#unlucrative

[1introvertedsage]

Now that your worry has proved to be an unlucrative business. Why not find a better job?

~Hafez~

[royaltrios]

idk man the thing about like writing badly is like. it sucks but its true. i am like extremely strict on myself when it comes to writing fic in a way that im not when it comes to making visual art. but like i literally have re-read fics multiple times where i think they're ooc or other such issues. and i look up to those authors for writing so much and obviously having enjoyed it. like it literally doesnt need to be good for someone to like it and think about it and get something out of it

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Home Is With You

Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone (TV) Summary: Inej returns home after another one of her long sea voyages to find that her lover has prepared her something quiet wonderful. Warnings: Mentions of sexual slavery Word Count: 1,521 Ship(s): Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa

Archive link!

A/N: At the beginning of the news of the cancellation, I felt very mixed about it. I didn't like what they had done to the Crows at the end of S2, I didn't like what they had done with Mal and Alina. But then I realized, after a while of thinking, that I want to see how it ends. I want to have more pieces of these wonderful books lifted from them word for word and spoken by these amazingly talented actors. So I'm participating in this event to try and get more attention to it, to show that we're interested and they need to stop being stupid. I hope you guys enjoy, it's not as long as some of my other stuff is! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

She had always heard people speak of needing to get their sea legs. They had mentioned it offhandedly when she was a child because she had never had the opportunity to really be on a boat. She had also heard it in laughing jeers referencing Matthias when they had first begun their voyage to and from the Ice Court. She was a being that lived with wings hidden on her back and feet that gripped impossibly slick surfaces, so she had never really understood what the point of developing another way of walking was.

At least, she hadn’t until she had touched down in Ketterdam after a solid ten months out at sea. She hadn’t expected to be away for that long, but she had found a string of slaver ships that had resulted in several quick trips back to Ravka so that they could return otkazatsya and Grisha back to where they rightfully belonged. 

There were more leads to follow, more names written on the little black book she kept next to he heart. She had more work to do, but her crew was weary and needed time to be back with their own families or to rest and recover from injuries. She had docked them back in Fifth Harbor so that they could see to their needs themselves and she could handle digging the problem out at the root. It was all well and good to be taking down the branches that stole people and sold them to the highest bidder, but if she could kill the demand then it would become unlucrative and thus wouldn’t happen any longer.

She could practically hear Kaz’s voice in her mind telling her that she was being too hopeful in the goodness of people again. She knew that he didn’t believe in the beauty of the world, that the evil really could be purged and would leave them with the happiness that they had earned. He told her often and sometimes made her feel so self-conscious that she wanted to give up on her entire plan. That hadn’t happened for a good long while, thankfully. He had been getting better about finding ways to voice his concerns or opinions and they played off of each other to balanced the other out, which was the beauty to be found in both of them.

The streets were just as busy as she had remembered them being almost a year ago. She was quick to find an alley that was slim enough that no one would notice her as she ducked into the shadows. Her fingers grasped at a drainpipe and her rubber-soled shoes, a replacement given to her by Kaz for her birthday after she had ruined the original pair at the Ice Court, gripped at the wall. She had always preferred walking above other people, not because she thought that was where she belonged but because it was so much easier to process what they were doing when she could see it from afar.

Inej traveled quickly and quietly over the rooftops that she had once been a spider on. She knew that Kaz had found someone new to find him secrets and get inside of buildings, but no one would ever truly replace her. She had once been offended because he had called her an investment, but after some discussion with Wylan she had learned how much of a compliment that was. The Kerch cared about nothing other than money, so it was a given that their terms of endearment and confessions of love would revolve around money and assets as well. He was simply trying to tell her that he cared deeply for her without being able to actually process his emotions.

A smile toyed over her lips as she thought about getting to see him again. They had been able to send letters back and forth thanks to their connections to the King of Ravka and the Grisha Triumvirate, but all flowy words and beautiful scripts would pale in comparison to actually getting to see him again.

She dropped down onto the landing of the Crow Club like she had many times before. She could remember almost all of them with crystal clear clarity, the ledge had basically been made for her. Her fingers slipped out of the gloves she wore to keep the ropes of her ship from callousing her hands and then she flicked the latch out of place. It would be invisible to anyone else, but she had been there watching Kaz as he installed it so he could feel safe and she could still come visit him whenever she wanted.

