once a lady told me that if my plants are dying even when I’m caring for them correctly, it means they’re absorbing the curses my enemies are casting upon me. so now when my plants randomly die, I wonder if they died protecting me.
Random Headcanon: Ronald McDonald regenerates when killed, horror movie monster style, but the Burger King’s immortality is dependent on serial reincarnation. That’s why the latter tends to disappear from the public eye for a couple of decades every now and then; when Ronald loses a fight in their eternal struggle for dominion over all fast food, he’s fine in like a week, but when the King goes down, he needs to wait for his reincarnation to grow up.
(Though this would seem to give Ronald an insurmountable advantage, it’s less decisive than you’d think, because Ronald is actually kind of terrible in a fight. The knowledge that he only needs to win once makes him sloppy.)
Quite so. The Colonel is older than Ronald, and even the King, but his reach is bound by the fact that he can’t affect the material world on his own – he’s strictly limited by the capabilities of his current corporeal host. Like all elder ghosts, however, he can cast a mean curse, so it’s best to tread carefully in his court.
Wendy’s a tough one to pin down. Once a mere figurehead empress, she’s taken a more active hand in the politics of the Fast Food Wars since her father’s mysterious disappearance scarcely a decade past. Nobody’s quite sure what her deal is; to all appearances, she’s a perfectly ordinary fourteen-year-old girl – but she’s been fourteen for a long, long time.
Collecting a variety of requests:
The Taco Bell Chihuahua is gone. In her hubris, she challenged the Colonel to single combat, who unhinged his jaw like a snake and swallowed her whole. Nobody’s quite prepared to say she’s dead, since the powers of the Fast Food Wars have been known to come back from worse, but it’s been fifteen years now, and few expect her return.
The Five are a sinister cabal who eschew personal names and identities, being known only by their collective title. The secret to their power is that they’re actually a telepathic hive-mind; though their members are technically mortal, the collective itself can recover from individual losses as long as at least one of them survives.
Despite its icy clime, the Dairy Queen’s kingdom flows with milk and honey. Her subjects are well-fed and happy and want for nothing – but there’s always something brittle about their smiles. In truth, beneath her jolly facade, their glorious sorcerer-queen’s heart is as cold as her realm: all shall love her and despair.
The Caesar is an anomaly in the Fast Food Wars: a mortal who contends with gods. What he lacks in personal prowess, he makes up for with his vast armies and spy networks. The title is non-hereditary; the current Caesar ascended to the throne in the traditional fashion: by literally stabbing his predecessor in the back.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick – though the Fast Food Wars’ fields are bestrode by giants, all know to fear the Giant-Slayer. Cursed by the Old Gods to the form of a child’s toy for some forgotten jape, Jack rules still from his castle in the clouds. A wildcard in the Wars, he’s as likely to decimate his own realm in a fit of pique as he is to march against others.
It has latterly been revealed that the previous Caesar survived his assassination, making his way in secret to the frozen lands, where he became vassal – and, some whisper, consort – to the Dairy Queen. The mark of his successor’s poisoned spear remains upon him, staining his skin a sickly ocher, and for this he’s known as Orange Julius.
Make a campaign world based around the lore of The Fast Food Wars.
This is the best Demolition Man prequel fic I’ve ever read.
the subway isn’t a person, as far as anyone can tell. it’s a strange underground realm filled with jaunty steampunk citizens. but none of the others dare set foot there. it neither attacks nor defends. it simply runs on time.
Full time work should entitle someone to enough pay for rent, food, bills, and leisure activities. Full time work for a full life wage. You put in your 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? You should be able to afford the basic shit you need in life, no matter where you work.
pisses me off that this is considered a radical statement.
I do agree with this but from economic standpoint if you are working at a job like McDonalds as someone flipping burgers and making fries you are getting paid for the amount of skill needed for the job. But if its any other job that requires you to have an actual skill that you can make a career out of then yeah you should be getting paid enough to live a standard life.
If you work FULL TIME you should be able to afford to fucking live. No, it doesn’t matter if it’s flipping burgers, these people contribute to our fucking economy and they MATTER. They should be allowed to be alive.
Jesus fucking Christ do you people hear yourselves?
People like this are why we can’t move on to issues like reducing how many hours is full time, or working out UBI.
We’re going to need to do that. Most people just don’t know what’s coming down the pipeline, without a major change to the structure of the economy, we’re looking at large scale permanent unemployment, even in the “skilled” labor force.
Also? Making food is a fucking skill. Running a fast food kitchen is a fucking skill. Operating a drive-thru is a goddamn fucking skill.
I do not know how to do these things. I have a masters degree and I have no fucking clue how to operate a deep fryer or make coffee drinks. I’d probably not be very good at it, because that kind of hands-on, fast-paced work is very hard for me.
But thankfully, there are people who are good at it, so I can do my job, and they can do theirs, and we can benefit one another by putting our skills to use in different areas. People who work in fast food are not less deserving of comfort and security in their lives just because their skills aren’t valued like they should be. That is a myth developed to deprive people of rights.
