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#Hotel vegetable farm

samptlay · 2 months

Note

https://www.tumblr.com/yandere-3-sagau/707700753307942912/can-i-request-sagau-with-reader-coming-into-teyvat

This

This is perfect

@112-darling~💕

Finished it. Alright, so this is a work of art. I'm so sad it seems abandoned and the creator is not even reblogging anything, so I believe their poof, gone. They will most likely come back eventually but for now, I'll feed your hunger.

Now I completely understand the AU you want me to make. It would be similar to @yandere-3-sagau's, yet different.

This is my rundown of my own AU for this, Simple!Creator!AU :

Now with the way I would have the Reader wake up in Liyue as well, though she doesn't run into a grandpa who takes care of her. She is aware that her blood is golden and she cries crystals, so she could never really be accused as an imposter, there's no worry on that part.

But Reader wants to live a quiet, peaceful life. She no longer has to worry about exams or deadlines. She finds an abandoned family cabin somewhere in the open fields of Liyue, renovating it herself to call it her own. The reader does farm work to get by, and with how much power she holds, all her fruits & vegetables are always sold out the fastest due to how fresh they are.

Word gets around about how amazing your supply is, and of course, eventually, even Zhongli is curious about the commotion.

So when he one day runs into Childe who had just gotten back from your stall and the ginger offers him some of your own fruits, he is, awestruck. Out of his 6000 years of experience, he had never tasted something so sweet & juicy. Not a single taste of bitterness in sight.

This couldn't have possibly been produced by a regular human being.

As an Ex-Overlord (Like An Archon, but we’re thinking of dynamics, such as in Hazbin Hotel) his suspension was too high for his too drop the concern so he hunts The reader down, eventually finds out the truth about who she really is and suddenly becomes as submissive as a loyal dog.

Though it feels nice, it’s not what she wants. So what else then to keep him on a leash, making a pact with him to silence The reader's existence.

A LOT more happens, the story would be way more detailed but this is just a rundown. Each Genshin Man would discover her secret in different ways, and the reader eventually has them all wrapped around her fingertips.

The men are just happy to have their souls connected with the creators in some way.

I might make the pacts with Archon’s (including Neuvillette) a lot stronger, so they're somewhat more at her mercy, something in that manner.

What do you think? I’d like to hear more ideas and comments about this AU and how it should be constructed.

Taglist For Those Who Want To Maybe Contribute Ideas. Edit: The reader will be Gender Neutral, though it'll be my first time writing like that so please forgive mistakes.

@uhfhfhfhf @xdrin @msun1c0rn @lovingnahida @strrawb3rrysh0rtcak3 @ssecylia @skyl8ver @immahuman @meowmeowraven @01234 @markexplanation @esthelily @dawnofazrael

#geshin impact #fanfic #zhongli x reader #xiao x reader #childe x reader #ayato x reader #thoma x reader #al haitam x reader #neuvillette x reader #genshin x reader #kaeya x reader #diluc x reader #scaramouche x reader #simple!creator!au #genshin sagau #sagau x reader #sagau

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celestialwhoree · 2 months

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how about a reader x simon riley but reader has a big family. im talking 4 brothers and 2 sisters type shit. loving parents and a pet dog or cat for whoever still lives in the house. i already planned out backstories and stuff but i wanna see your take on this

this is so cute baby, but I'm like the least qualified person to write this I've got no siblings, although I do have two dogs, a cat and a horse.

I feel like, for Simon, he really doesn't want to meet readers family at first. His own were ripped away from him and he still struggles to accept that he'll never het them back.

But, for his partner, he'll do anything, even if that means going and staying with their family at their massive farm for a week, then that's what he'll do.

Obviously, they warn him well in advance of their hectic family, tell him that if it gets too much at any point to just tell them and they'll take a breather, maybe book a hotel for the night, or hell, even sleep in the barn like they did when their siblings fought.

Upon arrival, Simon's first thought is just how homey readers childhood home is. A big converted barn with a wraparound porch and a woman sat on the swing in the shade with a baby on her hip and a collie at her feet.

Reader perks up immediately, running to their sister and their niece, being wrapped up in a huge hug, the type that Simon (although he'll never admit) will always miss.

Reader will give Simon, who looks like a lost puppy, a little nod to join them, and readers sister already has him in a bone crushing hug, surprising for a woman of her size, and one holding a baby at that.

"Si! This is my sister Cassie, and her daughter Emmeline." Reader'll muse, squishing the tiny toddlers cheeks between their fingers, before pottering inside with an "We're home!" We're.

Reader's parents are equally as welcoming, and their two brothers also take a total shine to Simon, asking if he's ever Benn quad biking or if he wants to play paintball.

The lot of them come in covered head to toe in fluorescent blue paint, all except for Simon, who just stands there smugly, giving reader a little wink like his paintball skills are some strange attempt at wooing them.

Mealtimes are always wonderful, despite the ruckus of all - however many there are - of them.

Simon also learns where reader got their cooking skills from, and their mom is constantly plying him with inordinate amounts of food.

He also perpetually has to look at where he's walking, lest he step on a cats tail or dogs paw or kids toy.

He and reader spend their days laying in the sun and picking vegetables for their mom to cook with, taking the dogs for a walk or babysitting their siblings kids.

Simon realises, perhaps for the first time in his life, that just because he had one family taken away, it doesn't mean that he doesn't deserve another.

⊹˚. ౨ৎ

Did not mean for this to go in the direction that it went in but oh well !

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mareposie · 1 year

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twiyor hc

Yor is feeling down lately, she’s daydreaming a lot and barely talk. One Friday morning she tells Loid that she will spend the weekend away, she wants to travel to her old village because she heard it had been restored and it is slowly getting repopulated with a great housing program. Loid wonders if she wants to go there alone, as a family or with Yuri. Yor says she doesn’t want to trouble anyone as she is a bit sensitive and might cry a lot, she doesn’t want Yuri or Anya to see her like that. Then Loid asks if he can go with her because he wants to be there for her when she will be vulnerable, since they’re married, they vowed to be there for each other in moments of weakness.

They make arrangements for Anya and Bond who will spend the weekend at Becky’s and there’s no emotional farewell moment because Anya was already running in the mansion with candied peanuts in her mouth before saying goodbye-

Loid and Yor arrive together in the old village and when they try to book at the hotel, the owner tells them there is only a room. So they blush and they act like they don’t mind because they are MARRIED.

The visit goes well, Yor shows all the places of her childhood (when her parents were still alive) to Loid, at least the ones she remembers. Many buildings are brand-new so it looks weird. The few people who lives there are people who came because of the housing program so they are not from the village originally. Loid notices that Yor lost her Southern accent but he can still hear it sometimes as he sees the elderly who survived the war talking with that accent. But Yuri definitely has the Berlint accent.

Yor’s mood is a little bit better as she found the farm with apple trees and the endless red roses bushes that she loved so much. She kicks an apple tree and many apples fall down “just like old times” (Loid just stares in silent, he’s used to that, not even questioning how a little girl could have done that.).

Her old preschool doesn’t exist anymore as it had been destroyed by bombs, she tells Loid that it was the only time she went to school and after that she didn’t receive an education because her parents died and she had to take care of Yuri... Sometimes she feels embarrassed because Loid and Yuri are super smart and sometimes she feels out of place. Loid tells her she is “street smart” which is even better because she knows things that books could not teach Loid for example, understanding children and kicking angry cows to calm them down.

They finally find Yor’s old house and guess what ? It’s one of the few houses that hadn’t been destroyed. They knock at the door and a pregnant woman opens the door and welcomes them, she got the house from the special program and has recently moved in with her husband. She allows Yor and Loid to visit the house but everything inside has been replaced or restored. Yor still find scratches in the kitchen and she reveals her mother used to cut the meat with a lot of strength and her father was tired of buying new cutting boards everyday. Loid laughed because Yor also cuts with a strong hand. The garden is large and they used to have chicken and would grow vegetables, Yor smiles when she remembers how she caught a rabbit in the garden with her bare hands when she was 4 and how her mother cooked it for dinner (Loid questioning himself again then smiles).

When they’re about to leave, the husband of the new owner arrive and said he found something hidden in the wooden floor and he shows them a box filled memories of the Briar family, there are albums filled with pictures, diaries, baby clothes, jewels and other things. He wanted to bring it to the government just in case the family was still alive. The pregnant lady says she is so happy that she and Yuri are okay and promise to take care of the house. She also wants them to visit as much as they want.

When Loid and Yor are back to the hotel, they remember the single bed crisis but Yor is too busy with the Briar box to worry about the bed. They spend the whole evening looking at the baby pictures of Yor and Yuri with all the missing information like the birth charts. She found her mother’s recipe book filled all the dishes she used to cook, that stew is not exactly like the one she cooked with Camilla but she is glad because it’s her own cooking inspired by her mother’s. Loid suggests to help her to prepare those recipes and Yor is just so happy. She cries when she sees pictures of her parents because she had forgotten their faces and Loid makes sures to comfort her. Yor and Yuri took their whole look from their mother but the funniest thing is that Yor’s father is actually a pretty blonde blue eyed man, just like Loid, Yor mentions that she thought he was brunette but now she really see the ressemblance with her dad, even in kindness and patience. Her mother was actually the strict parent.

Loid shares details on what he remembers from his childhood and he wondered if they could have been friends as children. Yor thinks no because Loid seems to come from a distinguished family and there’s an awkward silence. Then they find her parents’ wedding vows and also the rings as if her mother knew that something would happen to them so they hid their memories in this box. Yor find a very long letter written by her mother and this letter explains how she knew Yor and Yuri would be orphan because of the war and how they would always be watching them from the sky and many angsty stuff that just makes Yor cry even harder. Loid and Yor spend the night in each other’s arms, comforting each other and Yor says she is glad there’s only one bed because she doesn’t know how she would have made it alone. She was tired of feeling alone.