She stepped down into his room and then looked over the space as she was overwhelmed with a feeling of nostalgia strong enough to kill. Kaz had replaced the desk made out of an old door propped up on crates with something big and mahogany. It had marks around the edges from where his cane had hit it or a stray bullet and lodged in the wood, but it was still beautiful and shiny like it was brand new. The bed was no longer made out of milk crates with a thin blanket draped over it, but two twin beds pressed against the wall. They were pushed together that day, which meant that he was hoping she would feel up to sleeping next to him that night. 

The thing that brought her attention away from the surroundings and her own feelings was the new addition. There had always been a fireplace that high in the Slat since it was a floor of the building, but there was something crackling happily away inside of it for the first time since she had first ventured up to the attic. She walked over to the mantle so that she could inspect the Suli pendant, the picture of the Crows drawn by Wylan, and the old head of Kaz’s cane resting atop it.

In front of the fireplace was a table that was laden with her favorites, jasmine rice and kurma with huge pieces of chicken and naan and the little Danishes from Fjerda that Nina had introduced her to. Between them was a pot of cloves, loose but whole.

“What is this?” she asked when she heard the door open.

“I thought that you would enjoy it,” Kaz rasped. “I was also expecting a hello from you before you began interrogating me, treasure.”

She turned to him with a bright smile as everything finally clicked into place. He was dressed as he always was: black slacks pressed at the sides so that that lump of scar tissue next to his knee was hidden, a black shirt with a perfect collar and silver cufflinks, all tied together with a pocket watch draped from the gray vest he was wearing. His hair was slicked back and he was leaning moderately heavy on his cane, which was a given seeing as storm clouds were already beginning to hover menacingly in the sky above them.

“You did all of this for me?” she asked. Her hand immediately strayed down to the simple knife that he had gifted her when he taught her how to defend herself. He had always provided her with the things that she needed to live the life that she needed to at that moment, including the wonderful spread before her. “How did you remember that I hate the smell of woodsmoke?”

“I remember everything about you, dear Inej,” he replied. His voice was deep and husky, wrapping around her bones and shattering through her body. Kaz stepped over to the table while removing his gloves, cane tucked under his arm so it was close to him but not in use.

She sat down across from him with a smile bright enough to rival Sankta Alina bringing down the fold. “Thank you, Kaz. I don’t think I could have asked for a better welcome party.”

“Good. I had to convince Jesper that you would prefer this to what he was planning,” Kaz grimaced and she couldn’t help but laugh. The joy that had already fluttered to life inside of her was given a drop of euphoria when she saw the way that his bitter coffee eyes were sparkling at the sound of her happiness.

She would have asked him about how he had been, but she already knew. He was the same as he always was, the man that she had fallen in love with instead of Dirtyhands. He was only like that when he was around her, he had removed his armor just for her. She wasn’t going to interrogate him like a wife that didn’t trust her husband, come to make sure that he wasn’t cheating or gambling away their savings. He had his life and she had hers. They were entwined together and the older that they got, the more likely it was that the braid would become tighter.

So, instead of asking about any of that, she simply grabbed a piece of naan and ripped an edible chunk off, “Do you know how to eat this?”

[howieabel]

“Now that your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, Why not find a better job?” ― Hafez, The Poetry Pharmacy Returns: More Prescriptions for Courage, Healing and Hope

[whentranslatorscry]

Miss Kyouko’s Locked Room Lecture (4/7)

However, how do we get out after sneaking in?

A fitting room is a fitting room, even if not locked.

Without drawing the curtain, you wouldn’t know the situation outside— the design prevents those outside from seeing one inside changing, and vice versa, there’s no way to tell if someone outside is looking this way, impossible to know the right moment to come out without detection. If at this moment a clerk felt this customer was taking unusually long to change and opened the curtain—

“I just did it without thinking too much— anyway, intentional or not, I happened to not be seen by anyone when I came out, that's probably the most reasonable explanation." Kyouko-san's explanation was really quite reasonable.

Not even on the job, her detective reasoning was so reasonable that it approached disbelief. Still, uncanny luck does, in fact, favor some criminals.

A “perfect” crime, it seems, isn’t as complicated as you might think. Making elaborate plans and showing how clever you are tends to leave more clues and make it easier for the police to figure things out. The more obvious the trail of thought, the easier it is to spin a story. Perhaps a chaotic, seemingly contradictory approach is what truly stumps the authorities.

