lorata asked: re millennial killing stuff post: so at my second job I edited a dissertation on how young consumers are changing luxury brands, like they won't just buy the same identical handbag bc "oh it's $designer!" like they'd rather spend that money on an experience etc, so brands have had to COMPLETELY change how they approach the new generation - I mentioned this to an older friend cause I thought it was neat & she went "yeah it's weird how young people expect companies to bend over backwards for them"
THIS EXACTLY
My (much older) co worker was talking recently about how she wants the new $300 whatever designer bag, and I was talking about how me and the husband might set $300 aside to go up to House on the Rock for a weekend.
That seems to be pretty standard for the older people I know vs. the younger people I know. For $300, we could get a hotel room overnight, a couple good meals, into House on the Rock, and some money to spend on whatever while we’re there.
And she was just like “But it’s a kate spade bag.”
And I was like “And???? My purse has a unicorn on it I paid $5 for it at Goodwill and I can hold things in it to take up to House on the Rock.”
And you goddamn right that if a company wants my money, they’d goddamned better bend over backwards for me.
I’m doing them a favor by choosing their product. I don’t owe them shit. If they want my continued business, they’d better goddamn well earn it.
And if I’m not happy, not only will I tell them so but I’ll tell literally everyone I know, and then go on to never patronize them again.
It pays to be cheap/spend wisely. I make 1296/month. Many of my coworkers make the same if not ten cents per hour more because they’ve been there years. I support two people on this income while most of my coworkers have two incomes coming into their household. I however have about 300/month to put into savings or spending while my coworkers complain of not having funds because they are in tens of thousands of dollars of debt from buying expensive items on credit. I had to argue with myself recently about even shelling out of money to get a phone with $50/month service.
I decided to take off the 21st to go see the eclipse where it’ll be full. This will cost me about $100 (wages lost + gas). My coworkers seem incredulous that i would spend money and take a day off to go see an eclipse rather than spending all my funds on a bigger tv or alcohol.
The previous generations obsession with things over experiences is quite depressing to me. Things will always be lost, broken, or stolen eventually. Experiences are yours to keep.
The corporate brainwashing of the previous generations is starting to crack, and it is fucking terrifying to entrenched industries who now have to innovate for the first time in decades.
Look, don’t get mad because kids want, actual fucking VALUE, for the things they’re willing to pay their hard-earned money for. My Gen has been buying utter crap with pretty lights & tinkly bells sticker-taped onto it for SO long, we literally know no other way. I mean, how do you justify paying exorbitant amounts of money for a handful of shit JUST because it’s got an over-stylized BRAND NAME stuck on it? ‘It’ll impress your friends/neighbors’? STILL a handful of shit. Better off using the money as toilet paper.
Kids are figuring this bullshit out ON THEIR OWN and I’m here for it. Not just ‘Git it y'all!’ But ‘Make sure it is/does EVERYTHING you need and NOTHING you don’t, before laying your money down’. About, gotdamn, time SOMEBODY did.
Another interesting thing is that millennials take pride in doing things like making their own clothes or shopping at vintage/secondhand stores. I love my purse, which is ivory white with a gold unicorn on it. Conversations about it go one of two ways;
With a person under 40;
Them; “That’s a cool purse, where’d you get it?”
Me; “Goodwill! It was $5!”
Them; “NICE aw man I got the neatest vintage quilt/used bread machine/whatever else there awhile ago, I love thrift stores.”
(Cue 30 minute conversation about our favorite thrift stores)
Person over 40;
Them; “I like your purse! Where’d you get it?”
Me; “Goodwill! It was $5!”
Them; “…oh.”
Conversation ends.
(There’s some cases where the older person is appreciative. Markedly, it’s mostly among MUCH older people, like people who lived through the Great Depression.)
