#I first got a copy via the library and then decided I needed my own

[i-dont-talk-for-days-on-end]

Pleeeaaase, I need everyone here to get hold of Lyndsay Faye's Observations by Gaslight so I can scream about it - especially about "The Adventure of the Stopped Clocks".

It is perfect. It is narrated by Irene Norton née Adler, and additional to the fact that the author portrays Irene AND her relationship with Holmes in such a delightful way (Spoiler TM: They are not star-crossed lovers), it will completely rip out your heart. It is so good. (And the other stories are also superb!) Trust me. Please. I'm desperate. XD

An excerpt (p. 43-44):

See???

#I first got a copy via the library and then decided I needed my own #it's also available as an e-book #both this and the laper back are available for around 10 € #no i have not been payed to advertise it #i am just going insane #so nothing new after all #sherlock holmes #irene adler #dr watson #lyndsay faye #observations by gaslight

[incorrectlumityquotes]

Why Amity fell for Luz: A Theory

Watching all the episodes of The Owl House and reviewing them brought back a lot of thoughts and feelings that I maybe forgot about. We all ship things and sometimes we do it for fun; sometimes for deeper reasons. I just started lumity because it reminded me of Diana & Akko from Little Witch Academia. I loved that show so much that I wanted more, and I thought it would be cool if Luz & Amity did something similar. I had no idea that it was going to go beyond that, so DAMN. To quote a talking science wolf, “For years we ask how, but we should ask why.” I mean, we saw how. But why? Well I can take a guess.

If we’re are going to start anywhere it’s going to be with the girl in question, Amity Blight.

As far as I know as of this typing, Amity Blight is a witchling from The Boiling Isles. She lives in Bonesboro at The Blight Manor estate with her parents and her siblings. She attends Hexside School of Magic and Demonics. Good for her.

Amity has an ambitious and competitive personality. She’s always striving to be better and be at the top of whatever she is doing. When she’s introduced in I Was a Teenage Abomination, she’s showing having great pride in being the top student in her abomination class. In Adventures in the Elements, she goes to The Knee in hopes of training to beat her siblings’ high score on the placement exam.

Amity also has a bit of a temper and gets annoyed easily. In I Was a Teenage Abomination, she sics her abominations on Willow and Luz just because she wasn’t named top student that day. In Enchanting Grom Fright, Amity snapped at the person she bumped into before realizing it was Luz. And later in the same episode, Amity beat up Hooty when he decided to get too close.

But she does have a soft sensitive side. She keeps a diary in her secret room in the library and even reads to kids in her free time. Amity also has a strong sense of integrity. She despises cheating (and cheaters) and feels guilt when she’s forced to break ties with Willow.

So why did someone like this fall for Luz of all people? (see above image)

Enter what I call my Shipping Theory of Compliments

The Shipping Theory of Compliments is that two characters would be shipped and sometimes canonically enter a romantic relationship based on their personalities complimenting each other and fulfilling elements they don’t have alone necessary to developing the character.

People like to use the image of a missing puzzle piece, but I don’t like that comparison because I think it’s a little inaccurate and I don’t like puzzles. Think of it more like the two pieces of the yin and yang coming together and then growing the circles of the opposite colors in them.

Something like that.

And it’s compliments, not opposites. When you think compliments, think more Star and Marco from Star vs the Forces of Evil. Star wants to go on a magical adventure. Marco also wants to go on a magic adventure. The difference is that Star goes in recklessly while Marco wants to plan it out a bit. They still have their adventure as oppose to Star’s opposite who wouldn’t want to go on a magical adventure. That sort of thing.

So how do Luz and Amity compliment each other?

Let’s start with that they have in common. Obvious stuff aside, they’re both training to become the best witches they can be. The difference comes that Luz is a human who has to learn magic via glyphs that she finds and Amity learns magic the “proper” way on The Boiling Isles. 

Luz and Amity are also both fans of The Good Witch Azura book series. Difference is that Luz is more open about her fandom while Amity tries to keep it a secret. Also petty thing but they’re both fan artists too, but I think Luz might be a better than Amity. But hey, her crosshatching is improving.

Luz and Amity are also (at the start of the series) both lonely people. Luz’s mom says that she doesn’t have any friends, and Amity doesn’t like her “friends.” The difference is that Luz reaches outward to ease her loneliness (being social and friendly, trying new things, etc.) while Amity reaches inward (keeping a diary, staying busy, having a secret spot, etc.). They both also use escapist fiction to ease their loneliness.

That’s all well and good, but now we get into the real speculative parts. 

...complimenting each other and fulfilling elements they don’t have alone necessary to developing the character.

When I was taking acting classes I was taught that the way you see people act is a persona based on their experiences on what it takes to survive and avoid physical, emotional and social death. So now we have to speculate based on what we were given on what emotional/social needs and wants has Amity not been getting before that she has with Luz.

First let me point you to another show called F is for Family. F is for Family is an adult animated sitcom on Netflix that follows a very dysfunctional family in the 1970s. These are legitimately bad characters, not in terms of being poorly written. What I’m saying is that these guys are assholes. But here’s where it gets interesting.

One of the characters is Kevin Murphy, the teenage son of the family. He’s a dim-witted wannabe rockstar who is always yelled at and put down by his parents throughout the entire series. However in season four Kevin meets Alice. Alice teaches Kevin that his favorite band is a big reference to Tolkien and gives him a copy of The Hobbit. They bond over their love of Lord of the Rings and get along really well. Alice calls him smart for being able to read all of Lord of the Rings over a few days and never puts him down. Even in the one time they did fight she never yelled at him or raised her voice which he found weird because he’s so used to being yelled at. Alice gave Kevin the emotional support he always wanted but never got from his family.

Using that as a backdrop, let’s go back to Amity.

Amity grew up with her parents making her do things she didn’t want to do, making choices for her. Amity wanted to be one way. Her parents wanted something else. Amity’s mother even dyes Amity’s hair green so it matches her siblings. Amity wanted to be friends with Willow. Amity’s parents wanted her to be friends with the mean kids. While Amity does work hard to be the best at what she’s doing, her parents also put pressure on her to make sure that she is at that level. 

Her siblings are another bag of awful. They constantly refer to her by an annoying nickname that I’m guessing has an embarrassing moment attached to it. They seem to live by a double standard that Amity despises. She has to work hard and follow the rules just to be accepted while they are naturally talented and break the rules with everyone still thinking that they’re perfect. 

Family is supposed to provide unconditional love except it looks like the love of the Blights is based on conditions. Nobody just likes Amity for who she is. She doesn’t have a friend.

Enter: the friendliest person she’s ever met

Amity has to struggle and work for the simplest things, even affection. Except when it comes to Luz. Luz is naturally friendly and positive. Amity doesn’t have to earn her kindness. Even when she’s bullied Luz before, Luz is always coming back with a smile. I suppose when you live life surrounded by jerks, you’ll want to hang out with the one person who’s always nice to you. Sort of.

Yes, Amity did think Luz was a bully for constantly getting her into trouble. But even at Covention and Lost in Language, Luz kept reaching out to her. This combined with Amity’s awareness of her own behavior is what convinced her to try to reach out in kind to Luz by the end of Lost in Language. “She’s trying to be nice to me, so I should try too,” I’m guessing is the mindset especially in Adventures in the Elements. And then...Luz continued to be nice to her which is kind of a big deal for Amity.

Let’s tally up what we have so far:

Luz and Amity have similar interests (The Good Witch Azura series, art, fiction, learning magic)

Luz and Amity have similar values (work ethic, disdain for cheating, protecting those closest to you, etc.)

Luz gives Amity the positivity and affection that Amity doesn’t normally get anywhere else

They still have differing personalities with Amity being more competitive and Luz having more of a live-and-let-live attitude.

Even with all these things in mind, why was Amity so scared to ask Luz to Grom?

Speculating again but my theory is that Amity wasn’t sure if Luz actually liked her or if Luz is just friendly because that’s how Luz is. Amity was scared of being rejected because she felt that maybe she was just reading the situation wrong. Luz is this ray of sunshine in her gray skies (if you’ll forgive the cliché). People like Amity always think of all the worst possibilities (I know because I do this too). Amity was probably thinking a bunch of what ifs. “What if Luz doesn’t actually like me? What if she’s just being friendly because she feels sorry for me? What if she has feelings for someone else? What if she never actually liked me? What if she’s straight?”

Luz is Amity’s first crush and it is scary as all hell to put yourself out there like that for the first time. She wasn’t expecting to get married at Grom night. She just wanted to dance with the girl she liked.

The dance at Grom was like confirmation for her that it could happen. Amity didn’t have to ask out Luz because Luz asked her. Being with Luz isn’t a pipedream. It’s a definite possibility. And we all know how she reacted to that idea.

Uh...she’ll be in her bunk.

While Luz and Amity aren’t together as of this typing, I believe it’s bound to happen. Until then, after The Lumity Trilogy, Amity knows that Luz is the girl she likes. 

tl;dr version

Amity fell for Luz because they have similar interests and values, their personalities differ in a compatible way and Luz provides Amity emotional needs and wants that she doesn’t get anywhere else.

Also, round eared girl pretty.

.

Thanks everyone for reading.

#my thoughts #lumity #meta #analysis

[acetrainermags]

Pokémon Adventures: A Childhood Obsession

In 2006, I received a consolation birthday present of a GameBoy Advance, the flat kind that didn't have backlight and was powered by AA batteries. My brother had just been given a GameBoy Advance SP and a brand-new game based on the animated film Cars for his birthday. My parents, in their infinite wisdom, knew I shouldn't be left out of the fun. Thus, I was given a hand-me-down GameBoy Advance with a used copy of Pokémon Sapphire.

A GameBoy Advance very similar to the one I grew up with. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

Sometimes, I wonder if my parents regretted it.

You see, that gift - which was likely an afterthought, let's be real - kicked off what would become a years-long obsession with Pokémon. I had no idea what I was getting into when I turned that game on for the first time, but I eagerly selected my first Pokémon (a Mudkip I naturally nicknamed "ABBY" as any young girl ought to do) and began my adventure.

Unfortunately, my copy of Pokémon Sapphire has since been lost to time, but Pokémon remained a formative part of my childhood. I loved battling my neighborhood friends, comparing trading cards, and huddling around the TV to watch the latest VHS tape I'd picked up from the library.

Another thing you should know about me is that when I enjoy something, I'm all in. Pokémon was not an exception: I devoured every bit of media and lore I could find. I entertained myself by reading pages on Bulbapedia and Serebii, two of the best reference websites for the franchise.

This was how I was introduced to the franchise's manga adaptation, Pokémon Adventures. The series, also known as Pokémon Special or "PokéSpe" for short, only had a few volumes available in the United States at the time. Still, I devoured every bit of information I could about the story and its expansive cast of characters. I'd always been a voracious reader, and when you combined that with my favorite video games, Pokémon Adventures seemed perfect or me.

But like I said, at the time there were only a handful of volumes available in the United States, where I lived. The ones that were available were nearly impossible to find in your typical Barnes & Noble. So I did what any other self-respecting Child of the Internet would do in the late 2000s: I found an alternative. And that's all I'll say about that.

A few years later, U.S. publisher Viz Media finally decided to start bringing the rest of the series stateside. With the limited cash that an unemployed 12-year-old had, I stared my own collection. This included one volume (vol. 14) purchased from a "going out of business" sale at a Borders bookstore and another (vol. 7) from the gift shop in the Japan area of Disney World's Epcot. Why I remember this, I have no idea.

The two Pokémon Adventures volumes I've owned the longest. They're a little worse for wear, but I treasure them.

Now I'm an adult... in a loose sense of the word. Pokémon still remains one of my favorite interests, and it remained a great way to connect with others. I met some of my favorite people in college through a Pokémon Go group chat, where we would alert each other when rare creatures spawned on campus (shout out to GoCast, you know who you are).

My manga collection has also grown. I was finally able to collect all of my favorite volumes from my childhood, up through the "sixth chapter" or story arc of the series (vol. 29). I take one off the shelf to read occasionally, especially when I need a "comfort read" to make myself feel better. However, I haven't read the series chronologically since my childhood.

I decided to change that this year. I mean, I've already got all of the books, so why not?

That leads us to this blog. After spending four years as an English major in college, I picked up the habit of marking up my books. I know, I know. Such scandal. Unfortunately, manga and graphic novels don't really lend themselves to this process. I just can't bring myself to mark up the beautiful artwork with my terrible handwriting.

But I still wanted to engage with this story like I would any other. Originally, I just planned to share my occasional observation or joke on Twitter, like I did when I read Fullmetal Alchemist in 2020. However, the more I read, the more I realized I had a lot to say about Pokémon Adventures.

It's easy to be cynical and say that the Pokémon Adventures manga is just another cog in the marketing machine with a singular goal in mind: to get people to buy Pokémon games and merchandise. While that is probably true at some level, I find that Pokémon Adventures goes beyond that by having complex characters, engaging plotlines, and clever ways of integrating existing Pokémon lore into a different medium. The series creators - writer Hidenori Kusaka and artists Mato (vol. 1-9) and Satoshi Yamamoto (vol. 10 onward) - aren't just concerned with promoting the Pokémon franchise, they also want to tell a good story.

Satoshi Yamamoto (left) and Hidenori Kusaka (right), the current artist and writer behind the Pokémon Adventures manga. Image via Bulbapedia.

I'm not sure where this reading journey will take me. At first, I thought about writing a post about every single chapter as I read it. Then I realized I would be writing at least 300 posts just to get through my personal collection. Then I wanted to write about each volume, but Tumblr only allows 10 images per post, and that's not enough for me.

All this to say, I'll be posting about the chapters in chunks, with a wrap-up after each volume and story arc and the occasional "extra" post if I want to write more in-depth about something in particular.

Some things will be lighthearted, like a bizarre reference to Tom Sawyer in vol. 1, implying that Mark Twain exists in the Pokémon universe. Others will be more serious and analytical. For example, I can't wait to talk about the character of Giovanni, arguably one of the most recognizable villains in the Pokémon franchise.

In any case, it will be an adventure (see what I did there?), and I'm delighted to take you along with me. Our journey starts at the beginning, with a boy named Red in a place called Pallet Town.

#pokemon adventures #pokemon special #pokespe #pokemon manga #mags reads pokespe #Dexholders #Pallet Town #Pokemon Sapphire #Pokemon

[bonjour-rainycity]

Double Heart | Chapter Twenty-One ~ Cosima

|previous part|

Pairing: Haldir x OFC

Rating: PG-13

Word count: 4032

Warnings: None

A/n Hello! Sorry I’ve been absent! Life got a little crazy with family visiting and school starting again, but I’m happy to be back! I’ll see you again Wednesday with the regularly-scheduled update :)

I wake with my face buried in the crook of someone’s neck. Pushing against the solid mattress, I raise myself up and try to remember where I am. But the solidness beneath me isn’t the mattress at all. It’s Haldir’s chest. I sit up straighter, realizing that, in the night, I’d pulled myself almost completely on top of him.

He moves as he chuckles, bringing a hand up to tuck my surely wild hair behind my ear. I look down to find him smiling up at me, looking much more awake than I feel. “Good morning.”

I purse my lips, trying not to show how much I enjoy the sight of him in my bed, the feeling of waking up with him. I lower myself back down, settling against his side. His arm wraps around me automatically, securing me in place.

“Good morning,” I reply, tucking my chin against his sternum. “How did you sleep?”

He chuckles, lazily running his fingers up and down my arm. “Better than you can imagine. Though I did have an elbow digging into my stomach, there were, amazingly, no snores. And your bed is so much more comfortable than mine.”

I grin, twisting so I can better see his face. “Well, if you can suffer through being stabbed in the stomach all night, you are welcome to share my comfy bed any time you like.” I furrow my eyebrows, considering. “For the next two nights, I guess. After that, you’re welcome to share the grass beside my bedroll.”

He throws his head back in laughter, the sight so beautiful that my own giggles dies as I take the time to stare at him. How can he be so carefree and joyful when he knows his death is only a few decades ahead of him?

Our conversations last night pretty much disintegrated my resolve to end things with him, not that I had much resolve from the moment we actually allowed ourselves to be together. So weak, I chide myself. But, as Haldir has reminded me time and time again, he is an adult and can make his own choices. I have to respect that, just as he has respected that for me on numerous occasions.

But part of me worries I’m just using that as an excuse to justify my selfishness.

Because no matter how well I love him, how much joy I bring him, how happy I make his life, I will always be the one causing his death. He’s not doing the same for me. I’m the one who will kill him.

Haldir moves his fingers from my arm to my hair, tangling his fingers in the waves. I love it when he does that.

He smiles at me, distracting me from my gloomy thoughts. “I am excited for you to see Lothlórien. What do you have left to do before we leave?”

I sigh, shrugging and leaning against him. “Not much. I’ve got to tell Alex about us, hopefully he’ll take it well, but you know how he can be. I imagine Lavandil already knows, but I would still like to talk with her. After that, just packing, but I can probably put that off until tomorrow night. Packing will be easy — oh, that reminds me — do you have an extra bag I could use? That’s actually what I went up to your room to get the other night, but you confessed your love for me which was really inconvenient, because I never did get that bag.”

He laughs again, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “Please accept my most sincere apologies. Before any future proclamations of love, I shall ask if there is something you need to cross off your to-do list, first.”

“Thank you,” I huff, feigning relief. “That’s all I ask.” Once our laughter dies down, I turn the question back to him. “What about you?”

I feel him shift under me as he stretches to look toward the curtains pulled over the window s, likely trying to gauge the time by the rays of sun peeking through. “I have a few meetings lined up, as well as continued training with the guard. They’re in quite good shape, but you can never be too prepared. And, as much as I hate to say it, I must get up.” He rolls so I am under him and places a sweet kiss to my forehead. “I have stayed in bed far too long.”

I grin up at him, catching his lips in a proper kiss before following him from the warmth of the blankets. “If you must.” I eye my closed door, now fully aware that we are well into the morning hours. I cross my arms, shifting my weight between my feet. “People will see you leaving my room.”

He looks up at me, back leaned against the wall as he pulls on his boots and laces them up. “Yes?”

I shrug, taking a few steps closer to him. “Well, they’ll talk.”

He raises an eyebrow, the beginnings of a smirk playing on the edges of his lips. “Would you like me to exit via window?”

I laugh and shake my head. “No.”