“This so-called ‘locked room’ has many holes, formed as it is by lines of sight. If the killer managed to slip through a blind spot and commit the crime unseen, they could have made a quick escape.”

“But wouldn’t security cameras capture the fugitive? Maybe we can't identify who, but surely we could narrow down the suspects to people who left the store after eleven…”

“Who’s to say the killer fled outdoors? Mingling with customers might even be safer… and if the killer were, say, an employee, they can’t exactly abandon their job on the clock.”

Murder somebody and then go back to folding clothes? Tooasa found it hard to believe there were too many employees that dedicated. Based on the ‘murdered without much thought’ image of the killer he had in mind, they’d probably ignore the cameras and make a panicked escape. On the other hand, we couldn’t rule out the possibility that our bungling culprit might have stayed at the scene simply because they didn’t think things through. Panicked people do the most foolish things.

“All witness testimonies appear reliable without major discrepancies. A little far-fetched as a narrative, but nothing fundamentally implausible has occurred.”

Kyouko-san declared the verdict.

Thus confirming his initial suspicion; if there were glaring inconsistencies or blatant errors in the statements, he wouldn’t feel so troubled. Despite everything appearing logical, something about it felt off-putting still.

“If anything, avoiding detection by numerous individuals and surveillance cameras is highly unusual… but, not entirely inconceivable that they could evade capture, given the existence of blind spots for both parties.”

“So based on your deduction, the culprit didn’t intentionally play tricks on this point?”

The word ‘tricks,’ coming from a policeman, might be somewhat reckless, but he had long since abandoned any pretense of shame. Unfortunately, the reply he received was,

“No, no, no. I don’t do deductions, remember?”

Stubbornly frustrating.

“It's merely hypothesis. I deliberately avoid deep thought as it leads me to verbalize my ideas excessively. When an interpreter starts inserting their own interpretations, communication becomes harder, does it not?”

She was right.

On the other hand, Officer Tooasa typically enjoyed watching foreign films with subtitles since he appreciated how interpreters simplify and complement dialogue. Therefore, listening to Kyouko-san’s interpretation shouldn’t be problematic despite its non-literal nature.

“Being a responsible adult, I cannot allow myself to be so unlucrative… Oops, be so disruptive to others’ work.”

“……”

“To get into the specifics anyhow, Yanei-san was reportedly a regular patron— but it seems she wasn’t a dear guest.”

She put it delicately, but agreed with him on this regard. The Nashorn staff who knew her did not outright insult a regular, especially one now deceased, but the nuance in their choice of words was apparent enough that it didn’t need interpreting for Officer Tooasa.

Although a regular, she was not a guest of honor.

“She would shamelessly haggle to lower prices, often complain about the goods, try to make unreasonable returns… Well customers are only human, you know.”

As somebody who ran her own agency, Kyouko-san could perhaps understand. Thinking of the outrageous requests the chief made of the Okitegami Detective Agency on a regular basis, Officer Tooasa could only bow his head in apology as part of the force—He would assume the forgetful detective did not remember every single one of them, but it must have left some impression. Maybe her memories reset day to day but experiences remain in a corner somewhere— maybe.

Being often mocked as a civil servant paid by tax, Officer Tooasa understood very well, if you didn’t acknowledge that “the customer is God,” you could hardly do this job.

"Annoying though she may have been, she wasn’t so bad as to drive people to wish for her to cease to exist…still there was a reason that necessitated her death,”

Kyouko-san said, tapping her pen.

She'd been filling the empty space on the timetable with information about the victim's identity, but by now, the whiteboard that was her arm was nearly out of space.

“Necessitating… her death?”

It may be a so-called motive, but people are killed for reasons so trivial they couldn’t conjure them up in their wildest dreams, so digging too deep here may prove to be a futile exercise— Some are killed for being wicked, some for being good— it’s impossible to generalize. There may even be those who are killed simply because they are ‘impossible to generalize’.

Besides, if only a few hours of hearing from a limited number of people were enough to judge her character and personality, the deceased would not be able to rest in peace.

As expected, Officer Tooasa’s men were in the process of filtering through the victim’s interpersonal relationships at home and work, and with this thought, he felt a twinge of guilt, as though he were slacking dining elegantly with Kyouko-san this evening. As part of his job, he realized anew that good progress had to be made from these talks.