Even when I was a kid, I remember people judging my mom for dressing us in clothes she made and thrift store finds (Mom and dad had 3 kids and 1 teacher’s salary to feed and clothe us with)
Now? There’s no shame whatsoever. People my age with kids just straight up say “Yeah I made his shirt/found it for super cheap.” And people don’t ridicule them for this, they applaud them for being crafty and thrifty.
The measure of status has flipped. Rather than bringing admiration from fellows, paying for designer stuff is seen as wasteful, while being thrifty is seen as desirable.
And many brands have no goddamned idea how to cope with this.
Anonymous asked: Great now I'm having emotions about the Hork-Bajir
OH BUDDY JUST YOU WAIT, THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE EMOTIONS TO HAVE ABOUT THE HORK-BAJIR
Ha, your tag “way past Romeo and Juliet” I get it now. *sighs* God do I love ships with angst
You have not known angst until you’ve sailed the good ship Rachel/Tobias. Honestly this was super formative in terms of what ships I do and don’t like, and also what kind of ships I write, but even so: I’ve never come close.
Oh geez… I really like Marco and Rachel friendship….
Marco and Rachel have that excellent A-grade “Yeah we hate each other but also I’ll shank you if you so much as look at them crosseyed” banter dynamic and I love it. Also they’re…kind of similar, in terms of terribleness, and I love the kind of unconscious alliance that springs up because they both have that ruthless cold-eyed clarity about What We Have To Do.
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Anonymous asked: Oh no! He had to watch as they blew the ship apart.Oh geez this poor guy... I hope he does get to stab Vissier 3
*anguished keening* Aaaaaax.
My poor blue trash boy, I love him, he had to watch the Dome ship burn and then he thinks he’s going to die alone at the bottom of a foreign ocean and then some aliens come to find him and tell him his hero brother (who Ax adores) is dead and THEN he joins a horrible horrible guerrilla war and tbh I’m dying over it always.
OH GOD It’s the Andalire SOCIEEEEETYYYYY
YEP.
YEP IT IS.
HONESTLY THE DEATH RITUAL IS VERY LOVELY BUT ALSO OH MY GOD AX YOU DON’T HAVE TO DIE IN BATTLE IN ORDER TO BE WORTH SOMETHING PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.
#seriooously #the lore of robin hood predates a whole helluva lot of other canon lit #specifically because stealing from the rich will always be appealing #anytime any place #side note #in one of my medieval lit classes we read this super early version of robin hood #it ended with robin as an old man long since retired and back in his lordly life #and i forget how it worked #but he’s riding through the forest again #and something makes him take out his old horn #and he calls them again #not because he expects anyone to be there #but because it’s in his blood #and they all appear #and whisk him off #to continue the good fight #anyway all i’m saying is that that is also how we end out arthurian legends #you know what i’m saying #that is some fundamental building block narrative shit #aint no downside of robbing the rich (x)
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the-dot asked: hi!! i absolutely adore your Blue Sword headcanons (why doesn't it have a bigger fandom. why.) and i cried a little when i read the last ones. if i may ask, do you have any headcanons about the children?
(i sent that before i meant to weeps, sorry, feel free to ignore this one if you want) also, luthe is probably their weird uncle who loves them all and tells wild stories that no one quite believes. (i hope you’re having a good day!)
Ummm, let’s see, headcanons about the kidlets. I’m not going to do the headcanon meme because I’m mostly making these up, but I hope these are good!
Tor Mathin
Aerin Amelia
Jack
Hari
Anonymous asked: hi! can you do allura/shiro or matt/shiro for the ship grading? (I hope you're well!)
All right, listen, I am excited to be excited about Matt as a character but thus far he has such negligible onscreen time as to be pretty much a wholecloth creation of the fandom. Thus: Shiro/Allura, my loves.