“Then let them talk.” He places his foot on the ground and meets me in the center of the room. “I’ve no intention of hiding you.”

I grin broadly, surprised by how much that sentence pleases me, and pull him down for a final kiss. “See you after dinner for training?”

“Yes,” he nods, letting his hand trail over my waves as he backs towards the door. “Your armor should be done by then. I’ll bring it with me.”

“I’m not wearing it,” I shout through the open door as he passes through.

“Yes, you are,” he calls back in a confident, almost lilting voice.

I grumble.

“Ah, good morning Ríneth.”

I freeze. Guess the cat’s out of the bag.

“G-good morning, Marchwarden,” comes the stunned response. As the attendant passes my open door, she sneaks a look, her eyes widening when she sees me standing in the center of the room. I raise a hand and wave.

She scurries off.

Stifling a chuckle, I close the door and head to the bathroom to get ready for one of my last days in Imladris.

{***}

I decide to tell Alex first. Between him, Lavandil, and Baranor, Alex is the most likely to have a sour reaction, so I’d prefer to just get that over with.

He welcomes me in after one knock and I try to contain my surprise, immediately noticing the explosion of books, scrolls, and papers scattered across his room.

I step over a large pile of volumes to make it through the entryway. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” He grins sheepishly, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Elrond said I could take some books with me, but they’re too bulky to travel with, so I’m trying to copy down as much as I can before we go.”

I nod, trying to find an area clear of stuff large enough for me to place my feet. “I bet Lothlórien has a good library.”

“I hope,” he agrees, bending to move some books so I have space. “But what’s up?”

“Um,” I press my lips together, suddenly feeling very, very nervous. My hands twist themselves in and out of each other as I look for anything to distract myself from the way my heart races. “I wanted to tell you…” Just get it over with. “Haldir and I are — together.” I wince. That doesn’t even begin to encompass how I feel about him, but how the heck do I describe our relationship?

Alex raises an eyebrow, setting the books in his hands down on the chest of drawers. “Yeah, for a while, right?”

I blink. Of all the reactions, I hadn’t expected that. “What?”

He tilts his head. “Wait, this happened recently?”

“Uh, yeah,” I huff, a little put out that he’s been thinking I’ve been secretly with Haldir and just hadn’t said anything about it. “What made you think it happened earlier?”

Alex shrugs, throwing his hands in his pockets. “Well, I don’t know, it was just kinda obvious something was there. I assumed the two of you acted on it around the time we got to Imladris and have just been trying to keep it a secret or something.”

“Wha—um,” I sputter, completely floored. “We’ve been avoiding each other for three months,” I defend, suddenly self-conscious of my apparently obvious feelings.

“Yeah,” Alex shrugs again, hauling a bag filled with books onto his bed. “I thought that was part of it — pretend to avoid each other to quiet the rumors, but then meet up when no one was paying attention.”

“Rumors,” I squeak, not liking the sound of that.

“Well, I didn’t hear any,” he corrects, noticing my panic. “I just, you know — the two of you seemed to click. I figured other people noticed it, too.”

He’s not wrong about that, I think, remembering Lavandil’s excitement and, before he changed his mind due to my mortality, Rumil’s.

Alex speaks again, the slightest shift in his tone. “I also figured that, well, your attachment to him is what was making you want to stay here and not work so hard to get home. Because, honestly Cosima, I can’t wrap my head around any other reason that would be strong enough to keep you away from your own world.”

“Oh. Right.” I look down at my hands, guilt buzzing in my stomach.

“But now that it’s official, I’m guessing you’ve decided?” Alex comes to stand in front of me, arms crossed in front of his chest. He doesn’t look angry, like I thought he would, just resigned.

I sigh, hating the disappointment I know I’m causing him. “Yes. I will help you figure out how to get home if you still want that, but I—I’m staying here.”

He nods, his jaw tightening. “And when I get home, what should I tell your family?”

I suck in a sharp breath. Ouch. I drop my hands to my sides, pleading with him. “Can we just—not? Please? I don’t remember them, Alex, I don’t even know if they exist, aside from nonna, who passed away five years ago. And here…well…” I sigh, mind drifting to Haldir and Lavandil and Rumil and Orophin and Baranor, and even Glorfindel. “My family—the family I chose—they’re all in Arda.”

Alex nods slowly, regarding me thoughtfully. “Can’t say I didn’t try.”

I try to ease the hurt. I don’t want him to be sad. “But I’ll keep helping you, I promise. If there’s a way home, we’ll find it.”

He sighs and then smiles, though it looks tired. “Yeah. Yeah you’re right. Thanks, Cosi.” He steps forward and pulls me into a hug, the action surprising me. Blinking against the shock, I wrap my arms around his shoulders, holding him tight. “I suck at showing it, but I am happy for you, you know,” he whispers, squeezing my shoulders.

He releases me then, and I smile up at him. “Thank you.”

{***}

After my unexpected conversation with Alex, it’s time to find Lavandil.

It’s not difficult.

Her high-pitched giggle catches me on the way to lunch, her hands whirling me around into a wall of curls. She surprises me by grabbing me in the briefest of hugs, then pulls away, gripping me tightly by the shoulders.

“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! Orophin told me last night — he’s upset of course, but he does acknowledge that he’s never seen Haldir as happy as he is when he’s with you! And I honestly think Orophin just needs time. Bottom line, he wants Haldir to be happy and loved, and you’re doing just that. But okay, now that that’s out of the way, you must tell me everything.”

I laugh, trying to catch up with her enthusiasm and rapid-fire words. I pull her to the side of the hallway, closer to the stone wall. People are, of course, bound to find out as the week goes on, but I’d rather not shout the details of what I consider to be my most cherished moment. In a hushed voice, I recount the night Haldir and I decided to go for it, Lavandil squealing and grinning through the whole thing.

“That is so sweet,” she gushes, eyes bright. “Who knew Haldir had such a way with words!”

“I know, right,” I agree, pleased to finally be able to talk about this with one of my best friends. “And kissing him?” I place a hand over my heart in a mock swoon, earning me a delighted laugh. “I could do that forever.” But then I bite my lip, not sure how she’ll react to what I’m going to tell her next. “He uh—spent the night last night.”

Lavandil’s eyes blow wide. “Did you—”

“No.” I hurry to clear that up. “But, I mean…it’s difficult not to want to…” I sigh, feeling much better upon seeing her understanding nod. She gets it. “How do you and Orophin manage? For eight years?”

She grins somewhat bashfully. “Well, it does help that we don’t see each other very often. And a lot of times, we have to stop ourself before we end up getting married without a second thought. But it all just comes down to us acknowledging the reality of our situation — we don’t want to get married and live apart, but neither of us was ready to give up our homes, families, or careers, not until recently, so we had to wait to take that step. It was a decision we were both okay with for a while. But now…” She shrugs, her smile softens and a faraway look enters her eye. “That time is over. He’s staying here with me, and it’s the best feeling in the world.”

I smile at her, happy for my friend. “Do you…” I tread carefully, not sure how much more I can ask without intruding, “think you’ll get married then?”

“Oh, for sure,” she grins, crossing her arms over her chest. “And soon. All our reasons not to have conveniently been taken care of.”

I take her hand in mine and give it a quick squeeze. “I’m happy for you.”

“I’m happy for me, too, she jokes, winking cheekily. We laugh, and then she dissolves back into her interrogation of me. Dutifully, I answer each and every one.

{***}

When it’s dark outside, Haldir knocks on my door. In his hand, he carries a dark brown bag that makes a suspicious clanging sound with every step he takes. I eye it warily. He smiles, bringing the palm of my hand to his mouth for a kiss. “I’m sorry it’s so late. The drills ran long.”

I shrug, pulling him farther into my room and shutting the door behind him. “Don’t worry about it. I was with Lavandil until about an hour ago, anyway.”

He looks at me, a note of hesitation in his eyes. “And how did that go?”

“Better than expected,” I laugh in relief. “She’s very happy for us and says Orophin shows signs of feeling better. I talked to Alex too — can you believe it, he thought we’ve been together for months!”

At this, Haldir raises his eyebrows, shaking his head. “What would give him that impression? We avoided each other for almost the entire time we’ve been in Imladris.”

“That’s what I said!” I hold up a hand to stop him. “But I’m actually not going to talk to you any more until you open that bag. I need to decide if I’m going to be mad at you or not.”

He grins broadly, setting the bag gently on the ground. “I don’t know why you would be mad when all I’ve done is bring you a present.” Haldir reaches inside and draws out silver chainmail.

“Well, take it back,” I grumble, having correctly guessed the contents of the bag. I cross my arms over my chest.

“See?” Haldir smiles, straightening with the chainmail in hand. “It’s not as bad as you thought. It can even be worn under your clothes if you like.”

I grimace, taking a step forward and running a hand over the cool metal. Experimentally, I gather the bottom of the piece and hold it in both of my hands. It’s heavy. I look up at Haldir, unimpressed. “There’s no way this is comfortable.”

He shrugs. “You’ll get used to it. Besides, I’d rather have you uncomfortable and alive than comfortable and dead.” He steps forward, presses a kiss to my temple, then walks past me to lay the chainmail over my table.

I sigh. He’s just trying to keep me safe. “Alright, fine,” I acquiesce, following him further into my room. I step in front of him, trying to will my annoyance away. “Thank you for doing that.”

He smiles softly, though there’s a hint of humor in his eyes as he knows the effort I’m putting into making my tone polite. “You are very welcome. Now — go stand in the center of the room. I want to go over a few more techniques before we pause training to travel. And tomorrow, we’ll practice with the chainmail.”

I groan.

{***}

Haldir stays with me for the remaining two nights in Imladris. It’s very convenient — not only do I love having him with me, but it gives him and Rumil some much-needed space.

Over the course of our remaining days, we only had a few things on our to-do list: Inform Baranor of the development in our relationship — he didn’t seem surprised, just like he was making a very conscious effort to appear happy for us—prepare the horses, and pack our belongings and adequate provisions for the journey. On the morning of our departure, we’re set to meet at the bridge that marks the entrance to the city. Haldir leaves me while it’s still dark, kissing me while I’m half asleep and telling me goodbye. He went to ensure the horses were ready and ‘tie up a couple of loose ends,’ as he put it.

Despite the desire to sleep in, I rise with the sun, knowing we don’t have long before we leave. When I spot the chainmail laid over my table, I begrudgingly pull it on under my clothes, knowing Haldir will just send me back to get it if I don’t. It’s heavier than I want it to be, but he’s right — if we were attacked, it would provide an additional measure of protection. I don’t have to tell him that, though. Once I’m dressed, all that’s left to do is say my goodbyes and get on the horse.

I don’t want to say goodbye.

Lavandil meets me at my door. Wordlessly, she shoulders one of my bags and walks with me to the front of the estate. We step onto the lush grass, which still glints with the morning dew. Soon, autumn will creep in and the green of Imladris will turn into brilliant reds, golds, and oranges—or so my friends tell me. I hope that I will get to see it one day.

At the start of the bridge waits the rest of my company. I notice Haldir off to the side with both Orophin and Rumil. Unlike his brothers, Rumil doesn’t look up or wish us good morning. That stings—bad—but at least he’s talking to his brothers.

I search for Alex and, with a note of surprise, find him behind the horses, speaking with Elrond. I raise an eyebrow, but don’t investigate. If Alex wants to tell me about their conversation, he can.

Lavandil and I approach Faervel, who whinnies in recognition. Since Orophin is staying in Imladris, his horse is as well. Horses are apparently quite fond of their owners, so we agreed not to hurt any of them by pulling them away from their home and taking them back to Lothlórien. That means Alex still rides with Baranor and I will ride with Haldir — for now. Maybe if Rumil ends up forgiving me, I can ride Roch at some point.

I loop my bag into the straps on the edge of the saddle, securing it in place. Lavandil does the same with my other bag, tying it on Faervel’s back.

Someone behind me clears their throat, and both Lavandil and I turn around.

Elrond smiles in greeting, inclining his head. “Lavandil, would you mind if I had a moment alone with Cosima?”

“Of course,” she smiles, waving at me as she hurries off to join Orophin. This isn’t goodbye, I remind myself. I’ll catch her again before I leave.

Elrond pats Faervel on the head. “Cosima, I wish you safe travels.”

“Thank you,” I reply.

“Promise me,” he continues, voice turning serious, “that when you arrive in Lothlórien, you will speak to Lady Galadriel without delay. I believe she can help you and Alexander.”

I agree readily. Elrond has been so kind and helpful, of course I’ll do as he asks.

“Good.” He nods. “And, well…” he sighs, sadness entering his ageless eyes. “I pray to the Valar that you will have a happy, fulfilling life.”

Despite the well-wish, grief collects in his features and I suck in a breath, remembering exactly who his daughter is and who she loves.

I open my mouth to say — what? That I’m sorry? That I wish it were someone else? What can I say to an ellon whose daughter will die for the same reason Haldir will?  

I close my mouth.

Because no, there is nothing to say.

Elrond inclines his head in understanding and steps back, bidding a final farewell to us all before returning to his estate.

Rumil, Baranor, and Alex mount their horses.

It seems there is no more time to waste. Lavandil comes to stand in front of me, sniffling. “I guess this is goodbye.”

Tears enter my own eyes and I bite my lip, desperately not wanting them to escape and betray how sad I feel.

“The shop won’t be the same without you,” she whispers. Then, in a movement so fast I barely register the change, she flings her arms around my shoulders, drawing me in for a brief, tight hug. “Be happy.”

I pull back, smiling despite my sadness. “You too. Write to me?”

“Of course.” She gives me a watery laugh and tosses her curls over her shoulder. “Who else can we complain about them to?” She jerks a thumb in the direction of Haldir and Orophin, who put on identical expressions of affronted disbelief, and I break into actual laughter.

But when our laughter fades, Lavandil falls back, stepping out of the way of the horses and into Orophin’s outstretched arms.

Haldir walks up next to me. He crouches, ready to help me on the horse and, before I can look at the sadness on Lavandil’s face and burst into tears of my own, I put my boot in his hand, allowing myself to swing onto Faervel’s back. In the next moment, Haldir lands in front of me, taking the reins in his hands.

“Now what are all these tears about?”

I jump, startled by the loud, unexpected voice.

None other than Glorfindel, followed by four armored members of Imaldris’s guard, gallop down the path.

My golden friend sidles his horse next to Faervel, winking at me. “Good news, my dear lady, we shall not be parted so soon! Your commander—or should I say lover, now—” both Haldir and I make a face at the term, “asked for an escort through the mountain pass. My troops and I are happy to oblige.”

Haldir nods to him, serious despite Glorfindel’s exuberance. “Thank you for coming.”

Glorfindel smiles, returning Haldir’s nod. “Of course, mellon nîn.” He calls out a command and our company, much larger now, moves forward. I allow myself one final wave to Orophin and Lavandil, as well as a last glance at this shining city that had just begun to feel like home.

Before I know it, we have crossed the terrifying bridge and left the safety of Imladris behind.

A/n Thanks for reading! Likes, comments, and reblogs make my day <3 And to everyone who responded to the last chapter: I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, THANK YOU!!!!!

|next chapter - to be posted|

|masterlist|

Tolkien tag list: @anangelwhodidntfall @eru-vande 

Haldir tag list: @tolkien-apologist @that-cute-stranger

Double Heart tag list: @lainphotography @themerriweathermage @thophil2941btw @kenobiguacamole @wishingtobeinadifferentuniverse @from-patroclus-with-love @boywivlove @ordinarymom1 @my-darling-haldir @sweet-bea-blossom @moony-artnstuff @sleepyamygdala @thranduilseyebrows 

#haldir #haldir x ofc #haldir x oc #haldir fanfic #haldir fanfiction #double heart

[frostahesmegabite]

Imagine if you had an unlimited amount of money for setting up a living space/house/etc (or renovating your current one). What would your lifestyle look like, compared to where you are now? Would you move, and where to/why? Would you stay, but renovate your home? Would you just decide to refurnish? If the money isn't important, what else would you do with it? (Donating can't be an answer). This is aimed at your personal wants/needs! Selfish answers allowed! What's the dream for you?

"Selfish answers only? Damn, alright..." Mega takes a good long moment to think on this. "I wanna buy an island. Not just some little thing to hide away on, but an actual decent sized island that I can really build on. After that, gonna hire a construction crew at twice, no, three times their normal rates. Keep in mind, ya said no donating, you didn't say crap about over paying..." He gives a big, huge shit eating grin and a wink. "Once I got all of that, I wanna build a vacation resort. I mean, a beautiful island resort with varying districts for all'a tha race's'a Azeroth so they can feel like they got their own little vacation hubs or they'll be able to go to the other hubs and stuff to learn and see what vacation and relaxation is like for everyone else. Granted, I'm aware that relaxation isn't a racial thing, everyone can do it and a lot of us do things based on our likes, now tha skin we wear." "But that bein said, there's architecture and drinks and food and styles all over for every race that'cha don't see outside'a their cultures, and that's what I wanna make easily available. So, as you can imagine a -lot- of fawkin workin!" "Once I get that whole thing made, which I imagine would take years, I wanna get it all staffed with staff who -live- on tha resort. Free living, free food, reduced travelling expenses and entertainment expenses and if they wanna leave to go home or whatever, a few free trips back to the mainland via boat or however we decide to transport people back and forth! I want my staff there ta love workin there as much as they like living there cause, and this is key cause I firmly believe it, if ya love what'cha do, ya do it well." "And a'course, tha penthouse at tha very top would be mine. Tha whole floor and I wanna be able to have parties of all sorts there too." He pauses. "Oh and a fuckin library, for all'a my books or at least copies of tha books I got at home and stuff so I can work and relax and research in peace should I wanna." He sighs, nodding in approval. "Heck, we'd hire entertainers to come in weekly for shows and once everything starts giving profit, start usin that profit to fund my research and development for tha FBC... And lastly, I wanna have a bunch'a super studs there for Nat to have plenty'a eye candy to look at. I'm talkin so fuckin high on tha candy level that it's just automatic fuckin -sploosh- when she sees em..." He gives several nods, smiling as he plays out some unknown scene in his head. "Oh yeah, that'd be it..." "I'm sure I could think of other stuff later, but that'd be my first stuff to do and get done." [ Thanks for the ask @chothulu! Expect this one back at'cha if no one else has beat me to it cause I wanna see what Phe'd do! ]

#Megahes #Unlimited Moneys?! #Naturasu #Slip-n-Slide #Island Resort

[babybluebanshee]

Things I’ve Had to Deal With as a City Librarian: This Again

The library continues to be a vexing place, and so I continue to chronicle the madness. This is my burden. My curse.

