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calvinmaxfield · 3 years

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( booboo stewart. twenty-four. he/him. ) i think i just saw CALVIN MAXFIELD ride by on a golf cart . at least i think it was them . after all , STRAIGHT TO HELL BY THE CLASH was blasting on the transistor radio . maybe they were on their way to work , i hear they’re a LINE COOK . but they totally could have been on their way to STEAL SHOOTERS FROM THE BEVERAGE CART . guess we’ll never know . you’ll definitely know its them when you see PATCHES ON A WORN JEAN JACKET , CIGARETTES FORGOTTEN IN THE WASHING MACHINE , & AN UNUSED MUSICAL THEATRE DEGREE around the country club . let’s just hope they stay off the green after hours or else they sprinklers will get them ! ( haley. twenty-two. est. she/her. )

𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 : calvin antonio maxfield . 𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒(𝑠) : cal , maxxie . 𝑎𝑔𝑒 : twenty - five . 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑖𝑟𝑡ℎ : march 4th , 1996 . 𝑏𝑖𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑡 : pisces sun , virgo moon , capricorn rising . ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑛 : north caldwell , new jersey . 𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 : bisexual . 𝑜𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 : line cook begrudgingly . has bigger aspirations for himself but settles for an easy job over one he has to work for . aspiring in everything film whether it be acting , screenwriting , direction or anything in between . has also entertained stand-up comedy but had never taken the steps towards achieving that goal either .

ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠 : self proclaimed narcissist but is super self aware about his insecurities , is a whore lol , seems like he’d be the least judgmental person but is secretly super judgmental , will risk it all for a sexual connection possibly resulting in a romantic one , hasn’t cried in years , female manipulator music , thinks being called a theatre kid is a slur but was super well known for getting every lead role in high school and college , wants to be a stand up comedian or actor , could kill for a woman to braid his hair , will do anything for attention , noncommittal , the loudest person in a room but is insecure about his volume , the class clown , could be your friend for a lifetime and you still wouldn’t be sure if he likes you or not .

𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑚 : booboo stewart . ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑟 : black . 𝑒𝑦𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑟 : brown . ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 : 5 ft 8 “ . 𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑜𝑜𝑠 : to be determined but a littered , jumbled sleeve of meaningless drunk tattoos mostly . 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 : heavy punk rock . jean jackets plastered with patches , heavy boots , flannels tied at the waist line . heavy rings on slender fingers . a hair tie on each wrist . jeans or chef pants , no in between . fucks with an occasional open button down tee .

𝑚𝑦𝑒𝑟 - 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑔𝑠 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒 : the debater , entp . 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 : chaotic good . 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑠 : black cold brew with a cigarette , mindlessly rewatching taxi driver for comfort , quoting the sopranos , being right , comfortable silence , busy environments , making others smile . 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑠 : gossip , commitment , the transition from autumn to winter , cats , folding laundry , hungover anxiety.

𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 : ( drug tw , child neglect tw ) .

the class clown , the smart ass . these are just two of the labels that have been placed on calvin maxfield his whole life . he’s not even sure if he likes being called them , to know he’s being perceived by others is to know he’s truly alive . that he is seen . on one hand , he’d only ever wanted a disappearing act . one where he slips into the background with anyone truly noticing . a universe where he’s not putting on a face of clown make up to entertain . but on the other hand , he’s good at it . he’s good at entertaining and he likes seeing people smile . so why does calvin have so many qualms with being well liked ? it’s the expectations . an expectation to always be happy . no bad days , no turning off the constant sunshine smile . even if his mind is a storm far greater than he can conquer .

there’s nothing more freudian than blaming your short comings on your childhood . at least that’s what calvin will tell you anyways . but deep down , he knows it’s a mask . that his childhood fucked him up more than he has even begun to process . his therapist pries but he pays her no mind , wishing to be considered more of a strong silent type than one who speaks with loose lips . but his tendencies to make others happy lie within his greatest coping mechanism with is humor . one he developed during his childhood watching movies far too mature for his underdeveloped mind . robert dinero , al pacino , so many tough men who taught him how to be strong in the face of adversities . movie stars were his role models because dad was always too high to entertain the thought of his son , shooting up the day’s dose in front of him while the bills piled high on the kitchen table . calvin’s mother wondered if she’d ever see a day where the world wasn’t so bleak , where she could protect her son from the horrors of the world . but she couldn’t even protect him from the one inside her very home . not to mention it was hard to supervise when working more jobs than seemed possible .

but calvin grew up with thick skin and a cut throat attitude . he slept soundly knowing that his mother loved him and one day his father would see him succeed and kick himself in the ass for mistreating him . but calvin’s brilliance was never a revenge thing . he owed it to himself to be good at something . that something just so happened to be theatre . it was clear to the teachers that had maxxie the class clown sitting in their back row that he liked to perform so his drama teacher came an pursued him . at first hesitant , he remembered some of the greats . al , robert , and suddenly he was in . though he insisted on not being musically inclined , calvin quickly blossomed in the musicals and found his voice through his high school’s productions . he was finally receiving the validation he was deprived of his entire childhood . standing ovations , applause , genuine eye contact that came with compliments , loving hugs . he couldn’t get enough . so it only made sense that he pursued musical theatre in college .

college was when things took a turn for the worst . a slacker , calvin could no long get away with thing solely because his teachers liked him and enjoyed his performances . now everyone was just like him . a talented class clown who thrived on applause and validation from others . bad habits crept their way into his life at this time seeing as he was drinking and experimenting with drugs pretty heavily . what was a career for everyone else was quickly turning into a hobby for him as his poor coping mechanisms and social life hopped in the driver’s seat . this life in his life was all about self sabotage . missing classes to drink , going to acting workshops hungover , sleeping with friend’s girlfriends , doing things just because he could . it was mind blowing that he ever received a degree . but with college coming to an end , he addressed that his period of time with substance abuse were some of the worst years of his life and he wanted to tone back . focus on himself . but old habits die hard .

calvin doesn’t really know how he ended up in the highlands . maybe it was his lack of drive or washed up attitude , but it hard to give his life any real thought from behind the line in the kitchen. all he knows is he needs to get the fuck out .

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wanted connection:

ride or die ( f ) : ever since i created calvin as a muse i’ve wanted to him to have a girl best friend who literally completes him. calls him out on his bullshit , tell him when he’s being a dick but also helps him navigate through his life and feelings . bonus points if they’re a polar opposite of him like super feminine .

ex ( m/f/nb ) : calvin is toxic af so i’m down for plotting whatever honestly i just want him to have an ex

fwb ( m/f/nb ) : again , calvin is a bisexual and toxic whore so bring him all your muses to casually fuck

roommate ( m/f/nb )

coworkers

enemies ?? frenemies ?? frenemies with benefits ???

#highlandsintro #about #here's calvin :)

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phantommarhked · 4 years

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So this is my entry for CartoonFreakshow's Wes Weston NG contest held some time ago, they're the kids of Wes and one of my OCs, hope you guys like em! ^U^ I hope you find find the info decent ;;w;; Name: Dorothea Arany-Weston

Age: 17

Gender: Female

Species: Halfa

Orientation: Bisexual, Demiromantic

Parents: Wesley Weston and Matild Arany-Weston

Powers: Standard ghost powers, telekinesis, mild mind control, still discovering the rest

Likes: Fashion, figure skating, modelling, calligraphy, sand sculpting, experimental films, mural painting, spicy food, teamwork

Dislikes: Overly sweet food, getting dirty, lattes, unnecessary fights, lizards, history, heat, ghosts, sunburns, irresponsible people

Personality: She's more often than not the calming energy of the three sisters, she likes helping her sisters best she could. She's pretty proud of her appearance and would not be one to be humble when compliments are given, she's encouraging towards others and would gladly accept any rival she meets as a sort of friendly competition. She likes doing backhanded insults when she's insulted by someone she holds no liking to, but otherwise, she still attempts to keep an open mind to prevent herself from holding prejudices. (She sometimes fails at it.)

Backstory: She was born a human, her mother being something close to a shaman didn't really pass any of the psychic/medium powers to her, so she was pretty much just a normal kid. She was contented to just be a normal kid since she saw the famed half ghost fighting ghosts every now and again and she figured she didn't want that or anything involving the supernatural since she saw how dangerous it was.

When her sisters were born, she was three. As she grew older she took her role as the eldest seriously and she would be caught watching after her younger sisters. When her sisters showed signs of psychic/medium powers, she began looking for ways to help them control it instead of going into constant trances. As an elder sister she pretty much saw to it that whenever their parents were out either on vacation or business related trips, she would take charge easily and be able to follow their parents orders.

She studied in Amity Park's Casper High and had been able to show her prowess at arts and that was where she got to meet one of Danny's children. Mercutio Fenton. As a child of twelve, her first instinct was to go with her father's dislike for the Fentons, so she just scrawled a note to him saying "you suck" and stuck it in his textbook. She didn't expect him to wait for her after school to try and learn why she wrote him that note. It was because of that fact that they grew closer to each other and became best friends.

As she grew older, her love for art grew and she went further with even learning calligraphy. Soon enough she began joining mural contests and sand sculpting contests. At the age of fifteen, she grew interested in figure skating and began taking lessons. This she used for inspiration for new pieces, turning it into stories for every piece she did.

By the time she was sixteen, she began dating Mercutio and was scouted as a model, a job she gladly took up with great enthusiasm. It was the best thing she had done, but one thing just might change everything for her.

It was when Mercutio was visiting his grandparents that she was invited by him so they could look at the lab where Jack had some old ghost hunting weapons. She was there with Mercutio, they were both trying to figure out what each item was for and inspecting it when Mercutio found an ectoplasmic ray cannon. He grew curious and began fiddling with the machinery, trying to figure out if it was still functioning. It unfortunately was and he accidentally pulled the trigger, the ectoplasm going straight for Dorothea who was inspecting the ghost portal. She became unconscious and the next thing she knew, she woke at the hospital. Her father was upset with her but even more so at Mercutio - and his family...again - her mother in turn was worried and had spent the whole time trying to figure out if anything wrong happened. She spent a few days at the hospital before she went back to school. It didn't hit her immediately but when she began noticing that people sometimes panicked whenever they were talking and was calling for her name repeatedly or when her sisters would go into far more frequent trances, she began getting worried. She told her mother about what had been happening and this led to her being brought to Danny Fenton who explained to her what might be happening to her. As her powers made itself known, she began getting some lessons from Mercutio and his father on how to control them.

She had done her best to act like nothing was wrong but she found it difficult to keep up with her modelling and figure skating so she dropped out of both. Letting out her emotions through painting and writing, she broke up with Mercutio and had shut herself in her room where she would try to control her powers in her room. Her father was reluctant to let in the Fentons but had contacted them in hopes that they could help.

At age seventeen, she began getting a hold of her powers and she was starting to be able to adjust her time management to be able to do what she'd done before. At the same time she began helping out Mercutio and his family in fighting ghosts.

Name: Hajnalka Arany-Weston

Age: 14

Gender: Female

Species: Human

Orientation: Undecided, Demiromantic

Parents: Wesley Weston and Matild Arany-Weston

Powers: Psychic/Medium powers

Likes: Online and Tabletop roleplaying, sports, swimming, historical and fantasy films, renaissance art, renfairs, fantasy and historical fiction books, classical theatre, dancing, triathlons, sweet and sour foods, bragging

Dislikes: Spicy food, small spaces, insects, cats, science, being stuck inside, romcoms, high pitched voices, dolls, being late, staying indoors for too long

Personality: She appears to be a tough girl with her constant sports participation and aggressively competitive behaviour on the field but outside of that part of her life, she'd be found to be as sedate as her sisters. Of course that was not always the case since when she was younger she had a very short temper, she's fast to hold grudges and likes to get even with people that hurt her or her family. She's got some insecurities about when she goes into trances when she still couldn't control her psychic powers but as time went on she began accepting what she could about it. She's prideful of her achievements and of her family's achievements so she isn't really one to back down from a pissing contest when someone brags about what they could do. This often leads her to butting heads with different people.

