working at a grocery store has only made me even angrier about inflation and how food, water, and shelter isnt free
like just looking at groceries (not water or shelter) i see just a few bags (maybe around 5 or so) of food costing over $125 USD regularly. I've seen orders upwards of $600. and sure those have been bigger orders but no food should cost that much.
my coworkers and i shouldn't be complaining about the price of food when we get employee discounts.
a single bag of food for myself (usually containing some small pizzas, crackers, milk, and cereal) regularly costs between $50-60. minimum wage in my state is 15/HR. thats about four hours of work for one bag of food
a coworker who works on the front end of our store prides herself on being able to catch theives. everyone says how good she is at it. and sometimes it makes sense, sometimes people are just stealing to steal. but how do you ever know?
when the card reader we take outside is broken we are supposed to have the customers come inside to pay for their groceries if they're paying with EBT. there's a woman who's a regular who has a few small children and when she comes to pick up groceries they're usually asleep in the car.
am i supposed to make her choose between leaving her children alone in the car or waking them up and taking them inside?
four hours of work for one bag of groceries. is this not also theft?
four hours of work. let that sink in. four hours for one small bag of groceries.
we aren't supposed to accept tips but if we don't accept tips then how else are we supposed to afford our groceries?
i haven't seen a single person stealing food. you cannot steal whats already stolen.
although im no longer a christian, the teachings of my childhood have stuck with me, and in the bible it says "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you."
society has reaped right up the the very edge and beyond of its fields, so it's up to us to reap what we can
four hours of work for one bag of food
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These were the concept pages I drew for my original writer in the @vashwoodbigbang event! Unfortunately they have disappeared on me 😅 and also bc god hates me I guess, the day I was supposed to post these, yesterday, saw me dealing with first a wifi outage and then a whole electricity outage so. That was fun lmao
Details about the drawings below since. I don't know if my writer will ever post the story, unfortunately 😔
So this was originally coined as a stardust au! I believe it was primarily based on the movie that came out in the 2000s (?), though I believe my writer was familiar with both the movie and the book it was based on. Honestly, it doesn't pull much at all from the story itself, just the general concepts of stars.
In this version, Vash is a star, and he decides to try and find his long-lost siblings (Knives and Tessla). In his search, he comes across a planet he hasn't visited before, and while he's descending to it, he's shot down by something mysterious that causes him rather permanent injury (not new; I believe he'd already lost his arm previously and he has all his scarring from travels to previous planets, this specific technology is just new to him).
He manages to crawl some distance from the resulting crater and is rescued by the odd pair of anthropologist Milly and journalist Meryl, who are tracking fallen stars on their planet in order to research them. Vash is horrified to learn that stars on this planet are rather brutally searched for and used for their power, so he tries his best to keep his real identity as a star secret.
In the next town, he learns about Star Cultists, who are the leading experts on stars. Our dear Wolfwood is one of them, and though he's a priest under the head of Chapel, he seems pretty jaded about the whole thing. He also spends some time poking fun at their visitor Vash when he stumbles on the doorstep of the church.
Unbeknownst to all, Chapel is the one who shot Vash down, and he suspects Vash is his target. When Vash, Milly, and Meryl skip town, Wolfwood is ordered to tag along with them against his will, and he begrudgingly forces himself into the group with his usual grace lol.
Through some shenanigans, including an interesting fight with Livio/Razlo who is a martyr (a human who ate at least part of a star and became consumed by it), the group all grows closer to each other. Naturally, Wolfwood and Vash hit it off with their usual ideology clashing and homoerotic team fighting. The tension comes to a head when both of the boys are drunk and attempting to stumble somewhere after getting kicked out of the bar, and with the help of liquid courage, Wolfwood admits to Vash that he's what's known as a "Star Eater:" a human that has consumed part of a star, and by some genetic luck, isn't consumed by it and instead gains some superhuman abilities so long as the magical tattoo (i forget what it's called off the top of my head fuck) that forms around the presenting star isn't broken.
Vash is understandably horrified. Wolfwood is confused by Vash's rejection bc he isn't aware Vash is a star; he's under the impression Vash is just some very talented guy Chapel really wants to feed a star shard in the hopes he becomes part of their superhuman cult.
Vash sobers up and manages to drag a very drunk and eepy Wolfwood to their hotel.
The next day is the turning point; the star cultists, including Chapel, catch up to them and confront Vash. Wolfwood has to learn very quickly that he'd been Wrong and Vash, in his panic, flies to where it feels most safe; the city's Star (storage area?? Idk). He ends up cornered there and, in his panic, accidentally goes nuclear trying to escape and blows up half the city in a column of flame. While he's barreling across the desert in an attempt to get away, he's trapped by a net the star cultists set up, made of the same shit used to shoot him down at the start, and he can't escape it on his own.
Luckily he's found by Wolfwood first, who's decided he owes it to Vash to try and fix his fuck up, and using his superhuman healing, he manages to free Vash. Both are exhausted and ultimately rescued by LR, who's been tailing them.