- A teenage girl (probably at least 14) kept coming in and checking things out on her mother’s card. The card expires, and we tell the girl she can’t use it until the mother comes in to renew it. Our director received a call a few days later from the very angry mother, telling him she would, under no circumstances enter our library to renew the card. She would do it over the phone, but she refused to come in. The director thought it was due to covid concerns (valid), but before he can say a word, the mother, completely unprompted, went into a tirade about how she hates libraries and books and thinks that ours should burn to the ground because it was a waste of space and money. The only reason she got a library card at all was because her daughter begged her to, and she refused to let the daughter get her own, because “children don’t need library cards”. Finally, the director let her renew the card over the phone, simply to get her to shut up. Tellingly, we haven’t seen the daughter in about two months now.

- A woman came in to print something from our computers, and asked for help because she wasn’t very computer savvy. Not too out of the ordinary, except for one thing - this poor woman had a horrible ear infection and could barely hear a word. I managed to help her get what she needed in a relatively short amount of time, despite having to practically scream at her to be able to hear me. 

- A woman with a 23-page fax came in. It was front and back, so I had to do it manually on the glass of the copier. Right as I finished the last page, she got a phone call from the people she was sending it to. After she hung up, she told me that I could go ahead and cancel the fax, they’d rather she send it via e-fax, and she had a scanner at home, so she could do it there. She didn’t even apologize for making me do all that work. 

- An elderly lady came in asking if someone could help her set up an email account. Since I had nothing to do, I decided I could help her out. I ended up spending about an hour helping her because she knew nothing about computers. She didn’t know how to type, how to use a mouse, or what an address bar or browser or password was. I had to help her through every single solitary step to finally produce a useable gmail. When I finally had her ready to go, she revealed the reason she wanted to get an email account - an old flame from when she was young had come back into her life, but he lived in Florida. So they wanted to keep in touch. They probably exchanged emails for about a month after she first set it up. Then she came in one day, slid a candy bar into my hand, and told me she was leaving to go down to Florida to be closer to him. I hope they’re happy.

- An elderly couple came in with a tree branch they’d found on their property, and asked if we had any books about identifying Missouri trees because they’d never seen one like the one they had before. Most of the ones we did have had been checked out, so I decided to google it for them. They were very impressed by this, and were even more impressed when I found a picture that looked exactly like the branch they’d brought in. Turns out it was a persimmon tree. We spend about half an hour after that talking about persimmon trees and how messy they could be and how the husband and his friends used to steal persimmons from their mean teacher’s yard. It was utterly adorable. 

- A little girl and her dad came in, both equally excited about getting library cards after recently moving to the area. The chattered about all the books they were going to get, even more so after I told them they could have up to ten at a time. When they were done, the daughter sheepishly asked if we had any books about ancient Egypt. So not only did I make sure to load her up with books and show her how to use the card catalogue, but I also discovered she didn’t know anything about King Tut, so we had a long discussion about mummies and archeology. Her dad clearly wasn’t as into it as her, but he tried his hardest to be enthusiastic, and actually said, “Yeah! Mummies! Woo!” at one point. I had to go in the back after they left because I was so overwhelmed by how cute they were. 

- We check our phone messages every morning. It’s usually just people who forgot to renew their books before we close, but occasionally we’ll get weird ones. Like the guy who left us a long, rambling message about how his oven wasn’t working, so he tried calling city electric, and they gave him this number, but this was the number for the library, so why had they given him that one? And why weren’t we open? “Doesn’t anyone in this town work?” It went on for twenty minutes like that. My coworker Rachel initially listened to it and pulled me over to listen to it too because she was laughing so hard. We hope that guy eventually got his oven fixed, and that he realized he called us on a Sunday. 

- Rachel was out policing and a man came in with a bag from McDonald’s. He sat at one of our computers and proceeded to burst into tears. I wasn’t there for this, so I don’t know what happened after, but Rachel did say she felt so bad for him she didn’t even tell him he couldn’t have food at the computers.

- A woman asked me to make some copies for her, and I had walked a bit away before I realized I hadn’t asked her how many she needed. She didn’t hear me at first, and proceeded to pull down her mask and lean her ear in to hear me better. I still puzzle over the logic there.

- One night, near closing, Lori went to check the men’s bathroom and found clothes strewn everywhere. Pants, shirts, a few pairs of underwear, and even a belt were hanging from the stalls, the sinks, and even the urinals. A JC Penney’s bag was in the corner, which was presumably what the clothes had been in. No one who was still in the library claimed the clothes. I have no idea what the director decided to do with them. 

- My coworker Rayne was helping a lady print off some tax forms. The woman was older, and told Rayne this would be her first time doing her taxes on her own since her husband died. Rayne expressed her sympathy, and the woman decided that was an invitation to tell her about finding her husband’s bloody corpse in their shed, and how it had gotten everywhere and stained her shoes a bit. She didn’t tell Rayne exactly why he was bloody before she paid for her copies and left, wishing Rayne a nice day. Rayne needed a good sit-down after that.

- I was cleaning our study rooms, and when I walked into the last one, I immediately gagged because it smelled like someone walked in, farted like a machine gun for an hour, then walked out. It was vile. I had to grab a bottle of air freshener and just blast it for a solid minute to cut through the smell. 

#woe to the librarian #daily life with blue

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Treasure of the Golden Suns Reviews: Wronguay in Ronguay (Paid for by Patreons)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to the genesis of magillicutty   Ducktales with the second part of my months long look at Treasure of the Golden Suns, the mini series that kicked off the series. These reviews are a result of me hitting my first patreon stretch goal. I just did a LONGGG post outlining those here on tumblr so hit that up and help join my patreon so I can reach them and make some more moolah to help keep this my primary job. 

So speaking of that job we’re back to The Treasure of the Golden Suns and the first chapter, while not bad, was a tad disappointing, especially since I really liked it on first viewing. So will the second chapter fair just as bad or be a massive improvement? The only way to find out is under the cut. 

Previously on Ducktales: Donald shoved off with the navy leaving the boys with Scrooge, with both growing to care about one another... both out of nowhere

The boys ended up embroiled int he Beagle Boys theft of a wooden ship for a mysterious gentleman named El Capitan whose preferedd method of dealing with enterlopers.. was to use a chair like a lion tamer. After being falsely blamed for the theft, the boys ended up chasing the beagles to Scrooge’s candy factory, were vindicated and fought them off with Scrooge’s help , ending with the boys getting covered in choclate.  while El Capitan escaped vowing to find the gold. Now knowing the wooden ship was a map, the family prepared to set off

And that’s where we pick up. The reporter from last episode comments on the beagle bust and while the Beagles are hauled off, with Burger asking if they have any milk after eating his chocolate prison. Because his only  character trait is that...

The camera does linger on an impression the ship made in the chocolate... hmmmmmm.

Meanwhile we meet FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. As I said with Catch as Cash Can, he’s not BAD, just not NEARLY as memorable as the triumphantly insane 2017 version. He’s sitll a good villian and we’ll see why soon, he just has the unenviable task of competiting with a far more iconic versoin made decades later whose far more my type of bad guy. El Captian calls him and offers to make him the richest duck in the world, which he naturally is happy to hear him out on. El Captian as a character i’ll get into more.. but for now let’s talk about his weird fucking voice. For some reason, Jim is doing a Dr. Claw impression, to the point I thought this was Frank Welker. I will grant it’s better than a horrible latinx sterotype, and given the grand kishke and a minor character in this very episode, they were NOT above those, but its’ still just.. weird. He just sounds like he’s possesed with about 80 or 90 demons for no explained reason. 

Back at the mansion, Scrooge and the Boys are both preparing to go after the treasure on the boat map: Scrooge is practicing vacuming it up using the pool and a sea safe vacum likely invented by Gyro, while the boys find the right coordinates to the treasure. Scrooge naturally.. is a bit of a dick about it, refusing to take them along despite them having found it, and saying they can stay with Duckworth. Duckworth’s response is about what you’d expect:

However before they can argue about this, there’s a bang at the door: It’s Flinty and here’s where the parts of this Glomgold I DO like, that do make him standout, if not as much sa his succesor shine: He plays scrooge, offering him 2 million for the Candy Factory. Naturally not realizing what Flinty’s getting out of the deal, Scrooge jumps at a quick and easy 2 million, since he knows it’ll cost MORE than that just to fix up the place. Flinty then proposes a contest: the two of them try to make as much money as possible from scratch in two days. No rules, no barriers, just whoever dosen’t have more money than the other by the end has to eat Flinty’s hat. Scrooge accepts.. but then realizes he has to eat crow and allow the boys along. With Scrooge sufficently blackmailed, the boys reveal where the treasure is: Ronguay, a made up south american county. Why they did so.. well just wait a second. And no it’s not just for the tile... but your close. 

No we find out why as they take the cheapest flight avaliable to Ronguay, only for the boys their going the Wrong way to Ronguay. 

Yeah I love a good pun but I draw the line at desinging an ENTIRE COUNTRY for a really obvious one. I have standards on this blog! Standards that include thirsting after Keith David , DBZA refrences up the whazoo and posting this gif of David Byrne at every given opportunity. 

Look my standards are weird, but their still standards. I draw the line at making a stupid pun when there’s a rich number of countries in South America. I’m not saying Carl Barks was ever against making up a country, he probably did, could be wrong, but more often than not he did his homework instead, as did his succesor Don Rosa. It feels lazy to just make up a country when you really don’t have to and could’ve just found one with a massive rainy season for your children’s cartoon. It’s not hard. I mean it’s harder than now: now I could just google “what south american countries have torrental rains”.. but it’s not like you guys could’n’t just go to a bookstore and buy a refrence book or a library and rent one. I mean if they ran out of time to do anyresearch fine, but even for the 1980′s it wasn’t that difficult to at least TRY. 

Regardless it turns out the pilot is a robot pilot.. who looks amazing but  as it’s a flintheart glomgold company joint is purposfuly tring to keep them off path. Look they didn’t have to unplug the poor guy. I know what he wants. 

So now on the right way to Ronguay our heroes lan only to find the locals all fleeing in terror of something. Scrooge heads in for suplies anyway and finds... a VERY racist sounding clerk. Seriously just to picture this.. picture say .. Michael Scott trying to do an mexican accent. You good and cringing? If not, adapt that to your doofus sitcom character or republican senator of choice There you go. You see my point. It’s not the WORST i’ve seen.. but only because I sat through the Rediculous 6 with my best friend, one of three, Cory, for a podcast we tried doing a year or two ago. I’ve seen Rob Schinder do  this for an entire movie. In 2015 no less. So my threshold for HORRIFCALLY offensive is vast and deep. But this is still garden variety racist and should not have been okay then or now. 

And it really SHOULD have the warning label on it. I’m fully in favor of the content warnings Disney started using, and it’s why I got so fucking annoyed during all the talk about it when it happend to the Muppet Show, ESPECIALLY when the republicans got a hold of it and accused them of “Canceling the muppets”. This is NOT fucking cancelation, this is a way to have the past there for posterity, while acknolding it sucked and was NEVER okay. It’s the best way to do this in my opinon, and it bothers me a LOT that a bunch of jagoffs coopted it and threw a hissy fit about Disney trying to do the right goddamn thing. And i’m also okay with leaving some media out. Disney + is a family platform. While keeping classic movies and shows on there with a proper warning is one thing, it’s another to not put song of the south or that episode of the muppets where the host later turned out ot be a pedophile on there. Some things just don’t have nearly enough worth to outpace the harm they can do. And it’s up to companies and consumers to figure out what fits where. 

Anyways our heroes find a llama for transport and that the map is seemingly a dead end to the desert. But Scrooge is determined to press on... and while he does El Capitan and Glomgold are following him, though the two clearly don’t agree on whose in charge, or if El Captian sounds like dr claw or not. They followed with their own copy of the map taken from the chocolate. 

As things progress the rain starts.. and our heroes find out via the JWG that this is what the citzens were all running from. They loose the llama, though are able to salvage some of their suplies it was carrying, and Scrooge nearly gives up to dispair. It’s a good, if sudden, character moment: Scrooge genuinely laments that he was worried one day he’d loose his step.. and stop being one step ahead of everyone. It shows some much needed vunerablity.. that beneath his boisterious and cantankerious usual personality he’s deathly afraid his age will eventualy mean he’ll have to stop..and having to stop adventuring and stop working and stop doing eveyrthing that makes him Scrooge McDuck is a fate worse than death. 

Thankfully he dosen’t as via a figure on the ship, Huey, Dewey or Louie figures out, in a REALLY amazing twist, that the desert itself was the ocean: the ship that has the treasure simply sailed here and hid it. So while our heroes reflect, Glomgold decides to take them out NOW while he has the chance over El Captian’s protests, as the good captain only cares about the gold. But Glomgold is right.. from a villianous point of view at least. leaving them alive is a waste.. granted he does so.. in a way that makes my brain cry out in pain and want to run. He lights a stick of dynamite. In a torrential rainstorm. 

I mean i’d expect 2017 Glomgold to try it and have it fail.. not to have the actually clever 87 version not only try something this stupid BUT HAVE IT WORK. THE FUSE LIGHTS. IT’S READY TO GO OFF. HE ONLY STOPS IT BECAUSE HIS MAP GETS EATEN AND THEY NEED SCROOGE’S IN TACT. JUST HOW DO YOU WHY DO YOU AUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-

Okay i’m.. i’m good now. So after that bit of nonsense and some taking my medication, our heroes take shelter in a cave. The grusome twosome try to sneak in while their asleep.. only to trigger the alarms the boys set up using their pots and pans, a “junior woodchuck alarm”. Clever little bastards. 

The tables quickly turn though as Thing one and Thing Two trap our heroes in the cave.. as i’ts flooding. Scrooge has them press on in hopes of finding a way out, and it rises further and furthe ran excenelty tense scene. But eventually our heroes manage to find somewhere safe in time: the shipwrecked boat with all the gold. Scrooge even puts on a nifty golden conquestador’s helmet. 

Naturally since we have minutes left in the episode the bad guys show up and have a gun... they never had before. 

Regardless our heroes are lowered into the lifeboat at gunpoint as the ship goes out to sea and i’ts revealed el captain worked on teh ship as he knows the full manifest.

However both villians personal flaws end up doing them in: Glomgold’s need to gloat means he gives Scrooge a golden coin as he mocks him about winning the bet... only for El Captain to fly into an insane rage demanding he swim out and get it despite just how LITTLE he really needs the coin. He and Glomgold struggle over the ships canon, both no longer needing the other and eventually fire off a ball that capsizes the ship. El Captian seemingly drowns while Glomgold is forced onto the life boat with the McDucks.. and finds out he lost as while he and Scrooge both lost the treasure the coin he tossed scrooge means Scrooge still has made more money. So Glomgold prepares to eat his hat and El Captian prepares for vengance and to get his gold back. 

Final Thoughts on Wronguay in Ronguay: The iffy bit with the store clerk aside.. this episdoe is easily the best 87 Episode i’ve seen.  It captures the spirit of barks perfectly with plenty of intresting twists that kept me engaged the whole time, some great jokes, and two great villians who are done in soley by their own greed and neurosusi> it’s really great stuff and what I expected more and remember more from the 87 Series: top notch adventure in the barks style but wiht it’s own unique touches. While the pilot was a bit rough due to all the ground it tried to cover, this episode, now having the basic formula of the series pretty much set, is allowed to just be a fun, daring adventure story that brilliantly builds off the last episode but can be wholly enjoyed on it’s own. Hopefully this momentum keeps because I don’t remember being the fondest of the next two episodes.. and given that content warning I think we’re in for a rough time next month. 

If you liked htis join my patreon, etc etc, I went into that mor eup top. Till All Are One, See you at the next Rainbow. 