Backstory: Being the elder by fifteen minutes to her twin sister, she was the first to begin exhibiting psychic powers at a young age and she grew frightened of it, trying to hide her abilities but being unable to stop the trances or from her becoming a sort of vessel for ghosts to use. Her parents found out and her mother began helping her control those abilities while her elder sister did her best to help her out with stemming the effects of her abilities.

She always bonded with her father in sports and he encouraged her when she said she wanted to become a basketball player one day. So they'd always play with each other, and if she ends up in a trance in the middle of their game, Wes would just reassure her that it was nothing to be worried about.

It wasn't til she was seven that her twin sister began showing signs of her abilities as well, this led to Hajnalka immediately sitting her twin down to explain to her what she needs to learn so that her abilities won't get in the way of her life.

As a child she had an interest in history and fantasy and had often had some books about either genre stuffed in her locker or backpack. As she grew older she began going to Ren fairs and to conventions as well as joining some LARPing for kids her age. She gets a bit intense though.

She joined the basketball team when she was thirteen and had kept improving all the while trying to live a normal life even with her occasional trances.

Name: Hayley Arany-Weston

Age: 14

Gender: Female

Species: Human

Orientation: Asexual, Biromantic

Parents: Wesley Weston and Matild Arany-Weston

Powers: Psychic/Medium powers

Likes: Puzzle and mind games, investigative journalism, the Twilight Zone series, photography, short films, crime investigation TV shows, martial arts, sweets and pastries

Dislikes: Math, sour food, pranks, horror stories, high places, Puns, vague people, gum, getting their pictures taken

Personality: She tends to be too probing whenever she wants to get to know someone she talks to and she sometimes forgets to give people their privacy but she sometimes finds it hard cause of her curiosity. She's an ambivert though most of the times she prefers to being in the company of her family since she found that they could at least understand her when she starts rambling about various subjects. Though when someone needs help she willingly gives them her aid and would do her best to give them what they want or need. She's the more forgiving between her and her sisters. She likes to be a know it all and would often gloat whenever she was right in her assumptions, this sometimes leads to people not exactly liking her.

Backstory: She was the younger between her and Hajnalka, though this didn't really change much of their dynamic or attitude. She was a late bloomer with the psychic abilities that her twin and her mother possessed, but it didn't completely bother her since she would oftentimes spend the day reading or looking up various information that she finds helpful. And when she did develop her abilities, she gladly accepted every advice and training her family gave her, as well as the self defence training her dad taught her. She really wasn't against that.

Unlike her twin though who tried to hide her abilities, she would often use hers to help people when they want to talk to someone that had died, this though would often get her warnings from her mother who would remind her to choose who she'll help carefully. Those warnings were sometimes taken to heart, sometimes she would ignore them. Sometimes when she helps people it turns out good, sometimes, it ends up bad. Very bad. Fun Facts: -Hayley accepts payment for her psychic services through favours. -Hajnalka is a big fan of various fantasy and historical fiction books. -Mercutio and Dorothea has an on and off relationship until college where they finally go steady. -Hayley is deathly allergic to bees. -Hajnalka is allergic to shrimp. She doesn't really care though, not as if she eats the stuff. -Dorothea has a pug she named Cookiedough -Hayley likes to sneak some butter cookies to Cookiedough. -Hajnalka just wants a dog that doesn't sound like it's gonna fall over dead due to wheezing. -Wes and Matild take the three girls out once a week to spend time together as a family. -Wes is closest to Dorothea and Hajnalka, Hayley and he are close but he finds that Matild and Hayley are closer together. But he still loves all his kiddos a lot. -Hajnalka actually likes wearing old timey dresses, Hayley likes to experiment with her fashion sense and Dorothea secretly got herself a tattoo on her wrist. -Matild took Dorothea out for play dates when Dorothea was small to the Fentons. Wes would just come to make sure they're safe. -The last time the Weston family played a tabletop game, it ended with Wes being King, Matild getting murdered, Hayley fighting Orcs, Dorothea assassinating an NPC and Hajnalka laughing at her family. -Dorothea tends to stress bake. So every time there's pastries and biscuits and bread on any flat surfaces, everyone figures out her mood immediately. Dorothea, Hajnalka and Hayley Arany-Weston © Me, C-RIE-ativity

#Danny phantom #dp #dpoc #danny Phantom ng #dpng #danny Phantom nextgen #carrot cakes and butter cookies ship #dorothea weston #hajnalka weston #hayley weston #wes weston #fan character #next gen au #fankid

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derpyslurpy-da-derp-master · 6 years

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Why Emotionally Abusive Dads In Disney Is A Serious Problem

PLEASE SPREAD THIS. LET EMOTIONAL ABUSE VICTIMS KNOW THAT THEY ARENT ALONE AND THAT THEIR ABUSE ISNT OKAY.

So. Let’s get this outta the way immediately, I had and still have an emotionally abusive father myself and it took me a very long time to realize I was being abused. Why? Because I saw so many dads in movies I watched act exactly like him. Because to a kids brain, seeing these Emotionally abusive characters put in a positive light in the end made me think it was normal and okay. But it’s not. Not by a long shot. Because of this I let myself be victimized by my father over and over again, because I thought it was okay. And I just know that other kids with emotionally abusive fathers are growing up with this same skewed perception of morality because a movie said these abusive men are good parents. And before you go ‘What emotionally abusive parents?’

What these characters have in common?

Dream Crushing. Telling their children they can’t pursue their dreams. Neglecting them. Solving arguments with shouting. Not thinking about what their child must be feeling. Destroying or attempting to destroy things their child loves/cares about.

These kind of characters are the reason I thought my emotional abuse was okay.

Now, the reason it was so potent in making me okay with my abuse was because a lot of the things these guys do hit close to home.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve feared for my well being when his temper rose to Triton levels. I can’t tell you how many times my dad’s treated me nicely when I’m doing what he wants like Moana’s father only to snap at me the second I try to be who I really am. I can’t tell you how many times my dad has been like Remi’s father, telling me that i’m crazy if I pursue my dreams as an artist, saying it’s useless, treating me like garbage because I kept doing what I love. I can’t tell you how many times he’s outright abandoned me the second I’m under scrutiny that he doesn’t want to deal with like Buck Cluck does to his son.

I’ll start with the first and most violent of abusive fathers I've listed; King Triton. He’s one of two men on this list that tried to (and succeeded) destroy(ing) something his child cares about, and by that I mean everything his daughter cares about short of murdering Flounder. Like... The scene in Ariel’s grotto ties by stomach in knots every single time I see it because it’s so familiar and so harsh and just... I can’t even put it into words. This scene makes so many emotions go through me, both because of the scene itself and the memories it brings to the forefront of my mind. I’m not going to say anymore because I’d rather not throw a pity party for myself. But this is absolutely the prime example of an emotionally abusive father in Disney, he spends most of the movie literally trying to control Ariel who shows many of the signs of an emotionally abused child. And this... This scene is just the icing on the already toxic relationship.

Tritons not the only one trying to legitimately destroy something his kid cares about, when watching Moana I had serious flashbacks to the aformentioned scene. I already was going ‘great another emotionally abusive dad’ when I saw how the main conflict of the first half of the movie was literally Cheif Tui forbidding his daughter from being herself, something that a lot of emotionally abusive parents do to keep control of their children. But then, this happened.

He... He wants to burn the boats. He wants to burn the boats Moana had found and chucks the Heart Of Tafiti as far as he can, something of great importance to his daughter. This man is literally pulling a Triton, but in this case he doesn’t get the chance because he tossed the Heart where his mother’s walking stick had dropped. Think about that for a moment, if he hadn’t thrown it right there, He would have been too busy burning boats while his daughter was crying ‘NO!’ to be with his mother on her deathbed. That is how far Tui would go (Moana pun unintentional) to say ‘You can’t be who you are because I say so’ to his child.

Django isn’t violent per-say, but he definitely is controlling and NOT a good father to Remi.

This guy refuses to let anybody do anything even remotely different from him, Emile mentions at the beginning of the movie that Django would be upset if he saw Remi walking on his hind legs. Yes, you read that right, this guy would be very upset at his own son if he dared to do so much as to walk on his hind legs. That’s how controlling he is.

And when Remi is found alive at first Django’s nothing but happy that his son is alive, but the second Remi reveals just how much he’s grown as a person away from his father’s suffocating watch Django’s on him again and being even more adamant then before on telling his Son who he can and can’t be.

He goes so far as to take him to a pest control storefront with Rat Carcasses in Mouse Traps hanging from the display to make his point of ‘Humans can only be bad because they hate us and you’re wrong.’ He shows his child dead bodies of other rats killed by humans. To make a point.

Remi rightfully takes every opportunity to be away from his dad, and thankfully had a much better role model in Chef Gusteau who taught him how to create things in his own way and that his father was wrong about the world, and thank god for that, if Remi listened to his father Ratatouille wouldn’t be my third favorite Disney Movie.

Ohhhh Buck Cluck. Where do I even begin. Well how bout with the fact that the Youtuber MysteriousMrEnter hates this guy so much he would ‘Urinate on his grave given the opportunity’ and is from one of the most despised Disney Movies of all time which is very bad/offensive like half the jokes are ‘ha ha this guys fat’ or ‘ha ha this girls ugly’ or ‘ha ha bullying and maiming’

Well Buck’s definitely not the same as these other guys... And by that I mean he neglects his son and abandons him to avoid the embarrassment of having Chicken Little as his son. Oh, and he only ever acts like he loves him after he does good in baseball since Buck wants to re-live his glory days through his son and if he can’t do that his son is dead to him. He. Is. SO EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE. He neglects his son and makes his son feel absolutely worthless, he abandons him when he needs his dad the most, all for what? Because he doesn’t want to be associated with his own son??

Every one of these abusive dads has a happy ending and is ‘redeemed’ because they help their kid somehow in the end. Every. Single. One. And the movie acts like the abuse didn’t happen in the first place or that them occasionally being nice makes the abuse okay. It’s already hard enough to get away from Emotional Abusers, it’s even harder when they’re not awful all the time to make you think you’re exaggerating what’s happening to you, and it’s even worse with movies reinforcing that you are exaggerate since these abusive dads are put in a positive light at the end. This entire hot-cold attitude is how Emotional Abusers keep their victims from leaving or getting help. (This push-pull/hot-cold technique is also the same technique used by cults to keep their members from leaving.)

We need to stop letting abused kids think their abuse is normal, we need to stop normalizing abuse.

But, to end on a positive note, here are two Disney Dad’s that gave me some hope and a glimpse of actually good and healthy Father-Child relationship. These dads were genuinely really great parents that were very good examples for their kids and poured all their love into them, and that would be Mufasa and Tiana’s father, James. I mean both of them are dead and have little screen time, but that’s what happens when you aren’t an antagonist I guess.

In the Lion King, there’s a moment that is set up exactly like the aforementioned ‘kid does something they were told not to do which makes emotionally abusive dad lash out at them and/or destroy something they really care about’ that was highlighted with Triton and Tui. Simba just endangered both himself and Nala, Mufasa is clearly upset about it and says he needs to teach his son a lesson. Simba looks like he expects to get the aforementioned treatment of anger and i’m assuming this is the first time he’s ever truly upset his dad. Except...