The day after, they go to the library and they manage to get all the Briar family related documents. Yor’s mother used to be a well known performer from the Far East who retired after getting married while her father was...a doctor. A military doctor though (not Loid wondering why there are too many coincidences --many that’s why Yuri hates him so much). Yor’s mother used to be a “performer” who has a great physical strength ? Hm. Loid thinks a lot.

When they are in the train back to Berlint, Yor thanks Loid for taking care of her when she was vulnerable and as a present, she proposed to him one more time with her parents’ rings. He gladly accepts and he says he would do it a thousand times because he is her life partner.

Anya is happy to see her parents again (yeah she miss them) and she suddenly tells Yor that she loves her, and even calls her “Mommy” for the first time. Of course, Yor cried and calls Anya with many pet names.

Now Yor is always bubbly but gets flustered when she remembers how close and touchy she was with Loid during that trip. And also how they slept in the same bed.

“Papa and Mama kissed in a bed ?”

“NO WE DIDN’T”

Fin.

#spy x family #spy x family headcanons #twiyor #Yor Forger #loid forger #anya forger

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luluwquidprocrow · 5 months

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sometimes a family is three orphans, their adopted daughter, one not-so-sad writer, and two triplets

frank, beatrice the second, the baudelaires, lemony, ernest, implied ernest/lemony

gen

3,598 words

In the grand tradition of all parents, the extended baudelaire family find themselves trying to pull a fast one.

for @asouefanworkevent's woevember day 4, the hotel denouement! some rambling headcanon nonsense half-fic about post-canon family that i had great fun doing. my favorite thing in the whole world is post-canon babybea interacting with her absurd enormous family. i love them all so much.

okay. so bear with me here

so i think most parents/guardians are at one point or another faced with Pulling The Ultimate Fast One on their children. this is related to Your Beloved Pet Died But We’re Telling You We Sent Them To Live On The Farm, but this version, in particular, is infinitely easier and harder. this one is The Switch. The Replacement. The Double. when the intrepid parent or guardian, under the cover of night, goes to the pet store to purchase The Exact Same Animal because the first animal had an untimely death. i will admit, this is the easiest with like, a goldfish, or something else small where you can usually get one that looks very similar.

now, for babybea, it’s a pumpkin.

so babybea (who is twelve at the time this story takes place), at the very end of september, carves a pumpkin, and she goes in with a VISION. she spends a couple hours on this pumpkin, carving an owl. It’s not, yknow, a realistic owl, but she adds a lot of tiny details, lots of lines for the feathers, and she carves a little mouse on the side too, and even gets the side of a tree in there, and the pumpkin carving kit the baudelaires purchased that year came with these little stick lights, to put in the owl eyes after carving, so it has orange eyes!! this is!!!! The neatest thing babybea has ever seen, and she is so thrilled with the results and very proud of this pumpkin. (for the record – violet carves a few pumpkins into a starry night with a moon, klaus carves monstera leaves, and. let’s be real. sunny bites a series of turnips into jack-o-lanterns.) (and then she stabs a couple white pumpkins into bigger jack-o-lanterns, for variety. all of them get different expressions!

sunny, arranging her carved vegetation on the baudelaire porch in order of emotion: perfect.) (no, i don’t know what order of emotion means. But sunny does.)

Then they all pile into violet’s car – pumpkin included!! – and drive almost an hour out of the city to the bildungsroman bed and breakfast. (frank and ernest decided, at this point in their lives, if they were going to commit to anything, it may as well be The Bit.) (it has a local reputation as a place with solid wifi, stellar bread, and great mattresses. The owners are considered minorly eccentric, mostly for the portrait they have in the lobby, of, just one of them.

some impassioned yelp review: okay so the stay was great big recommend PLEASE try the bread but i cannot figure out the story behind the portrait in the lobby????? it's just one one of the owners?????? but I don't understand why bc they're twins and it's just ONE of them?????? and he's wearing this frog-patterned tie in the painting and when you see them like in person. neither of them wear the tie. what's the deal here

the locals are sure it's not an ego thing, bc the owners don't seem to be self-centered or anything like that. In fact, if asked about the painting, both of them will say, “oh, that's a painting of my brother.”

an additional yelp comment: I think. there's THREE of them a third yelp comment: don't be silly, they're definitely twins.)

frank and ernest have a very elaborate series of outdoor autumn decorations, with lots of pumpkins and mini gourds and hay bales over the front steps and corn stalks on all the porch posts, and babybea wants to not only show her uncles her hard work, but also put the pumpkin on their steps where everyone can see it!!

(her uncles also include lemony, of course – I think he did live with the baudelaires for some time after reuniting babybea with them, but has recently moved into ernest's side of the private apartment at the back of the hotel. this was mildly distressing to babybea, who likes everyone she loves under the same roof, but she can't deny that lemony is very happy. and so is ernest. and now she can see all her uncles in the same place whenever she wants!! so the baudelaires tend to spend weekends at the bed and breakfast, because they also miss lemony. and they get to know frank and ernest better, which is very important to them, as people who are important to babybea, and to lemony, and, to the baudelaire's past.) (not to like, detract from the sentiment here, but i do need everyone to know that i imagine ernest spends like, 80% of his working hours just making out with lemony.) (okay maybe not 80%. ernest does legitimately get work done, it’s his hotel too. ………but like, a lot of time.)

AND SO. the baudelaires arrive at the bed and breakfast, and frank and ernest and lemony are very proud of their niece's pumpkin. they take a lot of pictures. (re: my previous post-canon thoughts, frank has actually acquired a phone now, and does text. it is a flip phone.) babybea places it, very gently, on the third front step, and is so pleased. sunny steals two mini gourds while looking ernest dead in the eye. ernest approves.

But october turns out to be unseasonably warm, and babybea’s pumpkin, while lovingly carved but now lacking the support an uncarved pumpkin has to keep itself A Pumpkin, does not take kindly to the weather, and babybea actually becomes very distressed at the smallest signs of rot beginning to form in her pumpkin, when it is only the second week of october. She doesn’t TELL anybody, because there’s not really much you can do about a pumpkin doing what a pumpkin does in warm weather, but she’s very upset. (almost uncharacteristically so. usually she’d say, oh, well that’s how it happens, and rather pleasantly move on, but lately, she’s been kind of. quieter than usual.) And frank, who spends a great deal of time at the front desk, closest to the pumpkins, becomes Concerned.

now, in general, babybea’s family is like, pretty good at being realistic with her. She is of course an optimist, but still Aware of a great deal of the ways of the world, given her family, her upbringing, lemony’s books, her own adventures, everything. You can’t really shield this twelve year old from the ways of the world, even if that way of the world is, a rotting vegetable. All things have their time, and it cannot be stopped. Including seasons, and in-season foods.

However. She put SO MUCH WORK into that pumpkin, and as the week goes by and the pumpkin starts to shrink in on itself, turning all of babybea’s work black from the inside out, those charming little glowstick eyes CAVING IN, and the baudelaire’s weekly weekend visit grows closer and closer, frank has been imagining her devastated reaction when she sees the pumpkin, and decides, He Must Pull The Fast One. he will re-carve the pumpkin, exactly as babybea carved it, replace the pumpkin, and no one will be the wiser. They get a little more time with the pumpkin, presumably at least until halloween, and his niece gets to see her beautiful handiwork as much as she likes. Maybe, you know, there is a little magic in the world after all, to make a pumpkin look so nice.

(also, i think frank has. A shaky relationship with babybea, from his end. She loves him, as much as she loves everyone else in her family, and babybea herself would NEVER rank her uncles in order of how well she knows or admires them, but i, lulu vandelay, putting this together, have no qualms in saying she knows lemony the best, bc she has spent the most time with him, between trying to find him and both of them trying to find the baudelaires and all of them having lived together, and she’s rather deeply attached to him – ernest is very personable, and funny, so he’s easy to get along with – and she and frank both like tiny detail work, so they have things in common, but frank always seems very awkward around her. And he is. It’s bc he’s very nervous around her. Frank doesn’t think he’s good with kids. And he is usually acutely aware that in an ideal world, he isn’t the one she’d be spending her time with, that dewey would be so much better at all of this than he is. A better parent, a better brother, a better everything. Because dewey always was, to frank. but, dewey would probably want frank to do as much as he could for her, and would believe him absolutely capable of doing it, without a doubt. So he wants to be a proper uncle to her and THIS is his opportunity, he thinks. He so desperately wants to do something kind and considerate and important for her, like family is supposed to do for each other.)

the thing about pumpkins, though, is that, for some reason, mid-october, THEY ALL DISAPPEAR. I’m serious, you ever try and find a good pumpkin even like a little over halfway through october? It can be hard.

frank: i need your assistance. ernest: i’ve killed my quota for the month. frank: i – ernest, please. ernest: alright, my apologies. What do you need? frank: a pumpkin. lemony, from the kitchen: jarrahdale or red warty? frank: no, i mean a carving pumpkin.

The three of them take a good, long look at babybea’s pumpkin. Uncle Instincts Have Activated. They, very solemnly, bury the pumpkin in the back garden (lemony is the one who takes one for the team and removes the glowstick eyes from the depths of sad, sad pumpkin). And then embark on a mission. Please imagine the three of them packed into a mint green 1960 chevy corvette. Sunglasses optional. Who’s driving? That is up to you, my friend. Oh, google informs me it is cascade green. Imagine accordingly. (yes, no corvette has ever been made with more than two seats, but isn’t that just funnier? They really are packed in there. Lemony sits in the middle.)

The hunt for the right pumpkin is long. Grueling! Kinda chilly! This is october!! Much comparison is made between potential pumpkins and the pictures they took of babybea’s pumpkin. Snacks are purchased. (lemony, who has recently been introduced to instagram, posts a picture of his pretzel. [ernest is out of focus in the corner, eating a chocolate ice cream cone.] [#pretzel.]

sunbad: what is that lemonysnicket: I have purchased a pretzel sunbad: without me sunbad: you’re dead to me.)

(it was actually not sunny who introduced lemony to instagram, although she was his first follower. It was klaus.) (klaus uses instagram mainly to never post anything ever, just to follow his favorite authors, so he wanted lemony to have an instagram, especially since he just moved out.) (klaus……..my heart………..) (oh, frank bought chex mix. he likes those gross rye bread pieces.)