#ducktales #wronguay in ronguay #ducktales 87 #scrooge mcduck #flintheart glomgold #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #el capitain #duckworth #reviews #disney plus #the disney afternoon

[peaches-writes]

would i trust skz with my grades 

chan - i’d trust him with an rrl & doing a data gathering session on his own and that’s the highest compliment i could give someone tbvh the level of reliability and resourcefulness is so *chef’s kiss* this boy would NEVER fail you will carry his weight in the group and goes the extra mile even when he’s not the group leader because honestly iSN’T THAT WHAT GROUPMATES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO also he prolly also likes the library for summ reason like i like the library too i like actually looking at books for work and not just sitting there to stare at my laptop and hoard the air conditioning & electric sockets but he does it w/o hesitation like he gets in there and actually looks for books for the paper and that’s admirable shit right there canonically i have a crush on college campus heartthrob chan in all of his soft boy senior who’s kind to everyone forms and i think we should just discuss this

minho - we’d prolly fight once during brainstorming bc he suggested the one (1) wild ass topic proposal & thesis statement that the thesis adviser surprisingly liked (?) like GETS in a topic proposal there’s usually the underdeveloped topic the group just threw in there bc y’all could dream LOL, the topic everyone ACTUALLY likes and wants to do, and the filler topic that’s so wild but for summ reason gets the adviser’s attention like he suggests the THIRD one and it’s gonna spark a mini fist fight but it’s cool lee minho lee know is smart he knows what he’s doing 

changbin - he seems like ur 2 am google docs buddy where you know the one where all of your classmates have gone to take short naps & promised to come back at 4 am to finish their parts or just straight up SKIPPED on writing the paper the night before the deadline & the two of you like gave up halfway to communicate & consistently update each other via chat just so now you’re just competing over who’s gonna leave the website first ALSO IDK he reminds me of that one guy on twt who like hovered their gdocs cursor over their crush’s and said something like we were holding hands on gdocs im sorry my humor’s encountering an error atm

hyunjin - starbucks study buddy who’d fight u for the seat near the electric socket and will prolly be too chatty all throughout the thing like you just want to SUMMARIZE THIS LONG ASS ARTICLE IN PEACE but hyunjin’s sitting across from you while he’s typing obnoxiously loud and fast on his laptop while also scrolling thru his insta dump on his phone and showing you the latest tea on ur grpmates who refuse to do their parts sdhfksld but he’ll treat u to wings for lunch after bc u deserve it later dont get mad at him !!!! 

jisung - i’d pick him in class bc i can’t do public speaking to save my life, im too shy to approach people for surveys & interviews, i hate computer shops (!!!) and bc every stressed out research group needs a bubbly moodmaker to balance out the lack of optimism in getting a passing grade might also hav a crush on him if he dresses up extra on thesis defense day im just sayin like jisung in a kinda wrinkled button up he forgot to iron before coming to school in the color ur grpmates agreed to color-coordinate for ur presentation plus black blazer + slacks combo and then MESSY FLOOFY HAIR bc it’s just u & the scariest profs in ur department he doesn’t need to slick his hair up but it’s sooo adorable wtf u want me to treat u to iced coffee after this sTAY RIGHT THERE IM GOING TO TIM HORTON’S 

felix - i’ll end up doing most of the work for him not bc he’s lazy or deadweight (aka the usual reasons why i’m always overworked in a researched group) but bc i’m whipped for him like omg baby just go and cook the pancit canton for the group and rest i’ll do ur work for yOU ARE YOU HAVING DIFFICULTY UNDERSTANDING THE SOURCE MATERIAL DO I HAVE TO PUNCH THE SOURCE MATERIAL FOR YOU I GOT YOU OKAY 

seungmin - 100% no questions asked i’d trust him with my life in a life-threatening situation ofc i’d trust him with my grades he’ll prolly turn up to ur grp meetings w his resources ready and a sorta clear ide aon what to do alr like that’s HOT but more importantly i’d also trust him w ranting abt deadweight groupmates he’d prolly be that one (1) trustworthy groupmate of urs who’s also like super sassy n goes omg just remove their names from the title page if they dont want to do their work !!! then actually tells ur deadweight grpmates off after bc injustice ???? i wont stand for it !!!! 

jeongin - idk why jeongin exudes that classmate who has a decent printer that the entire class takes advantage of for a whole semester it’s prolly why he’s late to class all the time or coming to school haggard with all the stacks of paper he has to carry (until he decided one day to just fuck it and bring the printer to school) like bruh just make it a business also that one classmate of urs who’s like literally running all the time bc ur class is in one building, the campus library’s on the OTHER SIDE, and the conference room for the thesis defense is on a whole ‘nother planet and he gets the unfortunate task of transferring the final research paper copies and escorting groups to the thesis panel pls save him my poor bby lemme buy u iced coffee

#and eye oop #the whipped for felix agenda continues #i only hav one grpwork left tmi #but like #im too lazy to do the research #i did do the poster templates yesterday tho and i liked how they turned out!!!! #hopefully my grpmates like them too lol

[werebearish]

NaNoWriMo 2020 tag meme

Okay so I saw this video on youtube and decided to answer these questions here. 

1. What are you working on for NaNoWriMo this year?

It’s NaNoAMO again! I’m working on continuing my WIP longfic amo (amas, amamus. I’d like to say “finish” but imho it’s more important that I’m working consistently and making progress at all, so we’ll just say “continue” for now. 

2. What apps do you use to help you write and stay motivated?

Apps and sites that are helpful for me with writing, either directly or indirectly: 

Google docs and Scrivener apps — processing the words, yup yup. 

Calm app — a meditation app. This helps me settle my racing brain. 

Atmosphere — a simple ambient sound app that I really like. It has a nice basic interface and you can make mixes of five or six sounds; it’s simple enough that I can throw them together on the fly, and you can also save them. 

Ambient Mixer — an app (and site) that is less simple, but can be fun to explore and find or find-and-tweak or create some good mixes. I do NOT do this one on the fly — it’s too easy to get sucked in. 

Music playlist — great for signaling my brain that it’s time to work on the thing. Sometimes I have to turn it off after a while because I need more quiet, but that’s okay. 

Basic timer app — I don’t have a particular one I prefer, usually just my phone one. Sometimes I might mix it up by using an hourglass. I find that if I set it for more than 20 minutes I often lose focus, so I usually stick with that. I also try to make myself take five minute breaks every 2 or 3 sprints, which is hard to do, but usually helpful. 

4thewords.com — this is a gamified writing site, and I do have a lot of fun with the smaller wordcount monsters. It isn’t free, but I enjoy it a lot and use it every day. 

I will also mention Fighter’s Block — https://cerey.github.io/fighters-block/ — which is a very very simple version of racing/fighting a monster via wordcount, but this one is free. (I’m not sure if this plays well with mobile right now, and you might have to poke around to get it to work. Be sure to copy and paste your words into your preferred program after you write them!!) 

3. Where do you like to write and what’s your favorite writing spot?

Sometimes I like to write lying down in bed with my tablet, but honestly it’s not usually very productive. Even if it weren’t coronatime, I don’t live near any coffee shops or anything. There’s the library (well, normally), but then I get distracted by the books. Occasionally I will mix it up by curling up on the couch with a notebook and pen, but honestly, for me, my desk is best. I have a good chair, which is way better for my back and neck. I also have a little space heater, which is motivating on cold days. 

4. What are your writing space must-haves? (i.e. candles, pillows, fave notebook, etc)

Right now on my desk (besides some cluttery nonsense), I have: 

Folder with notes, timeline and calendars 

Bee balm lotion/ointment — I love it 

Lip balm

Post it notes — essential, mostly for noting “what to start with tomorrow”  

Process notebook and scratch paper notebook 

Beeswax candles — a pillar that has been STRUGGLING, and the votive that I just got out because I was tired of wrestling with the pillar 

A basket of AMO-related treasures, including: Simon and Baz plushies that I made, Red plush dragon, Watford scarf, star scarf, Lavender honey lotion, Chocolate mints, Baz candle, Snowbaz art cards, Printout of the comic of the first chapter 

5. What are your favorite drinks and snacks to have when writing?

I like to have water and/or Snowbaz tea available. I’m not much for snacks during, but this time I DO have some thematically appropriate Andes chocolate mints. (Simon and Baz actually like mint Aeros, but those are large and hard to find around here, and I like Andes better, so.) I usually have one right at the beginning of a writing session, and maybe one at the end, if it’s been a couple hours. 

6. What are your favorite writing distractions? (i.e. pets, tv shows, etc)

I like to take breaks to play harp or kalimba. Naps? 

7. What are your favorite ways to get back on track?

Making tea, taking some breaths or doing a meditation in my favorite app, possibly doing some stretching with a tai chi app that I have. Starting my playlist or focusing on a candle is helpful, too. And sometimes I really do just have to take a break for a bit, and then come back later. 

8. What are your writing rewards and milestones?

I’m doing a modified version of NaNo, since I’m working on an ongoing project instead of starting something new. I’m counting ALL the words I write (notes and freewriting as well as actual prose) and putting them into the NaNo site, but more importantly I made myself a tracker in my bullet journal with my own definitions of “success” to check off on a daily basis. (Prominently featuring: did you show up for at least 20 minutes? and Did you make a note for what to start with next time? If so then YOU HAVE WON!!) 

9. Tag 3 friends to do this tag!

If you want to do it, please consider yourself tagged. :)

#quizzes and memes #assorted memery #nanowrimo #my writing #amo #progress reports

[avoutput]

Gaps Between Worlds || Mega Man X

Recently I have been searching for the answer to a problem I have been drowning in: Do I still love playing video games? There was a time when new video game releases would get me hyped, and it could just be that I am getting older and my priorities are changing, or my love for games is evolving, but I think there is a better answer that sounds more analytical and less like a platitude. I had to start thinking about what made me fall in love with games in the first place, which was easy enough to do; it was an escape. We need to go deeper. What about games, about the escape grabbed me. Looking back at my most recent completions: Dark Souls, Persona 5, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, most of them offered a balance between challenge and story. For a long time in between the excitement of a title, I had been relying on a game either appealing to the challenge or the story, on a sliding scale in one direction or another. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by my lack of enthusiasm for new games, I pick up a game from my childhood, something that made me feel nostalgic, something like Mega Man X. They have this ability to lift my spirit and invigorate me. That’s when I realized what was missing from modern games: my imagination.

When I booted up my copy of Mega Man X this weekend, it was like it was calling to me. I did it subconsciously. I was struggling with my drive to play Persona 4 Golden, and picked up Nioh, a playstation plus game that had been sitting around for awhile. I was working on a boss, and I just wasn’t feeling it. That’s when I went looking through my games library. I had actually picked up a copy of Mega Man X Legends a while back, installed it, and never played it. Without thinking, just like I did when I was a kid, I just started playing it. The Capcom sound plays and the Mega Man logo flashes across the screen and I am instantly back on my friends bedroom floor, hogging the controller. When the first level starts, it’s instantly chaos, cars flying down the highway, trying to escape the ensuing carnage. You can find out why if you wait for the demo screen that explains the game instead of instantly pressing start, but I never did as a kid, and this led precisely to what I am here to talk about. I filled the gaps with my imagination, even in places where the game didn’t ask me to. I was hungry for a world that I could make cohesive. One that offers a clear definition, a map that leads the eye and the mind to a conclusion, but open enough to let that conclusion be anything that suits you. (The opposite of the Nomura-verse!)

In the era of 8-bit and 16-bit games, the worlds were often presented as flat, layered objects, but drawn to appear in three dimensions like a diorama or, as they often called levels back then, a stage. After you beat the opening level and receive a helping hand from your… friend… or brother… or just some other robot who looks cooler than you, Zero, you are introduced to the classic Mega Man selection screen, but with an interesting tweak. You now can access the enemy’s location via the map screen. This really got my imagination going as a kid and still does to this day. It’s just a minor tweak to the usual formula for the series, but it suddenly added a new layer of depth. I always knew they had to exist somewhere, but it never occurred to me that there was an interconnected ecosystem. They boldly took this approach a step further. Defeating certain Mavericks (the stage bosses) affected another Maverick’s stage. For example, defeating Storm Eagle causes the plane you fight on to crash into Spark Mandrils’ stage. I loved this because as much sense as it made, it also really didn’t make any sense.

Take a look at the map. It is an incredibly dense locale, seemingly made up only of the locations related to the Mavericks. You start the game in some sort of cityscape, but now, you appear to be on some kind of island or peninsula that maybe… supplies all of the needs of the people in the city? Some of the functions of these stages are clear, some you have to make a stretch, and others defy clear explanation. You have a power plant, an airport, a mine, and a factory, all pretty straightforward. As a stretch, we have a forest that possibly processes carbon into oxygen. It doesn’t seem to produce wood, the trees are all made of electronics and covered in a wood veneer. The sea port is also a bit mysterious. It seems more military related than shipping related. All of the robots aren’t the repurposed kinds you see in other stages. They already have missiles and lasers, they are attack focused. So this is probably a military research facility. In the unexplainable, first we have the icy mountain stage, which could be a mine or maybe a research station. I often thought that it produced and controlled weather, but what exactly does a mountain have to do with that? Maybe it is rooted in science, but as a kid, the mind isn’t fully formed, and as an adult, you just know that water becomes clouds and it rains. The American Education system is broken. Lastly, we have a tower that appears to be surrounded by a moat. As a kid, I used to think this was the control tower for the airport, but now I am thinking it might be the control tower for the entire peninsula’s robot ecosystem. It’s not clear, at all, but that's what makes it fun. It is the inconsequential nature of their necessity that makes it fun to explore in your imagination. The bosses don’t speak between each battler or even introduce themselves beyond the shonen bad guy thumbs down, phase in, or muscle flex posturing. If you dig, I am sure there is some concrete answer, but the power is that it ultimately doesn’t matter, it’s just fun to play and explore, either way you go about it.

What also stands out about the construction of the map is how one stage actually interacts with another. If you notice, the Chill Penguin stage is way up at the north side of the map and the factory is to the south, and yet, when you beat Mr. Chill, you Flame Mammoth’s stage is frozen over. There are other stages between the mountain and the factory that are totally in the way of the possible avalanche that would have hit the factory, and yet they are unfazed. I get it, fire is weak to ice, but since there isn’t really an overall method to the madness in the construction of the Map image, as far as I can tell, I just can’t figure why they didn’t move the stages into proximity of the stage that is affected by the defeat of a Maverick master. What is hilarious, the defeat of Launch Octopus causes the forest to overflow, and wouldn’t you know it, they are right next to each other. Same with the airport and power plant, helmed by Storm Eagle and Spark Mandrill respectively. The funny thing about the airport is that because you destroy an airplane in midair, you could have destroyed any stage on the map, and it would have made sense. It would have been even cooler if they had made it so that the longer it takes to defeat Storm Eagle, that changes where the plane falls, and thus the stage it destroys.

It’s not that modern games don’t have these imaginative gaps, it’s just that there are much fewer obvious gaps in the world because they have so much more space to create in. Just looking at the file size between games of the past and today, it’s like comparing the size of Mercury to Jupiter. With that in mind, it could be that I haven’t spent the time to really dive in and find the cracks in modern games. As a kid, I just played the same games over and over again and committed these gaps to memory.

I decided I would use this title to discuss different aspects of the gaps between the imaginative leaps that storytelling asks us to make. Like how we all came up with a particular internal story about what happens inside a Pokeball. I was part of the crowd that thought maybe they get their own personal oasis that suited their type. Or maybe we can discuss the implication of the relationship that Zelda and Link must have based on the minimal interactions we actually get to see them in. Mega Man X has many more facets as series we can dive into, like how exactly his buster arm might actually function and be powered? Maybe it is an internal nuclear reactor offset or totally green and powered by the sun. If it was nuclear, does he leave behind fallout at every defeat? Hopefully I can dedicate more time to this! Thanks for reading.

#Articles #Megaman #Mega Man #Mega Man X #Gaming #Video Games #Zero #Rockman #Rock and Roll #Roll #Dr White #Dr Wiley #Sigma #Penguin #Chill #Games #SNES #Retro Gaming #Retro #Anime #Japan #Capcom #Keiji Inafune #X Buster #Gaps Between Worlds

[dschribe]

What Would Jake Do?

I taped a photocopy of Jake’s latest press photo to the cinder block wall above my desk, and on it I wrote with a Sharpie in all caps, HERO.

If I looked over my shoulder, I could see the real Jake, across the hall, past the copier, though the open door to his office, beyond his assistant Joan’s desk, seated in profile on the couch he used as a desk chair, leaning over paperwork on the giant coffee table he used as a desk.

Sometimes he, JBC, would say, “DPS, you got a minute?”

I’d go across the hall to discuss a piece of copy, some item of marketing, or be handed a 5 x 7” index card with some notes on it, written in Sharpie, which is where I got the habit. (I once called his handwriting “angst-ridden” and he said immediately, “That’s not angst, it’s Sharpie.”)

I was a week out of college, a college I never once went to on a Thursday, because a midweek season’s pass to Stratton Mountain was way cheaper than the one for the weekends. Plus I had a growing skateboard and snowboard retail business I needed to tend to.

Burton, just a couple of hours up the road from me, was my biggest supplier and, I thought, likely the only one that would still be in business in ten years. So it was there, in my senior year, I sent the one and only unsolicited resume in my life. Nobody called for months.

About six weeks before I graduated, I was having the greatest game of my life on the Funhouse pinball machine outside my shop. The vendor who collected money from the games let me paint my quarters red. He’d fish them out and give them back to me, so long as I didn’t block paying customers. I got real good at that game; the phone rang about 45 times before I lost the ball.

The Burton HR woman scolded me for letting the phone ring so many times during business hours, but then told me that Burton folks wanted an interview. I thought I could hear an eye roll. But I scheduled a time, and a couple of weeks later I drove up to meet with Dennis Jenson, the head of marketing. A couple of more weeks went by. Then I got the callback to meet Jake.

I’d seen Jake a few times but never spoken to him. Although the sport was still small, we all looked up to him. He was older than all of us. Killing time in the UMass library I had stumbled across an issue of Time Magazine with a cover story called “Twenty Something.” It was about my generation. I didn’t realize I even had one until I read it. (It would be a little longer before they called us Generation X.) Our generation wasn’t supposed to have heroes, but we had Jake. And maybe Time had it all wrong; three years earlier they had called snowboarding "the worst new sport."

On the drive up to the Burton headquarters for my interview, I grew increasingly nervous about the meeting. When I got close, I pulled over in a panic and paced around the outside of my car. I contemplated turning around. Leaving my hometown of ten years, my friends, my business behind: it was all terrifying. It was also terrifying to go meet my hero. They say you never should.

I had a portfolio of my work—photos and press coverage of my shop, the skateboard and snowboard demos we held, and our skateboard camps. I had the letter that proved I had been the one to get “snowboards” as an entry into the Yellow Pages. I had the work I did to help get the word “snowboard" literally into the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, via my lexicography teacher. And there was a photo of a gang of kids, all mid-ollie, from skate camp.

The first time I taught anyone to ollie was the night before a skateboard contest I held to raise money to open my shop. As they signed up, the kids saw me building the ramps in the roller rink where it was going to be held, and demanded they get to skate them before the big day. Late evenings after the rink closed, we built and skated on the ramps. When any kid asked for help, I showed them what little I knew, and I knew enough to ollie.

One kid had been trying all week but not getting it. He told me it was impossible for him to learn it. I put out a scrap of 2x4 lumber. I pointed out that it wasn’t even that high; it was 1.5” x 3.5”. A few pointers and attempts later, and he cleared it. We high five-ed and I went back to my amateur ramp carpentry.

The contests was a success. The clear winner, who everyone knew would take the prize, snapped his board in half in the middle of his run. Nearly every kid in the place shoved their own board out onto the course so he could keep going. I started to see this wasn’t at all about competition. This became more clear to me as the kids were leaving: they all thanked me. That one kid I taught to ollie told me it was greatest week of his life. He was so genuine. The feeling of getting a kid to believe he could do something he thought he couldn’t do, changed me.

It took me a long time before I could see it, but ever after my life became a pursuit of trying to help people see that what seemed impossible for them, was possible, including levitating a wooden board with wheels off the ground. Snowboarding seemed just as impossible when I tried to learn it. Then it clicked and it was like walking on water. I sold snowboards knowing everyone who learned would be likewise transformed.

As I debated turning back from my interview, I flipped through the portfolio on the hood of my car. I studied the photos of skate camp, and thought about how snowboarding was starting to change how those kids saw the mountains and themselves. I had to go see Jake.