“It could be a murder without motive, or it could be that the murderer did not mean to kill but the victim died as a result.”

Kyouko-san further listed the possibilities.

“Yes… Or maybe a case of mistaken identity?”

Officer Tooasa ventured a hypothesis that he himself found unlikely, merely to pass the time— and after reacting to it with a “Mistaken identity?”, Kyouko-san went on to say,

“Killed by mistake— interesting, it could be.”

“Oh, could it be? Mixing up who to murder…"

“It's quite possible. She was said to have worn unusually large flat-framed glasses— and in the heat of emotion, it’s possible they couldn’t quite make out who it was.”

She said and touched her own glasses.

“Anybody would be tremendously nervous when murdering. When human life is on the line, people are prone to astonishing errors.”

She spoke as if standing in the killer’s shoes, something very difficult for Officer Tooasa as a policeman to do— the sole province of a private detective.

Remaining calm and rational was not easy when you can't afford to fail— though being wrongly killed would be the last thing anybody would want.

“But Kyouko-san. No matter what the motive was, you wouldn't want to commit murder in a busy store.”

The conversation had come full circle, but this was still the bottleneck— it's easy to understand if it were an ad hoc crime in which somebody was struck while walking alone on a street at night.

“Particularly, assuming the reason for killing Yanei-san was her being a troublesome regular— which is to say, if we assume the murderer to be an employee, it makes even less sense. Few with any sense at all would think for a second to plot murder in their own territory.”

Almost like the murderer saying, “Suspect me.”

Even discounting that, when viewed as a matter of simple cost and benefit, the fact that a person met their demise within a high-end boutique, where the brand image is of paramount importance, could potentially deter the flow of customers. Should rumors circulate that somebody was bludgeoned to death with a hanger in the shop’s fitting room (and they will), it could lead to the worst: bankruptcy. At minimum, it would simply feel unsettling to have your workspace become the scene of murder.

All harm and no gain.

If we were to, rather forcefully, entertain the idea that there might be a benefit in committing murder within one’s own territory, the only conceivable upside might be a slight easing of nerves when embarking on such a grave endeavor.

Nevertheless, in Officer Tooasa’s gut feeling it would still be more convincing if the culprit acted impulsively, without any thought, considering neither gains nor losses, merely that they ended up bludgeoning the victim.

“If there were other advantages to committing a crime in a familiar place,”

Kyouko-san said, offering a capped pen— from the look of it, she had already written down as much information as she could. She had indeed roughly reviewed what they had heard today— he took the pen, put it back in his breast pocket.

“Could it have been because meticulous preparations can be made in advance? Setting up mechanisms, making arrangements— creating traps to kill the victim.”

“Mechanisms… Locked-room shenanigans, huh?”

However, with regard to this particular murder, it was really difficult to imagine there being any large-scale contraptions behind it. It still gets hung up on there being too many witnesses. Somebody would have surely seen, what with eyewitnesses and ceiling cameras. Avoiding all was virtually impossible. Unnatural to leave to chance and impossible to do systematically—

The Little Prince says, “What is essential is invisible to the eyes.” Yet Kyouko-san says, “What is visible to the eyes is also equally essential.” If we were to extrapolate a “third rule of essentials” by analogy, it might be, “even unessential things can be invisible.” Now if only someone had eyed the despicable villain—

“Even unessential things can be invisible to the eye— such a profound thought indeed. We often miss the crucial in crucial moments,”

Kyouko-san praised this strange thing.

“Speaking of which, a locked room featured at the beginning of The Little Prince, too. The sheep in the box…”

“Oh… now you mention it.”

But Officer Tooasa did not nod in agreement as much as to say “now you mention it.” In fact, interpreting that as a locked room was where his mystery-loving mind had led him.

“The sheep in the box though, is just like Schrödinger’s cat, isn’t it?”

Trying not to reveal his mild trepidation, he joined in the conversation so casually. At least Schrödinger’s cat was a term more compatible with mysteries than The Little Prince.

‘Haha. The Prince would cry if the sheep were dead—oh!’

Just when Kyouko-san looked to be laughing warmly along with their casual chitchat, she exclaimed an ‘oh!’ She clamped a hand over her mouth and, in the process, knocked over the demitasse of espresso she had been about to sip after the meal, in evidently the reaction of somebody who had just realized something.

