the ends of our panties with his fingertips. You couldn't hold the strict demeanor up anymore as you reached in to catch his lips in a kiss, cradling his face in your palms as your lips slid in sync, impatiently. He was quick to pull you on his lap given the advantage, and you adjusted yourself just to sit right on his hard-on, grinding your soaked panties on his clothed length with a gasp.

And that must've given him a whole lot of courage because next thing you know, he was slipping his tongue through your lips, almost daring you to fight back with yours. Your skirt bunched up on your waist when he pushed it up a bit more, hands squeezing your hips roughly to grind you down harder.

Your gasps turned into messy whines against the sloppy kiss, lips wet and abused just from a few minutes of kissing with how rough both of you were being. If he pulled your lower lip with his teeth, you bit harder next time around. And that only turned him on more because he was gradually increasing the intensity like you.

You pulled back to catch your breath and to speak, possibly, but you couldn't help the way your eyes almost rolled to the back of your head when he took that opportunity to attach his lips on your neck, biting and sucking small marks with his tongue working to soothe every single bruise. Your fingers carded through his hair, gripping on the short strands with so much force that it pulled a groan out of Steve. "Fuck, Steve, calm down." you let out a breathy chuckle, causing him to pull away from your skin and look at you.

He seemed horny beyond comprehension.

"What's gotten into you, hm?" you spoke, still a bit breathless as your hands made their way to his face again, cupping his cheeks.

"Wanna fuck you so bad." he whispered as he couldn't trust his voice at that moment, eyes on your lips as if he just couldn't get away. "I'm going crazy."

"Yeah, seems like you actually are." you hummed, pushing him by his shoulders just so he could lay back on the bed, still straddling him. "But remember when you used to tell me to be patient whenever I got this way, Stevie? Remember how you'd slap my cunt just because I was going crazy for you?"

He let out a broken moan at that, eyes shut with his hands on your bare thighs. "So, be patient. Or else you might not get that dick wet tonight." you giggled to yourself, slowly pushing yourself up to your knees before reaching under your skirt, pulling your panties down.

"You're so- God, you're evil," he mumbled, helping you get rid of your panties nonetheless. You nodded with a hum before gripping his wrist, leading his palm all the way to your soaked cunt. A hiss left his lips when he felt how wet you acrually were, fingers spreading your essence through your folds, up to your clit before he started to circle it slowly. A soft whine left you, as you reached for his button-up shirt, unbuttoning it oh so slowly as if you had all the time in the world.

He didn't mind that as he carefully watched your reactions to the way his fingers moved against you, letting you push the material to both sides just to reveal his toned chest. You were already grinding on his fingers when you got to his pants, your whines becoming more consistent, eyes hardly open. "Steve, please."

"Please what?" God, you hated his guts sometimes.

"Please do something, I- anything, please," you sighed out, a type of bliss that got you desperate taking over your whole body. He wasn't going to tease you for long, not while he was way too turned on to even think straight, so he slowly wrapped his arms around you and switched your positions, now with you under him and him hovering over you. He was quick with the way he took off the rest of his clothes, instinctively giving his length a firm jerk, leaky tip way too sensitive to allow him anything more- he needed to be inside of you so bad.

But, a gentleman at heart, he ignored the instinct and kissed his way up from your parted legs, to your arms, to your neck again. His fingers found their way to your core again and you squirmed on the sheets under him, a sigh leaving you when he slipped one right inside, the second one following suit.

He was busy leaving his teeth marks all over your neck while his fingers thrusted in and out, hard enough to hear your slick hit against your own skin when it covered his hand, fast enough to have you moaning out his name in mere seconds. You were involuntarily clawing on his back, definitely leaving enough marks to have him complain about it by the next morning but you couldn't care less- his fingers felt way too good grazing against your walls and you would wear his marks on your neck with pride. It went both ways.

Finally, you felt a familiar knot forming, legs slightly shaking and your abdomen buzzing. He must've felt the way you clenched around his digits tighter and tighter, as he curled his fingers a little bit, making you see stars as you squirmed and writhed under him, moans way louder than before. "C'mon," he whispered, lips right under your ears as he left a kiss there. "Come for me, right on those fingers baby. Make a mess."

And you were sure that no human being would ever be able to resist him when he said it all like that, in that desperate voice as if your pleasure was his. A mindblowing orgasm took over your entire body, had you shaking completely and a moan of his name loud enough to be mistaken for a scream leaving your lips. Your vision was all white with your eyes shut tight, cunt gripping on his fingers like vice- tight enough to give him a hard time when he kept thrusting slowly to let you ride it down. "That's it, that's a good girl." he hummed, hot breath hitting your neck and trailing up to your lips, where he left a gentle kiss before pulling his fingers out and bringing them up to his lips.

You wrapped your arm around his neck loosely, composure barely regained when your free hand went in between your bodies, getting a hold of his hard & warm length and looking at him with pleading eyes, roles switched completely. Steve looked at you with understanding- knowing how nothing would ever come close to pleasing you the way his cock did, something you reminded him of quite often. So he didn't waste more time, hand meeting yours around his length when he let the tip brush through your folds to gather your wetness, waiting for you to pull your hand away before slowly pushing in.