Mufasa doesn’t shout at him. He doesn’t try to destroy anything. He isn’t upset because his child dared to defy him, he’s upset because his child put himself in danger, he was afraid for his well-being. Instead of shouting angrily, Mufasa takes this opportunity to take his ‘teach my son a lesson’ comment literally and teach Simba something. He teaches him what it truly means to be brave, they resolve their tension by the two being lovingly playful like a father and son should be, then Mufasa decides to teach him something else, about the past kings, and about how he’ll always be there for him. Instead of punishing his son harshly, he taught his son how to be better. That is a good dad.

James on the other hand doesn’t even have the hinting of the usual abusive dad trope to subvert it, James is just that- A really good, supportive dad.

Like, there are SO MANY bad dads in Disney specifically that try to keep their kids from their dreams because they don’t approve or understand, here James is nothing but supportive of Tiana’s dream, in fact they share the same dream of opening up a restaurant they can call their own. James sees her talents and he nurtures them so she can pursue her own dream, he instills the value of hard work and good cooking into his daughter, but not by force like the other dads on this list, because as Mama Oddie says, ‘You’re your daddy’s daughter, what he had in him you’ve got in you!’ Tiana grew up to become the amazing woman she is in large part because she had such a supportive, nurturing father that pointed her in the right direction.

So, in conclusion. We need more good examples like Mufasa and James, we need to stop pretending emotional abuse is okay, because it isn’t. Let’s set future generations good examples that they don’t get in their own homes.

#Disney #Emotional Abuse #Please Reblog #Important Post #Serious #Original

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lordofthebigtimesupernatural · 6 years

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Prompt: Keith (either a senior at high school or a freshman at college) saves a younger kid from bullies. The kid begins to think of Keith as a role model & try to emulate him, from his look to his mannerisms. Keith eventually catches on & reassures the kid that they're wonderful just the way they are. Shiro is a proud dad 💖💖💖

Alright, maybe I’m on a roll! Two prompts in one day. This prompt was so freaking adorable! I just had to do this. Can you just imagine Keith being a mentor of sorts? This is so cute! So thank you nonny for the amazing prompt! This was wonderful and I hope you enjoy!

x.V.x

High school was not the greatest time of Keith’s life. At all. In fact, high school was probably near the bottom of that list. However, Keith was thankful that he had less than three months left of high school before graduation. Then by this time next year, he’ll be enlisted as a pilot for the military and (hopefully) flying. Soon enough he would be out of this hellhole.

Away from bullies.

Away from arrogant assholes.

Just away.

With Keith and Lance being the only ones left to graduate high school this year, Keith found himself having a lot more free time, especially since Hunk and Pidge had already started their first year of college. This meant that Keith could see his dad a lot more before he was shipped to boot camp, however, even his dad couldn’t always be around. Lance had practices on some days which left Keith alone for many days of the week.

Which was why he decided to volunteer for tutoring at the nearby elementary. He wasn’t as great in Math or science as Pidge and Hunk, however, despite his reputation at school, Keith was smart. Very smart.

Though he usually kept that to himself and instead focused his skills on helping the younger kids out in Math.

Recently Keith had been tutoring a young kid named Josh. Josh was a kid that Keith had spent a particularly long amount of time with due to Josh being dyslexic and nonverbal. The kid was brilliant once he was taught the material in a way that he could understand, but not many tutors or teachers could be as patient with him as Keith was. Maybe Keith was a bit biased, but he had a soft spot for the eleven-year-old, since he too could understand what it was like to have people in authoritative positions not understand him.

So he did his best to help Josh and teach him different ways to solve equations based on his needs, and it worked. With Keith’s help, Josh slowly began improving and he could begin to solve equations without any help from Keith at all. His math teacher had been in awe, along with the principle while Josh’s mothers had thanked him profusely for his help. Keith blushed and decided then to continue helping Josh for the rest of the year.

The best days were when Keith brought Red with him to tutoring sessions. Many of the kids were excited when they saw the happy dog and became more motivated to work if pets were a reward. Josh had been exceptionally happy the first time that Keith had brought Red along, flailing his arms and rocking in his chairs. The grin on his face left Keith feeling giddy for days.

On a random Tuesday afternoon, Keith was making his way with Red towards the classroom that he always met Josh in. Just before the two of them entered the room, Keith could hear voices talking - voices that weren’t Josh.

“Are you even doing the homework?” A nasally young girl practically sneered and Keith felt his blood boil.

“I bet you’re making the nice man with his doggy do it for you.” Another voice laughed. This one sounded like a boy.

“Yeah, because you’re too stupid!” A third voice chimed in and Keith’s jaw clenched tightly. Three against one?

Keith didn’t hear Josh say anything back, not that he expected him to. Which the kids probably knew already. He did hear the sounds of papers being ripped and a scuffle across the room.

“You shouldn’t waste the nice man’s time. You only want to pet the dog.” The girl laughed loudly, causing Keith to peek into the room. The sight before him made his blood boil to its limit.

Josh was sitting at his usual desk, but he was surrounded by three kids. All of his papers and pencils were scattered along the floor and two of the three kids had ripped sheets of paper in their hands. Sheets of paper that had Josh’s math homework on them.

“You’re too stupid so why are you even bothering?” One of the boys sneered before yanking the snapback hat off of Josh’s head. Josh made a distressed noise and he tried to grab the hat back only for the boy to laugh mockingly and put the hat on his own head.

Now Keith was going to intervene.

“What,” He said calmly, despite his anger, as he stepped into the room with Red. “Is going on here?” Even Red was tense at his side, no longer looking like the goofy dog that always came to visit.

The three bullies looked at Keith with looked frightful and nervous at Keith, finally realizing that Keith might have been there the whole time. Josh simply stared at Keith, wide-eyed and jaw slack.

“U-Um, we were, um…” The girl stammered nervously.

“Uh, we were just…we just…” The boy wearing Josh’s hat said.

“It looks like you guys weren’t being very respectful of Josh’s things,” Keith said slowly and crossed his arms over his chest. He pointedly looked to the ripped papers and then Josh’s hat. They are just children. You can’t flip out on children. “And it looks like you were bullying Josh.”

The three kids gasped and Josh’s eyes widened even further. Keith’s heart ached for the boy.

“No, we weren’t!” One of the boys suddenly cried.

“That’s not what Josh would think. Would you Josh?” Keith replied softly.

“He can’t answer you! He doesn’t know how to!” The girl huffed impatiently and Keith took a deep breath. Patience yields focus.

“Josh?” Keith ignored the girl and looked directly at his young charge. Josh was nervously tapping his fingers along his pants and staring at Keith occasionally. However, after a minute of silence, Josh nodded.

“See?” Keith smiled at Josh before looking at the three kids. Younger Keith might have thrown these kids to the floor. “Just because Josh doesn’t talk like you and me, doesn’t mean that he’s stupid or that he can’t. Everyone is different. Like, not everyone can roll their tongue together. Or like how not everyone has the same color of skin. Josh learns things differently than us, as do I. But he is incredibly smart.”

The three kids nervously glanced between Keith and Josh, but it looked like they were listening to Keith and Keith was thankful for that. He was hoping that he could get through to these kids while they were still young.

“Josh has been doing his homework all by himself for a long time now and it’s always correct,” Keith said proudly, causing Josh to make a noise of content. “He just needed to learn a different way to do math, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s okay to solve problems differently from what you’re taught as long as you still get the correct answer.”

“R-Really?” The girl timidly asked.

Keith smiled softly. “Yes. The same goes for anyone. There’s no bad way to solve a problem as long as you’re doing it correctly.”

“Whoa,” The boy still wearing Josh’s hat whispered.

“However, taunting Josh and ripping up his homework is inexcusable behavior.” Keith continued with a firm but soft voice. The three kids immediately slumped and Keith was happy to see that they actually looked guilty of their actions.

“Acting like that makes you bullies and bullies are terrible and mean people,” Keith reprimanded, causing the three kids to flinch. “You’re old enough that you should know better because bullying can really hurt people, especially people like me and Josh who can’t always say something back. Your actions have consequences and they can be very negative, especially when Josh has never once done anything wrong to any of you.”

“We’re sorry,” One of the boys whispered sadly.

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.” Keith pointed out and then nodded to Josh. “And I believe that hat belongs to Josh.”

The boy with Josh’s hat scrambled to take the hat off before the three (ex)bullies turned back to Josh. Josh’s eyes were as wide as they could be and he flinched when they turned to him.

“We’re really sorry about being bullies to you Josh. That was wrong of us.” The three kids said quietly. Josh maintained eye contact with them for a few seconds before looking down after he shakily grabbed his hat from one of the boys.

“Does he forgive us?” The girl frowned.

“Josh doesn’t have to forgive you right away,” Keith reminded them softly. “However, maybe if you keep trying and you continue to be nice to Josh, he might. And maybe you guys could actually become really good friends.” Keith shrugged with a soft smile.

The kids nodded and Keith was pleased to see that none of them looked angry or upset by Keith’s words. Instead, they all had their own looks of determination on their faces, and it brought a smile to Keith’s face.

“Now, how about we have Josh show us this week’s homework…”

x.V.x

“I think you have an admirer.” Shiro grinned one day during conferences at the elementary. Keith had been invited to come so the parents could thank him in person for tutoring their kids. Keith had brought his dad along with the bribe of a free dinner afterward, but honestly, Shiro wanted to be smug and proud of his son all night long.

Look at how far Keith has come.

“Hm?” Keith frowned. Shiro simply nodded his head in the direction of where Josh and his mom were and Keith chuckled quietly.

He began noticing the subtle changes in Josh throughout the weeks but he decided to keep quiet. Although, now his changes were more apparent than usual.

It started off with a change of how Josh walked and presented himself around others. Instead of his shy, closed off posture, he was walking with his chest out and with a sharp glare in his eyes.

Then came the changes in Josh’s wardrobe. Starting with long boots similar to Keith’s own combat boots. Then came the darker jeans and shirts, and finally Josh began sporting a red jacket, that looked as if it had been cut in order to appear cropped.

Keith was almost expecting Josh to be sporting longer hair tonight but luckily hair did not grow that fast. While Keith was flattered, he knew he had to put a stop to this.

Josh deserved to be his own person. Not a replica of Keith.

“That’s Josh.”

“The boy you’ve been tutoring the past couple of months?” Shiro asked excitedly. “And those three kids with him?”

Keith grinned when he saw the girl and two boys running over to Josh and his mom to show Josh’s mom Josh’s latest science project. It seemed that the kids had actually taken Keith’s words to heart and were on their way to becoming friends with Josh. Josh was even smiling giddily when they came up to him and his mom. It warmed Keith’s heart and reminded him of his own group of friends.

“Come on, introduce me! I want to meet this prodigy of yours.” Shiro said as he began dragging his son over towards the small group. Keith playfully rolled his eyes but allowed himself to be dragged over. When Shiro began introducing himself to the group, the kids immediately latched onto him.

“Oh my god, Mr. Keith, this is your dad? He’s bigger than you!”

“How come your dad has a cooler arm than you?!”

“Are you sure that’s your dad, he looks a young as you!”

While the kids were reeling on Shiro, Keith turned to Josh and waved at the boy who immediately beamed with a flap of his hands. He then pointed to his jacket and boots and Keith laughed.

“Yes, I see! They’re just like mine, huh?” Keith asked and Josh nodded excitedly. “That’s so cool, do you like them?”

At this, Josh simply shrugged but he continued to smile and Keith sighed softly.

“Josh, you know that you don’t have to act like me, right?” Keith said gently and then he rubbed Josh’s shoulders. By then, Josh was fiddling with his fingers. “You’re perfect just the way you are, hat and all. You’re friends like you for you.” Keith nodded over towards the three kids who were still by his dad. The three happened to glance at Josh and waved eagerly at him, to which Josh shyly waved back.

“See kid, they like you,” Keith replied with a laugh before plopping Josh’s hat onto his head. “We’re all our own person and no two people are alike. It’s okay to be yourself.” His heart jumped when Josh looked up at him with such an open and earnest expression. Slowly he pointed at his hat and then his jacket with a shy smile.