In the interview, he let me do most of the talking, and I went through my portfolio. Then I told him the story of teaching kids to ollie, of teaching a community to skateboard, and how snowboarding felt like the next step—maybe to teach a generation to ride.

He said, "Well in that way we’re a lot alike. That was a hell of a pitch. You should work in marketing.” I got the job, and with it, started a career I never imagined: in marketing.

I went to my graduation ceremony, car packed with all my possessions, then drove to Vermont that night.

My marketing coordinator job, as one of four people in the Burton marketing department, required writing a lot of copy. My first meeting with Jake was to write a press release about him, as we had no stock bio to give the media. In the process, I got to spend hours with him, hearing his whole story, and I hadn’t even gotten my first paycheck yet.

I came back to Jake a few days later with the piece. I titled it “Everyone Calls Him Jake.” I had no idea what the process would be when I handed it to him. He pulled out his Sharpie and started writing notes on it as he read. For the most part, it remained intact—but what he marked up was an impressive collection of notes on grammar, style, and narrative voice. He cared about the words. I had found a great editor.

He said, “This sounds like someone who went to college wrote it.”

I said, “Yeah, let’s not underestimate our riders’ intelligence.”

He nodded in agreement and kept reading.

In the opening paragraph I referred to Jake as the “patron saint of snowboarding.” He said he was’t sure if he was cool with the title. I explained to him that any other way to say it—inventor, pioneer, sponsor, champion, mogul—either wasn't accurate or would alienate core riders who didn’t want an authority figure in their sport. He finally put his pen down and said, “Okay, leave it.”

My writing continued that summer, on catalogs, hang tags, in store displays, and instruction manuals. There was a new snowboard binding, adjustable to over 2 million positions on a snowboard, that needed a lot of explanation. I wrote a lengthy manual for it and then the description for the catalog. Deep inside, I hid a little challenge: if anyone could show the math behind the stance options, they would get a prize.

The writing continued into the summer, but there were other projects, too, like making a video of all our riders. Jake came by the studio one night to see what we’d put together, a film I called, “Push.” He said he didn’t like the title, but as I did when we were writing copy together, I challenged him on it. The name stayed.

About a week later he came over to my desk and handed me a beanie that said “Push” on it, and told me he found it at one of our retailers he’d visited. “It’s to remind you not to push so hard for your ideas. Try to listen little more,” he said. “Oh and if you’re ever in one of our retailers, buy something. Those guys need our support. Even just a hat like this.”

I lived by both pieces of advice ever after.

With all the work, I’d forgotten about the math contest until five envelopes showed up one day in my mailbox. I had five winners. I needed to get them a prize.

Another of my projects that summer was to deliver a sign for Burton retailers, made out of a cross-section of a log. It was being produced by a sign maker down the street named H. G. Wells, as in Homer G. Wells. His ability to tell stories lived up to his literary name, and his business was called Sign Language. As a punning, snowboarding, English nerd, I spent a lot of time hanging out with Homer G. Wells while he worked. Each log slab had a metal inlay of Burton’s newest logo, dubbed the "B-13.” The B-13 came from the design team led my Michael Jager, whose agency JDK was a little further down the road from Homer. I hung out there a lot that summer, too, watching them make ads and design snowboard graphics.

With all these creative people around, I wanted to make things, too. Homer had a drawer full of experiments and spare parts for various Burton items he’d been prototyping. In it I found a few examples of the coveted “Air Disk” medallions that the pro riders had been seen wearing around their necks the past winter. He gave one to me. He also had a little brass cube of metal with a backwards B-13 on it. He told me he was working on a branding iron but he decided to use a different metal. He gave me that too.

I wore the Air Disk around my neck, but after watching Homer make a few more log signs, I had an Idea. I would make my own miniature version, one that I could wear like an Air Disk. I burned a B-13 into a little slice of a branch by putting the brass cube on a hot plate. Homer made me a rubber stamp with "Burton Snowboards" in a circle that fit around it so it looked like its big brother. With a screw eye and piece of twine, I made myself next year’s model of the Air Disk necklace. I felt like I was a Burton team rider.

Years before, I first met Burton team riders who worked at one of the country’s first snowboard schools at Stratton Mountain. When I discovered snowboarding and started selling boards in my shop, one of the kids who worked at the roller rink next door bought one. As a starving computer science student, I did not have a car, but he had access to his dad’s, so for a discount on the board he drove us to Stratton to take our first lesson.

We both struggled while our instructor, pro snowboarder Suzie Rueck, tried to get us to adopt the counter-intuitive stance that makes snowboarding possible.

When I finally got the hang of it and I could make turns, leaving Jeff behind, Suzie said to him, “Wow, your friend must be quite an athlete.”

“He’s not an athlete,” Jeff said, with a sneer, “He’s a fucking mathematician.”

Back at college, I eventually switched from Computer Science to English, but my respect for math continued. My Burton math winners deserved a great prize, so I made five more of my log necklaces, and dropped them into the mail bin.

The next day there were 50 right answers. The day after a couple hundred showed up. In all, the pile got to over a thousand, yet I was hellbent to make them all a log necklace.

The wood for Homer’s full-sized sign was from downed elm, found on the forest floor and full of worm holes. (Our discriminating Japanese distributor would reject their shipment of them because the inferior wood showed insect damage.) Likewise I wanted deadwood for my miniatures, so I had to scrounge fallen branches from the woods across the street from Burton during lunch. After work I hand-sawed disks into the night. I had the hot plate running with the branding-cube, the rubber stamp inked up, and the eyes and the twine set out—in the foyer between the two doors at the entrance to our building, where the light was good and I could reach an outlet with the hot plate’s cord.

The last person out that night happened to be Jake, who stopped to ask me what the hell I was doing. I explained the situation and he said to follow him, he'd show me a better way. He helped me carry my supplies out back to the now-empty snowboard factory, turning lights on as we went. He powered up the dust vacuum and showed me how to use the same radial-arm saw that cut wooden snowboard cores to length. He set up a production line with all my supplies, clamping things in place so I wouldn’t have to pick them up and put them down repeatedly. He explained how, in the beginning days of Burton, he’d gotten in over his head more than once on snowboard production; he had learned the hard way how to manufacture a product in quantity.

Once I was up and running, he handed the operation over to me. Before he left he said, “Two things. One, you know you don’t have to do this all by yourself. We’re all here to help. Two, I thought with all this college-level copy we’ve been writing, you’d know not to fucking underestimate the mathematical intelligence of snowboarders.” And he laughed.

Then he handed me a key, “Lock up when you’re done.”

I said I would leave the key on his desk.

He said, “Keep it. Now that you know how to use the factory, you might as well have a key to it.” And he left.

Just a few months after college, I was a professional writer, a marketer, and someone with the key to the building. But it was even bigger than that: I was trusted—trusted to be the voice of Burton, the messenger of the sport, and the night foreman of the greatest snowboard factory ever.

As the voice of Burton, I’d work with Jake to write everything from letters to our senators about what a snowboard boot was (for some tariff legislation, which I learned needed to be address to the “The Honorable Senator Patrick Leahy") to re-writing the mountain resorts’ “Skiers Code” to be inclusive of snowboarders. Some of the stuff I wrote would get faxed to our distributors around the world to get translated.

One time I wrote an unfortunate press release that made fun of one of our distributor's cultures. I left it as a joke for Jake. The next day his assistant Joan came across the hall to hand me the fax receipt that confirmed she’d gone ahead and saved me the step of faxing it to the distributor myself. I was mortified. Then Jake came in laughing and said, “Don’t make fun of other countries. We’re a global company. And besides, that kind of shit is just not funny.”

I’d write really long emails and Jake would print them out and hand them back to me with, “Just tell me what you want,” written in Sharpie.

One all-company meeting I wrote some notes for him on an index card, suggesting a few talking points based on what I’d been hearing in the halls. He handed it back to me after he spoke with Sharpie written over it, “Who’s running this company God dammit?” I saved that one; it always makes me laugh.

As a messenger, I had to represent snowboarding to the industry, the press, the resorts, the United States Olympic Committee, anyone who might help (or get in the way of) snowboarding’s growth. I also had to represent Burton to the pro riders, who Jake would remind me, I had to listen to.

“If you were good enough to decide what’s right in snowboarding, you’d be riding, not sitting at that desk. Plus the riders have two ways of being right. First, they should know, they ride more. Second, if they’re off, they’ll set a new direction and call it right."

When he made me head of marketing, he told the company that I was always brutally honest about how I felt about the direction of the company, and that he didn’t want that to change. He let me know that my views from behind a desk counted too.

As unofficial night foreman of the factory, I always had projects going. We built skate ramps, buried a time capsule, and pulled all-nighters collating press kits. I designed and helped build trade show booths in a corner of the warehouse before packing them into crates and shipping them to Las Vegas, San Diego, Montreal, and Tokyo. I made a sign that said, “My Boss is a Protestant Carpenter,” and someone came up with the idea of bracelets that said “W.W.J.D.”—What Would Jake Do. Some nights I'd skateboard around the factory with my friend Andy, the PA system blaring music from a telephone dialed into it, duct taped to the speaker of a boom box.

It was in the factory, at another all-employee meeting almost ten years later, when my title was president, that Jake said he trusted me implicitly as the conscience of the company. Standing there, I still had that key in my pocket, and a million lessons from Jake in my head. One of them: by all means, do meet your heroes.

Jake passed away 27 years after I first started working for him—when I was 27. So half my life, his words have been with me. He and the people he assembled at Burton gave me a home, a career, and I hope, an open mind. They gave me a platform to help teach generations to snowboard, along with the humility to step off of it and just listen. My experience with Burton led to a job at another company where I could help teach a world that if you have a body, you are an athlete.

They say when you die, you can’t take it with you. Another way of looking at it is that when you die, you get to leave all of you behind. Losing Jake, for me, is being left with everything he had to give. I don’t feel loss, just the unspeakable pain of permanently indebted gratitude.

The day he got the news, The Honorable Senator Patrick Leahy, still in office, tweeted of Jake, “He was the soul and patron saint of snowboarding, and a beloved Vermonter whose vision has had worldwide reach.”

It makes me so proud: the title Jake accepted in 1992 in my first week, something I was able to give to him. I am grateful I was invited there to push for it.

#snowboard

[weaselle]

I got asked in my DMs to elaborate on my master project, so, just know if you click the read more, it’s gonna be like, a LONG ass read

(in b4: when I say things like “the poor” rest assured I am also “the poor” and not trying to feed into classist designations - I just need to be able to talk about different economic demographics. Also, I’ve pulled together several pieces of writing that cover this very involved endeavor for this ask, so there may occasionally be a slight overlap of information, tho I have tried to clean it up)

@victorylilygreen (lol, you asked)  @ekinsellaauthor (idk I thought you might be interested)

______________________________________________________________________

I have a plan to provide solutions to the socio-economic crisis facing this country. As I put this together over a couple of decades, it was important for me to not be telling people how they have to live, but rather provide them the tools they need to decide for themselves how to live. This plan then, is more like a mutable format, the first iteration of which provides the example and proof of concept. Then, when people see a successful solution available, they will be sure to copy it -- because this piece of social engineering is meant to be self replicating this way, I often refer to it as a socio-economic worm First, a breakdown of how I arrived at my plan:

The fundamental questions at the base of my attempts at large scale socio-economic fixes are:

1- Since every current system in our society is dysfunctional or corrupt, how can a single simple solution address the entire tangled web of institutions that effect every part of our human lives -- from agriculture, to rent, to wages, to government, to education, to the textile and clothing industry -- it's all problematic and needs to change.

2 - Since we can assume the wealthy will never help change the status quo, how can we get the middle class to pay the poor to create alternatives to current corrupt systems? in other words, how can we free time and money in the economy such that doctors and lawyers and computer techs can pay cashiers and gardeners and cooks to create banks and homes and grocery stores so we can bankrupt Wells Fargo and Century Real Estate and Whole Foods?

And the first answer is, we can create a simple solution that addresses all of it by bringing all that under one roof, for one small group of people, and addressing that microcosm in a way that is replicable by other small groups, as well as able to be scaled up such that it is applicable to the larger society.

To answer the second question, we have to create a situation where the poor are making more money than they currently do. And they need to do this by providing more of what the middle class need (for less money than the middle class currently spends on it) This will provide some immediate relief for the poor while freeing up money in the middle class to fund the larger solutions.

==========================================================

Since we can't create money from nothing, one way to accomplish that is: instead of the poor making more money, the base concept of socio-economic organization of individuals has to change such that it lowers the cost of living for the poor. Lowering the cost of living accomplishes many of the same things as increasing wages. And we have to do that while engaging in providing more of what the middle class needs for less money that they currently pay.

Therefore, we need to identify what the middle class needs. A fundamental problem facing the middle class is that raising a family and running a household and earning enough money to pay for it all is a full time job for three to five adults, and they are trying to do it with two. Which is a major problem for the poor also. What the middle class is trying to do about it is what the poor cannot: buy themselves more time, literally. They pay someone to clean their house, they pay someone to watch their kids, they pay someone to maintain their garden, they pay for food that requires less and less time to prepare or they order to go food. They pay a dry cleaner or laundry service to wash their clothes. If they can afford enough of these things, they wind up with as much left to do as 2 people have time for.

The important thing to realize here is that these chores are the genesis of the necessary institutions that have become corrupt or dysfunctional. Everything a household or family needs is a microcosm of the larger industries and institutions. For example, paying someone to take care of your children is the seed of a school. Paying someone to prepare your meal is the seed of food industry - if you pay them enough to prepare you enough food, it becomes more cost effective to start producing the ingredients or getting them directly from the source. Paying an accountant to do your taxes or getting help with budgeting etc, grows into a bank. Paying someone to wash your clothes is the seed of the clothing industry - soon they can offer repairs, replacing buttons, fixing burst seams, from there alterations and tailoring follow... This is how the poor will be paid to grow new institutions to replace current problematic systems.

SO. Low-income workers need to organize into cooperative communities that leverage group dynamics to lower costs. If four families live together, they don't need to buy four toolbox sets, they can buy one and share. 10 families worth of food bought in bulk costs much less than 10 individual families buying food at the grocery store. Heating a single large building and splitting the bill is much more cost-effective than paying to heat individual housing units. And when one such group is shown to provide solutions and success, other groups will inevitably come together and copy it on their own, unprompted.

AND once they are organized this way, they should offer those services the middle class are trying to use as stop gaps - the chores the middle class are buying themselves out of. The best way to do this is buy creating the solutions to the chore/time crunch for their own community, and then selling those solutions to the middle class. In other words, someone needs to do the house cleaning, the laundry, the cooking, the gardening etc for the building they all live in, and then they can go on to sell that service to middle class households.

They need to do this for less money than the sum of those things currently costs, which can be accomplished via two techniques. The first is simply by bringing all those services under one roof. When the gardener and the housecleaner are arriving in the same company vehicle, the consumer is getting passed less in gas and vehicle maintenance costs, and so on.

The second way is to identify the one or two most needed, most expensive services, and find a way to lower costs for just those services significantly. Maybe something like babysitters that function as small, suburban neighborhood daycares during peak daycare hours, and the babysitters would fill the rest of their work week elsewhere in the company.

Now! We have the poor with a lower cost of living, providing relief services to the middle class in a way designed to grow into the new food production, the new clothing industry, new banks, new schools, new hospitals... and when you have all these things, you can make whole cities that are largely autonomous. Again the concept is to bring under one roof smaller versions of all the needed things in life that have become the large problematic systems that currently exist, giving citizens the real power to either force those institutions to change, or replace them. When you have new cities, they can demand or create much larger change in government, in power production, in raw material sourcing for things like lumber and fuel. And hey can be built on purpose, instead of the chaotic haphazard growth typical of current cities. If citizens want to live sustainable, socially progressive lifestyles, it behooves them to live in municipalities explicitly designed to facilitate that.

This is my solution.

It starts with a single building. A single community. I have planed the building and community, budgeted it, designed it to be able to grow into these larger solutions. I have started the procedure to create it, taken the first small steps.

step One A: Creative Suite (already working with a small team on this)

My plan is to run several big fundraisers over the next year and partner with an SF Bay Area municipality (probably Oakland) to open a public arts production center by converting a warehouse.

The purpose would be to have a creative recreation suite with communal equipment and spaces, such that, if you wanted, for example, to make a music demo, or do a pod cast, or make cooking videos for youtube, you could easily accomplish that using the space and equipment available in the arts production center. To include:

dance floor / props and body work space

music center / DJ booth and instruments

recording studio - both audio and visual, with lighting, green screen, mics, cameras sound proofing

singing booths - individual sized sound proof recording studios, wired with a mic and output

industrial kitchen - large fridge space, rangetop and large oven, utensils / tools, big counter top

painting studio - surfaces (not always canvas) paints, brushes, frames

Crafting studio - buy bulk discount from creative center for reuse in berkeley?

wood and metal shop - partner with a tool library? is it possible to get a recyclable high-density ceramic 3-D printer to print tools with?

electronic repair (and robotics?) center

stage / small theater space / workshop with attached makeup studio

sewing and costuming – sewing machines and cloth bolts etc

gaming center - table top rpgs, card games, board games etc outdoor component, pool table, anything we can get a good deal on

computer bank - about 5 computers for general use / e games

leave one/take one library, scattered 1-2 person writers nooks

garden center

Amazingly my estimates from initial research indicates I can put a cheap, functional version of this together for about twenty thousand dollars. In terms of installing this stuff in like, an otherwise un-refurbished warehouse. Even if I spend $35k, that’s like, a new car. Plus I want the first month or so of funding to run the place up front. That’s gonna be water, garbage (it’s a lot for the dumpster a place like this needs) a shitload of electricity, and 3 people’s worth of monthly salaries to start.

Then there’s the rent or lease, which runs about $2 per square foot in the SF Bay, and I’ll need at least 5 grand a month’s worth of space. Plus monthly supplies, for whatever deals on paint and stuff we can scrounge. That means the monthly operating costs are like $25k a month. Hence large fundraisers for the initial build out and first month’s operating. Plus you draw your initial arts center membership from the fundraiser attendees.

Which, I’ve thrown warehouse parties before, so I think I can hit a target of a couple hundred people at each party spending $35 apiece. There’s a trick to it – you keep the cover charge low or non-existent, and then provide a lot of opportunities to spend money inside, like games and food and stuff. Low or no charge to attend drives attendance up, and then you have more people spending money. 