“Wha— what just happened, Kyouko-san?”

“It, it’s nothing.”

“Nothing? That sure didn’t seem like nothing.”

“I said it’s nothing,”

She repeated, taking another sip of her espresso, the first person he’d ever seen drinking a double-shot, black, no less.

“Erm… Kyouko-san. If you, you know, noticed something…”

“I noticed nothing. Nothing’s come to mind, nor have I deduced anything. The mystery of the case is far from solved, and not one doubt or inconsistency has been cleared up.”

She declared with certainty.

Declared with too much certainty, in fact, that it was hard to believe a word she said. It was baffling how she could lie so blatantly.

“You’ve… solved the mystery?”

“I said I haven’t. Ugh, I just can't make any sense of it. Now, it’s getting late, about time to go home. Thank you for today, Officer Tooasa, the meal was delicious. I’ll be looking forward to your future accomplishments.”

Kyouko-san wiped the meticulously written timetable clean with a wet wipe, rolled down her sleeves swiftly, and made an all-too-obvious move to call it a night. She couldn’t just leave like that.

It appears that she, who was only supposed to act as an interpreter, somehow ended up putting the pieces together due to Officer Tooasa's offhand remark. The relationship between the detective and the policeman, as embodied in detective novels, was unfolding— an unexpected turn of events, especially for the professional detective that Kyouko was.

If, however, she had indeed uncovered some truth, Officer Tooasa was in no standing to let that go unasked.

This was no battle of wits.

He wasn’t that far gone to lose sight of his responsibilities.

He needed to hear her deduction as soon as possible to react appropriately— no matter how popular terms from detective novels such as ‘locked room mystery’ or 'impossible case’ may become, such words are powerless in the face of the reality of ‘a murderer at large’.

“Oh dear, I’m in a pickle now, aren’t I?”

Kyouko-san crossed her arms, showing a truly troubled expression.

“It is so very unfortunate I can’t be of any help. This time I was only requested as an interpreter. I may discover the truth yet cannot grandstand with my deduction.”

As apologetically as she said it, the underlying message screamed ‘if you don’t pay, the machine won’t work’ so stubbornly.

Or, considering her respect for professional ethics, perhaps this should be respected just the same.

In the first place then, it was Officer Tooasa who wanted to send Kyouko-san back home. He could have insisted on solving the case all on his own and turned away the detective. Unfortunately for him, these developments were unwelcome as well.

Had that detective been any other than Kyouko he would have seen them off here— But.

“Erm, how about we head to another place next? There’s a quiet bar where we can sit down and talk things through.”

He had no knowledge of any such quiet bar (that would be another one owed to his colleagues), and never in his life had he been so forward with a lady.

“Well for my part, I’d like to proceed directly to the station to receive my compensation, hurry home to bed, and completely forget about the truth I happened to piece together.”

As if he would let her forget so easily.

But she could do just that. The forgetful detective had that ability. To reset any deduction or culprit profile, erasing them from her mind— by tomorrow morning, she would have forgotten it all. If he did not ask her tonight, her deductions would vanish into oblivion.

“But then again, it is difficult to say no when you’re so insistently invited. I will accompany you then. But— I will only provide some hints; if you could, based on these hints, make your own deductions, please do.”

“Hints… huh?”

“Correct. Hints distilled from the information that anybody listening to witness accounts would know.

Hint number one: Numerous eyewitnesses saw the victim, Yanei-san, approaching the store about eleven AM. But when you organize the testimonies you find all the eyewitnesses were customers who came to shop at the time. Why do you think that is?

Hint number two: Because Yanei-san never left the fitting room, staff suspected something was amiss, opened the curtain and discovered the body. But how did that staff determine Yanei-san had been in the fitting room all the time?

Hint number three: You cannot see inside the fitting room from outside, but can we say for certain you cannot see out from inside?”

“Err, uh, um…”

Kyouko-san talked so much and so fast that he wasn't able to catch the three at first, and had to count them off on his fingers to confirm what they were.

Hint #1: The biased eyewitness accounts— all who had seen Yanei Sashiko were customers.

Hint #2: Why did the first person to discover her notice something was strange in the fitting room?

Hint #3: You can't see outside from inside the fitting room— is this really true?