“Yeah, I think you look great in the hat and jacket. Especially if you like it.” Keith winked, causing Josh to giggle before being swarmed by his friends. Keith watched them fondly until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning around, Keith saw Shiro grinning at him so brightly that it made his own face flush out of embarrassment.

“I’m so glad you’re my son.” Shiro laughed and Keith sighed.

“Of course. You’re lucky to have me.”

“I know. Who knew that my little spitfire baby boy would turn into such a fine, level-headed young man?”

“I take it back. Maybe Kuro can adopt me instead.”

“Noooo, Keith. Admit it, you’re adorable!”

“I am not!”

“My adorable little baby.”

“Dad.”

#single dad shiro #single dad Shiro Au #kiddie!AU #kiddie!paladins #voltron legendary defender #thanks nonny #this was so fluffy #keith is so protective of Josh

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whydontwejustblog · 6 years

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unusual asks

@anon that said “1-100,” i’m no chicKEN—

spotify, soundcloud, or pandora? spotify all the way.

is your room messy or clean? messy i like to think it’s neat.

what color are your eyes? a boring dark brown.

do you like your name? why? i hate it. i wish it was esteban julio ricardo montoya dela rosa ramirez.

what is your relationship status? what’s a relaytionsheep?

describe your personality in 3 words or less. boring.

what hair color do you have? still a boring dark brown.

what kind of car do you drive? color? …i’m not old enough to drive, but if i was, you better bet i’d have a rainbow car because #yolo. (lmao stop your influence @heartsavery.)

where do you shop? at the candy store. *instantly thinks of heathers*

how would you describe your style? non-existent.

favorite social media account? if i say tumblr, will it start working for me?

what size bed do you have? a queen-sized one. (no, that wasn’t a pun or anything.)

any siblings? i like to think she doesn’t exist.

if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why? i’ve heard of this place called niue, which apparently has pikachu coins as part of their currency, so sign me up. (japan is also another option, because i love the atmosphere in kyoto. except for that one time i got lost at night near a creepy abandoned church.)

favorite snapchat filter? i don’t use filters much since i don’t take pictures of myself, but i’ll have to say the classic dog filter.

favorite makeup brand(s)? i don’t wear makeup.

how many times a week do you shower? i shower around once or twice a day. weird, i know, but it’s normal around here in a country that’s hot all year round. (except, of course, when there are typhoons, because it’s one extreme or another.)

favorite tv show? danger dings (read: stranger things.) i even have a side blog for it. *cough* @anevenstrangerblog *cough* i know the question only asked for one but can i throw in asoue too? i love both the books and the netflix show. malina’s so pretty i cri. ooh, andi mack is another show that i absolutELY LOVE AND—

shoe size? 6.5 in us women’s.

how tall are you? not tall at all. next question.

sandals or sneakers? sneakers are all i own.

do you go to the gym? no.

describe your dream date. with nikolai lantsov. but since he’s “fictional,” i’ll settle for the person giving me a fortune, then leaving me alone for the rest of my life. (but if the person was finn wolfhard / malina weissman / sadie sink, they can *in mulan’s grandma’s voice* stAy fOrevEr.)

how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment? about 2500 pesos and 2000 yen.

what color socks are you wearing? they’re pikachu socks.

how many pillows do you sleep with? one or none because quite frankly, i only like hugging pillows. sleeping on them is uncomfortable for me.

do you have a job? what do you do? i don’t have a job, but my class runs a business (with a beneficiary who all the proceeds go to), and i manage its marketing and finance. i also design a couple stuff for my mom’s clinic thing, which i guess is considered a job since i get paid.

how many friends do you have? if you don’t count online friends, zero ahaha.

what’s the worst thing you have ever done? lmao idk, exist?

what’s your favorite candle scent? i dunno. most probably woodsy or floral scents.

3 favorite boy names? names don’t have genders.

3 favorite girl names? names don’t have genders.

favorite actor? noah schnapp, my precious son.

favorite actress? millie bobby brown because why not.

who is your celebrity crush? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

favorite movie? the bee movie ahAHAHAHA the original spongebob movie.

do you read a lot? what’s your favorite book? i read waaay too much, and just like any of my other favorite things, i can’t pick just one favorite book, but i love six of crows by leigh bardugo.

money or brains? can i have both?

do you have a nickname? what is it? i’m called stupid a lot, does that count? ahaha :’) micah’s actually one of my nicknames.

how many times have you been to the hospital? too many times to count.

top 10 favorite songs? i have too many songs i like, so i’ll list some i remember right now (and limit myself to one song per artist.) crazy=genius by p!atd, bellyache by billie eilish, migraine by tøp, c’est la vie by maurice moore, glorious by macklemore, for him by troye sivan, my songs know what you did in the dark by fob, non-stop from the hamilton cast recording, teacher by prettymuch, and we the party by why don’t we.

do you take any medication daily? just vitamins, not medication.

what is your skin type? idk dude.

what is your biggest fear? the unknown.

how many kids do you want? zero.

what’s your go-to hair style? just my hair down since i’m lazy.

what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc.) i don’t know how to describe the size of my house lmao.

who is your role model? thomas the tank engine.

what was the last compliment you received? i’m not sure if it was meant as a compliment, but that one anon who asked advice from me said they were awed by my independence so there’s that.

what was the last text you sent? i sent “i’m hungry” to one of my housekeepers.

how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real? he IS real. i don’t know what the quackidy quack you’re talking about.

what is your dream car? lightning mcqueen. ka-chow!

opinion on smoking? i’m asthmatic, so personally, i don’t smoke, and i don’t encourage it either. if you’re talking about cigarettes, it harms the lungs of not only the smoker, but the people around them. it also affects air pollution (its effect is 10 times stronger than those of diesel car exhausts), and i’m very against all types of pollution to the environment. (i’m looking at you, glitter, which, if you didn’t already know, contributes to the pollution of waterways.)

do you go to college? i will in 2 years. (i’ll be a wee child all alone in another country :’( @whydontwejustbesomethingdiffrent i’m dragging you along if it’s the last thing i do.)

what is your dream job? i don’t really know lmao.

would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs? suburbs.

do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels? who doesn’t?

do you have freckles? no.

do you smile for pictures? i don’t like having pictures of me taken, but i occasionally smile awkwardly.

how many pictures do you have on your phone? i recently cleared out my photo library so now i’m left with only 3033 pictures.

have you ever peed in the woods? no.

do you still watch cartoons? duh.

do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonald’s? there are no branches of wendy’s where i live so i’ll go with mcdonald’s.

favorite dipping sauce? does gravy count?

what do you wear to bed? pajamas.

have you ever won a spelling bee? i’ve never participated in one aside from the mini ones we used to hold in class before, which i won because the competition wasn’t exactly tough.

what are your hobbies? photography, bullet journaling, brush lettering, eating, reading, scrolling endlessly through my phone, dying, and other fun stuff. coding and robotics are cool too.

can you draw? @thefangirlingmaster i still stand by my opinion that i can’t.

do you play an instrument? the only instrument i can fluently play is the violin, since i was taught how to play it at 6 years old, but i own a guitar and keyboard which i can sorta play.

what was the last concert you saw? a pentatonix one.

tea or coffee? water.

starbucks or dunkin’ donuts? starbucks.

do you want to get married? not really.

what is your crush’s first and last initial? f.w. (hint: it rhymes with pinn rolfhard.)

are you going to change your last name when you get married? i dunno man.

what color looks best on you? still dunno man.

do you miss anyone right now? no.

do you sleep with your door open or closed? closed.

do you believe in ghosts? uh…

what is your biggest pet peeve? my neighbors slow walkers

last person you called? my dad.

favorite ice cream flavor? cookies and cream.

regular oreos or golden oreos? i only eat mini-sized regular oreos.

chocolate or rainbow sprinkles? choCOLATE *insert gif of that one fish from spongebob*

what shirt are you wearing? a panda shirt i got from singapore a couple years ago.

what is your phone background? it’s a zoomed in face of the ice cream octopus from dora. my parents say it’s creepy, but i think it’s calming. (i couldn’t post it on here because tumblr says i reached a limit, but if you wanna see it, tell me to send it to you.)

are you outgoing or shy? depends on the people i’m with.

do you like it when people play with your hair? it tickles.

do you like your neighbors? i’d prefer it if they moved far far away (haha shrek reference) and took their horrible karaoke with them.

do you wash your face? at night? in the morning? i wash my face everytime i shower.

have you ever been high? nope.

have you ever been drunk? nope. (i was gonna come up with some punny joke but i’m too hungry to think right now. which reminds me, i have to go eat something real quick, be right back—)

last thing you ate? oh wow, perfect timing. i just ate mango float.

favorite lyrics right now? it’s from my son troye’s song, suburbia. “swallow nostalgia, chase it with lime. better than dwelling, and chasing time. missing occasions, i can’t rewind. can’t help but feel i’ve lost what’s mine.”

summer or winter? it’s basically summer all year round here so—

day or night? night.

dark, milk, or white chocolate? milk chocolate.

favorite month? december.

what is your zodiac sign? sagittarius.

who was the last person you cried in front of? my dad.

#this took me about an hour because like i said #i’m me #indecisive me #whoop whoop #also #i s2g #the anon who requested this better see it #or i’m suing #anon please tell me if you read it #it’ll make me feel better lmao #ask list #unusual asks #*agl*#*enim*

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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How Uber Turned a Promising Bikeshare Company Into Literal Garbage

One morning at the end of May, Mark Miretsky awoke in his San Francisco apartment and groggily browsed his phone. There was no rush to get up. Just a few weeks earlier, he had been laid off from his job at the bikeshare company JUMP, which was owned by Uber, along with hundreds of other people.

While still lazing in bed, he opened the Slack with more than 400 of JUMP’s laid off staff, and he saw something that hurt him even more than the layoffs. The JUMP bikes were being destroyed by the thousands and someone was posting videos of it on Twitter.

At first, Miretsky couldn’t bring himself to watch. He spent eight years of his life, often working 100-hour weeks to the point of nauseous exhaustion, to get people to ride those bikes. He did this because he believed in bicycles, and that they are worth riding.

Miretsky's family left the Soviet Union while his mother was pregnant with him. They briefly lived in Italy but couldn’t afford any mode of transportation other than a single bike. His dad pedaled, his mom rode side saddle on the rear rack, and his brother, just a toddler at the time, sat in the basket. Miretsky grew up hearing these stories, and even if he didn’t realize it at the time, he said it taught him bicycles are the cheapest, most efficient, and equitable way to get around. He would end up spending most of his adult life working with bicycles, caring about them so much he can’t even bring himself to get rid of any of his seven bikes.

In one of the videos, viewers can hear the claw crunching the frames and baskets while lifting the JUMP bikes. That was enough. Miretsky didn’t need to watch a second time.

“It kind of crushes one’s heart,” Miretsky said. He had difficulty putting into words exactly how he felt, but repeated what one of his former coworkers told him. To the die-hard bike enthusiasts who worked at JUMP, destroying bikes is like burning books. “To me, and to many of us [who worked at JUMP] the bike is not an object to a means of a business. It has a soul.”

Few, if any, of JUMP’s former employees were shocked by the videos. To some, it even felt a fitting, if upsetting, coda to a troubled two years under Uber’s stewardship.