One key element is, you fill out the paperwork to be a catering company. Not only do you use this to sell food at the event, but ALSO it allows you to file for a single-use liquor license so you can have a bar. Usually there are a finite number of liquor licenses in a municipality, and they can go for millions of dollars. But with a catering company’s single event liquor license you can legally sell alcohol at the party. NOW we’re talking money.

anyway, I’m HOPING I can find state, federal, or municipal grants and assistance programs for the arts (and also, maybe some kind of, entrepreneurial support programs, but for like, small personal internet ventures?) Maybe even get some city to cut the rent in half by forgiving the property taxes on the warehouse or something. If I can’t, I may have to adjust the fundraising vs start date timing. Membership will be a monthly fee like a gym. I’d love for it to be free, and will certainly stay open to anything that allows that, but by the numbers it’ll have to be about $50 a month. Still, that’s like a 24 our fitness membership. One refill of gasoline. About one person’s share of an electricity bill. A phone payment. It’s a doable monthly bill for a lot of people. Monthly budget to be supplemented using the space, for example dance classes, ticketed theater performances, live band music shows, etc. So it’s possible we could drive membership prices way down. and maybe certain days or times could be free to the public or something. I want it to be accessible. Of the 3 monthly salaries mentioned above (each at $20 an hour) one is for me and that’s all I need, enough money to live on and access to this facility. There’s no way I can figure out how to afford this kind of creative suite for just me, but I might be able to figure out how to make one a whole bunch of us can afford This is just the first step of a very involved something I’ve been putting together since forever. But even if I only ever accomplish this first nesting-doll of a scheme, I’ll be very pleased.

The Creative Suite is like, an egg. And it should hatch into a little baby iteration of a socio-economic worm I’ve conceived.

If I can grow it to the full beast, it should become a self replicating, bottom-up revolutionary process that could improve the lives of many millions of people and put more power over our personal day to day lives back into the hands of the common public.

I have thousands of words in hundreds of research drafts and notes and exploratory essays, etc, but… Roughly speaking that looks like

flip the Creative Suite into MN Building One, a scheme designed to allow minimum wage workers to access more free time, lower their cost of living, and build equity by acquiring and owning their own property. Mortgage is paid off in ten years. Meanwhile

Building One starts up a business called Full Service Living that leverages group economics to allow for ethically sourcing goods while addressing the issue that middle class nuclear families with two adults face 4 full time adults’ worth of labor to maintain the household and raise the children.

Full Service Living becomes FSL Pro, in which the first group offers the next group of minimum wage workers their old building (cutting out the banks from the process) while acquiring a second building, gives the new people in Building One entry level jobs in FSL that pay better than minimum wage, while adding second tier careers to the mix living in Building Two – lawyers, accountants, mechanics, teachers, etc. These two groups continue to propagate more communities in their paired type one and type two buildings. Each of these community pairs contains the seeds for various institutions designed into them, and are meant to cooperatively grow  into:

Community Support Centers. These offer a variety of support services to surrounding communities. Such as: day care and after school programs, tax and bill/budgeting assistance, legal advice/support. The sum of the total efforts by all parties is designed to blossom into:

A school A construction and landscaping company A public owned Credit Union/Bank A public service law office An ethical clothing line An alternative low footprint locally sourced supermarket I call Alt-mart (Alt-mart works hand in hand with a food production construct I have in mind. It’s a little involved for this breakdown)

All that with room for other endeavors people see a need for. The initial concept brings most issues of modern life under a single multi-family roof such that communities are afforded the opportunity and resources to create alternatives to the flawed or corrupt institutions with which we are currently participating.

When that all coalesces into networks of these communities and institutions, we’ll have all the necessary pieces to the puzzle and I hope a city will be built. I’ve designed many elements of it. Engineering as well as socio-political and economic design. But who knows if I’ll ever get there.

More detailed breakdown of the plan follows:

Project Overview and Concept Exploration:

Begins with providing affordable housing, property ownership, and upward mobility to minimum wage workers. Becomes a network of live/work facilities with a focus on sustainable entrepreneurialism, accessible autonomy, and community outreach.

These facilities function as socio-economic labs - they are on paper corporations, to access any advantages, protections, and loop-holes available to the corrupt institutions currently running the economy. They target the large corporations, ultimately seeking to end them. They produce businesses such as restaurants that grow all their own food, and doctors that are paid for by the apartment complex to provide medical care to residents.

Additionally, theses facilities provide a new way of life, in a format that allows for autonomy, but also allows for successful participation in the current economy... where all the money is.They also attempt to alleviate the time crunch problem for the middle class, wherein managing a household and raising a family is actually three or four full time jobs.

As such, the facilities are designed to grow into these large businesses/institutions:

SCHOOL

A preschool through junior college school on 3 cooperative campuses, wherein the school functions as a microcosm of the economy as a whole for the purpose of study: school gardens provide cafeteria food; school wood shops produce school furniture; economy classes figure out how the school budget can afford the water, fertilizer, metal, and wood.

3rd graders have classes in the garden learning the biome and doing the weeding; 8th graders are each growing 3ftX3ft gardens and helping in the large garden; 11th graders are cross-pollenating and designing green housing and aquaponic systems; bachelor students are splicing plant genes in the lab.

But by then some of the students have stopped being involved in the garden, and are making replacement hinges for all the school doors as metal shop homework or squeezing enough money out of the school budget for a big homecoming event.

By the third campus, students are living on site, so there is housing to manage. Student store and cafeteria provide economic interactions; the whole of our socio-economic society done small for study and practice, under a single administration instead of our current system of a scholastic career being broken up into mismatched administrations, which is a disservice to our students.

ALT-MART

A facility meant to compete with Target and Walmart and Whole Foods etc. It grows from the live/work facility kitchen and meal-plan set up. Alt-mart features a permanent farmer’s market, supplemented with an onsite garden/nursery. There is an onsite industrial kitchen and restaurant that uses overstock from the farmer’s market and ingredients from the garden, possibly purchasing all unsold produce from the farmer’s market at a discount.

The restaurant offers prepared foods for sale to the public, kitchen processes overstock into consumer goods like ketchup, frozen microwaveable breakfast burritos, and canned corn. Bakery also, of course. Facility also features a tool-library with a 3-d printer that can print any tools not on the shelves.

Additionally features local tailoring and a second hand clothing store. The local tailors get access to all the second-hand pieces for use in making their own clothes to sell onsite, as well as some facility-bought cloth and onsite machinery (sewing machines to textile machines like tuffters, gins, and looms).

Toy aisle is franken-toy land, where in-house creative DIYers take second hand toys and make whole new toys out of them. Electronics section is mostly repair, and offers lessons in repair. Book-nook and greeting card section features local/community writers. And so on. The goal is to offer an alternative to the big one-stop-shop stores, with a focus on local/community sourcing.

CONSTRUCTION COMPANY

This business grows out of building maintenance and groundskeeping into a landscaping company, then into a construction company. It should be the company used by the network of facilities for any renovations and repairs, so it should grow quite large.

COMMUNITY-OWNED CREDIT UNION (and LAW OFFICE)

Basically a non-profit bank, that offers community outreach for people who need help with budgeting, would like to learn about mortgages and homeownership, etc. Grows out of a Community Support Center that also offers community office space and legal advice.

FIRST STOP HOSPITAL

Not a full hospital, at least not at first, this should just be a few medical professionals that can answer common questions, provide emergency medical response, and assess medical conditions. Not for treatment so much as to find out what kind of treatment you need and who to get it from. Where first-time parents bring their babies when they’re not sure if they need o bring their baby to an emergency room. Honestly, medical care is the hardest part of this whole thing and I'm not sure if it's going to be possible or what to do about it.

CATERING AND EVENTS COMPANY

This is what get’s the ball rolling, the catering folds into the care-taking positions within the facilities, and the events company later become basically the arts entertainment and media/information division. There's a traveling circus element. It's fun.

These projects can possibly culminate in a whole large, sustainable city built from the ground up, that I have outlined. It involves building a large hill and two small lakes. I am happy to talk a lot more about that, but it clearly necessitates all the above pieces and more.

OKAY, so much for the overview. Let’s start at the beginning. The loan is for 2 million dollars, for a property of 1 million and another million in remodel costs.

Note: I ran the following numbers for California. Obviously property values and minimum wages are different other places, but the concept should still be applicable. Additionally, these are preliminary estimates only. Additional research and budgeting is required.

____________________________________________________________________

First I have to tell you about a type of loan called “Micro debt”

Basically, if you loan 10 people a total of 100k, they are each responsible for 10k of debt. If one of them defaults, the other nine split their debt, so now each of them has about 11k of debt, which is payable as it is not a significant increase in debt per person. However, this also encourages them to all help make sure nobody defaults on the debt -- for example, if one person is in danger of defaulting because their car was totaled and they can’t get to work, there are nine other people with a vested interest in making sure that person gets access to a vehicle or ride share. If a person starts to default on payments because they are drinking all the time, there are nine other people who are going to drag the to AA meetings.

A couple of banks in Bangladesh and Germany have had success with this, citing a 98% repay rate which is a few percent better than the average home loan repay rate here in the United States. Additionally, there are at least a couple million people who have this structure of loan here in the states, so it's not unheard of nor untested, even specifically in our own economy.

_______________________________________________________________________

SO. 28 people get what is essentially a home loan for 2 million dollars. We'll call them group A. They each have about a $71,000 mortgage, their share of the loan. (note, an average mortgage in California is like, nearly half a million, so, less than a hundred thousand is a GOOD mortgage)

Group A buys property (ideally unused/abandoned industrial sites or dilapidated property in low income areas) for about a million, maybe a little under, and builds a facility on it for about a million, maybe a little over. (I looked at apartment building costs per square foot and reviewed properties currently for sale in California to get these numbers).

Some of the money is earmarked for partnering with the city on local infrastructure - so, say the streets in that neighborhood need repaving, we might buy all the materials for the city to do that, saving them money, incentivizing the city to work with us on rezoning and permits, while at the same time those kinds of improvements are an investment in the value of the property. This is because many of those buildings are not zoned as live-work the way this project requires, and rezoning without incentivizing the city to cooperate is a nightmare.

The facility is 60 bedrooms, with an industrial kitchen, plenty of diverse common space, and shared facilities (like at a gym: banks of private shower stalls, even a hot tub and a sauna, because if you’re going to ask people to give up single use showers in their own apartments, you want to add value).

Group A moves in and rents remaining rooms to an additional 28 people, we'll call them Group B.

Now, out of 60 rooms we have 56 people living in the facility. 10 of them are caretakers. Instead of paying money, they pay their way in labor, and they additionally receive a monthly stipend of 500 dollars a month to start. The caretakers do all the building maintenance and groundskeeping, they do the housekeeping and laundry, they make sure the bills are all paid, and they provide (cook) a meal plan. Utilities are all included in rent.

This means that anyone renting there has a single, affordable monthly bill for their cost of living, never has to cook, never has to do laundry or wash a dish. I call this Full Service Living. And the budget is for 60 but only 56 are planned in, with 4 slots available for social outreach, so this community can offer semi-temporary room and board for free to women fleeing abusive relationships, disabled veterans, homeless people with children, rehabilitated felons, whoever they want to help.

All this for a single payment of $1,000 per month, per paying resident.

Rent, food, utilities, housekeeping, everything. In an area where rent alone is more than that. This guarantees that a person making local minimum wage can afford to live, and pretty decently, with more free time and less headache.

When the building is paid off, if they want, Group A will each have a room to live in, plus a room to receive rent from, as income.

Let's break down the budget for this so far

(60 people, minus 10 caretakers and 4 outreach residents, equals 46 paying residents)

Per Month Costs to Paying Residents:

Meal plan for 60 people = $5,000.00

60 person phone plan = $1,800.00

Internet sufficient for a business: $400.00

Water bill for 60 people = $1,800.00

Electricity for 60 people = $3,600.00

Garbage bill for 60 people = $2,000.00

Caretaker stipend = $5,000.00

(subtotal: $19,600.00)

Building/Community fund = $1,853.002

million dollar mortgage = $21,213.00

Property tax = $3,334.00

Total: $46,000.00= $1,000 per paying resident per month, roughly $600 “room” and $400 “board” with as many costs of living as possible paid as one low bill.

 Sharing a room adds a "board" payment to the room, so if you move a romantic partner in with you and split it evenly, you each pay $700. I also have discount rate breakdowns for people with children in various scenarios, but it starts to get complicated for what is supposed to be a simple overview. Basically it comes down to an inherent flexibility in the meal plan; the fact that a food budget for 60 people easily accommodates an extra mouth to feed could allow a group to offer a single parent a separate room for their child with no board payment, so they could live in two rooms for $1,500; stuff like that.

At those payments, the building is paid off in ten years. TEN. Our low income earners don't have to wait 30 years to be actual property owners, and they only have to give the bank an added $500k instead of the 1.4 million a 30 year mortgage would net.

Here is one place people replicating the format and participating in their own group can do whatever they want. The 28 building shareholders have the option of leaving everything the same but owning the place outright, which means they are no longer paying the ~$500 mortgage portion of their bills, instead each receiving about $500 in rent from the other residents, which is a net gain of $1k per month each in disposable income. Or they could all just sell the building and split the money 28 ways. Or they could all move out and use the entire building to generate residual income. Anything is good, we've made almost 30 people property owners and built them equity for only minimum wage while they provided relief services to the surrounding community, so anything they think is best, we've already done it good.

Ideally they move into a second building and sell the first building to group B, which is what the very first group will have to do to complete the seeding of the entire project. 

SO. The two buildings I mention represent two stages of the greater project. Full Service Living, and Full Service Living Professional (hereafter FSL, and FSL Pro)

In the first stage, you have 10 caretakers providing full service living to 46 paying individuals, most of whom make minimum wage, and 4 social outreach recipients. FSL is basically getting as much of your life as possible handled with a single low bill, something similar to living in a good hotel.

To expand, The caretakers additionally seek to offer this service to middle class households - these homes already hire a house cleaner, a gardener, use a dry-cleaner, order delivery food, so they are prime clients. As middle class households become clients, the caretakers need more people to handle the work load, and the other people living in the facility quit their minimum wage jobs and work for the FSL company. This will earn the group profits as a whole while paying the individuals close to $25 an hour. THIS allows the second building to be much nicer.

With a second, much nicer building, the 28 people move in, and they find 28 new renters from higher up the economic food chain. These folks need to earn at least 35k a year and include people from a specific list of professions. This new group of 28 shall be referred to hereafter as the tenants.

The rent agreement is unique: The 28 tenants pay about 2k per month each for the same package, the FSL company from the first building provides all the housekeeping, meal plan, etc. The tenants also agree to pay one third of any increase in their wages, up to a cap, with the money going toward renovations, improvements, and additional services and amenities. This means as your income increases, you pay more actual dollars, but a smaller percentage of your over all income

So if you are making 35k you earn 3k a month, which means you pay 2/3 of your income to the facility (many people spend this much on rent plus food). If you double your income, you now earn 6k per month. Your rent package would go up by 1/3 of your additional income, or one thousand dollars, and you would still have an extra two thousand dollars per month of personal discretionary income. You would have started out paying 2/3 of your income, but now you’d be paying only 1/2 your income. Your building improves, your life improves, but you’ll always be able to afford it, and every raise you get does give you more spending money. Additionally, the staff is motivated to really give you all the support they can, as a well supported individual is more likely to have monetary success.

And one more important thing. Tenants either pay an additional 500 bucks a month in money, OR they offer $500 of their professional services to residents of the facility. Unclaimed time must be made available to the surrounding public for free.

So, say a paralegal values her time at $50 dollars an hour for qualified legal advice (such as, do I need a lawyer for this? what kind of lawyer do I need? What is this legal process going to look like?). The 50 residents only use an hour this month, so something like 9 appointments should be made available to the surrounding community for free - the facility staff will handle outreach (letting the community know of the offer via flyers etc). They will handle making the appointments according to her availability, and will provide the facility’s communal office space to hold them in.

These programs allow businesses to grow in a very low risk environment. Let’s look at a day care worker. She’s a classroom assistant at a day care, going to school part time to finish her teaching degree. She offers residents hours of baby sitting as her $500 service. As she earns more money, the facility also earns more money, and can renovate a space that sometimes functions as a play room for kids. No longer going to school, she is earning more money, the facility hires a permanent babysitter or two, and she manages them. Free to residents, they accept neighborhood kids for a reasonable fee. Low cost good quality day care becomes available to the neighborhood. She’s a class lead at a good school now, making more money, so the facility can afford to hire classroom assistants and the baby-sitting / daycare starts offering after-school programs to older children, well on its way to being a small private school, with our tenant running it.

Similarly, restaurants and construction companies grow out of offering facility residents goods and services.

To recap the ideal situation here: 28 people live in a nice 60 bedroom facility. They own a business in a neighboring facility, which houses workers who are paid fairly, but who also pay the first group monthly on a ten year lease (instead of paying a bank) -- after which that second group owns the building they live in and no longer has to pay. Everyone’s cooking, cleaning, laundry, are all done for them. By now their meals are largely made from the facility’s garden and aquaponics greenhouse, which includes a fish-farming pool, a few goats, a cow or two, and some chickens and ducks. Living with them in the facility is their lawyer, their nurse, their electronics expert, etc. They’re all part owners in their own non-profit bank/credit union, and there is an onsite day care, gym, and communal workshop. The group offers outreach programs to the surrounding community: low cost high quality day care, legal advice. They provide semi-temporary room and board to those in need, such as women fleeing abusive relationships, disabled veterans, and the homeless (especially those with children). They are an active part of an ongoing socio-economic program designed to give low-income housing, property ownership, retirement options, and upward mobility to minimum wage workers, as well as alternatives to broken institutions to all.

By the time they pay off the second building’s mortgage, the first building has been paid for over again, and THAT group can move into a ANOTHER FSL Pro building, offering their new building to a new round of pro tenants while offering that first building to a THIRD round of low income workers.

The first 28 people achieve all of this, building ownership, business proprietorship, community support, within the same thirty years it takes to pay off a standard home loan, starting with nothing more than entry level jobs and this master plan. 

From there, growth continues. More buildings are offered to more low income earners. More facilities means more services, amenities, cooperative power, a stronger micro-economy. Political influence also increases with membership...

