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@the-amber-shadow

ao3 is TheAmberShadow

I feel like a good shorthand for a lot of economics arguments is "if you want people to work minimum wage jobs in your city, you need to allow minimum wage apartments for them to live in."

"These jobs are just for teenagers on the weekends." Okay, so you'll use minimum wage services only on the weekends and after school. No McDonald's or Starbucks on your lunch break.

"They can get a roommate." For a one bedroom? A roommate for a one bedroom? Or a studio? Do you have a roommate to get a middle-wage apartment for your middle-wage job? No? Why should they?

"They can live farther from city center and just commute." Are there ways for them to commute that don't equate to that rent? Living in an outer borough might work in NYC, where public transport is a flat rate, but a city in Texas requires a car. Does the money saved in rent equal the money spent on the car loan, the insurance, the gas? Remember, if you want people to take the bus or a bike, the bus needs to be reliable and the bike lanes survivable.

If you want minimum wage workers to be around for you to rely on, then those minimum wage workers need a place to stay.

You either raise the minimum wage, or you drop the rent. There's only so long you can keep rents high and wages low before your workforce leaves for cheaper pastures.

"Nobody wants to work anymore" doesn't hold water if the reason nobody applies is because the commute is impossible at the wage you provide.

Anonymous asked:

Hi! You reblogged a post recently about authors not wanting to talk about symbolism and repetition and themes and foils and analysis stuff in their own work, and I was wondering if you had anything like that for your fics (that you’re willing/able to share) because if so I’d love to hear it! (I may have become mildly obsessed with iitv and a lesson of fire and ice recently since they’re the kind of thing I like to read and amazingly well done)

OOOOOOoooooohhhhh boy!! There is so much

But because I'm at work and also terrified of accidental spoiling my own fic by getting too excited talking about it let me just talk about the title. It's something I've wanted to explain for a while!

Ink in the Vase

I needed something to evoke an image, right away. And its a complex one. Even if you're not familiar with "Flower Husbands", 'vase' is almost always connected to a bouquet of flowers. So it's a steady image. Everyone can put their own flowers in it. Maybe the flowers will change over time, with new events in the story or in the reader's own life events.

The same goes for the vase itself. Up until the carafe of flowers in the hospital chapters, there was no indication of a particular style. I describe Jimmy's dishes as having a mish mash of antiques and hand me downs from Ela, so maybe the vase becomes a chipped and repaired antique to some people. Maybe the image of the carafe was impactful enough that it's what stays as the image to people. Or maybe the bleakness of Jimmy's home in the beginning sticks with the reader, and they imagine a plain, dusty, glass vase.

It's interactive, flexible, and starts a process of pulling the reader into the story before they ever read it. And it's a good hook every time an update comes. It brings up the reader's personal experience with the title, and makes it easier to recall past events of the story.

And the Ink.

It took a bit of a leap on my part, but I found two ways to make this work.

The first, is that ink is staining, permanent. Whatever it touches, purposely or not, leaves a mark. Anything that happens in the story or the backstory, I want it to feel like it's clinging, staining, impossible to completely ignore. If that ink, those events, are touching the rest of the mental image, the vase you're picturing isn't allowed to be "perfect", the flowers are going to be poisoned.

And second, is where I took a leap. I loved doing flower staining growing up. That thing, where you make a fresh cut of a stem and feed the plant dyed water to turn the petals different colors. There's ways to do it with living flowers and cut bouquets. It depends on what you feed the flowers. So we can see the flowers, see the results of what they've been fed, what they've been placed in and forced to make a part of themselves. If that food/water is toxic and dark and ugly, signs of that experience will show. But if you clean the food source, put in bright colors and healthy food, fresh water and love and care, the next buds will come out healthier and healthier, until all that's left of the toxic relationship is memories and pictures and maybe a little bit of a shadow of a stain. It can get better, if people are willing to put in the work and care to fix it.