My friend works as a medical assistant and I’ve worked at McDonald’s and Starbucks. You know there’s a lot of things you gotta learn in this typa job?
Like in addition to it being physically demanding (standing up for 4-6 hours straight, carrying heavy ice/coffee, constantly getting burned by boiling water and an oven, a lot of reaching and squatting (like a lot a lot I lost 40 FUCKING pounds in a year okay this job demands a lot from the body)), there are actual skills required. Also your skin splits from using so much antibacterial soap.
Do you know what temperature different foods have to be to prevent contamination? If it’s a “cold” or “hot” plate?? Do You know how long food can be out before bacterial contamination can happen?? Do you know the difference between say 1% and heavy whipping cream? Can you teach a chemistry class using milk????? That’s p much what you gotta learn to be able to do. My friend who works as a medic was surprised, because I do more in my day than they do, and THEY told me that. They were shocked how much I actually do; I am on my feet more, talking to more people, I have a working knowledge of food germs food born illnesses and chemistry, I gotta do the same shit with sterilizing my tools the same exact way a doctor sterilizes theirs. Etc etc.
There’s no such thing as an unskilled job. There are only undervalued skills.
“There’s no such thing as an unskilled job. There are only undervalued skills.”
The most physically demanding job I have ever had was McDonald’s. I am fortunate now to have a different job and advanced degrees and while I do work hard now, I never come home with the same level of physical exhaustion that I had at the end of a McDonald’s shift. Plus I had to go home to the stress of not enough money, which is its own kind of hell.
And anyone who wants to go on about how I made good decisions and got degrees and left the McDonald’s can just shut the fuck up.Yeah, I worked hard in college and grad school, but I also got lucky. Everyone who succeeds in this nightmare hellscape got lucky to some extent. Not everyone does. And I am not arrogant enough to think that my PhD means that I’ll never end up in fast food again. The universe/fate/whatever can be a fickle asshole.
Plus the people I see attacking fast food workers who just want to be able to work and pay their damn bills (what a novel fucking concept) also seem to want to be able to buy their fast food for cheap and not get food poisoning. “Wahwah… Bust your ass to feed us safely but don’t expect compensation.”
So stop giving people shit for wanting to be able to fucking exist.
What people mean when they say it’s an “unskilled job” is that it’s an industry that considers its workforce disposable (quickly replaceable) and can therefore coercively drop wages until they find the minimum tier of desperate people. The more companies do this, the more desperate people there are.
People cannot bargain effectively for wages when “need to be alive” is on the table.
After the tragic Hurricane Katrina of 2005, many individuals returned to their homes which were marked with large X’s. Some houses, abandoned or not, still bare these symbols today.
The “Katrina Cross” or X-codes were painted on the houses by the Federal Emergency Management Agency after searching the houses during the storm’s aftermath. The X-code is simple: Going clockwise, the first quadrant contains the date the house was searched. The second quadrant notes any hazards inside the house. The third quadrant notes if anyone, dead or alive, was found inside the house. The fourth quadrant identifies the rescue team that searched the house.
Some abbreviations used for the hazard quadrant:
NE-No entry
GL-Gas leak
TFW-Toxic flood water
F/W-Food and water (left for pets)
EXT-Exterior surveyed
Some abbreviations for the body count quadrant:
0A or 0D-No one found
A-Alive
D-Dead
LV-Live
DOA-Dead on Arrival
0-0-No survivors
Some abbreviations for the rescue team quadrant:
HSUS-Humane Society of the United States
NOPD-New Orleans Police Department
TX-Texas National Guard
D-Mor-Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team
LSP-Lousiana State Police
An incomplete X or a dash signals a search in progress. An X in a square means the house is dangerous and should not be entered. A lone square signals it is safe for rescue teams to enter. A dash in a square means the house may have significant damage and should be entered with caution. An X with a filled circle in the center means the search was terminated before its completion.
Woah. This post really resonated with me. If anyone else is interested in looking into this a little bit deeper, here’s a couple links with some more information:
I was thinking last night that maybe one of the more important experiences in my life was how this girl who spent an entire school year bullying me ruthlessly at recess wound up being one of my good friends a couple years later when we were in orchestra together. We didn’t recognize each other for a while. It was strange.
This isn’t my *only* experience like this, but it’s one of the ones that really cemented his idea I have that, like…. circumstances matter. Sometimes you just weren’t in the right place or time or headspace or context to connect and communicate as humans, but almost anyone *could* be a friend if life went the right way.