The first hint he hadn't realized until he'd been told, but looking back on it, it seemed to be accurate— we can’t say for absolute certainty without listing the eyewitness testimony of all questioned. However, since the detective-turned-translator said so, well, it's probably the case.

As for hints number two and three, he already had some ideas. Staff had noticed after Yanei had been in the fitting room for a considerable amount of time. And you couldn't see outside from inside as you couldn't see inside from outside, right?

That would be all there was to it.

Officer Tooasa, who understood neither the mystery of the case nor the meaning of these hints, was hoping for a fourth hint, but it seemed to end at three.

“Now then, shall we be off?” Kyouko-san stood up to leave her seat. “Try unraveling these hints yourself, officer. Ideally by the time we arrive at the next venue— so that we may enjoy some light mystery discussion over drinks.”

Contrary to her smile, he, alas, utterly failed to meet her expectations.

Prev | Next

[badthoughtsgoodfeelings2]

Now that your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, Why not find a better job?

[fenderguitar]

my theory as to why community college sucked so much for me as that if i actually enjoyed it, i would've picked an unlucrative major and ended up even poorer.

[joyffree]

Book Title: Dionysus in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Gothic, Book 1) Author: E. H. Lupton Publisher: Winnowing Fan Press Cover Artist: E. H. Lupton Release Date: May 26, 2023 Genres: Urban fantasy/historical M/M romance

Mythology, but make it everyone’s problem.

A graduate student and an archivist work together to fight a god.

Fall, 1969. Ulysses Lenkov should be working on his dissertation. Instead, he's developing an unlucrative sideline in helping ghosts and hapless magic users. But when his clients start leaving town suddenly—or turning up dead—he starts to worry there's something afoot that’s worse than an unavenged death or incipient insanity. His investigation begins with the last word on everyone's lips before they vanish: the mysterious Dionysus.

Sam Sterling is an archivist who recently moved back to Madison to be closer to the family he's not too sure he likes. But his peaceful days of teaching library students, creating finding aids, and community theater come to an end when the magnetic, mistrustful Ulysses turns up with a warning. There's a god coming, and it looks like it's coming for Sam.

Soon the two are helping each other through demon attacks, discovering the unsavory history of Sam's family, and falling in love as they race to find a solution. But as the year draws to a close, they'll face a deadly showdown as they try to save Sam—and the city itself.

[haikujitsu]

I love how you just dropped a bomb of a story when no one was expecting it and everyone’s already in love and freaking out. This is so amazing and I can’t wait to see more! What inspired this one?

Hehe, thanks. Though to be fair I wrote more than half of it two years ago and just couldn’t find the energy for the rest. Which happens a lot? I have quite a few half finished fics just kicking around in my Drive folder.

The original inspiration for the story came from this artwork! More precisely the juxtaposition of classic dissection angst with the term surgery. The idea of medically necessary vivisection was so intriguing that I had to explore it.

As for why I published it, @derpyscribbles donated to a fundraiser when I offered to do commissions. And she’s my friend. And she asked nicely.

[newamsterdame]

i’m planning on going to japan for my bar trip, and dear god it’s going to be so bad for my wallet being there during bnha hype

[comfortcomes]

it does comfort me that all my dykes girlies etc on tumblr also have like unglamorous unlucrative jobs despite literally being the smartest most interesting best ppl i’ve known and it’s so true of life in general like you meet ppl with rly important political cultural jobs or who go to elite schools or whatever and it makes you so go like wait if these are supposed to be the best people then is there just no one smart in the whole world? and then you talk to like literally a random waitress and it’s like oh yeah wait people are brilliant and fascinating and capable actually ya

[lazyevaluationranch]

I was wondering if you would be willing to share the titles of your resilience-inspiring lesbian farm books? My google search led me to a book titled “Attack of the Lesbian Farmers” which, while certainly inspiring, is not exactly what I was looking for.

Here are two very different books in the Farm Lesbians Write Honestly About What Went Wrong And How They Got Through It genre. Hopefully at least one is to your taste.

It's nearly fifty years old now, and can be hard to find, but Country Women: A Handbook for the New Farmer is deeply important to me. Country Women was a black and white xeroxed magazine written by a collective of woman-run farms in California in the 1960s. (There are some issues scanned at the Lesbian Poetry Archive). Each issue was half articles about feminism and half articles about small-scale farming. In the 1970s, the how-to articles on farming were expanded and organized to make the book, along with some scattered journal entries, lovely hippie-style line drawings and poetry about wood splitting, bees, and gazing at one's beloved while fixing the tractor on a summer day. The contributors have names like Jean and Ruth Mountaingrove, Ellen Chanterelle, and Sam♀ Thomas. 