A rough groan left his lips, sensitive whine left yours. It was a pleasant stretch each time even though he was literally gifted when it came to how thick he was, filling you up just right when he bottomed out. You felt so full to the brim, struggling to even form a thought when he was so deep inside of you, unable to do anything else than whining and squirming, just to feel something. He gave in rather easily this time and pulled out half-way, only to roughly thrust back in, sending you flinching away but he was there to hold you, arms wrapped around your clothed waist.

Your pathetic moans mixed up with his softer ones as he set a rough pace, too impatient to give you a second to recover from one before another followed. You could feel the outfit getting more and more damp with your sweat but you couldn't bring yourself to care, and neither could Steve, as he was busy watching the way your vest-covered breasts bounced with each thrust, little white stars on either side.

He was sure just the thought of tonight would be enough to elicit shudders later on.

Your walls were pulsating hard around him, the grip you had on his length tightening with each thrust, making it harder and harder for him to move- but he made up for that with increased intensity of his movements. His hips snapped against yours, the lewd sound filling up the entire room and giving you no time to breathe in the same amount of air you exhaled. That familiar knot was forming again, way more intense in the way it pushed you straight into overdrive, and God, it didn't help at all when Steve's pace faltered, strokes deeper and harder but less so in velocity.

"Fuck, gonna come," he panted against your ear, feeling your slick all the way down on his balls, the mess making his brain all mushy and awakening the most primal of all urges inside of him. You could only nod, not trusting your voice as your throat hurt a bit from how loud you were being, whines consistent with the way he kept grinding onto you. "Come with me, baby. Let me fill you up real good."

Not like you had any other option when the coil snapped, back arching from the bed and making your body press against his when you felt his hot seed fill up your insides to the brim, in the best way possible. You felt full enough to go numb, vision white until blurry, arms wrapped around his neck so tight that if he wasn't busy groaning out your name he would try to get out of that grip.

Your orgasm, surprisingly, was even more intense than the former. It had your toes curling, body shaking so hard that you could feel the mattress quake, a loud cry leaving your lips. Steve, despite the sensitivity, snapped his hips up once more before capturing your lips in a heated kiss, full-on spit and tongue with no care whatsoever.

You felt like you were on the clouds, wrapped up in the embrace of your lover.

"You there, honey?" he whispered against your wet lips after pulling away a bit, eyes closed with a grin on his lips as you nodded slowly. "Earth to Y/N."

"Feel so full, Stevie." you mewled out, letting out a soft hiss when he slowly sat up and pulled out of you, fingers immediately finding your core again just to run the tips over his come leaking out.

"I know, baby. I know. But we don't waste a drop, do we?" he hummed, slowly pushing his fingers in despite your tired protest, the sensitivity causing you to squirm with a lazy grin. A curse left his lips. "Wanted to come on your tits in that vest."

"You're such a teenager," you whined out, earning a laugh from him. "Maybe sometime."

"Maybe." he leaned in for a short peck, smiling against your lips when you tried to wrap yourself around him again. "Messy girl. Let's go shower, yeah?"

Your entire body felt sore in this good, tingly way as you watched Steve pull on some sweatpants, damp hair dribbling down to his toned back. You were still wrapped up nice and comfy in your soft bathrobe, resisting getting dressed much to Steve's dismay.

"You're photocopying me with your eyes." he spoke, earning a lazy laugh from you as you held your arms open for him, humming contently when he climbed on the bed just to pull you into his embrace. "That was interesting."

"Mhm, so insightful." you chimed in, nuzzling your face into his chest as he hugged you tighter. "Didn't know I could pull something like that out of you."

"Me neither. In my defense, you looked absolutely gorgeous. Not that you don't look gorgeous when you're not-"

"I get it, Steve," a soft chuckle left you as you squeezed his hand. "Love you."

"Love you too." and with that, you thought that the two of you would go to sleep but of course, Steve had quite the active brain.

"Do you think you could sing the Star Spangled Man song next time you wear it?"

"I might consider it if I wake up to a box of donuts."

"With red, blue, white sprinkles," he nodded. "Sounds like a deal."

[5ummit]

Hello! I’m still not over your deep dive into Brock Rumlow’s custom SIG Sauer P226 SCT. I was wondering if there was any indication as to what caliber model was used? I’ve been reading up on these babies and they come in 9mm, .40, and .357.

I'm so glad you enjoyed my deranged ramblings, anon! I'm also still not over The Gun.

The short answer is no, I don't know the caliber for certain. But I'll tell you what I do know and maybe you or someone else will have more luck than me deciphering it.

On a P226 the caliber is always stamped on the right side of the barrel in the ejection port cutout. This makes caliber identification for The Gun challenging for multiple reasons.

First, the text is tiny and difficult to read even in images with perfect lighting like the one above. Second, while there are a few good shots of The Gun in both CATWS and TFATWS, there's only one (1) decent shot of the right side, and even in the highest resolution I've been able to get (see below), the text is just too shadowed and blurry for me to make out with any confidence.

Additionally, it doesn't help that most gun images are of the left side (as this is where most of the controls are) so references for comparison are hard to find AND the exact text can vary. For example, I've seen some P226 9mm's stamped as "9mm PARA" and some as "9mm x 19" and there could be other variations I don't know of since my gun knowledge is limited.

My guess is that it's a 9mm, as that seems to be pretty standard for the P226 (though Rumlow's gun is clearly not standard) and it looks kinda like that's what it might say, but unfortunately I can't give you a definitive answer.