Put it all together and even if no one ever thinks about me as much as I did- even if no one knows what exactly the title is doing, I know that it's special. I know there's gonna be people who it has an effect on, even if they don't know why. I know how important this little four word summary of the story is.

Honestly, I would love to see the images "Ink in the Vase" has brought to people's minds.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you for this ask!! I hope it's what you were looking for. If you had specific things you were wondering about, feel free to ask. This was so so cool to have permission to talk about and I'm very much happy stimming atm lol.

<3

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Scar’s busy trying to make their rock look prettier. Cleo leans against it. It’s cold against their back; good. They still feel the heat of burning mansions and anger and TNT and burning pyres. They don’t have long now until they’re yellow. Both they and Scar know exactly what they’ll do then.

They and Scar do, at least.

Bdubs is loudly muttering indistinct things to himself while repeatedly shoving a hoe into an enchantment table. Cleo watches for a bit.

“Scar and I have some people to get revenge on tomorrow,” Cleo says.

Bdubs nods. “Oh yes. Those nasty Bad Boys, they won’t know what’s coming to them! Just as soon as I finish dealing with this stupid hoe.”

Scar snickers from the corner. “But Bdubs, I thought that was -”

“HEY!” Bdubs says. “WATCH IT!”

“Yeah Bdubs, I thought you were good with your hoes,” Cleo says, because they’ve never been one to let a joke like that just go by.

“I’ll have you know that I’m excellent at handling hoes. The best at it. The best at hoes,” Bdubs says. Scar laughs so loud he nearly chokes.

“Wow, didn’t need to know you thought that,” Cleo says.

“I’m - no you idiots!” Bdubs says. “You’re putting things in my mouth!”

“Like the hoes?” Scar says.

“Screw you guys,” Bdubs says, huffing and returning to the steady chime of the enchantment table and grind of the grindstone. Cleo tries to catch her breath again through the laughter to remember her original point.

Wiping at her eyes, she leans back. “To be honest though, I have no idea what your plans are. You sort of just… vanished today?”

“Yeah. We lost you,” Scar says. “Not very responsible parenting. Or older sibling-ing.”

“Who said you were older?” grumps Bdubs.

“Well you see, the older sibling is normally taller, and -”

“Boys,” Cleo says. They both stop.

“Sorry mom,” Scar says, sounding not even remotely sorry.

“I regret you two,” Cleo says.

“Awww. But you love us,” Bdubs says.

“Absolutely not,” Cleo says. “Besides, you’re dodging my question. Where were you?”

“Well, I can’t just tell you that,” Bdubs says. “Then people will know!”

Cleo and Scar are both quiet for a long moment.

“That’s sort of the point? It’ll just be us,” Scar says. “Us, your partners in crime, knowing where you were. That’s all we’re asking.”

Bdubs harumphs. “And I said I’m not telling. They’ll know if I tell you. The people who are watching. And they don’t get to know, you hear me? Nope, I’m a man of mystery. I’m here to keep them guessing, I am!”

Cleo and Scar glance at each other. Scar is grimacing. Ah. He knows what Bdubs is talking about, doesn’t he. Cleo’s not sure they do. They almost do, but clearly not in the same way Scar does.

Still, they know enough.

Cleo huffs overdramatically. “Fine then. Keep your secrets. See if I tell you mine.”

“You can’t have secrets! You’re our mom!” Scar says.

“You have a bizarre idea of how this works,” Cleo says.

“Aha!” Bdubs says. “A - no I read it wrong. Gosh darn it.”

He puts the hoe in the grindstone again, washing off whatever he’d enchanted it with. Cleo leans back against the wall to cool the burns they still feel. They prepare for the next morning.

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all year. all damn year we've been in constant battle with our middle schoolers who are endlessly determined to make this sign say 'hoe'. every time we fix it by the end of the day it's back to this. they never ruin the Phoenix and they never rip the whole thing off. somehow this entire school year we haven't been able to catch them. every time I see it I have to pretend like it isn't the funniest recurring bit in this stupid world

there are many things tumblr as a whole has to learn but one of them is “someone can reblog a post without them endorsing every action the op has ever taken, we are not beholden to do background checks on the producers of every shitpost on the internet”

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pastassassins

reblog if your name isn't Amanda.