(don’t get me started on lemony with an instagram……….I think this is a hilarious but also heartwarming thought – this man who has avoided being photographed for years and years and years and YEARS (yes that much repetition was in fact necessary) is at a point in his life here he is not only comfortable of taking pictures of his life, but he is capable of doing it, he’s allowed!! It’s still probably mostly food and it’s so good!!!!!!!! and think of the amount of pictures he keeps just in his phone gallery, too!!! violet’s inventions and klaus’ library displays and sunny’s baking and babybea’s school projects and ernest’s record collection and frank’s breakfast spreads, and nature shots with lemony’s thumb in the corner, AAAAAAAAAAAA) (uh, anyway, these men are on a mission. back to the mission.)

Eventually, they do find a comparable replacement pumpkin! Does it fit in the car? Lemony, by virtue of sitting in the middle, holds the pumpkin.

They return to the bed and breakfast. Between the three of them, many different knives, and all of their photos, frank and ernest and lemony painstakingly recreate babybea’s pumpkin, down to the last, smallest detail. Including the little mouse and the side of the tree and the feathers and everything. (frank does do most of the work, because ernest and lemony very much see that this is important to him, but he doesn’t mind them helping, because, yknow. This is about family, and babybea is their family too.) (frank feels like he owes lemony a lot. for trying to set the record straight about their past. or as straight as one could try and set it, with what all of them did. for their niece. for making ernest happy.) (ernest deserves to be happy, with everything they put each other through. ernest thinks the same for frank, too.)

(ugggggg if you told the three of them when they were so much younger that one day they’d stay up late recreating their niece’s perfect pumpkin masterpiece so she’s not upset about the passage of time………..)

(who’s in charge of the bed and breakfast while all of this is happening??

ernest: mallory, you’re in charge. mallory, a twenty-two year old with a major in hotel management who runs the front desk when ernest and frank can’t: sounds like a plan.

mallory has a deep respect for the denouements. meanwhile –

mallory: so you’re lemony snicket. lemony: i am, yes. mallory: you don’t look like your photo. lemony: that’s my legal representative. he has a stamp.)

meanwhile meanwhile – it is not necessarily about the pumpkin.

For babybea’s part, she already firmly believes that there is some sort of magic in the world. Even at twelve. Especially at twelve!! Look, she knows it wasn’t magic that reunited her with her family, that it was her and lemony’s hard work, but she wound up with SO much more family than she expected, when she first contacted lemony. And like, that is what there’s magic in. this whole group of people who care about her and love her and want to spend time with her. Babybea thinks she has the best family in the whole entire world. (AND SHE’S RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!)

But that is also babybea’s problem right now. She loves her family so much, and she loves having them, and it’s been a couple months but she is still not entirely comfortable with people she loves being so far away from her. Not now! Not when they’re all supposed to be in the same space, like they’re supposed to be!! And some kids at school have teased her, not so much about her puzzle-piece family but that she talks about her uncles so much. She’s just proud of her family and she loves them!! But middle schoolers are like, rude as fuck sometimes, okay. And they don’t even think they’re saying anything wrong, just offhand comments about how much she talks about them. They don’t even know anything about her parents, not really, but babybea starts to feel like, it’s the unspoken throughline in what they’re saying, why doesn’t she ever talk about them? Why only her uncles, her guardians? They’re her family, but –

she feels almost guilty, that she goes through periods where she doesn’t even think of her parents at all, and periods where she can’t stop thinking about what they would look like and what they would be like, and that makes her feel like she doesn’t value the family she DOES have. So it’s not necessarily about the pumpkin starting to rot, what’s making her upset. It’s that, the pumpkin is another thing in a line of things babybea is Thinking about, things that aren’t Going the way she thought they were supposed to go. Her uncle moving out, missing somebody who was supposed to be there, her pumpkin not staying like it’s supposed to, she’s SUPPOSED to love her family but is she loving them right? Is she loving the right people right? Can you miss people you didn’t even know? And babybea has it very set in her head, the things she knows and is supposed to do – this is something she hasn’t quite worked on, but she’ll get to it eventually, she is still twelve – and they keep not happening like that. And now. Something else she worked really, really, really hard on, that isn’t going right either.

So she spends the week a little gloomy about her pumpkin, and worrying the whole ride friday afternoon after school to the bildungsroman bed and breakfast. Violet and klaus and sunny are very aware of babybea’s mood, and try to cheer her up by asking her about what she’ll be for halloween, but babybea’s heart is not super into this conversation. (she has ideas about a big group costume where they’re all different local birds, but now she’s not even sure about that.)

And then! She sees her pumpkin!! Glowy eyes and all!!!!! And, mysteriously, those little spots of rot she’d noticed the week before are gone, and, in fact, it looks a little sharper than it had before? And she didn’t think she’d cut the lid quite like that, but! That’s her pumpkin, exactly where it’s supposed to be!!! And it makes her feel just a little better. That’s good. That’s right. But she still can’t, entirely shake off all her previous feelings, about family. But. right now. Her pumpkin still looks very special.

Later, babybea can’t sleep. So she sneaks out of bed and goes down to the lobby, and sits down on the floor in front of the front desk, and looks at the big painting on the wall, that ernest did of her father.

This, of course, is where frank finds her. (because frank has never been very good at sleeping consistently, even when there’s nothing to worry about now, and he likes to walk through the hotel to make sure it’s secure.)

(ernest would say something very clever, like, aha, with a raised eyebrow, but all frank says is – )

frank: hello, beatrice. beatrice: oh! beatrice: hello, uncle frank. frank: may i sit down? beatrice: yes, please.

They spend a little while looking at the portrait.

beatrice: um – beatrice: does it –

What she wants to ask is, does it look very much like my father, which she then realizes is such a STUPID question if her father was a TRIPLET and she has a mirror image of him right in front of her, who acts like she thinks a father is supposed to act, so, but, it’s not like that doesn’t mean dewey didn’t look like dewey. Just because dewey looked like frank doesn’t mean he only looked like frank. And beatrice forgets, sometimes, that he would’ve just looked just like her uncles. But still!

beatrice: i mean – the painting, is it –

But she thinks it’s such a terrible thing to ask!! But frank knows EXACTLY what she means.

(some time ago, when the hotel had just opened and ernest had just painted the portrait of dewey –

ernest: i wanted it to look like him. And, it’s not like i, don’t know what he looks like. Looked like. I mean – that could just be me or you up there, couldn’t it. It doesn’t look like it’s him. frank: no, it does. frank, knowing exactly what he means and feeling like, he needs to make ernest Not look so abjectly miserable: you don’t look nearly as happy. ernest, in tears, very amused and touched and still terribly upset: wow!

The point being, god of course it looks like dewey. It couldn’t be anybody but dewey, even if dewey looks like other people. Dewey looks like himself, he looks like his family, he looks like beatrice, around the eyes. And family means lots of things. It means your guardians raising you, and your uncles raising you, and your father’s portrait on the wall and never knowing him at all, and loving so many people and being loved back by them, whether or not it’s Supposed to be a specific way, and sometimes it means missing somebody, sometimes it means missing different people, sometimes it means being sad for something you’re not sure if you should or could miss, sometimes it means not missing anyone at all, sometimes it means your uncle going to live with his definitely boyfriend even if they won’t say the words out loud who’s also your uncle just on the other side of your family and that doesn’t mean anyone’s going anywhere. Sometimes it means your pumpkin rotting, because things change. uh, does this make sense.) (admittedly, i put a lot of things in this.)

frank: yes, it looks very much like him. frank: i think about him a lot. beatrice: ......would he like my pumpkin? frank, without hesitation: absolutely. beatrice: do you like it? frank: i do.

of course babybea already knew that, but it's nice to hear. it's just. nice. it's not, like, everything? just like before. but beatrice is loved by a lot of people, and she loves them, too, and. she feels loved, right here, like she's supposed to, and that's what's Supposed to happen.

beatrice hugs him, and it's not the first time she's hugged frank, but it means more? frank hugs her back.

beatrice: thanks for fixing my pumpkin. frank: i’m sure i don’t know what you mean, beatrice.

beatrice hugs him again, and then goes back upstairs. frank looks a little longer at the portrait, and then goes to bed himself, and doesn't get back up until his alarm goes off.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #woevember #tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...................#you know what. for as much as i Did In Fact jam in here. bc my thoughts get away from me. i DO think i wrapped it up rather nicely.#the capitals are inconsistent bc i wrote this in googledocs and it just wants to capitalize EVERYTHING. AGAINST MY WILL #i am as stunned as you are that this is frank-centric. but sometimes the words happen.#if you were wondering. yes my parents did in fact Pull This Fast One on me. with. yes. fish.

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humansofnewyork · 2 years

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(2/13) “My life of crime came to an end in Room 911 of the Philadelphia Lowes Hotel. Room 911. That was the Feds fucking with me. I hadn’t been in the room for 5 minutes when there was a knock on the door. A voice said: ‘Housekeeping.’ But I knew: ‘That’s not fucking housekeeping.’ Nine guys bust in carrying every type of gun known to man. And that was the end. Part of me was glad it was over. I’d become a scumbag. A complete, sociopathic scumbag. But before any of this happened, Johnny Gargano was a pretty good person. I really believe that. Not the most emotional guy. Not the most expressive guy, but certainly not a scumbag. I believed in right and wrong. I’d bring baskets of vegetables to my friends’ mothers. I was a freaking altar boy for ten years. Not saying that means anything, those child molesting fucks. But with all things considered: a pretty good person. Then one afternoon I’m taking a nap on the couch, and there’s a knock on the door. It’s the Fed-Ex guy, with a package from the health insurance company. It says my application for coverage has been denied. Now there were only six reasons you could be denied. The first five were crazy bugs in Africa. I was a farm boy from New Jersey; I’d never been to Africa in my life. So that left the sixth thing: HIV Positive. How did I get it? Some things in life are nobody’s business. Not then, not now. It’s taken me 25 years to even talk about my diagnosis. I come from an old school Italian family where nobody talks about nothing, especially the men. Everything gets swept under the rug. Could all of this been avoided with a conversation? Who knows. But I didn’t know how to have it. I couldn’t handle the stigma. I couldn’t handle the shame. At the time I had a garden shop, with thirty greenhouses; I left them all behind. I packed up my shit and moved to Philadelphia. This was 1997; there were no miracle drugs back then. I thought 100 percent for sure I was going to die. I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen to me, but I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. I felt like I’d just been ejected from a roller coaster, and I said: ‘Fuck it. I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want before I hit the ground.”