Eventually, you can take all these businesses and facility/communities, and go build a whole city, which looks a little like this

See the problem with cities is they grew organically. No one ever sat down and said “we know we want a hundred thousand people to live here -- what is the best design for that?” Instead is was just, some people, and then some more people, and then some more...

So.

You go out in the middle of wherever. You dig two GIANT holes. You take the dirt from the holes and you build a nice big hill. You fill the holes with water and you have two lakes. Now you have a nice place people want to live, nestled between the lakes, under the hill. It gives you enough water and topography to create a resource feedback loop and control things like wind and sun exposure.

You regulate everything for sustainability, design it from the ground up. 

Current municipalities have to provide everything for the public from a budget that largely comes from property tax, which is 2% of the property value. That’s why when there’s something like a homelessness problem, there is no money to address it properly. 

This city holds all the property in a trust administered by the elected city officials. Instead of rent paid to private landlords, the public leases their homes and businesses directly from the city, which keeps rents low and controlled and gives the city an incredibly large budget compared to current municipalities, which allows them to provide outstanding public services -- transportation, healthcare, parks -- as well as giving them enough budget to address any issues like homelessness. Regulation and organization for sustainability as a whole city addresses the fact that existence is always interlocked issues. For example:

Grey water. In this city, only approved cleansers are allowed for sale or use (and the city provides one. Because the city provides it, it has to be cheap and easy, which means that there is always room for improvement, or, a business selling better cleansers for more money. But no one will ever go without one available, even if they are broke). SO, no bleach down the drain. So you can take the grey water of the city, and dump it on the top of the hill into a manmade creek/river, which starts full of rocks, then pebbles, then sand (a natural filtration process) flows down the hill and ends up in the first lake, which is recreational. The second lake sits a little lower, and the water flows into it from the first lake. In the second lake there are fish farming and bi-valve farming, which additionally filters the water (especially bi-valves like fresh water muscles, which feed by straining the water through organic filters and not-for-food populations should be in the first lake as well). The city pulls its water from the second lake through its combination water purification facility / power plant. The power plant uses a steam turbine already so we simply run that steam through a charcoal filter, and re-condense it into molecularly clean water for municipal use; this uses our existing power generator, instead of requiring massive amounts of additional power.

That’s just one example. The city has it’s own sustainable agriculture program, and grows it’s own food. There are public meal plans, and a lot of organization of the city economy that I just don’t have the energy to get into here.

These designs allow a large group of people to live with very little environmental impact. It would be healthier for the citizens. And it would encourage a certain amount of political unity, while removing a lot of stress from modern life. 

The city is modular in growth. So when the city population doubles, roughly half of them build a city nearby and live there.

_______________________________________________________________________

Aside from the first two facilities (and then probably the first of the cities, if that happens) I don't need or want to be involved. As it replicates into more and more facilities, the baseline should remain: "here is a format by which minimum wage workers can own property and grow wealth in a way that allows them more control over their lives and denies profits to existing corrupt industries and corporations -- copy it if you want and suit it to your own group of residents”

I don't want to tell people how to live or what to do, I want to give them tools and templates to improve their own lives, whatever that looks like to them.

Anyway, believe it or not, this is only about a tenth of the detail I’ve put into this. I can never get the whole picture of any of this out in one go, but I've spent a lot of time on all the details which, as you can tell, are innumerable. The ways in which the FSL buildings act as entrepreneurial incubators by cutting start-up overhead to nearly zero while providing an initial customer base of 60 regulars, the various permutations that could address specific scenarios, the details of how to add gardens and fish and food production supplemented by ethical food sourcing.. I could just. keep. going. forever.

It addresses the whole tangled set of problems. You have to help high population areas, but also go out to the middle of the country. You have to help low income earners and people in poverty, but also our middle class is struggling. You have to do things that effect education, infrastructure, ocean management, industrialized food production, population density/overcrowding  issues, helps prevent homelessness, creates better jobs for workers of big box stores while providing affordable more sustainable alternatives to their customers...

I think this plan does all that and more.

I’m exhausted and can’t find all my work on this right now, it’s buried in email chains and computer back ups, but I think I more or less encapsulated it. Good night

[pi-cat000]

MSA time travel idea (part 10)

Summary: Arthur falls off a cliff and lands in the past.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Vivi POV, Part 8, Part 9

Part 11: Lewis POV

Micky gestures to the narrow street, running down the side of the shop he’s just spent almost an hour in. Arthur glances around, but there is still no one in the immediate vicinity.

“You can drop the bags kid,” Micky comments when Arthur begins to shuffle, shopping bags and all, in the direction indicated.

Arthur thinks about following the instruction for about two seconds before asking, “Can I hold onto them?”

Sure, it would free up his arms but he had just spent a whole day and several hundred dollars tracking this stuff down, he’s not about to leave it on the ground where any random person could grab it.

Micky gives him an odd look, and shrugs, “Whatever,”

“Thanks,” Arthur mutters, realising after the fact how odd it is to be thanking the guy holding him a gunpoint. Micky apparently thinks so too, raising a brow. In his defence, this is the most recent shitty thing to happen in a long line of shitty things. It’s not even in his top ten. Not currently. He hopes that's not about to change. The Arthur rubber band is stretched pretty thin by this point.

Thus Arthur ends up lugging an armload of shopping bags around the back of the darkening building, lamenting his innate ability to attract crazy people because he doesn’t think this has anything to do with something ordinary like being robbed.

It is pretty gloomy in the one-lane street, and he almost doesn’t spot the second man propped against one of the walls next to two hefty muscle bikes, which he recognises from his brief spat at the Peper’s diner. There is no Lewis to bail him out this time. Shorter and heavy than his counterpart, with the red scrawly hair, the second man glares at the both of them when they come around the corner.

“Micky,” he snaps, voice deep and gravely, matching his angry scowl, “What the hell are you doing?”

“What!” Micky retorts, “It’s the best way to get results.”

Harsh words are exchanged, growing in volume, and Arthur shuffles back a step to give himself breathing room in case the two angry men decide to open fire. This whole scenario is an unknown,  different from his first time around. It’s making him increasingly nervous. He doesn’t want to die here, not when he has things to change. Though, if he does end up murdered in a back alley, it would probably put a stop to Vivi and Lewis’s supernatural road trip.

“All you needed to do was ask a few questions and explain what's happenin. Not traumatise him,” Leather guy number two lectures.

Arthur coughs, shuffling his bags around so they can rest on the ground. His arms are getting tired.

“Does he look traumatised to you?” Micky retorts, waving the gun in Arthur's direction. Both sets of eyes settle of him, expressions narrowing in suspicion. Though the second man is glaring, Arthur’s not getting the same vibe shouting DANGER, it’s almost welcoming in comparison to Micky's aura of violence.

“My names Dan, who’ve already met Micky here,” Dan turns toward him, stepping in close, holding out a dusty hand to shake.  There is an expectant pause. Arthur stares at the limb. He’s not sure how he feels about shaking hands, not after he just got his right one back and whole again.

The expectant silence stretches awkwardly. Arthur extends his arm slowly.

“Arthur, was it?” Dan asks. Great, they knew his name.

“Yeah?”

He tries to contain the flinch when their hands connect and is partially successful. Dan doesn’t seem to notice. His grip is vice-like, and he gives his arm a firm shake, frowning like Arthur is a confusing puzzle.

“Apologies for all this,” a gesture at Micky and the gun, “My brother’s an idiot,”

Micky scoffs but steps back to lean against a wall, lowing his gun to keep a watch on the street's entrance.

“You’re probably wondering what this is about.”

“A little,” Arthur answers honestly. Now the gun is not pointed right at him he can re-centre and logically work through what’s happening. The constant chill of threat is still hanging around, but it’s not entirely overwhelming.

Dan nods and continues, “Now, this might sound strange so keep an open mind, but we’re like investigators, you see, except we look into strange and unusual occurrences. As it happens, your town has an unusually high…” Dan pauses to think, “let’s call it an otherworldly presence, about it. If you could tell us anything about the place, we’d be grateful.”

The only supernatural entity in the area he knows of is Mystery and, as apprehensive as he is about the dog, he’s not about to sic two guys with guns on him. Not to mention, he’s pretty sure Mystery would wipe the floor with any regular human. Guns or not.  Also, you don't just hold someone hostage to ask whether their town it haunted or whatever without some ulterior motive. He’s not an idiot.

“So does that make you supernatural detectives or something?” He asks both for clarification and to stall while he figures out what exactly is going on.

“Yeah, in a nutshell, sure,” Dan considered him, crossing his arms and stepping back, “You’re taking all this awful well for someone who’s supposedly new to it,”

Arthur raises his hands in what he hopes is a placating gesture, “Ah, my friend, Vivi, she’s super into that sort of thing. We’ve been in a few weirder than usual scapes as a result,” he laughs as naturally as possible, “I’ve never believed it much myself,”

At least he’s finding it easier lying to these guys than he did with Vivi and Lewis. All that practise has to pay off at some point, even when it’s not exactly where he wants it to.  

Micky, apparently, has had enough with the stalling because he pushes aggressively off the wall, “Cut the crap kid. We saw you last week. No one builds a spiritual pressure that fast without extra help,”

The gun is back and in his face.

Arthur holds his hands a little higher, and can’t help but ask, “Spiritual pressure?”

“Don’t play dumb. You’ve got double what a human should have. What was it? Messing around with the occult? You some sort of shifter.”  

“I really have no idea what you’re talking about,”

“Calm down Mick,” Dan waves a hand to calm his brother, dropping into a more serious tone, “Look, Arthur, he’s how this is going to go. We’re going to run a few tests. See if we can get anything off you. If there’s nothing, then you’ll be free to go.”

While Micky glares, now silent, Dan pulls out a pack of chalk. He gestures Arthur forward and begins to sketch out a circle on the grimy concrete around his feet. He recognises a few of the symbols. After The Cave and getting his arm removed Arthur had paid a lot more attention to the library’s worth of supernatural books Vivi owned. This is infinitely more complex than any of the stuff he’d read. Was this whole situation a result of time travel? He can’t see how the two would be related, but nothing else of significance has happened within the last week which could have caused the change in....spiritual pressure? Of course, he’s not about to try and explain that.

Several meters away he can hear the sounds of a roller door shutting as shops close for the evening. The whole area is darkening, throwing long shadows across the cement and asphalt. There is no way he’s beating Vivi and Lewis home now.

“So, it’s just the two of you, doing this investigating supernatural stuff,” Arthur breaks the silence, the need for answers outweighing his apprehension.

“Yeah, just us for the moment. It’s more of a side job,”

“Have you been doing it long?”

“Long enough to know a few things.”

Slowly, it begins to dawn on him,- now that’s he not in immediate danger,-that this may be the perfect chance to do something about The Cave. This was a chance to take action before Vivi and Lewis even got near the thing. If Micky and Dan were any good then maybe this was a blessing in disguise.

“Hmm,” Dan hums after what feels like several hours of sketching, stepping back to contemplate Arthur and the circle.

“What?”

“You seem human enough, congratulations.”

Arthur breaths in relief. There was a small part of him which had worried that he had been changed fundamentally by the time travel.  It’s nice to have some positive confirmation that he’s somewhat normal.

“Serious?” Micky grumbles, finally shoving his gun back into his pocket, “A whole day wasted for a false alarm.”

Dan shrugs loosely, addressing Arthur appearing more perplexed now, “True to word. You’re free to go. Sorry for the drama but we have to be sure about this stuff,”

He packs away his chalk, moving a foot out to smudge the intricate lines decorating the ground. Arthur takes a step back to watch, hesitating.

“You heard what he said. Get out of here kid,” Micky orders, lighting a cigarette, still muttering obscenities under his breath.

“You know how I said my friend was into this sort of stuff,” he starts and pauses.

Dan glanced across at him, “What about it?”

“A few days back we went on a day trip to check out this cave. Err, nothing really happened, but there were a lot of warnings about the place being cursed,” That’s what Mystery had told him the few times he had worked up the nerve to ask about The Cave. Some sort of evil curse which had latched onto Arthur and could only be removed via amputation, “Maybe something happened there?”

“Never heard of a curse that increases spiritual pressure,” Dan frowns,  staring with dark scrutinising eyes.

Arthur shrugs, “It’s the only thing I’ve done differently in the past week,”

“Can’t hurt to take a look I guess. Where’s this cave located?”

Because it would seem weird to rattle off the location of a place he had supposedly been to only once, Arthur fishes around for his phone. Dan leans in to copy the address, commenting,  “I’d keep these supernatural trips to a minimum if I were you. Most of this stuff’s harmless, but there’s always a few nasties waiting in the shadows.”

Preaching to the choir there.

“and keep an eye out for anything strange happening. Spiritual pressure is a lot like a beacon of sorts. Some say its linked in with the soul, not that there’s never been proof of that except for that fact that a lot of those nasties are drawn to it. Your town seems safe enough, we did a whole sweep and didn’t get much in the way of recent malevolent activity, but it's always best to be careful. Esapicaly when you've got more of it than normal...”

Dan finishes and gives him a stern expression.

“Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep a lookout,” Arthur offers to which Dan nods. Now there’s no undercurrent of malice Dan kind of reminds him of his Uncle.  

“You see anything weird give this number a call.”

A business card, which is mostly blank save for a number, is thrust into his hand. As much as he would like to stay and ask a dozen more questions its already dark and Vivi and Lewis were probably freaking out about his absence. He shuffles back over to his shopping bags, hulling them up. Neither Micky or Dan say much else, though they both watch him make his hurried exit.

Note: And the moral of this fic is: lying is bad and it will come back to bite you. Will be returning to Vivi and Lewis in part 11, hopefully to be done in the next week. 

#msa #mystery skulls animated #fanfiction #fanfic #time travel #arthur kingsmen #and some OC's who are totally going to be fine #thus concludes arthur's mini adventure

[acaseforpencils]

Jason Chatfield.

Bio: I grew up in the far flung suburbs of Perth, in Western Australia, and used to spend my paper route money on MAD Magazines (I cheaped-out and stole my dentist’s waiting room issues of the New Yorker. I think I was the only kid who looked forward to going to the dentist).

I moved to New York in 2014 and started pitching to the mag in person. I’m not sure Bob liked me, so I went back to pitching via email. Then I went in on his last day and finally sold my first piece. I feel like it was his final f—k you to the magazine. “Here! Have a Chatfield!” 

Find this print here!

The cartoon was a goofy play on Vlad the Impaler. 

I didn’t sell to the magazine again until last month, but I’ve had a handful sold as dailies. And I’m published in MAD often, so they’ve clearly done away with any of their standards.

When I’m not drawing gag cartoons I write and draw a syndicated legacy strip called Ginger Meggs which I took over 10 years ago. It’s been around since 1921 and now appears daily in 34 countries. He’s kind of an Australian version of Dennis the Menace, except he predates him by about 30 years.

Tools of choice: For drawing/roughs, I use a Prismacolor Turquoise clutch pencil with a red lead and try to find some paper with a little bit of tooth. The mixed media pads at Blick do the trick nicely.

I ink using a Uni-ball Vision Elite Stick Roller Ball Pen… or a Pigma Micron 03. 

DO NOT use the Uni-Ball Vision Rollerball Pens, Fine Point (0.7mm) if you’re traveling. They explode on planes. And ruin your copy of The New Yorker.

For a wash, I just use watercolor and whatever brush is lying around. Nothing fancy. There’s a scanning app on my phone called “Adobe Scan” which does a nice job of scanning line-art into a PDF when I’m out of the studio and need to email in a quick rough.

I use a Wacom Mobilestudio Pro for finished artwork. I like to get out of the studio and work from a bar or restaurant, so it helps that I can take that with me. I use a little glove that I got on Amazon so I don’t grease up the screen, and the felt-tip nib that comes in the pen-holder makes the friction between the stylus and the screen more like pencil on paper. Unfortunately, they’re not waterproof, as I found on a recent vacation…

My wife plays piano and sings at bars around the city so I’ll often sit at the bar during her sets and draw. Digital/Traditional depends on what deadlines are most pressing. (She has a weekly residency in Astoria —if anyone’s interested in going, let me know!)

A lot of people email me for advice about tablets —I’ve been trialling/demo-ing Wacom products for 15 years— I think they’re great. If you’re married to doing stuff by hand but want to colour digitally, you can get a decent tablet without going broke. Depends on your workflow.

Writing Desk: My wife and I were living upstairs in 5A when my neighbour in 4B died. He was a brilliant poet and had an incredible old writing desk. It’s the only thing that was left in the apartment, so I’m looking after it ’til his grandson moves in at the end of our lease. I work for countless hours at this old thing. It’s beat up, but I’ve patched it together enough that it won’t collapse and bury me mid-brushstroke. I’ve stuck a few of my favourite toons on the top of it.

Tool I wish I could use better: My brain. It really is a sack of cats. Whenever I want to sit and do work, it clocks off. Then it comes up with a pearler of an idea at 3 in the morning when I’m trying to sleep. I write it down in my phone, but autocorrect makes it indecipherable by morning.

I like working with my writer friend, Scott. We both do comedy at night and have developed a nice short-hand. We also seem to have the same library of references and can build on each others’ premises, which tames my sack-of-cats.

Tool I wish existed: The Deadline Extender.® I’ve never missed a deadline, but that said… an extra 3 or 4 minutes to allow for a terrible wifi connection, or a errant scanner wouldn’t go astray.

Also: The Deadline Extender® PREMIUM: Let’s you go back in time to when you were procrastinating and slap yourself in the face. $30 p/month.

Tricks: Ok, well. This is going to sound a bit Dalton Trumbo, but bear with me: I do my best work…in the bath.The most productive 3 hours of my week are during Scotchbath Sunday; an immoveable chunk of time on Sunday evening whereby I lock myself in the bathroom, run a bath, lug my drawing stuff onto a bit of wood that sits over the bath, and just write and draw. Nothing else. I write weeks worth of my syndicated comic strip (Ginger Meggs), I write New Yorker cartoons, scribble up roughs for dailies— and when I feel like I’ve earned it (usually 2 hours in) I tap the side of the bath three times, and my wife peels herself from her piano and I unlock the door to a nice big glass of scotch. It’s a hell of a carrot on a stick to work towards when you’re stuck. (PS. Lest you think I’m some kind of Don Draper-era misogynist; the scotch reward part was her idea. I think she realized it keeps me in the bath and out of her way.)