Motherboard spoke to a dozen former JUMP employees about their time at the company, most under the condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements in order to receive severance and extended health care during a global pandemic. Former JUMP employees who agreed to speak on the record did so under the condition they not talk about the time the company was owned by Uber. They described remarkably similar experiences, in which JUMP, a previously thrifty company, with a culture that had a deep commitment to a shared sense of purpose gave way to Uber’s scale-obsessed model. The early promises of bikeshare for the world and replacing ridehail trips with bike journeys only partially materialized, but it came with unsustainable inefficiencies and waste. Uber bought JUMP in 2018 and two years later sold it to Lime, a changed and broken company. To these employees, the literal destruction of the bikes was a metaphor for the destruction of the operation they’d worked so hard to build.

Uber’s unrelenting pursuit of scale created all sorts of problems for those working on the bikeshare systems on the ground. In cities with high rates of theft or vandalism, the same people hired to retrieve, charge, and fix bikes were also responsible for recovering stolen ones, an occasionally dicey proposition. To address this, Uber hired private security teams, which three employees referred to as “hired goons,” to assist in getting the stolen bikes back. One employee from Providence, Rhode Island described a scene in which one “hired goon” wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying handcuffs and pepper spray “tackled” a black teenage girl riding a JUMP bike. The employee said it was something he would “never forget” and that “the optics didn’t look good, as people would say.” An Uber spokesperson said the company has no records of such an incident taking place and this account is “wholly inaccurate” because JUMP technicians and the security teams accompanying them were instructed not to forcibly remove anyone from the bikes or “engage in aggressive behavior.”

While hardly typical of JUMP’s operations, the incident—which occurred last year during a rash of thefts enabled by a faulty bike lock design—exemplifies just how far the company strayed from its original mission of getting people of all walks of life onto bikes. JUMP used to be a company that held countless community meetings in low-income neighborhoods prior to launching in a new city to make sure they were addressing everyone’s needs and offered low-income residents virtually unlimited biking for just a few dollars per month.

But JUMP’s rise and fall is not just about Uber—which only owned the company for two out of its 10 years of existence—or even just about bikeshare. It's about the role cities play in determining their futures, how much of that role has been usurped by a handful of people with a lot of money, and the perils of trying to be the good guy.

Even with everything that’s happened, many former JUMP employees still think selling the company to Uber was the right decision. Had it not, one former employee told Motherboard, “the company might have saved its soul, but died much younger.”

Ryan Rzepecki became a cycling evangelist when he borrowed his roommate’s bike one summer day in 2005 while living in New York City's East Village. It made getting around the city so much easier and more pleasant, even though at the time New York didn’t have anything resembling safe bike infrastructure.

On a trip to Paris, Rzepecki came across the Velib bikeshare system. Although Velib has had its problems, to Rzepecki’s eyes it was a marvel: tens of thousands of bikes for Parisians to use for a very small fee. No worrying about locking the bike, storing it, maintenance, or repairs. Just unlock it, ride it, dock it, and be on your way.

But Rzepecki had an idea for a different kind of bikeshare system. He wanted one without docks, where people could begin and end their rides anywhere they like. He thought this would be the key to unlocking cycling for the masses. In 2010, he started Social Bicycles.

The original business model of Social Bicycles (SoBi) was different from the one it would adopt after re-branding as JUMP eight years later. Instead of going directly to people, it sold its proprietary bikes and docking stations to cities, who would then contract with another third party to operate the bikeshare system.

The key to this model was SoBi’s quasi-docked model, in which every bike had a GPS unit and a built-in lock. Riders had to lock the bike to something, and were encouraged to lock the bikes to SoBi’s docking stations, but could use regular bike racks if they wanted.

“It’s probably good I didn’t have a technical background,” Rzepecki told Motherboard, “because if I knew how hard it would be I probably never would have attempted it.” It was not a simple or easy business. Back then, cities would put out Requests for Proposals (RFPs) that announced they were interested in a bikeshare system, triggering a two-year process that, if all went well, resulted in a bikeshare system. The RFP process ensured a deep partnership with the city that would minimize long-term uncertainty or community outrage over bike rack locations. For both SoBi and the cities in which they worked, this trade-off was worth it, because they were in it for the long haul.

SoBi hired urban planners to help cities with the expense of figuring out where new bike racks should go. This involved not only painstakingly drawing architectural renderings for hundreds of bike racks, but presenting those drawings to local community groups to hear their feedback. As a general rule, they drew up plans for about three times as many racks as they would ultimately install, knowing local community groups tended to reject about two-thirds of them.

While this approach to a bikeshare system was complicated, time-consuming, and expensive, Rzepecki and his early team thought it was the best way to forge the kind of relationships between the city government, local bike advocates, and casual riders to allow bikesharing to thrive in the long run.

Likewise, Rzepecki wanted SoBi’s bikes to be comfortable and fun to ride. They debated the merits of certain bolts over others, the size of the baskets, and the best distance between the handlebars for the most comfortable ride for the most people. SoBi’s designer, Nick Foley, and the other designers not only took into account the rider experience, but also that of the mechanics charged with fixing and maintaining the bikes. They standardized parts, reduced the number of different bolts and screws as much as possible, and put thought into how to make flat tires easy to replace. The bikes were not to be disposable objects, but permanent, rideable street art.

“Ryan’s goal was the bicycle comes first,” another former employee told Motherboard. “He brings that kind of attitude, that I want to make my city better.”

All that attention to detail notwithstanding, in the early days SoBi’s technology barely worked. One of its first clients in 2012, the San Francisco International Airport, wanted a bikeshare program for employees to use during their lunch breaks. But the bikes barely worked. Miretsky remembers having to run around the airport to reboot the bikes’ onboard computers, which he described as “super 1.0 early beta technology that wasn’t working” in which the GPS and computer unit was attached to the bike with velcro.

There wasn’t very much money in the bikeshare world then. The company was operating hand-to-mouth, people were forgoing paychecks some weeks, and everyone was working on shoestring budgets. One employee recalled the “SoBi flop houses” where six of them would live in a two-bedroom Airbnb to save on costs. The unlucky ones who didn’t get a bedroom would sleep on the floor; more than one former SoBi employee recommended if I ever find myself in a similar situation, I snag the space under the dining room table so that anyone getting up in the middle of the night doesn’t step on me.

With this shared sacrifice came shared responsibility. The company structure was remarkably flat. Once a month, everyone would get on a call and make decisions together by consensus. People’s titles only vaguely aligned with their actual jobs. “Things got done because everyone wanted them to get done, not because someone was assigning them or there were super-clear expectations,” one employee described it. “You just went to wherever you could supply the most-needed help.”

Over time, SoBi worked out the kinks, and each contract got slightly bigger than the last. Its big breakout came in 2016, when 1,000 of its bikes launched in Portland’s Biketown program, sponsored by Nike. It was the company's biggest launch to date and also its most successful. It was also the first year SoBi was profitable. Things were looking up, until the people at SoBi started hearing about these bikeshare companies out of China.

“Here’s where the story changes,” Rzepecki said. “Just as we were figuring out how to do bikeshare and make it work, the entire landscape changed.”

Up to that point, the bikeshare world was a small one, an industry of government contractors and their suppliers. Companies couldn’t be neatly divided between partners and competitors. Social Bicycles sold its hardware to Motivate, which operates the biggest docked bikeshare systems around the country, to operate Biketown, even though SoBi and Motivate would compete for contracts elsewhere (to complicate the dynamic, Motivate was purchased by Lyft around the same time JUMP was bought by Uber). It was a small world, in part because it had to be; there wasn’t enough money in bikeshare to make it any bigger.

Which is why when two Beijing-based bikeshare firms, Ofo and Mobike, expanded to the United States right around the same time Biketown launched, it blew up everything the bikeshare world had known.

Rather than work closely with cities over years, Ofo and Mobike parachuted in, got permission to launch a bike share by shoveling money at cities, and then did it. They also introduced a fully dockless model known as “free lock,” in which riders didn’t have to lock their bikes to anything after finishing a ride. They could leave them wherever they wanted, including in the middle of sidewalks and strewn across lawns.

“At least initially, there was this hint of hope that this big dumb app company was actually helping push us towards a more sustainable transportation ecosystem.”

This went against everything SoBi believed in. It not only was a short-sighted strategy that was sure to create conflict with city officials and communities—the very people SoBi felt were integral to any bikeshare systems’s success—but it sent the wrong message about the bikes themselves.

“Freelocking turns the vehicles into trash and blocks the sidewalk,” one former JUMP employee said, “which is both bad for business and bad for cities.” It turns bikes into obstacles for people with mobility issues, the exact opposite of what bikes are supposed to be. And it sends the message that the bikes are disposable, have little value, and belong to no one.

But it was not the free lock element of the Ofo and MoBike model that changed everything, at least not directly. Without the need to go through the lengthy RFP process or site docks, Ofo, Mobike, and their countless imitators could grow as quickly as their bank accounts permitted. It was catnip for the type of venture capital investors who love exponential growth charts.

Suddenly, dockless bikeshare became the trendy investment. From October 2016 through July 2017, Ofo raised $1.28 billion in two funding rounds, according to Crunchbase. Mobike raised more than $800 million. In October 2017, the newly-founded Lime (then called LimeBike) raised $50 million. To Social Bicycles, this was an unimaginable amount of money. Up to 2016, SoBi had raised only a few million dollars.

“It became a feeling of there is no way we can succeed anymore,” Miretsky said. “We were playing checkers and it suddenly became chess.”

“They would go into markets we were just in with RFPs and said ‘we’ll pay you. How many bikes do you need? We’ll give you more,’” Miretsky recalled. “Cities said well great, this is no longer a problem for us to solve, the business community has solved it.”

Almost overnight, Rzepecki said SoBi lost 25 percent of its revenue. For sexy startups like Mobike and Ofo, a 25 percent revenue drop would be a tough pill to swallow. For SoBi, it was poison. Thanks to overseas investors flooding the market with cheap bikes, the time of working closely with cities to build a sustainable bikeshare system was over. The RFP approach, everything SoBi had built its business around, was dead.

SoBi pivoted to be a permit-based dockless bikeshare company like the others. But it resisted what it viewed as an ideological non-starter and it did not succumb to the free lock model. Just as in the SoBi days, riders would still have to end the ride by locking the bike to something.

Moreover, SoBi didn’t need to compromise on its deeper philosophy because Rzepecki had an ace up his sleeve. For two years, SoBi had been secretly developing an electric bike, where a battery-powered motor helps the rider pedal, making bike riding an effortless endeavor even up the steepest of hills and longest of distances. Former employees credited Rzepecki and Foley for having the foresight to know the entire industry would eventually shift to e-bikes, and the only way JUMP could survive was to get there first. And it did.

In the summer of 2017, as JUMP was looking for investors to stay afloat, Uber invited two JUMP employees in to demonstrate the e-bike, sparking conflicted feelings among the JUMP staff. This was right at the height of an Uber public relations disaster, as its co-founder Travis Kalanick floundered in the days leading up to his resignation. At this stage, Uber was virtually synonymous with spoiled rich kids flouting laws and operating solely according to their own internal code. Among the JUMP staff, Uber was regarded as wasteful and environmentally irresponsible at best and downright evil at worst.

Some former employees believe JUMP ultimately took the meeting as an intelligence-gathering operation, others as an implicit admission of JUMP’s precarious condition despite the distasteful prospect of working with the company so many of them loathed.

In any case, two JUMP employees rode the e-bikes to Uber’s headquarters on Market Street, where Dmitry Shevelenko and Jahan Khanna, the duo behind Uber’s micromobility and transit expansion, took them for a test ride.

“This was like the first time using an iPhone.” Shevelenko told Motherboard. “It just feels magical.” He had demo’d other bikeshare e-bikes in recent months, but the JUMP bike was far superior. Instead of having a motor that kicked into gear providing an unwanted jolt, JUMP’s e-bikes sensed how hard a rider pedaled and increased the motor power to match what the rider is doing. It felt like a partnership between human and bike, not a human ceding total control to a machine. “It was almost like a superpower,” Shevelenko recalled, “like this bike is connected to your body.”