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kirisaki-daichi-scenarios · 1 year

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Kiridai if Kiridai were involved in agriculture

Britain edition because I know little to nothing about Japanese agriculture

Hanamiya Makoto

Large animal and equine vet

The type of vet who sells various prescription drugs under the counter (or, to be specific, from the boot of his car): everyone knows and no one calls him out on it, because cheaper drugs are cheaper drugs

There’s a rumour that he used to be a specialist small animal cardiologist abroad, best in the country, and only moved because he may or may not have made an ethically dubious decision that may or may not have resulted in his breaking criminal law

But he also has a great eye for spotting lameness that another vet would miss, and in general his diagnoses are never wrong, so livestock owners flock to him because one consultation almost always gets the job done, and equine owners flock to him because he always finds a problem to explain their paranoia

Yamazaki Hiroshi

Has a flock of sheep in the Uplands

I.e. he spends lambing season in sideways rain and gales, getting soaked to the skin and swearing that he’ll give up on sheep, and yet he never does and never will

Breeds for meat, but dreams of a world where he could breed primarily for wool and earn a living from it

Has a couple wethers living in his house full time - all were orphaned at birth and thus hand-reared by him, making him too attached to them to send them to slaughter

Also has a slightly deranged collie that still hasn’t quite figured out why it has to leave said wethers alone but herd all the other sheep

Names as many of his sheep as his memory can manage, even though he knows it just makes the goodbyes harder

Furuhashi Kojiro

Flower farmer - has some bee hives on the side, and grows seasonal vegetables, but his primary focus/income is cut flowers

Has a good 400 varieties of flowers (everything from Achillea to Weigela) growing on his land for commercial use, most of which he will cut and organise for wedding and hotel arrangements and bouquets

Also grows his own rose breeds (one purple to red climbing rose; one mostly white with hints of purple Damask rose) but he rarely, if ever, sells any of the progeny. They’re practically his children, after all - you don’t sell your children

Some of them will see the inside of rose shows, and the climbing rose has been planted at a rose garden, but otherwise they spend his days in his garden

Meanwhile, the other flowers and the foliage both get sold throughout the year, as does the honey and the vegetables (at the local village market), and, though he doesn’t love cutting them, he doesn’t miss them like he would the roses

Doesn’t use any insecticide or herbicide and very much judges flower farmers that do

If he’s not silently tending to his plants for hours on end, then he’s grumbling about the loss of insects, and if he’s not grumbling about the loss of insects, he’s frowning reading the latest reports on climate change

His plans for the future involve an exceptionally sharp pair of scissors and a Bonsai tree

Seto Kentato

Large animal vet

Tried small animal for a while, and then equine, but neither worked because he found the owners talked too much or ‘loved their animals too much’ (aka made them obese). Hence moving onto, and sticking with, large animal.

The farmers he works with know that he doesn’t like to talk too much, and can be brusque, but none of them care because he’s the best large animal vet in the area

Doesn’t particularly like cows but, for reasons unknown, cows really like him (and bulls despise him)

Can be found sleeping at the back of the clinic whenever he’s not on call

Thinking about getting some training and specialising in large zoo animals, for the added challenge - something about rhinos and elephants is calling his name

Hara Kazuya

He was a man child struggling with boredom and too much money for his own good, who therefore decided he’d try his hand at farming

Wasn’t initially sure what to farm - at one point, he was seriously considering snails - until he read that the ostrich industry had collapsed because no one could figure out how to keep them healthy in the UK. And he took that as a challenge.

Hence Hara, the ostrich farmer.

Went through a phase where he had his hair dyed half black and half white, to rep the ostriches

Keeps saying he’ll get a dangerous animal license, so he can get some pet zebras to continue with “the theme”… the mad* lad might just do it

He’s also the kind of owner to ask whether he can give his ostriches weed to help them chill out “because it works for people in the States”… it’s safe to say that his local vets avoid doing his call-outs as much as possible,

The ostriches like him though :)

The business is profitable, the animals are healthy so clearly he’s doing something right

*and by mad, I mean despicable. do not keep wild animals as pets.

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phantoids · 1 year

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Fuck it. Take some dsmp countries worldbuilding for an AU I'm working on.

Snowchester. originally it was l'manberg's industrial sector of claimed land, including a nuclear research lab (not limited to weapons but mostly yea, i like to think they had a decent physics department and were trying to figure out nuclear reactors to help power the city when things started getting worse) but ofc it turned into an industrial town since workers migrated there. you have small farms of hardy vegetables and their own traditions and such. it ends up gaining independence of lmanberg as like a separate country but it's still a colony yk since they wanted to be allow the people of snowchester to be seen as their own people whilst being able to easily keep their lmanberg citizenship and such given they're all first generation migrants basically. snowchester's main things are engineering (electrical, mechanical, anything they can get to do with mechanics), physics and nuclear physics. they've got some primary industry in extracting natural materials required for the nukes (the specific area is where there's a lot of very deeply buried inactive nuclear ore) and ofc secondary industry in the processing of those materials too since they're refined there too. snowchester has very little tertiary industry, and quite a bit of quaternary in terms of engineering and designers and such. meanwhile l'manberg has quite a bit of quaternary and tertiary industry but not nearly as much secondary (they mainly export food products, however, and often jewellery too) and basically no primary industry.

snowchester remains one of the more populated areas on the server after the egg, with how it's self sufficient and a bit too cold for the vines still. some are creeping up the shore though and nobody's too sure how long they have til the town is uninhabitable.

the dsmp specialises in primary industry and tertiary. all its manufacturing is either outsourced to lmanberg or the badlands. cause like. the badlands is an extremely good place to have a lot of manufacturing and quaternary as well, and they just do fuck all everything. they are THE manufacturing specialists (also cause sam would definitely like that kind of thing and help out with it).

kinoko exports agricultural goods and has one of the most popular brewing industries on the server, as well as being renowned for the general quality of ingredients and the amount of cafes. also has a lot of builders, there's a decent amount of construction done there due to the materials used in most of the buildings, it attracts a lot of carpenters and construction workers who want to test their skill working with mushrooms sturdy enough to build a house with. las nevadas is entirely tertiary and quaternary industry, they outside a lot to lmanberg and the badlands. basically after el rapids dispersed they created las nevadas so the few people who lived there moved to las nevadas, and people probably migrated from elsewhere too, but el rapids was planned to have a decent entertainment industry. las nevadas has lots of builders and carpenters and jewellery sellers but it's all bespoke stuff, and a lot of it is high end or hand made goods too. it's where you'll go to find the best restaurants and hotels and night clubs and casinos. it's where you meet the big business execs and where there's a lot of cramped office buildings, and the food is quite lovely since it's so close to kinoko they get fresh ingredient imports every day.

also foolish's summer home is a tourist attraction and resort. you've also just got foolish there. he's always seen building smth.

#void talks about writing #worldbuilding shit #god i love it so much.#tteote au

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andnowanowl · 3 months

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Since "Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation" is suspiciously not available in the US in the form of an e-book, I purchased a physical copy and wanted to share it here for anyone else also unable to get access.

IBTISAM ILZOGHAYYER

Director of cultural center, 54

Born in Battir, West Bank

Interviewed in Bethlehem, West Bank

During our dozen or more meetings with Ibtisam Ilzoghayyer in her office, her black hair is either pulled back into a slick ponytail or falls to her shoulders in tight curls. She speaks with us in English, and she has a distinct accent influenced by her time studying at Newcastle University in northern England. When she stands, she adjusts a clamp on a knee brace in order to walk. This is due to a childhood bout with polio, which she contracted when she was two years old.

Ibtisam is the director of the Ghirass Cultural Center, which she helped found in 1994. Ghirass, which means "young trees" in Arabic, serves more than a thousand youth annually in the Bethlehem region through enrichment programs in reading, traditional Palestinian arts, and more. The center also provides literacy programs for women - generally mothers who are learning to read so that they can take a more active role in their children's education.

The walls of Ibtisam's office are decorated with awards and framed drawings by children who have passed through the center. Throughout her day, children stop by to share their successes - an improved test score or a list of books read during the month. Ibtisam takes time with each one to congratulate and encourage them, and to laugh with them. She spends most of her time at the center she works five or six days a week, though she can often be found at the center on her days off as well. When she isn't at the center, she is likely to be at home with her elderly mother, tending a large garden of fruit trees, flowers, and vegetables.

I was born in 1960, in Battir.¹ Life in the village was simple. Most of my neighbors were farmers, and when I was a child, people from Battir would all travel into Jerusalem to sell produce in the markets there. My parents had some land that they farmed, and my father was also a chef. When I was very young, he worked at a hotel in Amman, Jordan, and we'd see him on the weekends.² Then, after 1967, he began working as a chef at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem.³

My mother stayed home and raised me and my siblings - there were nine of us. We didn't have TVs, and there were no computers and no plastic toys to keep us distracted. I think we were lucky to have those things. Instead, we used nature. We'd play in the fields, climbtrees, make toys ourselves out of sticks and stones. It seemed then there weren't divisions then between neighbors, despite religion or other differences. We were all part of one culture in many ways. I remember my mother coloring eggs every Easter. It was something that had been passed down for generations - it wasn't a Christian thing or a Muslim thing, it was a Palestinian thing to mark Easter that way.