Anyway. It’s a great way to switch gears creatively. It’s like being on an aeroplane. No wifi, no phones — just the work you need to get done. Get involved. #ScotchBathSunday.

Oh! And if I get my deadlines done for the week, I have a small budget for a solo lunch somewhere where I can eat cheese and draw. I really didn’t know cheese ’til I moved to America. (And yes, I’ve already been to Wisconsin. Good Lord.)

Tips? I always tell younger artists to not even think about touching a drawing tablet until they’ve learned to draw by hand first. Otherwise they’ll always be drawing away, knowing they have the insurance of the CTRL+Z key at their disposal if they screw up a line. That’s not a good habit to have when you’re working to a deadline. But, once you do know how to draw, by all means dive head-first into the digital realm. It’s incredible. Procreate, Sketchbook or Photoshop are all great.

Misc: One of the hangovers from working in advertising illustration is that I’ve had to be a bit of a chameleon style-wise for the last 15 years and haven’t allowed myself to just settle into one style. Lately, I’ve just decided to say “Bugger it!” and try and find a loose, consistent style that I’m comfortable with, that’s an apt conduit to my silly ideas.

I always loved George Booth’s line, and his ability to create a scene with so much movement but just at the right moment in time. Also Sam Gross’ dark, hilarious cartoons with perfect line-economy. And I’d give my left arm (I draw with my right) to know how Barry Blitt has so much control with his washes…

Chatfield’s portrait of Sam Gross

While I’m geeking out, I love seeing younger cartoonists find their feet and thrive in a style that just feels like they’re speaking to you— Ellis J. Rosen, Sofia Warren, Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell, Jason Katzenstein, Amy Kurzweil, and a seemingly endless list of talented younger artists who are putting in the work are a big inspiration. 

I know it should be Steig or Thurber or Addams, but my favourite cartoonist is Sergio Aragones.

I was always so enamoured of MAD growing up and studied the lines of Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee and the Usual Gang of Idiots. I remember being so frustrated I couldn’t even come close to getting my work to look like theirs, but I think I found a style somewhere in between when I fell short. 

I think Wil McPhail’s poses are masterful, and I wish I knew how how the hell he did that. One day I’ll trudge up to England and knock on his door to ask him. I find myself doubled-over at John Cuneo’s Instagram, and Ed Steed’s absurdly funny gags. I have a slew of toons I’ve torn out of years’ worth of magazines and taped to my studio wall, or my zillion year-old writing desk. I’m constantly humbled by how generous and welcoming the existing crop of New Yorker cartoonists have been to a goofy Aussie immigrant — Joe Dator, Matt Diffee and Pat Byrnes, Mort Gerberg and an ever-growing list of prolific, talented cartoonists who make the 99% weekly rejection tolerable.

I’ve made some of my closest friends and have been lucky enough to meet my cartooning heroes through the National Cartoonists Society. I got to spend a lot of time with Sergio at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in the UK last year which made my year. We were signing together for a whole afternoon and I spent more time geeking out with him than signing.

Okay. Enough drooling. Sorry.

I’m a fan of cartoonists.

Website, etc. I have a weekly podcast where I throw around ideas for New Yorker cartoons with a fellow comedian and writer, Scott Dooley. It’s called “Is There Something In This?” It’s a bit of fun. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the art of writing gags very seriously. It’s an extremely difficult skill to master, and we’re virtually zygotes at it. We have lots of listeners now, which is bewildering. Talking about drawing is like dancing about architecture, but here we are. Anyway you can find it on iTunes or wherever you waste time listening to podcasts.

My website is jasonchatfield.com and my comedy stuff is up at jasonchatfieldcomedy.com  ( I’ve been doing stand-up comedy for 11 years. If anyone wants to come see a show, hit me up! I’ll put you on the door). My instagram is @jasonchatfield. I’m still trolling the British chap who has the @jasonchatfield handle on Twitter to no avail. To that end, I’m @jason_chatfield on Twitter.

If you want more art supplies in your life, A Case for Pencils is on Instagram and Twitter.  You can also find me, Jane (the person who created/edits this blog), on Twitter here, which is where I stick the paintings that I’ve been doing instead of interviewing people consistently (I needed to balance working on other people’s work and my own work!). Oh, and If you’d like to support this blog, which is always very appreciated, there are many different ways to do so, which you can find here!

#Jason chatfield #how to draw New Yorker cartoons #artists on tumblr #art supplies #drawing process #artist interview

[pixelrender]

Board Games Wishlist (2021 Update)

So, I’ve been playing video games and there definitely will be a list highlighting some of them at the end of the year, but I haven’t been in touch with new releases and my attention shifted towards strategy games and city builders in particular. I spent quite a few hours on Crusader Kings 2 and Imperator: Rome too.  Playing this kind of games got me closer to thinking about game design and narratives they present and slowly I moved back to watching reviews of board games and coming up with a prototype of my own, which I hopefully manage to transform into something to at least playtest later this year. If I get into that phase, I def will post pictures here. I’m still not that interested in playing board games myself, but I’m more interested in owning few now. So, my biggest concerns are graphic design and box sizes. Interesting mechanics or good flavour only come second. I’m making this list to showcase how my tastes developed over the last 2 years and to spotlight some newer designs, which influenced my own creativity. Out of roughly 30 games I find very intriguing, I decided to spotlight several in $100 challenge inspired by Board Game Barrage. I managed to include five smaller games, which I find to form a diverse starting collection. I used Game Nerdz for pricing, so It probably would cost slightly more locally. In addition to that this post includes a list of 10 other games I find myself attracted to for various reasons.

Pictures used in this article: 1) In the Hall of the Mountain King - Source: Burnt Island Games, 2) Fjords - Source: Board Game Geek, user Jacek Nowak, 3)Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space - Source: Board Game Geek, user Alessandro Fibbi

$100 Board Game Collection

I approached this challenge slightly differently than the BGB crew. My list doesn’t have a crunchy big game accompanied by several lighter games. All games on this list play fast and have a fairly easy set of rules. Two of these games are 2 players only and they’re all filled with tasty decisions and loads of strategy. The rest is a filler and a lighter pick up and delivery game from Reiner Knizia. Two of the games on the list aren’t properly out yet, but I believe they would fit my list perfectly.

1. Coup - I’m a fan of social deduction and hidden roles games and this one is a super easy one to pick up with nice illustrations and small packaging. I think games like this need a specific group of people, who are more into playing a game than usual social activities such as chatting or dancing, but It might be a good opener for silent groups with its high level of interaction, leading to a more interesting evening. Price at Nerdz: $11

2. Targi - Overall, I find worker placement games on the drier side. This one intrigues me because of how tight it is and before as a 2 player game, it offers more confrontation than competition. The new printing made it widely available at a very affordable price point. The small box and Berber theming are good too. Price at Nerdz: $14

3. Hive Pocket - This game is a classic and it could be easy to play it with people instead of chess. Hive consisting of sturdy tokens in a sack makes it a perfect companion for travels too. I find it that stranded far away from home, it’s way easier to have a good opportunity to play something as comforting as a board game. Price at Nerdz: $21

4. Whale Riders - An obligatory Reiner Knizia pick. It was a tough decision among several games, but I ultimately ended up siding with this pick up and delivery game, which even isn’t out yet. It puts interesting pressure on players, it plays in thirty minutes and looks awesome. The core mechanisms are something I wanted to have on this list yet. I heard that it is a tight design, maybe slightly less fulfilling than popular Knizia games, but given it’s playtime I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Price at Nerdz: $21

5. Fjords - The new edition of Fjords is currently being kickstarted and it looks gorgeous. It’s a very simple design, close to an abstract game. The first phase is tile laying, the second is go-like area control. I think this might be an excellent game to start playing very quickly and get invested into without complex mechanics obscuring possible strategies. The basic pledge on Kickstarter is $26 and It’s expected for the retail version to be more expensive (I would assume somewhere in the middle between estimated $40 and $26). The new version replaces tokens from the picture below with viking meeples and beautifies the tiles. Tbh, I find the look of the old version good with an exception of its box cover. 

Osprey Games

This category stayed from the previous list. I still like fairly unified small boxes of theirs and their excellent design. They are all relatively small and fast playing. The themes aren’t as niche as some other games on this list and that should make it easier to play them with other players too. Finally, It should be fairly easy to order all four of them as a batch. Either from one of the local resellers or directly for slightly higher prices.

1. Cryptid - Cryptid is here for its sweet look and as a game I would find easy to show other people than gamers. It’s very abstract and I think that its components could be used to create your own games too. As a teacher I might use this in class to learn children about game design. Obviously, playing the deduction game might be a lot of fun and a good brain exercise too.

2. Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space - Again, this game has great graphic design and presents a different kind of experience. This is a hidden movement game, in which aliens and humans have asymmetric win conditions. The sparse presentation helps the game to build up a dense atmosphere. It’s very close to being more of a role playing game without a need to roleplay. I think I would enjoy this stressful experience a lot.

3. The King is Dead - is a simple area control game, which plays very quickly and by limiting players’ actions to an absolute minimum, makes every decision interesting. It’s a good vehicle for creating tension and players trying to influence each other into actions. The game has a dedicated community and you can find interesting homemade versions.

4. The Lost Expedition - and yet another fairly minimalist game with interesting mechanics and immersive look. In case of The Lost Expedition the game is at its best as a harsh solo survivor. You’re trying to get through the jungle and discover El Dorado. I love that it managed to capture the atmosphere of The Lost City of Z and despite its limited mechanics it looks like it succeeds at creating great emergent narratives and loads of friction.

Other Games

These are various bigger games I find interesting. The reasons for me liking them differ quite a bit. In this category themes and mechanics are usually more of a reason for me to include them than presentation or size of boxes. All of them are too big anyway.

5. In the Hall of the Mountain King - This game is here for a special reason. I heard about it on Youtube, liked its board and theme, but also kinda disliked some of the mechanics. So, I started reading more about it, watched a playthrough and that led to me getting inspired and starting working on my own design, which takes a lot of inspiration from it. In the end, I still find the two main mechanics of the game slightly disconnected, scoring too complicated and spells unnecessary, but I also ended up liking the game a lot and I’m actually planning on buying it asap. The creators put a lot of love into it and the way you gather resources via a cascade of trolls looks like a great innovation. The parts I like the most happen on the board, tho. I find moving of statues and building of great halls very thematic and unfortunately kind of earthed by other mechanisms.

6. Coal Barons - After starting working on my design, I got more interested in mining games. There are only few interesting ones and alongside In the Hall of the Mountain King, Coal Barons from my favourites Kiesling and Kramer looks the best. It combines worker placement with action points  and set collection in superbly thematic fashion. Mining different kinds of coal and loading them on trucks and trains feels like fun in this game. The other thing I love is that despite various actions you can take, the game is fairly tight and simple. Everything makes sense, rounds are fast and diverse scoring helps you to plan your next steps. I hope I’ll manage to find an older copy of this or that they’ll reprint it.

7. Tikal - Yes, It’s another Kiesling and Kramer and the first game of their Mask Trilogy. Mechanisms of this one also fueled by action points and actions you can take simple and confrontational. I like the theme and its table presence too. Unfortunately, getting hands on this one right now is fairly difficult, but there’s always hoping for a reprint of the Super Meeple edition of the game.

8. Akrotiri - is a two player game from the designer of In the Hall of the Mountain King. The game has two main components. The first one is exploration driven tile laying and the second is pickup and deliver mechanic. Basically, you compete as traders in this very stylized ancient sea. It feels like the game is very tight and that it offers enough paths to victory for good replay ability. I’m mostly interested in fairly simple rules and the game being faster than many other trading games with worse table presence. Together with Fjords, these two games feel like much better replacements for Carcassonne.

9. Yellow and Yangtze - I definitely wanted a second Reiner Knizia game on the list and after some consideration I decided to go with this one. Firstly, I like the cover and most of its components. Secondly, It would create a nice section of Grail Games in my library. That might be visually appealing too. I chose it over Tigris and Euphrates mostly for these two reasons as the older game seems to be preferred for its clarity by most Knizia fans. Still, It’s widely agreed that this is a great sequel full of confrontation and interesting choices.

10. The Great Zimbabwe - Splotter games are known for several things. They’re expansive, usually out of print and they have a specific esthetic. They’re also very highly regarded. The Great Zimbabwe is getting a reprint this year and after watching the video below I got super hooked in. It’s mechanics are deep, clever and among other games fairly unique. I also like the theme and thematic ties being present. I even like the look of the board and wooden components on it. If I had money to spare, I probably would pre-order it.

#board games #wishlist #board game barrage

[bloggerjoedoe]

WallCreator for iOS 14.

Two years ago in our MacStories Weekly newsletter for Club MacStories members, I shared a shortcut that enabled creating wallpapers for iPhone and iPad featuring solid colors or gradients of your choice. Given the newfound popularity of the Shortcuts app and the amazing custom Home screens people are putting together with widgets in iOS 14, I thought I’d play my part and revisit the shortcut by simplifying it and adding new features. The shortcut is now called WallCreator and you can download it for free (alongside 220 other shortcuts) from the MacStories Shortcuts Archive.

Here’s the gist of what WallCreator can do: with just a few taps, you can either generate a wallpaper with a solid color or gradient. You can choose to enter your own colors (using their English names or Hex codes) or, even better, let WallCreator generate random solid colors or gradients for you.

You don’t need to worry about anything else: WallCreator will create the right version of a wallpaper for different iPhone and iPad models automatically, without having to specify any option; at the end of the shortcut, you can preview the newly-generated wallpaper and, if you like it, save it as an image to the Photos app. Otherwise, you can tell WallCreator you want to generate another image and start over. It’s a very simple workflow – just take a look at WallCreator in action by playing the video below:

Creating wallpapers with WallCreator.

Using WallCreator

You don’t need to know the details of how WallCreator works, but for those curious: under the hood, the shortcut uses a combination of HTML and local JavaScript execution1 to generate colors, which are then converted to wallpapers using Shortcuts’ native image actions. WallCreator knows whether you’re using an iPhone or iPad (and therefore creates the right version of a wallpaper each time) because Shortcuts can see the display resolution of the current device.

When you run WallCreator, you’ll be presented with seven different options:

Random Color

Random Gradient

Random Gradient (Top to Bottom)

Solid Color

Gradient – Left to Right

Gradient – Diagonal

Gradient – Top to Bottom

The first three are fairly self-explanatory: if you pick Random Color, WallCreator will generate a random solid color and create a wallpaper for it; pick Random Gradient instead, and the shortcut will create a linear gradient featuring a set of two randomized colors. The generated wallpaper is always previewed with Quick Look, and you can then decide whether you want to save it to your Photos library or not.

A random gradient generated with WallCreator.

By default, the shortcut should save wallpapers into Photos’ Recents album. However, if you keep a Wallpapers album in Photos like I do, you can tweak the ‘Save to Photo Album’ action to use that album instead.

You can change the photo album where wallpapers will be saved.

If you don’t want to use random colors, you can enter your favorite colors manually with the four other options from WallCreator’s main menu. For both solid colors and gradients, you can enter colors using their English HTML names or, better yet, any Hex code in the standard #123ABC format (a six-character code preceded by a # character). There are plenty of websites to browse colors by Hex code, but I recommend the excellent UI Gradients if you’re looking for good color pairs that work well together. Once you’ve found the code of a color you like, enter it in WallCreator, and you’ll have a wallpaper based on that color.

You can use Hex color codes to create wallpapers manually.

There’s another useful way to grab colors directly on your iPhone or iPad running iOS 14 or iPadOS 14. One of the additions to this year’s update is a brand new color picker that, among other things, lets you save favorite colors and extract any color from anywhere on iOS or iPadOS via an eyedropper tool.

So, let’s say you have a photo you like with some great colors you’d love to use for a wallpaper. Here’s what you do:

Open the photo and take a screenshot of it

Tap the screenshot to enter Markup mode

Tap the color icon in the bottom right corner to open the color picker

Tap the eyedropper icon in the upper left corner of the color picker

Select any portion of the photo with the color you like

Open the Sliders tab in the color picker

Copy the code displayed next to ‘Display P3 Hex Color’ button2

Save the code somewhere so you can use it in WallCreator later. I recommend the excellent Pastel app by Steve Troughton-Smith, which is what I use to save my favorite colors as custom palettes.

You can save any color from any photo using iOS 14’s new color picker.

Once you’ve got a bunch of color codes you want to test, run WallCreator (and remember to put the # before color codes), and let the shortcut assemble solid color or gradient wallpapers based on them.

Running WallCreator with compact UI on the Home Screen.

Another nicety made possible by iOS 14: you can install WallCreator as a Shortcuts widget and generate wallpapers directly from the Home Screen thanks to Shortcuts’ new compact mode. I’ve wasted way too much time flipping through randomly generated gradients via the WallCreator widget, which is why I added an option at the end of the shortcut to run WallCreator again and generate more random wallpapers. You can never waste enough time making your iPhone ever so slightly prettier.

Download WallCreator

You can download WallCreator below, and you can find it, along with another 220 free shortcuts, in the MacStories Shortcuts Archive.

If you’d like to get access to more advanced shortcuts and scripts, check out our MacStories Weekly newsletter, which is part of a Club MacStories subscription. The Club is celebrating five years this month, and you don’t want to miss the special perks we’ve prepared for the occasion.

I hope you’ll enjoy customizing your Home Screen with WallCreator as much as I am. You can find the shortcut below.

WallCreator

Create wallpapers for iPhone and iPad featuring solid colors or gradients. Wallpapers are automatically sized for different devices. You can enter your favorite color codes manually, or you can let the shortcut generate random colors for you.

Get the shortcut here.

This is a workaround I’ve used in my shortcuts before: you can let Shortcuts run any arbitrary JavaScript by embedding a script object in a local webpage encoded in Base64 and use the ‘Get Contents of Web Page’ action to let the script run and return results as text. It’s a pretty silly technique, and the Shortcuts team should really get around to making an official ‘Run Code’ action, but it works. ↩︎

If you’re going to run WallCreator on a device that doesn’t support the Display P3 color space, tap the button and select sRGB instead. ↩︎

Support MacStories Directly

Club MacStories offers exclusive access to extra MacStories content, delivered every week; it’s also a way to support us directly.

Club MacStories will help you discover the best apps for your devices and get the most out of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Plus, it’s made in Italy.

Join Now Source: Mac Stories

#Gadget #Gizmo #technology #tech news