It's written in an informal and pragmatic style, mostly organic hippie farming, but using pesticides or conventional medications when necessary.

This afternoon the Anderson brothers began teaching me how to graft fruit trees - the careful joining of life with life. Even more than I loved gaining a new skill, I loved learning from two old men who have so very much to teach me. I admire the audacity of eighty-three-year-old men setting grafts that will not bear fruit for years: the total involvement in a process they love. Those trees will stand and live; I doubt whether Jake or Fred even stop to wonder if they'll pick the fruit. I want to live my life with that kind of harmony and purpose. I want to be planting seeds the day I die.

The first lamb was born today. Premature and dead. Olivia, the mother, seems to be all right though. I had a dream a few weeks ago that the lambs were born tiny (like mice) and pink. And that I struggled to save them, but they were too small to feed. The lamb today was small and pink, its fleece plastered against its body, thin and sparse. For a moment it was nightmareishly like my dream... This is my first animal death. The beginning of a long cycle. It seems even harder to have death come before life, than to have an old one die giving birth. Hopes for the future stillborn.

Driving home today, I suddenly realized that this really is going to be a sheep ranch, that I have done, and am doing, and will do it. That I'm making my livelihood from the land. The canyon is fenced now. There are  sheep out there on pastures that were open hillsides two years ago. 

The very act of building this place, the simple actions of tamping dirt, stretching wire, dumping hay in feeders, has profoundly changed my sense of self. I'm doing things I never dreamed I could do, and I'm doing them easily without even considering whether I really can. Last night I was talking with Susan about fencing the front meadow for feeder calves, and I realized that I could say that realistically, no fantasizing, no bragging: I can fence the front meadow as soon as I get done with the hay barn and get a little more money.

Like almost every other farmer in America today, I'm in debt and hoping for a good season. I'm only at the beginning now, and I know there are many struggles to come and overcome and come again: Someday I too, like my neighbours, will be counting carcasses killed by a marauding dog or watching the spring oats be wash away in an "unheard of" late storm. No matter how prepared I am, there us always that vulnerability - to the weather, other animals, disease - that seems to strike when things are finally going smoothly. But inside me there is also this incredible joy: This life is real and good, and it has made me strong and real and good too. 

I gotta stop or I'll type the whole book into this post. One more: 

My father is here this week ... working on the truck whose engine has been alien to me. I am learning now what I could have learned at 7, 11, 15. Beneath my truck, side by side, lie his seven-year-old son and his twenty-five-year-old daughter, both of us learning for the first time how bearings fit together, how to remove pistons. And here beneath this truck the patriarchy stops: he has passed his knowledge to his daughter, and from me  it will pass to sisters, from sister to sister to sister. 

That's this book. The things women weren't supposed to know in the sixties. They found people to teach them; they taught each other; they learned through bitter loss. The book says: we have gone before you and you are not alone. Here is what we have learned, and here is how we have learned it. We have failed, and we have wept, and we have gotten up and gone on, and it was alright. Here is the fire, passed from hand to hand to hand. Here is the light that will never be put out. 

The week after we first got goats, we received a package in the mail from my coolest relative, a veterinarian who was the first woman to graduate with a specialization in large animal medicine at her school. People thought that women just weren't physically capable of handling large animals. (Hint: the bull weights 1100 kilograms. It doesn't much matter if the veterinarian weighs 50 kilograms or 150 kilograms.) I remember staying with her a child, in summer, laying on the stainless steel operating table in the barn; it always felt cool when the heat was unbearable.

The package, of course, contained Country Women. An old well-loved copy, with notes on long-ago calving dates penciled in the margins, and random scraps of paper with sketches of possible gardens and goat sheds as bookmarks.  A light passed from hand to hand, a light that will not go out. It was like receiving a video game quest artifact.

Country Women is rooted in second wave feminism, which is not everyone's cup of tea. For something more modern and story-focussed, consider Hit By A Farm or Sheepish by Catherine Friend. These are collections of short, funny autobiographical essays about farming and relationships. Their tone is honest and wry, self-deprecating. You can see Catherine Friend's blog here and decide if you like her writing style. She wanted to call Hit By A Farm "Sheep Sex and Other Disasters" but her editor didn't think it would sell. 