Shevelenko and Khanna viewed the e-bike as a perfect complement to Uber’s ridehailing business. Insofar as it would cannibalize Uber trips, it would be shorter city trips that weren’t profitable anyways. The e-bike would not only be cheaper for riders, but also quicker during rush hours in the dense urban areas where Uber is most popular. And Uber wanted JUMP’s superior product. Shevelenko figured JUMP had a year’s head start on every other dockless e-bike. Paired with Uber’s resources, they thought it would be hard for anyone else to catch up.

Image: CHESNOT/GETTY IMAGES

After some brief negotiating, the companies initially formed a partnership and Uber connected JUMP with the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures to keep the company afloat. Starting in January 2018, SoBi officially rebranded as JUMP and its bikes would be shown as a rental option in the Uber app. Four months later, Uber acquired JUMP for close to $200 million.

It was, undoubtedly, an odd pair, not just in mission but in corporate culture. Many of JUMP’s staff were self-described hippies, a far cry from Uber’s bro culture and no-holds-barred approach to business. But, the acquisition made sense as one between two companies struggling to figure out what they were doing at a time when the old way was no longer going to cut it. Uber had to clean up its act and put on a good face for investors in a run up to a public offering, while JUMP had to find a model that worked in the dockless world of VC capital.

On a personal level, eight years of bikeshare startup life had taken its toll on Rzepecki and the original SoBi crew. To illustrate the point, Miretsky said that when he visited the New York office where Rzepecki was based, he had stopped buying breakfast, because he knew Rzepecki would take two bites of a breakfast sandwich, vomit it up from nerves, and then give Miretsky the rest of the sandwich.

When asked about this, Rzepecki confirmed his stress manifested with various physical symptoms around that time, and that “2017 was particularly hard.”

“I think it’s really on the right course now and [Uber’s then-new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi] believes the way we approach working with cities and our vision for partnering with cities” aligns with Uber’s mission, Rzepecki told TechCrunch when the acquisition was announced. “That was important for me and his desire to do things the right way. This is a great outcome and gives me a chance to bring my entire vision to the entire world.”

“At least initially, there was this hint of hope that this big dumb app company was actually helping push us towards a more sustainable transportation ecosystem,” a former JUMP employee said. “And then they fucked it up.”

Accounts differ on precisely how long it took Uber to undermine everything JUMP had previously been about. Some former employees said it happened virtually immediately. Others described a more gradual process that took a few weeks. But they unanimously agreed it didn’t take long at all for JUMP to stop being JUMP.

Not only were JUMP employees no longer working on a shoestring budget, they barely had any budgets at all. Sleeping under the dining room table gave way to $400 per night hotel rooms. Like the Ofos and MoBikes they long decried, JUMP was now buying as many bikes it could get its hands on.

For a split second, JUMP was “the hot new thing” at Uber, as one former employee put it. Khosrowshahi talked it up during company all-hands meetings and in the press. He came to the warehouse where JUMP built new prototypes.

"During rush hour, it is very inefficient for a one-ton hulk of metal to take one person 10 blocks," Khosrowshahi said at the time. With JUMP, "we're able to shape behavior in a way that's a win for the user. It's a win for the city. Short-term financially, maybe it's not a win for us, but strategically, long term we think that is exactly where we want to head."

One of the first signs that the acquisition was not going as planned came just two months after the acquisition when Uber put longtime employee Rachael Holt in charge of the New Mobility unit. In one of her first meetings with the JUMP team, Holt made it very clear that she was in charge, as multiple employees recalled. This directly undermined what Rzepecki had publicly said when the acquisition was announced, that JUMP would remain independent of Uber. Now, the employees were being told that wasn’t the case. When asked about this reversal, an Uber spokesperson described Holt as “a longtime Uber executive with experience growing a mobility business.” Holt did not respond to a list of questions sent by Motherboard.

"There was also an awareness that this was no longer some private company, that it was fucking Uber now."

Holt brought an Uber 1.0 approach to bikeshare, one that mimicked what companies like MoBike and Ofo were doing (MoBike co-founder Wang Xiaofeng had previously been general manager of Uber’s Shanghai operations). They flooded the streets with bikes under the philosophy that any second a bike is not on the street, it's losing money. They expanded to new markets and hired so many people so fast some employees spent half their time in hiring meetings and prospective employee interviews. Teams doubled or tripled in size within months, only to find they were now overstaffed. Bike mechanics at the main warehouse would have thousands of bikes to build that were just delivered from China, but local mechanics in the cities where JUMP operated didn’t have spare parts to fix the bikes on the street.

In other words, JUMP employees felt Uber was applying a software business mentality to bikeshare. It was, to JUMP’s longtime employees, a fundamental misunderstanding of what kind of business they were in. Uber was running JUMP with the mindset that anything that’s broken can be patched, but, as one employee put it, “a firmware update can’t fix a bike chain.”

“Like any startup (whether inside of Uber or out), JUMP’s early days can be characterized as scrappy,” an Uber spokesperson said. “JUMP was scaling very quickly. When we bought JUMP they were a very small company with a fleet of only 500 e-bikes in San Francisco. When we merged with Lime a few weeks ago, we had tens of thousands of e-bikes and scooters in 30 cities around the world.”

Otherwise an impressive feat of engineering, the bikes JUMP released in early 2019 under Uber had one critical flaw. JUMP replaced the sturdy if bulky U-lock with a cable lock in order to make the bikes easier to secure. But the cable lock wasn’t robust. It was a critical oversight, one that highlighted how far JUMP had strayed from its roots, since any New York City bicyclist knows a cable lock is an open invitation for theft. All someone had to do was flip the 75-pound bike over and the cable would snap under its own momentum (there was also a method using a hammer that took more finesse). With a few well-placed blows, thieves could easily disable the GPS unit and be on their way with a (very heavy) bike.

While every city experienced some degree of theft, Providence, Rhode Island experienced among the most because, for whatever reason, stealing JUMP bikes became a form of sport for the city’s teens.

“We didn’t understand the magnitude of the problem until it was too late,” one former JUMP employee familiar with the situation told Motherboard. “Hundreds and hundreds of bikes were getting stolen.”

In emails obtained by the Providence Journal, JUMP’s operations manager in Providence, Alex Kreuger, told the city that, in one weekend in July 2019, 150-200 bikes were vandalized out of a fleet of about 1,000 bikes.

“Someone brandished a gun on a field tech, kids tried to steal bikes directly from our warehouse, riders reported attempts by people to steal the bike as they were riding them,” Kreuger wrote.

In another instance, according to a source, an employee trying to retrieve a bike reportedly had to wield a broken kickstand to fend off some kids swinging a 2×4 at him.

In the fall, Uber hired a private security firm to ride along with the field technicians in order to retrieve the stolen bikes. This didn’t strike any of the employees as especially odd, since none of them had signed up to be fighting kids in the streets. One field tech who spoke to Motherboard estimated that "five to 10" instances resulted in private security workers physically restraining people while the bikes were being recovered, as was the case with the bulletproof vest-clad rent-a-cop tackling a kid riding a bike.

Among other things, the vandalism made it impossible for JUMP to have 90 percent of its bikes on the street at all times, as its contract with the city required. Sometimes, one former employee said, they’d have fewer than 300 bikes, or less than 30 percent of the fleet, on the street.

In August, JUMP pulled its bikes off the streets of Providence for what it claimed was a temporary period, but the bikes never returned. In October, the field technicians, who had ridden around with the security guys for weeks, received an email at the end of their shift telling them not to bother coming in anymore; they were all fired. The security guys got an email at the end of the shift, too; their new job was to take over bike retrieval, but their first order of business was to escort the field technicians out of the building.

At least one former Providence employee thinks the vandalism could not be disconnected from the Uber acquisition.

“There was also an awareness that this was no longer some private company, that it was fucking Uber now,” they told Motherboard. “This is owned by a corporation that doesn’t care about bettering anyone’s fucking community or whatever, so people saw an opportunity there.”

Whether or not that was the case, JUMP had bigger problems than just Providence, and Uber had bigger problems than just JUMP. After breakneck growth and an IPO in the spring of 2019, Uber was under more pressure than ever to show it could be profitable. And thanks to its growth-at-all costs approach to bikeshare, JUMP was leaking cash.

But it wasn’t the financial losses that bothered JUMP employees the most. It was the gradual erosion of everything that got them to sacrifice so much for the company in the first place. Morale tanked as people slowly noticed they were busting their asses to hit growth metrics. The joy of cycling and creating a community good was not only secondary to that, it was becoming a memory.

“We went from putting 45-pound steel plates with 35-pound racks down on street corners where we had paid surveyors to stand and count people riding and locking bikes and working very closely with municipal transportation services, universities, and community groups, to, from what I understand, basically offering cities as much money as they needed to launch as quickly as possible and putting as many bikes on the curb as quickly as possible wherever we could,” one former employee said. “That’s the same approach that Bird used for scooters, that Lime used for their bikes, and Ofo used for their bikes in Texas and got in so much trouble for. And that’s why they’re trash. And that’s why JUMP became trash.”

In September 2019, JUMP employees were transferred to a new entity called Sobi LLC, which some employees took as an indication they were being broken off for a sale. An Uber spokesperson said it was because “As JUMP grew its footprint, so did the need for more focused business support for day-to-day operations.”

Four months later, at the beginning of 2020, Rzepecki and a handful of other original Social Bicycle employees left. The following months would result in a cascading series of layoffs in which Uber let 25 percent of its staff go.

At the beginning of last month, The Information reported that Uber was leading a $170 million funding round in Lime in a deal that would involve transferring JUMP to them. This was news to the JUMP staff. In an all-hands call that day, Khosrowshahi refused to directly answer a question about JUMP’s future, which both irked and worried its employees. An Uber spokesperson said, as a public company, Khosrowshahi could not discuss the transaction before it finalized. The next day, Uber laid off nearly everyone at JUMP. Because it was in the middle of the pandemic, the laid off had one hour to say goodbye to their friends over Slack. Then their computers turned off.

Whatever comes of JUMP under Lime’s stewardship, it will be without the people who made JUMP what it was. Lime was founded in 2017 by two former venture capital executives who quickly bailed on bikes to hop onto the scooter fad. It even experimented with a carsharing service. Lime obtained the intellectual property rights for the newest versions of the JUMP bikes and scooters, but, as of now, none of the people who designed or built them.

The big question facing the bikeshare industry—and its scooter-share offshoots—is whether the business can ever be profitable. To date, the answer is no. Lime lost some $300 million last year while its major competitor, Bird—founded by a former Lyft and Uber executive—isn't faring much better. While 2020 doesn’t look poised to turn industry fortunes around due to the global pandemic, it is a testament to how poorly managed the micromobility industry has been that ceasing operations may, in fact, be a blessing in disguise for companies that haven’t figured out how to run a service without bleeding cash.

Unlike software, transportation is a deliberate business, sometimes painfully so. To tech executives, this appears to be a flaw, an inefficiency to disrupt. No doubt the RFP process and other regulations around the transportation industry can be improved, but there’s a reason transportation businesses move slowly. It costs too much to screw up, both in money and in reputation. Useful mass transportation doesn’t suddenly appear. It is carefully nurtured from a tiny seedling of a good idea to a fully-formed organism that breathes life into a city. It is a process that takes time and effort and patience as well as money.

For all their shortcomings, this is something the SoBi people knew well. It is also something Uber could never understand, because it has always rejected the premise that it’s in the transportation business. It’s been telling itself and regulators since its inception it is merely a business-to-business software application so it can skirt employment regulations that would force it to make all of its drivers employees. But that deception became so ingrained in company culture that it conducted itself as a software company even when it was purchasing and fixing bicycles by the tens of thousands. On the most basic level, it’s impossible to succeed when you don’t know what line of work you’re in.