I must have joined in all the games when I was very young, but then I developed a disability as an infant. When I was two and a half years old, my mother was carrying me past a clinic in town one day. A clinic nurse stopped us and told my mother she should come in, that she should get me the vaccine for polio. So I was given a vaccine. That night I had a fever, and I couldn't move my right arm and left leg. Over the next few years, I was able to regain function of my limbs, but my left leg grew in shorter than my right. At age four, I started wearing a brace to help me walk. It was just bad luck that we walked past that clinic.

I had to get used to people treating me differently because of my disability. Even people's facial expressions when meeting me were different they didn't react to me as if I were a normal child. When I was at school, I was excluded from physical education activities, and some field trips that required a lot of walking. That was really difficult.

I also had learning disabilities. My teacher beat me once in fourth grade because I was nearly failing all subjects. Education was important to my parents, so they were unhappy that I was struggling. My father had only gone through fourth grade, so he could read and write. My mother had never been to school. But they wanted more for their kids. Especially me. Because I had a disability, they wanted me to do well in school so that I'd be independent when I grew up, and not need to rely on anyone.

Then in the fifth grade, I succeeded on an exam, and the feeling was very strange. The teacher handed back the paper and said the work was "excellent." I couldn't believe I'd done anything that would make her say that. I couldn't believe that it was my paper that was excellent. I thought she'd made a mistake. I think that's common for children who aren't used to success-they don't realize it's their effort that leads to excellence. They think it's by accident. But I tasted success just that one time, and I realized I loved it. I just had to convince myself it wasn't a mistake! Then I continued to try hard at school, and I started to realize my potential.

In 1977, I was accepted into a boarding school in Jerusalem. It was actually right next to the American Colony Hotel, so I could see my father sometimes. I'd also go home on holidays. It was still relatively easy to travel into and out of Jerusalem then.

I did well enough in high school that I got accepted into the University of Jordan in Amman. I started there in the fall of 1979, and I studied economics. I loved university, and I wasn't lonely. Other than college students who became friends, I had a lot of family living and working in Amman. But I still felt homesick sometimes, and I started to understand what made Palestine feel special. In my last year at university, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish came to read at a theater on campus. I got tickets to go, but when I arrived, the theater was absolutely packed. And the streets outside were full. There were so many Palestinians in Jordan, and we all wanted to hear this poet remind us what it meant to be Palestinian.

IT RAISED A LOT OF EMOTIONS FOR ME

I returned home in 1984, and I had one of the hardest years of my life. I had just spent many years working extremely hard to make something of myself, to become independent from my parents - economically, emotionally, socially so that I wouldn't be a burden to them. Then I returned to Palestine and found I couldn't get a job. Because of my economics degree, I wanted to work in a bank, but there weren't any jobs in that field available, and I couldn't find any other sort of work. So I lived with my parents for a year and they supported me. I was very depressed during that time.

Then one day in 1985, I read a classified ad put up by the BASR.⁶ They were offering to train workers in a field called community-based rehabilitation, which was about helping people with disabilities overcome them by working with the family - the whole community, really - to integrate the disabled into daily life. At first, I wanted nothing to do with that sort of work. I had an economics degree, and I had spent my whole life trying to get away from any limitations imposed by my own disability. I simply didn't want to think about disabilities. But I desperately wanted a job, so I applied.

I trained with the BASR for a year. It was hard. I worked with children who had hearing issues, blindness, mental health issues. The work brought up a lot of emotions for me, and it took some time to become comfortable around the children. But I kept receiving praise from my supervisors, and they made me feel like I was useful. In 1986, I began working in some of the refugee camps in Bethlehem as well, and that helped open my eyes. I got to see some of the real traumathat was happening in the community. That same year, BASR opened a community center for people with mental health disabilities, and I helped to run it. It was a very busy time for me.

Then the following year, in 1987, the First Intifada began. I remember it started just after I got my driver's license. I bought an old used car on November 30 of that year, and I was really proud of myself. I was starting to feel quite independent. Then I set out to drive to work for the first time on December 6, and I ended up driving through streets littered with stones and burning tires. It was the first day of the Intifada, and I couldn't make it to work that day - there was too much happening in the streets. So I spent the day listening to the news with my family.

THINKERS BEFORE FIGHTERS

The idea of starting a community center came to me in 1990. It was the middle of the First Intifada, and the streets were dangerous places to play for children. Aside from the threat of getting caught in fighting, children were sometimes targeted by soldiers. Sometimes children threw stones at soldiers, but other times soldiers would find children simply playing traditional games with stones. Many children, even young children, were arrested by soldiers who saw them playing these games. So the idea of the center started as a way to give children a safe place to play.

Also, at that time many schools were frequently closed by military order, so children had to stay at home for long stretches of time. Sometimesthe Israeli military would even use schools as checkpoints to control the area. The school in Battir was used as a military camp. These realities came together to make us want to start the center.

The BASR was able to establish the Ghirass Cultural Center in Bethlehem in late 1993, early 1994. In the West Bank at that time, the school curriculum was Jordanian. In Gaza, it was Egyptian.⁸ So when I went to school, I studied a Jordanian curriculum. We never studied anything about Palestine or its history. We never saw a Palestinian map. We studied the history of Jordan, of China, of Germany, of England - I remember learning about all the families who ruled England-but nothing connected to our history, nothing connected to our geography, nothing connected to our culture.

When we started the center, we wanted to educate children about Palestinian culture, Palestinian music, Palestinian poetry. We have famous poets like Mahmoud Darwish, but it was forbidden for us to read from them or read other Palestinian writers. If the Israelis caught us with a book from certain Palestinian writers, we might end up in jail. We couldn't have Palestinian flags, political symbols, anything considered propaganda for a Palestinian state-everything could get us into trouble. My family, like most in the West Bank, had a hiding spot at home. For us, it was at the back of the cupboard. When we heard there were going to be raids on houses, we'd quickly hide our forbidden books of poetry or flags or whatever behind a false wall at the back of that cupboard.

With these restrictions in mind, one of our first goals at the center was to provide a sense of Palestinian culture to children. We wanted the center to be inclusive, so we didn't allow any religious symbols or symbols of any specific political parties in the center. We had children from Christian communities and Muslim, urban and rural, from refugee camps and from relatively well-off neighborhoods. I also continued to work with children who had disabilities, but we integrated them with other kids in the classroom, whether they were blind or hearing impaired or had learning disabilities. They were all integrated.

After working this way in the cultural center, I even began to forget my own disability completely. I had other things to worry about or work on. One day, I saw myself in a reflection in a window while in the street, and I remembered I didn't walk as other people do - I had simply forgotten for a time that I had any disability at all. And I was happy for myself! Overcoming my own disability was no longer my focus.

In the center, I tried to make students thinkers before fighters. I did everything I could to keep them in the center, or make sure they went straight home to keep them from dangerous interactions with the soldiers. We lost some children - some had a strong feeling that they wanted to fight. It was very difficult. Of course, they didn't always understand what they were doing. But they weren't just imitating other people who were fighting in the streets, they were expressing their own anger from experiencing humiliation and violence.

Not long after the center was established and I had begun working there, I had the chance to travel abroad for the first time. I went with a friend to help her apply for a scholarship offered by the British consul to study in England. While there, I applied myself, sort of on a whim. But it turns out I won the scholarship. When I got the call that I had won, the consular office gave me two weeks to get ready for travel. So for the first time, I got to leave Palestine - other than my college years in Jordan. I studied for a year at Newcastle University⁹ and learned administration and counseling. It was a good experience, even though it was hard.

I felt homesick from the moment the plane took off. I was away from home from the fall of 1994 to the spring of 1995. I got to travel a lot throughout England, and that was interesting, but I wanted to go home the whole time. I remember I had very little money, and what I had I'd use to call my family. I'd spend hours asking my brothers about neighbors I barely knew - old men who hung out on the street that I never talked to, for instance - just because I wanted to know everything that was happening at home. When I completed all my coursework, I was expected to stay for the graduation ceremony and some parties. But I told the school administration I didn't want any parties, I just wanted to go home and see my family!

CHILDREN SEE THAT THEIR PROTECTORS ARE SCARED

The Second Intifada began in 2000.¹⁰ During that time, I had to get around a lot of crazy obstacles just to continue my work. From late 2000 to 2003, I used to practically live in this office because I couldn't always go back home. I remember the first time I tried to go home to Battir from Bethlehem in 2000, just after the Intifada started. It was just a couple of miles, and the checkpoint was closed. Nobody could cross to or from the five villages on the other side of the checkpoint. The soldiers refused to let anyone go back home. Children, old men, workers - imagine, all these normal people who wanted to go back home at four p.m., the end of the working day. Hundreds of people! We were surrounded by soldiers, and I remember thinking that nobody had any place to hide if shooting started. I waited that day from four p.m. to seven p.m. At seven p.m., I was so angry and depressed I started talking to myself. I said, "God, are you there? And if you are there, are you seeing us? And if you are seeing us, are you satisfied with what is happening to us?" Finally, a little after seven p.m., I gave up and came back to Bethlehem and stayed at the center.

Another time that same year, I tried to walk home past the checkpoint. The Israelis had blocked the road with large stones. I wanted to go around the stones, because I couldn't climb over them with my leg problems. It was also slippery, because it was wintertime. But a soldier, a man less than twenty-five years old, stopped me from going around. When I tried to explain, the soldier said bad things to me - nobody in my life has said these things to me. He called me a prostitute. I can't repeat all the things he said. I became angry and I started to argue, and at that moment, a young man, Palestinian, tried to calm me down and asked me to stay quiet. He took my hand and helped me pass the checkpoint. At that moment I couldn't talk. I passed the checkpoint, and my brother was waiting for me on the other side. He took me by my hand and led me to his car, where my nephews and nieces were waiting. Normally I would talk to them, but I couldn't say a word. I knew that if I spoke, I'd start crying, and nobody would be able to stop me. I reached home and I threw myself on the bed. I felt I was paralyzed completely.

I saw the soldier the next day. I had a feeling that if I'd had a gun, I would have killed him. You know, I can't kill an insect, but in that moment, I felt my anger was more than it's been at any time. When he saw me, he began swearing at me again. It was very humiliating. I saw that soldier many times-usually soldiers would stay one week or ten days before they changed the group of soldiers at the checkpoints. I had to see him every day. And every day I looked at him and wished that someone would kill him in front of me. I wanted him to suffer.