Tbh my memory's kinda foggy... my writer only managed to share up to that first LR fight, so I don't remember exactly what's supposed to happen between here and the fight at the orphanage?? I remember Vash somehow finds out what happened to his siblings (a hella long time ago, Tessla was consumed by the people of the planet and Knives, in his rage, fuckin just annihilated everything, turning it into a desert planet, and has been laying dormant for the most part since then) and also we learn that martyrs gain better control of themselves, and the crystal growth consuming them stops, when in proximity to enough additional star power. Vash, as a star himself, allows LR to easily think as they did before they ate a star shard when in close enough proximity.
Anyway, fight for the orphanage, Vash shows up in time to see Wolfwood getting his shit rocked and his magical tattoo (I'm so annoyed I can't remember what it's called. My mind is supplying sharingan and i know that aint it) shattered by Chapel, who accomplishes this by running Wolfwood through with his cane. Vash, believing Wolfwood's dead (bc like. Lmao it's pretty hard to live getting impaled, like, fully), loses his temper and basically obliterates Chapel. He moves on from Wolfwood's body to try and dismantle the entire Star church so Wolfwood's orphanage can stay safe. In this process, he confronts a Doctor Conrad, who was behind the whole thing, the remains of Tessla, and somehow Knives?? I think Knives, sensing Vash's anguish, just tried to fuckin nuke everyone, and Vash stops that. I feel like Knives dies in this process somehow... I think it was by saving Vash from something Conrad made??
By the end of it, Vash is wounded and exhausted, and ends up being saved by Milly and Meryl, I think.
When he recovers, it's to find he's lost his ability to leave the planet; while still functionally a star, his power has greatly diminished, his hair is black, and he can't even hide his wings anymore. Last I knew, my writer was actually merciful and let Wolfwood live! Albeit as a martyr (thus the wolf form with the uncontrolled star shard bursting out of the hole in his chest you can see on Wolfwood's page lol). Luckily he's got Vash around, so he gets to keep his mind, if not his human form.
With Knives dead and the star cultists mostly dispersed and no longer able to fuck with the planet, the story ends with our characters getting to experience rainfall on the planet for the first time in centuries.
.......
I like the story :P I imagine it'd be a lot better written out in actual novel form by the person who'd actually thought it up than my shitass, too-long summary lol.
Honestly my writer was communicating up until like, a month ago?? And then they just.... disappeared :/ which is weird bc I checked with my mod for this event (shout out to mod sana, @pushclouds, you're an amazing mod and I appreciate the heck out of you) and they submitted literally every check-in. Honestly I'm more worried for them than anything, if anyone knows what happened to @lohikaar I'd appreciate anything you can tell me. I hope they'll publish this story whenever they can, I'd still love to read it in its entirety.
Additional shout-out to @priellan for beta-ing the story they shared with us, and for overall being a super supportive team member :D
Also they did assign me a pinch hitter writer since we have no idea wtf happened to my original writer, so I'll be doing more drawings :D priellan agreed to beta for them too, which I'm super happy about! And thanks again to mod sana for your hard work and arranging that so quickly!
An admittedly strange first big bang experience, but I don't think it was overall bad, and I'm excited to work on more stuff with my new writer :D if you read this far goddamn. Thanks lol. See you again for sure on January 1st! (I'll try to post other shit between then and now hopefully)
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I suppose I'm a little late to the party, but I needed time to collect my thoughts.
Here's the thing, everyone's caught up on Caiti's age and whether she consented. To me, that isn't anywhere near the point. Her being so young is certainly creepy and strange, but not the point.
Here's the first thing, though less important than the next. As an adult, it is blaringly clear how irresponsible these "adults" were. Two grown ass men supplying alcohol to underaged girls in a hotel room. They were up drinking until 6am. They were one noise complaint away from getting the cops called.
Second thing. While underage drinking in the US is fairly normal, 18 is still pretty young here. Also, publicly admitting to supplying alcohol to an 18 year old is crazy, but not the point.
18 year olds can't compete with grown adults when it comes to alcohol. They don't have the same tolerance. There never should have been any "one upping."
No one should have gotten that drunk. The fact that there was a girl leaving, vomiting in her hand is fucking ridiculous. When someone, regardless of their age, is drinking too much too quickly, you cut them off and give them water. This is how college parties are run. Once you start wobbling a little too much, your speech is slurred, and you stop being a person, someone gives you water and walks you home.
And nobody walked her back to her hotel room?? Two grown men. I don't give a shit how tired you are. You always walk a girl home. Who the fuck raised you??
I am an adult man in college. I have been around a lot of different men. I have hung around men that behave like this. Let me promise you this: they got those girls drunk like that on purpose. They both wanted something. When they didn't get it, they just let the girls go. They were never interested in their safety. They were never interested in who they were.
And let me promise you this: there's never just one girl. And any well brought up man would have cut them all off and sent them on their way. There is way more to this situation than lets on.
And of course George never asked for her consent. It was never a question. They brought those girls back to that hotel room with the thought that they'd get something out of it. To George, he heard 18 and thought, "oh cool, she's legal."
I see this happen all the time in college. Usually men don't grow out of all of it, but they usually grow out of begging like a shitty dog in some random girl's DMs. To hear a grown ass man, 26 years old, behave like a fucking 19 year old sophmore in college is pathetic. I'm not interested in giving pathetic men any more time.
Also, love and light to Caiti, she looks like she's 16. "I didn't know she was 18!" First off, doesn't matter. Second off, I would've guessed she was a minor, so I know you checked first. Or else you're even dumber than the fucking college kids. Damn.
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