On top of that, transportation companies have to work with the cities in which they operate whether they like it or not. To several of the employees Motherboard spoke to, this was the single biggest and most consequential culture shift after the acquisition. Whenever there was a problem with a city, Uber postured for a fight, which went against every instinct JUMP had.

“We wanted to work with [the cities] and build trust,” one former employee summarized. “Uber wanted to steamroll them.”

(“We disagree,” an Uber spokesman said. “JUMP worked diligently to address sidewalk riding and parking clutter through both operational changes and investing in innovative technology.”)

And the whole scheme was built on a faulty premise, that putting more and more bikes on the road in more and more cities would eventually result in profits, even though the company lost money on each ride. They imitated the strategy that MoBike and Ofo used to blow up the bikeshare industry—which itself imitated the strategy Uber used to become a global behemoth—because that’s what investors wanted to see.

But by the end of 2018, the very strategy JUMP would later imitate was clearly not working. MoBike was sold to Chinese neighborhood services company Meituan-Dianping and retreated from foreign markets (its European operations were spun off, so some MoBikes are still on the road there). In June of last year, a Chinese court found Ofo “has basically no assets,” according to Quartz, and couldn’t pay off its debts. Photos of mass bike graves of the erstwhile bikeshare boom went viral.

But the damage was done, because the perception of what bikeshare should be had been irrevocably altered. It was no longer a transportation business; it was a tech business, and everything that brought along with it.

Even at the time Ofo and MoBike were getting handed billions in cash, the JUMP people didn’t know what to think, because they were still thinking like bike people. “We didn't believe the unit economics worked,” Miretsky recalled, “Then we heard the companies said the unit economics worked, and we thought well they couldn't be lying, we wouldn't lie. And then it turned out later they were probably lying.”

After the videos of the bikes getting destroyed surfaced, several former JUMP employees wondered if there was something they could do to save as many bikes as they could. They asked that I not disclose who they were so as not to jeopardize the NDA they signed with Uber.

With some help from current Uber employees, they were able to save some. They will get donated to various groups and organizations. The Bike Share Museum in Florida got five, but an Uber spokesperson did not say who got the rest. But multiple sources told Motherboard that, in total, they saved 5,298 bikes. They each knew the exact number.

How Uber Turned a Promising Bikeshare Company Into Literal Garbage syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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hamiltongolfcourses · 4 years

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The Best Quotes on Fatherhood

Fathers tend to be taken for granted.

We invariably make more of a fuss over Mom on Mother’s Day than Dad on Father’s Day, for one.

Dads are like a steady but less sentimentalized institution — the sun in our familial sky that warms and gives life but isn’t much thought about unless he goes missing.

Yet this belies the enormous impact fathers truly have on their children; while a dad’s nurturing may often take the form of playful roughhousing and silly jokes, his influence is quite serious and significant: the presence of a loving father greatly increases a child’s chances of success, confidence and resilience, physical and mental well-being, and yes, quite naturally, their sense of humor.

One of the manifestations of the way we take fathers for granted is that there exist many more quotes about Mom than dear old Dad (and even fewer about fathers and daughters). To make more accessible those great pearls of wisdom that do exist, we searched high and low for the very best, and created this ultimate treasury of quotes about fatherhood. These short quotations provide great prompts for reflection; typically, we’re so busy plowing ahead that we don’t pause to look up and get a “birds-eye” perspective on things — taking the time to ponder what our own dads meant to us, and the way we’re shaping, and should be savoring, our kids right now.

Quotes About Fatherhood

“You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes.” –Walter M. Schirra, Sr.

“Some dads liken the impending birth of a child to the beginning of a great journey.” –Marcus Jacob Goldman

“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” –George Herbert

“Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later . . . that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.” –Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

“The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be seen never doing that of which you would admonish them.” –Plato

“The nature of impending fatherhood is that you are doing something that you’re unqualified to do, and then you become qualified while doing it.” –John Green

“One of the greatest things a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” –Howard W. Hunter

“To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.” –Euripides

“If there is any immortality to be had among us human beings, it is certainly only in the love that we leave behind. Fathers like mine don’t ever die.” –Leo Buscaglia

“That is the thankless position of the father in the family—the provider for all, and the enemy of all.” –J. August Strindberg

“Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.” –Charles Kettering

“Son, there are times a man has to do things he doesn’t like to, in order to protect his family.” –Ralph Moody

“A boy needs a father to show him how to be in the world. He needs to be given swagger, taught how to read a map so that he can recognize the roads that lead to life and the paths that lead to death, how to know what love requires, and where to find steel in the heart when life makes demands on us that are greater than we think we can endure.” –Ian Morgan Cron

“Parenthood remains the single greatest preserve of the amateur.” –Alvin Toffler

“My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it.” –Clarence Budington Kelland

“When you’re a dad, there’s no one above you. If I don’t do something that has to be done, who is going to do it?” –Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am

“‘Why do men like me want sons?’ he wondered. ‘It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.’” –John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold: A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional Reference to History

“If the past cannot teach the present, and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.” –Russell Hoban

“There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railway man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.” –Theodore Roosevelt

“Father!—To God Himself we cannot give a holier name.” –William Wordsworth

“We think our Fathers Fools, so wise we grow; Our wiser Sons, no doubt, will think us so.” –Alexander Pope

“His values embraced family, reveled in the social mingling of the kitchen, and above all, welcomed the loving disorder of children.” –John Cole

“Children are a poor man’s riches.” –English proverb

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” –Frederick Douglass

“A girl’s father is the first man in her life, and probably the most influential.” –David Jeremiah

“Fathers, like mothers, are not born. Men grow into fathers and fathering is a very important stage in their development.” –David Gottesman

“Father of fathers, make me one,

A fit example for a son.”

–Douglas Malloch

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” –Umberto Eco

“My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’” –Harmon Killebrew

“Until you have a son of your own . . . you will never know the joy beyond joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son. You will never know the sense of honor that makes a man want to be more than he is and to pass something good and hopeful into the hands of his son. And you will never know the heartbreak of the fathers who are haunted by the personal demons that keep them from being the men they want their sons to be.” –Kent Nerburn

“When my son looks up at me and breaks into his wonderful toothless smile, my eyes fill up and I know that having him is the best thing I will ever do.” –Dan Greenberg

“Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you have to do it again tomorrow.” –Reed Markham

“It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.” –Pope John XXIII

“When I looked at you first I saw not your mother and me, but your two grandfathers . . . and, as my father, whom I loved a great deal, had died the year before, I was moved to see that here, in you, he was alive.” –Peter Carey

“Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, and singers of song.” –Pam Brown

“‘Father’ is the noblest title a man can be given. It is more than a biological role. It signifies a patriarch, a leader, an exemplar, a confidant, a teacher, a hero, a friend.” –Robert L. Backman

“Noble fathers have noble children.” –Euripides

“The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them.” –Confucius

“No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, what anything means, until he has a child and loves it.” –Lafcadio Hearn

“I cannot think of any need in children as strong as the need for a father’s protection.” –Sigmund Freud

“A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be.” –Frank A. Clark

“His father watched him across the gulf of years and pathos which always divide a father from his son.” –John Marquand

“A family needs a father to anchor it.” –L. Tom Perry

“Words have an awesome impact. The impression made by a father’s voice can set in motion an entire trend of life.” –Gordon MacDonald

“Children need models rather than critics.” –Joseph Joubert

“A father is someone you look up to no matter how tall you grow.” –Unknown

“Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.” –Joseph Addison

“Mostly you just have to keep plugging and keep loving—and hoping that your child forgives you according to how you loved him, judged him, forgave him, and stood watching over him as he slept, year after year.” –Ben Stein

“Life doesn’t come with an instruction book — that’s why we have fathers.” H. Jackson Browne

“Fathers, you are your daughter’s hero. My father was my hero. I used to wait on the steps of our home for him to arrive each night. He would pick me up and twirl me around and let me put my feet on top of his big shoes, and then he would dance me into the house. I loved the challenge of trying to follow his every footstep. I still do.” –Elaine S. Dalton

“A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society.” –Billy Graham

“When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son.” –The Talmud

“My father always said there are four things a child needs: plenty of love, nourishing food, regular sleep, and lots of soap and water. After that, what he needs most is some intelligent neglect.” –Ivy Baker Priest

“Like so much between fathers and sons, playing catch was tender and tense at the same time.” –Donald Hall

“By profession I am a soldier and take great pride in that fact, but I am also prouder, infinitely prouder, to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys.” –General Douglas MacArthur

“The lone father is not a strong father. Fathering is a difficult and perilous journey and is done well with the help of other men.” –John L. Hart

“Children of the new millennium when change is likely to continue and stress will be inevitable, are going to need, more than ever, the mentoring of an available father.” –Ian Grant

“The quality of a father can be seen in the goals, dreams, and aspirations he sets not only for himself, but for his family.” –Reed Markham

“Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.” –Frank Pittman

“Never fret for an only son. The idea of failure will never occur to him.” –George Bernard Shaw

“My son is seven years old. I am fifty-four. It has taken me a great many years to reach that age. I am more respected in the community, I am stronger, I am more intelligent and I think I am better than he is. I don’t want to be his pal, I want to be a father.” –Clifton Fadiman

“Some day you will know that a father is much happier in his children’s happiness than in his own. I cannot explain it to you: it is a feeling in your body that spreads gladness through you.” –Honore de Balzac, Pere Goriot

“A child enters your home and for the next twenty years makes so much noise you can hardly stand it. The child departs, leaving the house so silent you think you are going mad.” –John Andrew Holmes

“Every parent is at some point the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.” –John Ciardi

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dazedclarity · 7 years

Text

blood and water (Super Sons ficlet)

Look what I found in my drafts! I wrote this before Super Sons #4 came out, so it’s basically a canon divergence. It takes place after they defeat Kid Amazo and return to the Kent farm. Here, Lois and Alfred don’t catch them.

The dust had cleared. The murders solved. The jerk who committed them was in custody. His sister rescued. They were standing in the Kent’s home, still in costume but finally finished.

And Jon was still a little shaken.

No, not just shaken, rattled. He hadn’t slept all night. He could last longer than most kids on that, but he wasn’t like Dad--his human side needed sleep. His body shivered, his lips were dry, and his mind was on edge.

The image of four bodies--bloody, battered, with cracked heads and bruised necks and everything that showed exactly how they died on full display, spreading across the floor--lingered in his mind. Two adults. Two kids.

No matter what, this didn’t feel like a victory. Every time Jon closed his eyes, he saw that image. He smelled it too--blood, fresh death. He felt the tears sting his eyes again.

Is that the sort of thing his dad sees everyday? Is that the sort of thing that someday, he’ll have to see everyday?

He wasn’t sure he could do that.

“Good work, Superboy,” a casual voice said behind him. He turned, and there was Damian, leaning against the wall and typing unassumingly on his pad. Like he didn’t care. Like he hadn’t seen what Jon had seen.

Jon tried to turn away. Tried to say “yeah, whatever, you too” and leave it at that, prepared to never talk to that guy again. He was just quiet.

“This was a good run. I suggest that we do outings like this regularly--”

“No.”

Damian cocked an eyebrow and looked up. “No?”

Before he could stop it, the tension built up in his stomach broke and so did he.

“What is wrong with you!?” Jon snapped, clenching his fists and throwing them to the side. “You don’t give a crap--”

“Whoa, language Superboy, you’re supposed to be a good role model for the kiddies.”

“SHUT! UP!” Jon shouted, and to his surprise, Damian actually looked a little startled behind his mask. “People died! You just don’t care! What kind of superhero doesn’t care when people get murdered!?” Damian’s jaw clenched. Jon’s hands were shaking now, no matter how tense me made himself. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry...”You come to me in the middle of the night to solve this, why? Is this all just a game to you?”