One more occasion stands out from that checkpoint during the Second Intifada - I'm not sure exactly when. I remember a little girl was crying. She needed to get to school to take exams, and the soldier wouldn't let her. It's not guaranteed that a child is able to go to school. And it's not guaranteed that the child will be able to come back. Of course, this kind of helplessness has a psychological impact on kids as they grow up. Many parents have told us that their children have nightmares and achievement problems. Children look to us adults as people who can protect them, and when we can't - in many situations, we're scared! To see the child recognize that his mother is scared, his father is scared-it's not an easy thing.

When you move around Bethlehem, it's very restricted. We don't travel long distances. When you face a checkpoint or a wall, you might need to travel only a mile or two as the crow flies, but your destination is far away behind the wall. The children I teach don't have a good sense of distance because of the restrictions. They might say they live "far away," and I'll ask, "How far?" And it's a ten-minute car ride away, if not for checkpoints. That's far for them, because that fifteen minutes might actually be an hour or two most days. Sometimes I try to put all the obstacles in the back of my mind - the checkpoints, the harassments - to try and keep up my energy for my work, to keep my optimism for the future. But when I'm waiting at checkpoints, I have to face the hard realities of our lives. And the children I deal with they also have to face these realities, and before they're even fully grown they have to face them without guidance, without someone to protect them.

THE SIGN JUST SAID "OTHERS"

Back in 1994, just after we'd started the center, we used to take students to Jerusalem for trips, to spend the day in the city. It was possible then. Since the Second Intifada, it's not possible to take the class to Jerusalem.

I think this is the first generation of Palestinians that isn't able to see Jerusalem easily. Now we only talk about Jerusalem. At the center, when we ask the children, "What is Jerusalem?" they only know about the Dome of the Rock.¹¹ That's all Jerusalem is for them. They've never experienced the city - to see it with true senses, to feel it, to smell it. They only know it through photos. I think it's really demoralizing that this experience, something that used to be essential to being Palestinian, has vanished. I think the Israeli government wants other parts of Palestine - Gaza, Jerusalem - banished from our minds. The new generation, these children might never come to Jerusalem. After years, how will it be in their mind? They won't think of it as Palestine.

Here in the center, we try to keep students connected with the different parts of Palestine, even if it's only through photos, movies, films anything. For instance, I want our students to understand that Gaza is part of Palestine. This is my hope for all Palestinians in the West Bank, that if they have the opportunity, even if it takes a lot of effort, to go and visit Gaza. I think it's our duty. Many people have lost their lives to keep Gaza and the West Bank one land. I'm not losing my life, but I have put in some real effort to go there.

In 2011, I went to Gaza to facilitate an outreach program. I was with a German colleague who worked for a German NGO that addressed international development projects. The German NGO was trying to fund a cultural center in Gaza that used our center in Bethlehem as a model. The Israelis keep a tight control on who gets into Gaza, so the permits to visit were not easy to get. I had to go through a lawyer and the court to get the permit. First, the Israeli military rejected my request for the permit, but I was able to appeal and get permission from the court to go for one night. It took me some time to get permission. But even then, I had to go through checkpoints - a checkpoint to get out of the West Bank, and then another checkpoint to get into Gaza.

To get to Gaza, we took the car of my German colleague. When Palestinian workers in Israel talk about the checkpoint, you can't imagine - you hear about it, but you need to live the experience to understand it. We went through the checkpoint nearest Hebron, because from Bethlehem it is the most direct route to Gaza.¹² It was the first time I was at that checkpoint. I can't imagine the mind that designed that checkpoint. It's a kind of torture. We tried to pass through the checkpoint in her car. We thought we might have an easier time in her car since she was an international. She passed right through in her car at first, but then a soldier stepped into the road and stopped us. They checked my ID, saw that I was Palestinian, and I was made to get out of the car and walk back to the checkpoint building a fifteen-minute walk! It was difficult for me to walk all that way with my brace. When I got back to the checkpoint, I was put in line with the rest of the Palestinians. It was around seven a.m., so most of the people there were workers. We were herded in lines through cages, and all around us were young soldiers with guns. There were only three or four other women in line, and they all passed through with no extra delay. But not me.

All the Palestinians have to pass through metal detectors. I failed the detector because of my metal leg brace. The soldiers had to examine me personally because I couldn't just take off the metal and pass through the detector. Soldiers behind security glass told me that I'd need to be taken to a special cell. The whole time I was at the checkpoint, I hardly ever talked to a soldier directly - it was through microphones, since they were always behind glass.

I was taken to a cell with no chairs. The walls were all metal with no windows, and I couldn't see anyone. I stood waiting for half an hour. I thought they might have forgotten about me. Because of my disability, it's difficult for me to stand for long periods of time. I knocked, and nobody came. Later, I knocked several more times, to remind them that there was somebody here.

Then I was taken to another room, also like a cell - just five feet by five feet. Here there was a soldier behind security glass. She was young, in her twenties. Otherwise I was alone in the room. The soldier was dealing with me as if I didn't exist. She ignored me and didn't bother to explain what would happen next. She just sat there behind the glass. From time to time I would knock, or ask her to please search me so I could leave the cell, and she'd say, "I'm just waiting for someone to come." For an hour she left me standing there.

Then another soldier joined her behind the glass. They told me to undress. I said, "I can't, there's a camera." She looked at it and said flatly, "Yes, there's a camera in the room." Every checkpoint has a Palestinian mediator, someone to translate and do chores for the soldiers, and I made them get him for me. This took a long time. Eventually, he arrived and I talked to him. He put his jacket on the camera and then brought me something to put on. I got undressed and then the soldiers told me how to move so they could examine me. Then I put on the clothes the mediator brought while he took my other clothes for them to examine. More waiting. After everything was over, the mediator took his jacket and left, and then I was taken to pass through the metal detector again.

The whole time, my colleague was outside in the car waiting for me. It had been hours. Then, once we made it to the Gaza border, it was the same procedure. My German colleague was allowed to pass quickly through the checkpoint, while I had to go through procedures strictly for Palestinians, not for foreigners. At the Erez checkpoint, we were not in the car.¹³ We had to park, and after you pass through the checkpoint, everyone has to walk through a mile-long tunnel to where the taxis are.

The tunnel was an open-air tunnel, with fencing on both sides. It was narrow-not big enough for a car to drive through. Outside the fence was a barren, treeless security area. My colleague had waited for me so we could walk the tunnel together, but a mile is very far for me to walk. I had to sit on a luggage cart of another Palestinian who pushed me the whole way. It was a struggle for me. I like to think of myself as strong, independent. I do things on my own. It's not easy for me to sit on a luggage cart and be pushed!

We finally made it to Gaza after hours going through the checkpoints. We went directly to the organization because we couldn't waste time. They only issued me a permit for one day! It's ridiculous to not be able to visit your own country. We can move freely in other countries, but not in our own.

After I finished my trip to Gaza, I had to go back through screening at Erez. This time, at the start of the checkpoint, I saw the two signs-one for "Israelis and Foreigners," and the other just said, "Others." You know, it's like they want us to feel that we belong to nothing. They could write "Palestinians," they could write "Arabs," but "Others"?

Going through the tunnel, there were open-air cells along the way. They were more modern than the Hebron checkpoint, but the same principle. The soldiers were all on high scaffolding with guns. They looked down on us from up high and talked into microphones. They would say things like, "Open gate number 2. Open gate number 10." And they'd tell us to move along. The whole time, we could see soldiers on the scaffolding, but we could never see exactly who was talking to us and ordering us onward to the next cell. The last cell had a ceiling and a grated floor. A soldier behind the glass was there. She asked me to take off my clothes. We negotiated what I could take off and leave on. I took off my trousers and my brace and put them on the conveyor belt. She checked them and then put my things back on the machine to send back to me. I waited for them to contact the people who got me a permit. It took a long time. I thought I had already negotiated all the permits I needed, so it would be fine, but no. They made me wait anyway.

I've spoken with some friends and some people at the Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation. They go through the same thing, the same conditions. They have the same procedure. It's not because of me - they target Palestinians anyway - but they could show more understanding. They could not make me wait so long, or bring me a chair to sit on, to be humane. I understand they need to check, but they could do it without humiliating the person. If this were just about security, they wouldn't need to humiliate Palestinians and not others. It's to show that we're a lower class of people. The Israelis and foreigners are first-class, the Palestinian people fifth-class. And people don't understand why we are fighting. I want to be equal! Equality! Not one of us is better than the other.

Someday I want to go back to Gaza to keep working on developing a cultural center that is like Ghirass. But by then I hope I can find an easier way to get there than through the Hebron and Erez checkpoints as they are now. Still, I'm happy that I passed that experience, really. Now I know what it's like for Palestinians who have had to travel through the checkpoints day after day for work.

ALL THINGS INDICATE THAT THE FUTURE WILL BE MORE DIFFICULT

I am very proud of being Palestinian. I have never thought of living in another country. I've traveled across Europe, but I prefer to live in Palestine. When I was abroad and something bad happened in Palestine, it would be very difficult for me to sleep. If people I love die, then I want to die with them; if they live, I want to live with them. If they face a difficult situation, I want the same thing to happen to me. I want to be a member of this society. When I think of Palestine, I think of the struggles we've had. We have to keep struggling for our rights, and there's no end to the struggling for me - some days it's for rights, some days it's to improve education. We are all fighters. When I do work with the children at the center, that's fighting. When I work to improve their quality of life, that's fighting. And working against the occupation, that's fighting as well.

Day by day, it becomes more difficult. All things happening in Palestine indicate that the future will be more difficult. Twelve years ago we did not have the wall, the settlements were fewer, the harassment was less. Everything bad is increasing. Usually I avoid going to the checkpoints, because it makes me sick - physically, emotionally, all kinds of sick. It usually takes me time to come back to normal.