Ship Grade: A+ (OTP) | A (I love it) | B (It’s really cute) | C (Not a bad ship) | D (I’m neutral on it) | E (I don’t really like it) | F (NOTP) | N/A (Don’t know it well enough)
I love Shiro as a character because I’m an ENORMOUS SUCKER for PTSD-ridden ex-prisoners who are holding it together by the skin of their teeth and on the merits of a core of solid titanium determination. I love Allura as a character because I’m a huge fan of royalty whose nations are half-destroyed (or all destroyed) and who are still fighting the good fight because they believe that nobility is an obligation, not a privilege. I’m enormously in love with them as a couple because they’re mutually the adults in the room most of the time and, A, I love relationships where the people in question can relax around each other more than anyone else, and, B, they’re just so ruthlessly competent and I live and breathe competence porn and I am NOT turning down such a perfectly dovetailed pair of personalities who can ALSO be a solid 10/10 in capability.
Also, that shot of Shiro catching her hand and pulling it down in whichever episode of Season 2 was a more compelling argument for the ship than anything else I’ve seen for any other arrangement. So like. Here I am. Let the alien princess and her right hand man smooch.
…I just realized that between this and Elfangor/Loren I have A Type and it’s half-alien battle couples who bond over learning how to be EVEN MORE COMPETENT with each other.
The obelisks are gone when you look away. So Look Away: they’ll whisper you your fate.
(Source: seasons-in-hell, via littlestartopaz)
miraculoussparrow asked: For the ship grading, Elfangor and Loren?
Ship Grade: A+ (OTP) | A (I love it) | B (It’s really cute) | C (Not a bad ship) | D (I’m neutral on it) | E (I don’t really like it) | F (NOTP) | N/A (Don’t know it well enough)
Where do I even START with my affection for this ship. Like, despite the unremitting horrors of war, this ship has it all. Alien expressions of affection, Battle Couple shenanigans, Loren and everything she chooses to be in the face of not one but three alien abductions, cute flirting, comedy, tragedy, THE WHOLE NINE YARDS. God, Animorphs can fucking deliver on the ships.
But I think the thing I like the most about Loren and Elfangor is how much they learn from each other? Like, okay, Loren learns about the universe, she learns about how big the galaxy is and how much there is to see, about science she could never have dreamed of and what it means to fight. That’s obvious. But Elfangor learns so much from her, too–the Andalites teach courage with a combination of formal education and shame culture, but Loren is the first person as far as I can tell who teaches Elfangor that feeling emotions isn’t in conflict with being brave.
More than that, though, Loren brings a kind of brutally hard-headed, incredibly human pragmatism to combat that Elfangor seems to gravitate toward almost immediately. Like, this is humanity’s Special Thing in Animorphs (in addition to our mastery of the sense of taste), it’s that we’re very clear-sighted about our goals (be they freedom from a Yeerk or victory over an enemy) and we care much more about achieving them than about anything else. Plenty of people in the series talk about how strange humans are in their absolute willingness to fight against hopeless odds–everyone from Temrash 114 to Edriss, Visser One herself, mention it. The Hork-Bajir bring up how much they agree with it, free or dead. Taxxons, Andalites, the Arn, even the Ellimist.
And Loren teaches Elfangor that brutal human practicality from the very first time they meet. He meets her and she doesn’t know what he is or what’s going on, but she’s already eliminated the immediate threat to her safety and she is more than willing to take out this new potential threat as well. Loren wants to get home, sure she does, but saving the universe takes priority, so okay, sure, she’ll go on a potentially life-threatening mission to make sure that happens. Fighting Pre-Visser Three (actual Visser Three at that point? Not sure) in the Time Matrix world, Loren doesn’t mess around with fancy forms, she throws rocks and beats things with a bat and does whatever works no matter how dishonorable or underhanded it might be.
And then Elfangor, after everything, when he’s returned to the timeline, what does he do to win a battle?
He rams a ship with his fighter, in the most graceless, unadorned, pragmatic battle tactic I’ve ever seen.
I love these kids so much, y’all. Does Loren/Legs art even exist, y’all, where is it.