Damian, now standing straight up and glaring, opened his mouth to speak, but Jon wasn’t finished. It was all streaming out now, several hours of bottled stress and fear and anxiety and horror and sadness and shock. He wasn’t even sure he could stop if he wanted to. He wasn’t sure if he believed what he was saying.

“Dad says we should do this to help humanity. But is that important to you? Do you just like playing with us? Do you just like showing off? Do you care at all? Would you have even cared if I had gotten hurt you threw me off a building!?” Damian scoffed, and Jon had his answer. He took a deep breath, and one tear did finally drop down on his cheek. Just one, though.

Damian stood there, lips pursed and arms crossed. “Are you done?” he sighs. Annoyed. Indifferent.

“Yeah. I am.” Jon shook his head and turned away. “Go ask the Teen Titans next time. My dad can teach me what I need to know, thanks. Have a nice trip home.” And finally, he turned away.

“Jon, no, wait!” In a second Damian’s hand was gripping his arm. He stopped. Jon was strong enough to keep going, of course. Maybe he was just too tired to. “Wait, I can explain...”

“Then do it.” Jon ripped his arm away.

Damian opened his mouth, closed it, looked away. Jon shook his head, ready to turn away again.

Until Damian took off his mask. Jon saw a pair of uneasy blue eyes, eyebrows furrowed above them.

“Look,” Damian said, with his signature casual, indignant attitude, but with the slightest of shaky undertones, “I didn’t have a regular youth.”

Jon rolled his own blue eyes. “First of all, you’re still a ‘youth.’ Second of all, neither of us--”

“I was raised by my mother, in the League of Assassins. I had one purpose there, to take my grandfather’s place as its leader. The first thing I was ever taught to do was kill.”

“You said you could get a doctorate in geology when you were five...”

“And had my first kill at age three.”

Jon stood frozen. He blinked, then looked down. “I don’t believe you.”

Damian glared at him. “You don’t have to believe me. But unlike you, I was never sheltered from blood. In fact I was pushed towards it, raised to spill it. That isn’t who I am anymore.” Jon nodded softly. “I had seen scenes like that around the time you were, say, born. So no, I didn’t freak out and cry like you did.”

There was an unspoken finished sentence. But Jon could still hear it. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t care.”

“What made you want to stop killing?” Jon asked quietly, no longer tense, but his heart just as heavy, and still wanting to cry in confusion. Damian could be lying. Damian could be laughing behind his mask at the stupid little kid believing his stupid, crazy story...

“I will fulfill my father’s legacy,” the other boy said, almost robotically. Like there was still more the story that he didn’t really want to tell. So Jon didn’t make him.

“Why did you make me fall?”

“Ugh, I knew you would be fine.”

I trusted you to be fine.

Jon didn’t know what to do. He stared at his feet a little longer, shuffling them a bit. Then he finally reached forward, stiffly and awkwardly, and put a hand on Damian’s arm. “I’m sorry I said you weren’t a good hero. You are. I mean, I don’t always like your ideas and you can be really pushy and mean sometimes still, and I’d really appreciate if we plan ahead when you throw me off stuff, but it’s really cool that you got away from all...that.”

Damian looked up again. He was almost smiling. And then he wasn’t. “Well...as for you, you have plenty of, ahem, heart, I suppose. And occasionally you are surprisingly observant. But you need to grow some independence from your father and a thicker skin.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” On a whim, Jon stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. Damian, much to his surprise, didn’t push him away. He didn’t accept it, but he didn’t push him away. “We can still work together. We make a pretty good team sometimes.”

He might have imagined it, but he could’ve sworn he felt Damian arms tighten around him. Just slightly. So he hugged him tighter in return.

“Damian?” Jon whispered, not yet having let go.

“Hm?”

“What if I never get used to the blood?”

“You will. Not like me. But you’ll learn to get past it and get the job done. Or, you know, you might as well put away that S.”

Jon smiled this time, pulling out of the hug. “Thanks for believing in me.”

Damian scoffed at the endearment. “It’s not about such a cliche platitude. It’s about--”

“Shut up, dude.”

#super sons #supersons #damian wayne #jon kent #damijon #robin #superboy #fanfiction

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marilynnewbury-blog · 7 years

Photo

My daughter, Julia Lotholz, posted an ode to Rachel Ray on social media.

She kindly agreed, with some reluctance, to let me share her writing on my website.

But first, let me tell you why my daughter's kitchen mentor was Rachel Ray - and not me, her mother.

Why I Did Not Teach My Daughter How to Cook

by Marilyn Newbury

My Mom, while alive, cooked, baked, preserved food, decorated cakes and experimented.

No recipe was too complicated and no kitchen task too formidable:

A piano-shaped cake for my sixteenth birthday - my most favourite, ever - complete with white and black keys

Baked Alaska, with several layers

Borscht Soup

Cinnamon Buns, her specialty, often started at 5:00 am

Cinnamon buns may have been the last thing she baked.

In her final season of life, with her body ridden with breast and liver cancer, she still baked and delivered cinnamon buns - to the new neighbours and to the doctor during three rounds of chemotherapy.

My mom, The Gourmet Cook, and my dad, The Shredded Wheat GuyWhen my mom was away, my dad was in charge of meals.The menu was fixed.

Shredded Wheat cereal, the go-to-meal or snack, any time of the day or night

Canned tomato soup

A can of pork and beans, if we were lucky

Possibly a piece of mom’s homemade bread

That is not to say my dad was not involved with the household. He parented us with loving firm discipline and was the primary taxi-driver to music lessons, often a weekly ninety minute commute each way. He took on side jobs to finance family camping trips, enlisting us as free labour to help build Westco grain elevators.

But most of all, I remember my Dad, with his larger than six-foot frame,down on his hands and knees washing the kitchen floor, often.

My parents made sure that we children also understood this principle of a common work ethic. We weeded the garden, snipped beans, shelled peas, and cleaned toilets, learning early that chores were as much a standard fare as the delicious meals my mom served daily.

I carried this expectation of shared household duties into my marriage and parenting. I created a rotation list of weekly jobs for our three children so they would learn how to clean - thoroughly.

(For years, until she had her own children, my daughter believed that the only reason I had kids was to have help with my housework. Now that she realizes how much work kids are, she recognizes that if a spotless house was the goal, remaining childless and using the extra disposable income towards a housecleaner would be a more direct route.)

My husband, however, did not share this communal view of household tasks. He had an excuse, a chronic joint disease, but even if he had been in perfect health, he likely would never have washed my kitchen floor on his hands and knees. His father had modeled a different lifestyle: while he provided for his family by fixing chain saws and making colourful fishing ties, the only way he ever graced the floor with his presence was to lie down on it to relax.

Eventually, I became overwhelmed with managing our home: three young children, part-time and full-time jobs, and all of the physical work to keep life running smoothly.

I decided that my husband could do more, rheumatoid arthritis notwithstanding.

Logic dictated that this more would be in the kitchen, given my questionable expertise in this area.

Growing up, I helped my mom by doing mountains of dishes and making an occasional recipe, but usually I was told me to go practise the piano instead. Maybe my mother wanted better for me, since she regretted her late start in music lessons, or perhaps she knew better than I that my passion would be found in music rather than in creative cooking. In any case, kitchen skills were not my forte.

My husband liked to cook, and his meals tasted better than mine. Besides, he even liked to test new combinations of recipe ingredients - sometimes.

I told him the ‘sometimes’ could become ‘always’. He resisted.The arguments in our Kitchen War flew fast and furious.

In desperation, I stopped preparing meals, resulting in his hostile takeover of the kitchen. After further non-negotiable discussions, and the added impetus of an empty fridge, my husband also agreed to do the grocery shopping.

Slowly, over time, my husband began to love his Kitchen Kingdom and his new role as the Family Chef.

He took his cooking to a new level when he regularly started concocting new dishes, including Dad’s Specialty, now a family goulash favourite. Meanwhile, I was ordered out of the kitchen if I so much as tried to butter a piece of toast. My children only vaguely remember me ever cooking or baking, and to this day, are surprised if I manage to make anything beyond canned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

I admit, culinary proficiency is not my talent. My children are indeed fortunate that I did not teach them how to cook.

My daughter, Julia, inherited her grandmother’s cooking genes. During her high school years - with assistance from Rachel Ray - she started venturing into Dad’s kitchen domain, trying different recipes with exotic ingredients. A new Kitchen War ensued – a father and daughter competition. The grocery budget escalated along with increased anticipation for the new diversified menu.

Today, all of our children and their spouses are fantastic cooks. At family gatherings, I am not allowed kitchen entrance, except to wash the dishes, and perhaps to semi-annually wash the floor on my hands and knees.

Julia's Hummingbird Cake made for Easter dessert

An elaborate charcuterie board Julia made with a friend

an ode to Rachael Ray

by daughter, Julia Lotholz

Rachael Ray taught me how to cook.

there are numerous stories of ill-fated cooking attempts from my childhood, from feeding my brothers Cheerios soaked in water, to a near 3rd degree burn from making KD (I was reading an Archie Comic while stirring boiling water), to burning a plastic bowl full of raw chinese noodles onto the stovetop. I was destined to be the girl that was a disaster in the kitchen.

when I was 17, I took a semester off high school to travel with a guatemalan kids choir, and the tour ended a month and a half before the next semester began. a high schooler without a drivers licence, I was pretty well stuck at home, going stir crazy. I started watching the Rachael Ray Show every day at 2pm out of boredom, and eventually got tired of watching people eat food I couldn't even smell.

so I started printing off the day's recipe after watching her make it on tv, walking to the grocery store for the ingredients, and then trying my hand. my parents are wonderfully affirmative and appreciative when they taste good food, and it didn't take long before the fun of setting a steaming dish in front of someone and watching their reaction became one of my favourite things on earth.

I still remember some of the recipes I made that fall, even if I only made them once.

My girl Rachael has never failed me (actually, once, with a blue cheese buffalo chicken chili that was a big ol' pot of expensive disappointment) but otherwise, she's the queen of quick and easy family style meals.

I still pull up one of her new weeknight recipes every few months to cook for the fam, in honour of the woman who's never met me but taught me everything I know.

the first recipe of hers I ever made after watching it on TV: https://www.rachaelrayshow.com/rec…/15709_Sloppy_Taco_Stoup/ (I still make my own version of this on the regular, with an avocado salsa on top. We usually eat it with Tostitos scoops because what is life if not to be enjoyed?)

what's on tonight: http://www.rachaelray.com/…/butternut-squash-sweet-sausage…/

{that gorgeous wooden spoon in walnut is by Lotholz and Company}

Lotholz & Company is Julia’s husband Jeremy's woodworking shop. His beautiful woodworking creations are sold via his Facebook page.

Mother’s Note:

Julia and her mother-in-law, Ruth, are making sure that my granddaughter knows her way around the kitchen.

My granddaughter baking with Oma, her other grandmother

POSTSCRIPT

Julia's dad feels he should be given some credit for teaching his children basic cooking skills, so here it is:

Thank you, Cliff, for teaching your kids how to cook.

Hopefully, I am now vindicated.

Under no circumstance would I wish to jeopardize my daily breakfast in bed - graciously served by my husband!

Photo Credits:

Cinnamon Buns - pixabay.com

Shredded Wheat by Nick Saltmarsh CC BY 2.0

Butternut Squash, Sweet Sausage, Gnocchi, and Sage, Hummingbird Cake, Charcuterie Board, & Granddaughter Baking: Julia & Jeremy Lotholz

Originally published on https://www.marilynnewbury.com

#family #food #cooking #houshold chores #cancer #marriage #parenting #grandparenting #mother #daughter #father

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