My goal now is to expand the center - to extend it and spread it to other places. We're working on outreach programs, to reach schools and other communities that are struggling just to continue to exist. Some villages are surrounded by Israeli settlements and are cut off from important resources. We are looking to support these communities and improve the quality life through education. I believe a lot in education if you want to rebuild the nation.

At the cultural center, we try to keep our students as children as long as possible, to protect them. When they reach a certain age, we can't protect them anymore, they have to face the reality of the streets by themselves. And this is very sad. I can think of many times I've been out walking with my nephew, or with other young boys and girls who are nearing the end of childhood. Suddenly I would get very sad, because when they reach fourteen, fifteen years old, they are children under international and national law, but the soldiers don't think of them as children. They deal with them as adults. And it doesn't matter if they're following the law or not. How they're treated depends on soldiers' moods. I use many strategies to manage. My strategy is that I love life. I want to protect my life, and the lives of others, as much as I can. Life, even with all these difficulties, deserves to be lived. And I like to look for nice things. Even the smile of a child, or flowers-I try to find something.

I'm not optimistic about the future for Palestinians. Israel is strong, and the Western powers give them their support. On the other hand, I don't think Israel can continue this forever. The world will not support Israel forever with all their behavior towards Palestinians. One day, changes will happen - history proves this. One day, sooner or later, the Palestinians will have their rights.

When the world looks at Palestine I do not think they see the full situation. If people want to see the reality of the situation, they will see. If they want to hear the reality, they will hear. But if they don't want to know the reality of the situation, they won't, even if it's right there in front of them.

---

Footnotes

¹ Battir is a village of around 4,000 people located four miles west of Bethlehem and three miles southwest of Jerusalem. It is a site of ancient agricultural terraces and was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014.

² Amman, the capital of Jordan, is a city of over 2 million residents. Jordan administered the West Bank between 1948 and 1967, and many Palestinians worked in Amman during this time.

³ The American Colony Hotel is a luxury hotel in Jerusalem. It was built in the 1950s on the site of a former utopian Christian community started by an American couple from Chicago in 1881. The hotel is well known as a gathering spot for influential people from diverse political and religious backgrounds.

⁴ The University of Jordan is considered one of the most prestigious universities in the Arab world. It was founded in 1962 and currently serves over 30,000 undergraduates.

⁵ Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was considered Palestine's leading poet and helped lead a movement to promote Palestinian cultural heritage. Darwish was also a leader of the Palestinian liberation movement and part of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1973 to 1993.

⁶ The Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation (BASR) was originally founded in 1960 as part of the Leonard Cheshire Disability project, a major charitable organization in Great Britain dedicated to global disability care.

⁷ The First Intifada was an uprising throughout the West Bank and Gaza against Israeli military occupation. It began in December 1987 and lasted until 1993. Intifada in Arabic means "to shake off."

⁸ Jordan administered the West Bank and Egypt partially administered Gaza until 1967. Textbooks developed during those administrations were used even during the Israeli occupation after 1967, but when the Palestinian Authority assumed administrative control of the West Bank in Gaza after the Oslo Accords, it developed its own educational texts.

⁹ Newcastle University is a public research university in northeast England. It serves over 20,000 students.

¹⁰ The Second Intifada was also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada. It was the first major conflict between Israel and Palestine following the Oslo accords, and it lasted from 2000 to 2005.

¹¹ The Dome of the Rock is an Islamic shrine built on the site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

¹² From Glossary -

checkpoints: Barriers on transportation routes maintained by the Israeli Defense Forces on transportation routes within the West Bank. The stated purpose of the checkpoints in the West Bank is to protect Israeli settlers, search for contraband such as weapons, and prevent Palestinians from entering restricted areas without permits. The number of fixed checkpoints varies from year to year, but there may be as many as one hundredmthroughout the West Bank. In addition, there are temporary roadblocks and surprise checkpoints throughout the West Bank that may number in the hundreds every month. For Palestinians, these fixed and temporary checkpoints-where they may be detained, delayed, or questioned for unpredictable periods of time-make daily planning difficult and can make cities or villages only a few miles away seem like distant points on the map.

crossing points: Crossing points are the gateways into Israel from parts of Palestine, or between Palestine and neighboring countries such as Egypt and Jordan. There are currently five crossing points by land into the Gaza Strip, and most of them have been closed or significantly restricted since the Israeli military blockade was imposed in 2007. There are seventy-three barrier-gate crossing points from West Bank into Israel, and Palestinians with permits have access to thirty-eight of them.

¹³ As of 2014, the Erez crossing is the only remaining crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip accessible to Palestinians. The crossing is tightly restricted since 2007, and special case-by-case permits granted by Israel are needed.

#palestine speaks #palestine #palestinian voices #strike for palestine #part 1 of 16 #there are sixteen interviewees #book exerpt

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stayatsam · 1 year

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Favorite D&D Puzzle

my favorite puzzle I've ever thrown at my players was one I adapted from another DM that we still laugh at two years later

Long post

The players enter what seems to be a hotel living room, but the door shuts behind them. It seems to be magically sealed, and no amount of firepower or lockpicking can open it. Another exit on the other side is similarly sealed.

A couch, a water fountain, writing desk and drawers, a bowl of fruit, book cases filled with blank books, and a grandfather clock stuck at 12:00 PM.

A dagger in the drawers purposefully misleads the party to thinking someone must bleed (wrong) or die (wrong) to escape. The dagger can't open the door and the fountain is only there to provide water. They figure they can grow a little farm with the root vegetables they brought in with the water and eventual excrement they produce themselves in case they're locked in here forever. Cool, that took 45 minutes to think of.

Hmm, the fruit's fresh, and very delicious. Ok let's look elsewhere. (2 hours pass real time). "Can we take a long rest?" Party spends 8 hours in game resting while they think about their new lives in a hotel room. The sorcerer breathes fire at the ceiling.

The rogue finally takes a look at the grandfather clock. He's close to solving the puzzle. "What if I moved the hands on the clock?" He moves them to 4:20 PM with a laugh and goes back to dicking around with the party.

he was so close, I'm going insane, and throw them a bone. The bananas are a little brown. Only the rogue seems to care that they're browning. Finally puts two and two together, sets the clock back a few hours, when both doors were open.

A full session real time and at least 12 hours in game spent in this goddamn room.

#sam crying

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creativegenius22 · 2 years

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Wild Kratts Theory: Zach’s Obsession with Being Rich and Famous

Besides wanting to be acclaimed as the world’s best and smartest inventor, Zach Varmitech has an obsession with becoming rich and famous, or richer and more famous in his case, by any means possible. From creating his own arctic ice hotel to farming every vegetable and fish in the sea to sell, this man will attempt anything to further his quest for power and status. But I’ve often wondered why Zach has such a large void he needs to fill. Thus, I have my own theory as to why the inventor always feels he needs more in his life.

First off, I believe that Zach was quite poor as a child. From his appearance in the flashback in “Tazzy Chris”, Zach appears to be slightly unkempt, wearing baggy clothes and having his hair not as neat as his usual adult look. His loose clothes as opposed to the young Kratt brothers’ more fitting clothing leads me to believe that his clothes were second hand or hand-me-downs that were meant for him to grow into, meaning there was not enough money for his family to keep buying him new clothes as he grew. You can see this is quite the opposite of how his keeps himself as an adult, making sure his clothes are form fitting and his hair is perfectly styled with everything in its place. He wants to be in total control, as opposed to the chaos of his childhood.

Also, quick side note, the robot he made as a child appears to be made of random junk that he could have found around town very Louis from “Meet The Robinsons” style, something that a young boy with no excess money would have to do if he wanted to make robots.

Looking back on this scene as well, I noticed that the flashback is set up showing the Kratt brothers picking on Zach, almost in a bullying way. Their stance towards the young inventor is pretty threatening, and although I know that they’re going after him because they’re trying to protect the frogs, the way it’s portrayed in the scene shows Zach as a victim. From the way we see Zach’s sad expression and sniffle after the flashback, you can tell that this was a regular thing that happened during his childhood that has left him with permanent trauma. Perhaps it wasn’t even just his conflict with the Kratt brothers, but other kids in his neighbourhood who would pick on him because of his family’s financial situation.

Speaking of Zach’s family, it appears to be only his mother in the picture. Zach has mentioned his mother before in the show, but has never once mentioned his father. My opinion is that it was only Zach’s mother who raised him, leaving him no father figure to look up to or rely on. Instead, he had to be the man of the house and slowly grew into the man of complete power and control he believed he should be.

As well, I’d like to mention that Zach has constantly been upstaged by Aviva for most of his life. They met as kids in a summer science camp, where Aviva’s inventions were constantly seen as better than his own. This is mentioned in “Cheetah Racer�� when Aviva points out that at science camp her potato clock kept time better than Zach’s mouldy bread clock (I personally think it’s amazing as well as very out of the box thinking that he got a clock working from bread mould even if it didn’t keep time as well as a generic potato clock). Being repeatedly pushed to the sidelines by his rival would definitely make the inventor want to seek fame, as much as he could to prove that he is better and more important than Aviva.

In conclusion, I believe that Zach’s endless quest for money and fame stems back to his childhood. His need for wealth comes from him being a child of poverty. He wants to make sure that he’ll never be poor again, which has led to his obsession with being excessively rich. And his desire for fame and attention comes from his need to prove his worth to everyone who ever doubted him as a child, be that those kids who teased him or his main rival, Aviva Corcovado.

Anyways, just my thoughts about Zach and why he has such a big hole in his life to fill. I just wanna give him a giant panda bear hug and tell him everything is gonna be alright. Poor Zach has been teased so much in his life for his shortcomings and he deserves some love! Let me know what you guys think of this as well!

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pancakehouse · 1 year

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have eaten the best strawberries of my life this week they are so red and juicy and sweet i want to cry there’s a produce farm near my hotel that has rows and rows of them in little greenhouses oh my god isn’t that such a dream i need to move out to the country and have my own garden of strawberries and blueberries and raspberries and orange trees and apple trees and also vegetables and flowers and i think it might be nice for some lamb and sheep and cows to be there and also while we’re at it i might as well get some cute little pigs and goats and horses and roosters and bunnies and they can all be bestest friends with each other and also with ME!!!!!!