In Hit By A Farm, Catherine - a professional writer - goes along with her partner Melissa's lifelong desire to ranch sheep, and describes the results from the perspective of the slightly reluctant farmer's wife as they start a farm in Minnesota.  Sheepish is written fifteen years later, when they're thinking about quitting the farm, after all the shiny newness of farming and the relationship has worn off. There are different mistakes then, different sorrows, and new joys. 

From Sheepish: 

We rarely pay attention to middles. Perhaps we ignore them because they're problematic. The middles of our beds often sag. The middles of our bodies sag. The middle of a long story told by your brother-in-law is likely to sag, and so you'll need another beer to stay focused. Everyone needs a reason to keep going when they're in the middle. 

And:

Don't expect a farm to fix your life, for once the romance dims, you must still muck out the barn and stack hay bales and give that sick goat an enema...Although there are tons of stories about starting something new, there just aren't that many about how to keep doing something, about how to slog through the middle when the going gets tough.

The quotes are all from Sheepish; I can't find our copy of Hit By A Farm:

My spinning wheel continues to torture and confound me. I realize I'm not interested enough in the craft to really commit to learning it. After a few more tries, I tuck the wheel into a corner of our living room and turn it into what Melissa likes to call a Dust Accumulation Research Project. Clearly our wool market will continue to be the wildly unlucrative wholesale warehouse.

The patron saint of spinners is, interestingly enough, Saint Catherine. She was a Christian martyr in Alexandria. In 307 AD, she was condemned to be torn apart by the spokes of the wheel.

Well. No wonder.

Spoiler: things get pretty rough, there’s illness and hard winters and financial issues, but they do not, in fact, give up the farm or each other. 

The book says: We made it. You will too.

[maskrosfe]

hey just dropping in because I saw the ask on POC L and I have to make a very clear note that L is already POC, he is asian. The correct way of asking about it is "hey what if L had a darker skin tone" or "what if he was black/mestizo/southeast asian/mixed", because saying that you're going to draw him POC means that you're ignoring that he's asian and assuming he's white, which he isn't.

Thank you for droppin in, you have a grand point! (This reply got a little chunky so there’s a TLDR part at the bottom) Using BIPOC or POC as terms to talk about specific people or characters is rather unlucrative, and can at times also erase certain experiences of erase the vast diversity of people who aren’t white.  Despite anon’s intention, the way they used the term ends up translating as “there’s 2 options. white and then non-white”. Using the term like this is an indication towards a world view dominated by a white perspective and a white norm, aswell as an act that helps recreate the white perspective as the base from which all perspectives stem. I’m writing that out in hope that the anon, and others aswell, get a chance to understand their actions and language.  On the note of L’s ethnicity, it is rather unclear. The creators have said outside of the work itself in “DEATH NOTE 13 how to read” that his “nationality” is quarter Japanese, quarter English, quarter Russian and quarter Italian or French (pp 59). Considering the fact that you can’t legally have 4 nationalities, it’s fair to assume that they confused the words nationality and ethnicity. Thus, they do perhaps mean “L share the ethnicities commonly found in these 4 / 5 countries” which would mean he’s half asian, half european but 3/4 white and 1/4 east asian BUT...... that ASWELL... is to read this statement through a white political norm and try to “logically” reach some sort of conclusion based around a colonial understanding of the world???? it basically means nothing. ill drop this now lol

You’re 100% right on the note that if he was asian, more specifically east asian, assuming he’s white would erase that and thus whitewash him. You’re also right on the example of questions that would make more sense to ask, like what if he had a darker skin tone or what if he had this or that ethnicity. Thank you for sharing that so I could share it further!

TLDR; Anon is saying that you should not use terms like POC as “can i make this character a person of color” when you’re speaking about a specific character who already is a person of color, that whitewashes them. Although L’s ethnicity is unclear, according to sources outside the main series of Death Note itself, L is implied to be at the very least part east asian. YET The specifics of those facts might not even be relevant, since what anon suggested as alternative ways to ask what we believe the previous anon wanted to ask are more so.

[lupovecchio]

Now that your worry has proved such an unlucrative business/

Why not find a better job?”

― Hafiz