Maybe this is why I like the “opposites sides forced to work together” and the “enemies to friends” tropes so much, but it’s just… fascinating to play with context in fanfiction. What does it take for two people to understand each other?
the insides of dead malls exist within a space that is separate from our own and if you explore hard enough you will find the gateways that link them together
savvy readers will connect the dots and realize this will effectively allow you to teleport from one location to another but this is not recommended as repeated traversals will merge one’s consciousness with the mall, trapping them inside forever
Hey, actual expert on this! Dead malls and the anachronistic realities contained within them are a new phenomenon caused by the overabundance of malls being built between the 1960s and 1990s, along with today’s economical decline. So not many people know this, but as previously said, teleporting and walking deep within the walls of dead malls leaves you at a very real risk of not coming back, physically and otherwise. Say for example you are coming across an old, abandoned K-Mart, do not enter the store, especially in the Fall fashion aisle of the ladies and girls department today. You can choose from our Hunters Glen collection, an array of fashion fall pants, sweaters and shirts, all in the latest styles and colors! For that sporty look, you have a great selection of novelty fleece tops, private labels, and label jeans! We also have a terrific selection of girls’ sweater and fleece separates to choose from. Don’t forget to use our convenient layaway on all these new fall fashions, and thank you, for shopping our K-Mart.
cursed soul of the shoppers realm, take leave from my sight. this world is not yours to inhabit.
Denny’s is your local, friendly diner open 24 hours a day every day of the year. A place to relax and enjoy a breakfast at any hour, a fulfilling lunch or delicious dinner. All are welcome at Denny’s, and it’s your safest location, provided you follow this very simple guide for the nightly hours.
Never close your eyes in a Denny’s parking lot.
Walk calmly to the door; you will hear sounds. Do not look behind you.
Always make sure the door closes behind you, unless it was already open when you arrived, in which case do not touch the door.
Never sit at the table farthest from the front door. Your server will sometimes try to seat you there. Politely refuse and ask for another table.
If you see a table with two salt-shakers, walk past it; that table is taken. Sit at the table directly across from it instead.
Eat your pancakes. Box any leftovers; it would be a shame to waste food. It might attract something.
Do not, under any circumstance, look into the eyes of your own reflection in the bathroom.
If your server’s eyes turn black, do not panic; order a coffee with extra cream. Do not ask for a refill. Do not stare.
Think you recognize someone who just walked in? Best to ignore it. It’s probably not what it seems. They will proceed to sit at the table farthest from the door.
If you are walking past a Denny’s and you see yourself sitting in the corner booth through the window, keep walking. Do not eat at Denny’s that night.
Did you tip? You better double check. It’s only polite to leave a tip.
Do not ask questions. They will Notice.
Your local Denny’s is the perfect place for a delicious meal at all hours of the day. Hope you enjoy your next visit to any Denny’s Diner!
tbh one last lil irascible radical healthcare-for-the-people rant before I go to bed: I think narratives about the Genius Diagnostician often wind up serving as false propaganda about medicine, and about the abilities of the people who practice it.
in reality the majority of doctors are under an enormous amount of cognitive strain, and the layers of mystique around the profession and its artificial scarcity (limited by residency slots, mostly) are the things that insulate them, that prevent everyone else from recognizing that
and the information that’s available to doctors about things like antibiotic prescription, etc: a lot of it is available to all of us, and while it’s complicated as fuck, and a layperson can’t automatically be assumed to have the reading comprehension ability to understand it, it’s also not impenetrable, it’s not mystical; recognizing what parts of a paper you do and don’t understand is often enough to help you piece together the rest of it; it’s just dry science papers and manuals written in shorthand
so many of us who do have the capacity to read and understand such things wind up assuming that we don’t truly, because Doctors Know Things
but I’ve been burned enough times by doctors not knowing things I knew, and helped enough times by laypeople knowing things doctors didn’t, that I’m starting to see that the wall of that walled garden is not what I thought it was, and the purpose it serves is less beneficent than I once believed.
i think andrew hussie is a master class case study in author anonymity
like, who even gives a shit about death of the author when the author barely exists metatextually anyway? his public friends are all people associated with or who worked at one point on homestuck, his social media reveals nothing about him personally, and the only pieces of personal information he discloses are pieces of disjointed, unrelated, or “is he joking?” type material. i know he’s a sagittarius but i don’t know if he has parents. i know he has a giant blue horse dildo somewhere in his home, but i don’t know which state he lives in.
nobody within the past 500-600 years of literature has managed to write something as big as homestuck and remain as secretive as he has. most authors are tempted by the fame offered to them via their work and immediately flood their audience with personal disclosure, try to make themselves celebrities. not hussie. hussie wrote one of the biggest pieces of internet literature in history and stayed completely off the map for all of it.
I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about the “dangers of fiction influencing reality” with linked scientific findings and stuff and I appreciate the effort to back things up with psychological studies rather than, like, memes, but I’m just letting y’all know… that was literally the argument Tipper Gore used when she went after Prince music for fear it would turn her daughter into a stripper. That’s the exact argument that was used against Rockstar when they were accused of ‘making’ kids shoot up schools. These crusades against media have time and time again failed with their only positive results usually just being more prevalently available warnings for mature content. And their negative repurcussions have been far greater, such as an increased stigma against black music and parents banning their children from playing any video games. (Blocking people off from experiencing multiple genres based on racial bias and excluding access to an entire artform.) I’m not saying that there’s not stuff to be concerned about/critique. I’m just saying that if you’re going the “fiction is dangerous!” route it has historically been proven to be a lost cause.
just moving along like everyone else 