#have my strawberries w pancakes in the mornings #w some orange slices and pomegranate seeds for lunch #and for dessert w this insane chocolate cake that is literally .. guys .. im not gonna say the M word but it truly is so. SO mois—[gunshots]#ah god. okay. time to reread beneath a big blue sky and also text my grandma for pics of her insanely cute garden <3 #also i am a vegetarian just so we are CLEAR !!!!!!! the animals are FRIENDS not foo—[more gunshots]#fav

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mariacallous · 1 year

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Noma is widely considered the best restaurant in the world – not only for the quality of its food, but the standard it created for fine dining. It brought a new era of excellent, locally focused cuisine, helping to break the stranglehold French food had on the cultural imagination when it came to gourmet greatness. Noma trained some of the finest chefs of a generation, spreading its ideas and values far and wide like fungal spores caught on the wind.

For 20 years it dominated and defined the restaurant scene, but soon it will be no more. Although its brand may live on in other ways, Noma recently announced that it will close its titular restaurant at the end of 2024.

Anxious questions fill the silence: is the era of fine dining over? Will we stop choosing our next vacation destination based on hot new molecular gastronomic contraptions we saw on the pages of the New York Times or in the feed of a foodie Instagram influencer? Has the multi-hour, dozen-course tasting menu – with ingredients rendered into mysterious foams, mists, or blobs for your delight and occasional exhaustion – finally come to an end?

Noma is just one of many high-profile restaurants to close in recent years. Restaurants have notoriously thin profit margins, thanks to quickly rising rents in cities around the world, energy and other overhead costs, and food being an unstable and expensive product. The pandemic and its various lockdowns were too much for many restaurants to manage, leading to much-loved establishments, such as Chicago’s Blackbird and New York City’s Prune, to permanently close.

The recent success of the films Pig and The Menu and the TV show The Bear brought mainstream exposure to the exploitative and abusive nature of many fine dining kitchens, but they were preceded by years of investigative reporting about physically and sexually abusive star chefs, widespread wage theft, a huge disparity between the income levels of diners and the workers making and serving their food, and internship programs necessary to gain entry into the industry that amount to years of unpaid labor.

Noma officially blamed its closing on the difficulty of executing such consistently high work for so long under grueling conditions. Talk of burnout and the search for work-life balance transcends all forms of work, but is especially present in businesses that are considered passion projects or in the creative arts.

Some former employees, however, have told a slightly different story – of an unsustainable workplace with an environment of hostility and control and of poorly compensated but painstaking work. One intern told the New York Times of long hours spent constructing beetles out of fruit leather with tweezers in complete silence; she also said she had been instructed never to laugh.

There is also the difficulty of meeting clients’ expectations of constant novelty and trends like hyperlocality and restaurants with private farms. Consider Willows Inn, a former restaurant/hotel on Lummi Island, Washington, which claimed to source rarified ingredients like pink singing scallops and heirloom beets from the island, its ocean waters, and the Inn’s own farm.

It later turned out that Willows Inn was charging diners $500 a night to eat food that was often shipped in from the mainland, including chickens bought at Costco and supermarket vegetables. The restaurant’s one-acre farm, disgruntled employees said, could not feed daily diners without significantly greater acreage. This disparity – between the restaurant’s small farm and its brisk custom – would have been immediately obvious to the Inn’s rich clientele, had any of them known anything about agriculture.

Willows Inn closed amid a flurry of other controversies, including allegations of an abusive atmosphere. But it was hardly the only restaurant caught creating an illusion of farm-to-table freshness and a fantasy of knowing exactly where each ingredient originated. When Eleven Madison Park, one of New York City’s most famous and expensive restaurants, announced that it was going vegan, the result was a fiasco, with reports of food waste, misleading marketing, poor labor practices, and chefs paid minimum wage.

Can an industry that has been run on income inequality, labor exploitation, underpaid and undocumented workers, widespread abuse, and catering to the most entitled rich people in the world successfully pivot into something more flourishing and less soul crushing? Maybe. But in the meantime it seems more likely that we’ll see more reports of destination restaurants closing down amid nasty revelations and revolts by burnt-out workers.

But the wealthy will always find ways to cajole the talented and the exceptional to entertain them privately. (Recall Beyoncé performing a private concert at a party for Colonel Gaddafi’s son.) Our greatest culinary minds are not going to disappear. If they can’t make their restaurants work, they’ll instead show up at private estates and compounds to serve the tech giants, oil barons and shady world leaders who can pay them. They’ll be trotted out, humiliated, to pose in Kardashians’ Instagram posts, or flown in secret to fill the bellies of warlords and tyrants when the price is right.

But people will still care, deeply, about food – about its pleasures, about its future and its limits, about how it is grown and harvested and consumed.

Chefs will still wake up sweaty at 4am thinking about what new thing could possibly be done, at this point in the trajectory of human civilization, with a carrot. Gourmands and people who miss Gourmet magazine will still look at a picture of a perfectly roasted duck and long to put it in their mouths. Diners who used to save their slim disposable incomes for annual trips to great restaurants, to be transported by a mouthful of potatoes to their childhoods or maybe to a better future, will have to find new pathways to ecstatic states.

It’s not the money-makers and the money-spenders who are going to lose out on Noma’s absence. It is, like everything else, going to be about the people who care.

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xc23 · 10 months

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Saturday

Rain, rain. This has the potential to be a very long drive. We’ve got to go over 500 miles to Regina, Saskatchewan. That’s a quarter of the way across North Dakota (100+ miles), turn north, and cut a diagonal line to Canada. 350 miles in the USA. Another 150 in Canada. The first 100 miles or so were in the rain.

Our view for the first couple hours.

To give you an idea of how wide open the spaces are out here, we left the hotel without breakfast and thought we’d drive a few exits down the highway for food. We skipped the first 3 and the next thing we knew we were 40 miles west of Fargo before we found anything. With that, we gassed up the car every time we stopped today. We never really knew how far we’d have to drive before the next gas station.

Along the way in North Dakota we saw plenty of farmland, grassy prairies, rolling hills, and flat plains. Much of the ride was on 2 lane intrastate roads with no divider for oncoming traffic and with a 65 MPH speed limit (the divided interstate has a 75 MPH limit). There was quite a bit of construction along the way which slowed us down. At one point, they had scraped all the asphalt off the road leaving nothing but dirt for about 3 miles. Fortunately, it hadn’t rained there.

3 nasty construction miles.

Although this grassland was along the construction route.

There were many interesting sights along the way. At one point, we were in a valley for about 5 miles. Along the hills the graduating seniors from the local high school had laid out their graduation years in stones forming huge numbers. This started back in 1945 and only 2 years had yet to leave their mark.

You can’t tell from the pic but these numbers are 30 feet tall, at least.

Earliest year we saw.

We entered Canada via a town named Portal, ND. The border agent asked us all the usual questions and let us pass. The first town on the Canadian side was North Portal. Makes sense!

Oh Canada!

Saskatchewan, initially, wasn’t all that pretty. A mining company is surface mining a large area, 10s of square miles. What isn’t being mined was mined and what remains are mounds of vegetation-covered slag heaps. Once beyond the mining operation, things opened up into more farming. As well as crops, the farmers are exercising their mineral rights with fracking and pumping oil. There were more pump jacks than people.

Some Saskatchewan industry.

Regardless, the sky seemed to be endless. We also saw some wildlife… six pronghorns (3 adults, 3 children). A highway sign also warned us about moose but we never saw any.

Rapeseed, perhaps. To make Canola Oil.

Once in Regina, we quickly checked into our hotel and then scooted out to find food and drink. We walked into the Hotel Saskatchewan, a 100+ year old grand hotel that was build by railroad barons. We enjoyed the bar and they served excellent food. Our bartender was very attentive and educated me on Canadian whiskey.

The bar at the Hotel Saskatchewan.

After a few hours of relaxation in our high back chairs we decided to make our way back to our hotel. We hope to catch the sunset but don’t know if we will last until 9:14pm. You’ll have to find out if we did, tomorrow.

I watched it! Sunset beyond rail yard.

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xx-1c1cl35-n-t34r5-xx · 1 year

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General Slender Mansion headcanons! - part one

TW: not really any, mention of all the slender brothers tho

The house is alive. Yes, you heard me. A L I V E. It cleans itself, and it's more alive in the way a plant is than anything else. It feeds of dead skin cells, sunlight, CO2 and water. It's actually auto-cleaning because it's alive, the vents work as sort of soft suction machines that inhale dust, of which the house uses to build more rooms. (Yes the rooms are continuously built by the house, it likes to be constantly growing)

It's surprisingly clean too. Almost all dirt and waste is eaten and used by the house.

Some stuff the residents have to do themselves, and they have a cycle system for it. Everyone has a chore.

Did I mention it has free electricity? Yeah it makes its own. It needs the residents so it makes sure the residents want to stay. The residents are basically free maintenance and protection.

They also take turns getting a group to go get groceries every week, they all have a big group chat where they all add stuff to the shopping list.

But, to avoid going out into public as much as possible, they have a little farm that grows basic necessities (like herbs, flowers, fruits and vegetables, etc) though, they try and get food and meats from a neighbouring village sometimes (it's a lot more efficient with the amount of people, and cheaper)

The mansion is more of a hotel tbh, and it also connects to some outside cabins. I headcanon that everyone from the slenderverse and every creepypasta is housed here, so of course it needs to expand. Though the cabins are mostly for slenderverse those who are proxies as they do more outside-of-the-mansion work. There are pros and cons to both though.

Slender and his brothers are less the 'big boss' and more managers. Slender mainly hands out missions, while splendor tries to be HR, and trender makes sure everything is spick and span. Offender is just.... There ig. Oh and surrender is just around as well.

Everyone gets their own room too, and they're all gorgeous.

#Slenderman #offenderman #trenderman #splendorman #surrenderman #Creepypasta #Mansion au #Technically #Headcanons #Not a request

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