allthebooksunderthemoon - Tumblr blog

allthebooksunderthemoon · 17 days

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Oops, I never uploaded this one to Tumblr (which I only realized when someone else did, but then was kind enough to tag me, thank you)!

This is the comic that kickstarted my obsession with telling stories with as few panels as I could (usually 10-11 haha), so it’s got a soft spot in my heart.

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allthebooksunderthemoon · 28 days

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I just went through and read through some of the mbti posts I made in high school and haven’t updated throughout college and it’s wild looking back sometimes

Back in highschool I had an ongoing fic I promised my readers I wasnt going to abandon and today is the 13 year anniversary of its last update

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allthebooksunderthemoon · 1 month

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Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

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allthebooksunderthemoon · 3 months

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AU where everything is the same in the Percy Jackson series except that every time the gods don’t claim their kids in time, they have to watch the entirety of the Lightning Thief Musical

#to learn their lesson of course #i love the musical #percy jackson #lightning thief musical #heroes of olympus #rick riordan

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allthebooksunderthemoon · 3 months

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Coming out of hibernation just to say that Love, Theoretically was a good book. No, a great book. I like Ali Hazelwood's formula, I like her characters, I LOVE that she writes about women in STEM and uses her books to advocate for fairer practices in academia.

Modern romances are almost all written with the same general structure. I read a lot of them (and write some), and while some tell a really good story and create memorable characters, the majority are generic cookie cutter stories that I forget about as soon as I close the book.

Most romance characters are archetypes. Most plotlines are derivative. There is always miscommunication. Popular tropes are popular for a reason.

Ali's specific version of this genre has tall grumpy men who are misunderstood. It has academic collaborations that force proximity. It has quirky women trying to figure out how to human while unpacking trauma, fighting mysogeny, and dealing with inconvenient feelings they don't know how to navigate for men they don't realize are their biggest advocates. Then they have a happy ending where everyone gets what they deserve and progress has been made in the STEM world.

This is Ali's universe. I loved it the first time, I loved it the second time, I enjoyed it in her novellas, and to no one's surprise - I loved it this time. If she keeps creating complex characters that I can actually care about and root for (something many romances fail to do) then I will keep reading. Hell, if every single man in her books continued to be an Adam Driver clone I would never tire of it, because a well written romance is a well written romance.

If you do not enjoy Ali's formula, why are you still reading her books? Just stop. We all like different styles, tropes, character types, etc. and I'm not judging anyone for not enjoying her writing. But it feels to me like the big complaint is that she has written a romance... And it's familiar... And we'll, duh. So few romances stand out to me, I feel this way about most romance authors. It's all the same in some way or another. But Ali's writing speaks to me, her stories move me, her characters feel familiar and comfortable in a way I rarely find in other books, and in a world where 1000's of romances are published every year, I feel like we can all find our own version of that without shitting on a talented author who writes books that a lot of people love.

We all have the option to DNF and move on with our lives if something isn't our preference. Let people like things. That's all I wanted to say.

Thanks, Ali. Love, Theoretically was sublime.

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