2,121,566 people are not Amanda and counting!

We’ll find you Amanda.

this has almost 11 million notes what is this

I’ve never seen this post once in 10 years on this site

I’ve never even heard of this before tho??? Wtf??????????

oh my god, I didn’t think there were any surviving versions of this post left

For those who weren’t around in the Deep Lore times, this is one of the relics of the editable post era. This post has THE SINGLE HIGHEST NOTES of ANY post on this site, bar none, but with more than a dozen variations. Every single post you’ve ever seen with more than 3 million notes has been a different version of this one.

This is the “Dean’s Gym Shorts” post. This is the Flubber post. This is the original “Reblog if you support gay people” post. it was ALL of them. before half the site got nuked, it had even more notes than it has now - at one point, well over 15 million, and that was years ago.

This, with no exaggeration, is the ONE TRUE heritage post

ranma-official

Hey, everyone

guess what

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woke-up-on-derse

getting that its one picture and not four, but not getting the meme at first, is like effortlessly moving out of the way of a cyclist on the sidewalk by jumping into oncoming traffic

QSMP English speaking fans:

I wanted to clarify some things because it seems like some of you are confused about the nationalities/ ethnic groups of the content creators on the server. So... If you want to educate yourself keep reading.

Spanish creators: A Spanish person is a person born in Spain. You may only call Spanish to the creators that were born in Spain.

Hispanic creators: A Hispanic person is a person whose mother language is Spanish but that person might not necessarily be from Spain (you may call them Spanish speaking creators as well but please don't call someone from Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, etc. just "Spanish". If you're gonna use it make sure to put the "speaking" in front of it).

For example: Vegetta and Quackity are both Hispanic because both of them come from countries that speak Spanish (Spain and Mexico). Quackity, however is not Spanish while Vegetta is.

Latin American creators: A Latin American (most of the time people just use the word Latin) person is someone who was born in the Latin American region (a series of countries with historical, political and social similarities). Most countries in Latin American speak Spanish. However, not every country in Latín America speak Spanish.

Brazil, for example, speaks Portuguese.

Therefore: A Brazilian content creator is Latin American but not Hispanic (because they don't speak Spanish).

EDIT: (This is very important).

Please refrain from calling people from Brazil "Portuguese" they speak Portuguese because they were colonized by Portugal but Brazil is an independent country)

Another tip: Latin American people are vastly diverse.

So, Latinos can be Indigenous, black, white, mixed. Asian, etc.

EXAMPLES:

Roier (from Mexico) and Spreen (from Argentina) are both Hispanic and Latino.

Roier and Spreen, on the other hand, are not Spanish content creators because they do not come from Spain.

Rubius and Vegetta (from Spain): Can be called both Spanish (born in Spain) and Hispanic (born in a country that speaks Spanish).

Rubius and Vegetta however, cannot be called Latin American (Because they were born in a European country)

Cellbit and Forever (from Brazil) are Latin American.

Cellbit and Forever, however, are not Spanish (they weren't born in Spain) or Hispanic (they don't belong to a Spanish speaking country)

Spanish creators:

  • Vegetta
  • Rubius
  • Maximus
  • Luzu

Hispanic creators:

  • Vegetta
  • Rubius
  • Maximus
  • Luzu
  • Quackity
  • Mariana
  • Roier
  • Missa
  • Spreen

Latin American creators:

  • Quackity
  • Mariana
  • Roier
  • Missa
  • Spreen
  • Cellbit
  • Forever
  • Pac
  • Mike
  • Felps

Lastly. I'm sorry if it seems like I'm over explaining.

I've seen some confusion and I wanted to clarify.

If you have any questions on any creator let me know.

(I'll leave a map I stole from the internet lol)

Again, I don't want to offend anyone, just educate

.