No joke if youre a young American with a job go open up a Roth IRA and start saving money
My first day of classes, my professor doesn’t even hand us a syllabus. He begins instantly talking about retirement accounts. We were all a bunch of history-loving college kids who probably wanted to go into academia and we were the perfect audience for such a talk. He specifically told us to open a Roth IRA. We were young, low income, and probably all unmarried.
A Roth Individual Retirement Account (Roth IRA) is meant to hold post-tax income and accrue interest tax-free. It’s meant for young lower-income workers looking to invest early and its most effective when done then – Anyone who has made income from a job can open one (which includes child actors apparently). Roth IRAs have eligibility requirements. if you are single or the sole head of your household and your Modified Adjusted Gross Income (google that) is less than $120,000, you can put in the maximum of $5,500 a year (although you cannot contribute more than you earn if you make money below $5.5k). Married couples and old people have slightly different requirements and outcomes.
“… if a 20-year-old puts $5,000 a year into a Roth for 10 years and then stops contributing, … the 10 years of Roth contributions and growth – let’s say about 8% interest a year to age 65 – could total about $1,070,944 tax-free dollars [for retirement].”
I’d read more about it to see if youre eligible and if itd right for you but pretty much any high school and college student with a job will benefit from one. If you think you’ll need money later in life after retirement, you need to open one of these.
It’s also worth noting that in order to comfortably retire it’s recommended that you contribute at least 10% of your income and try to begin by age 20.
Many workplaces (even shitty retail jobs if you jump through enough hoops) will match your 401k contributions. My workplace (a factory), for example matches 100% for the first percent and 50% for the next 5%, meaning by contributing 6% of every check, my employer will contribute a total of 3.5% of what I make, but out of their own pocket. Make sure to find out about and take advantage of any such program you can find
Sometimes I get a tad confused over the canon in Pacific Rim. Does Tendo actually like bagels? Was Newt ever in a band, or did everyone just decide that yes, the tiny screaming man was definitely in one? Does Hermann even like tea? Does Newt put energy drinks in his coffee? Is there even a decontamination shower in the lab or did everyone simultaneously decide that there was (like K-science obeys any other safety requirements). Does Newt have Kaiju posters in his room? I don’t know! Reality is a fiction. Are there even collectible Kaiju figurines?
1) Tendo definitely likes bagels:
2) Newt being in a band was mentioned in the PacRim novelization, I believe? Enthusiastic fan observation of Newt and Hermann’s lab in PacRim reveal his side of the lab has more than one instrument present. Also his parents are musicians (piano tuner and an opera singer).
3) Hermann’s side of the lab is covered in tea cups in PacRim. I think you see a lot more coffee cups in Hermann’s lab in Uprising though.
Not sure about the rest of them.
No problem! This post made me go over my old PacRim meta tags and oh boy. You should check them out. The fanbase really did a great job going over every little detail in Newt and Hermann’s lab, among other things.
Warning: generalizations are used liberally below. Mentally preface all statements with “in general” and don’t yell at me. For purposes of definition, “standard” is meant only in terms of familiarity and the intent of the distinction is solely to indicate something a reader might find jarring if there’s no reaction to it written. While every preference is equal in value, some are more familiar than others, and some are familiar to almost everyone. That should affect the level of description of emotional reaction.
I’m a male who reads and writes fanfic. Why? Because when it comes to gay smut, women do it better than men. Male-consumed pornography is transaction-oriented (just the act) with “characters” that are completely objectified and without any narrative context (the pizza boy showing up does not count as “plot”.) Not helping is that porn stars are generally not actors, they are professional objects. In fanfic, there are characters to care about, sex that makes narrative sense (even in PWP!) and real artistry like that is rare in commercial porn. Some people prefer commercial visual porn, and that’s fine. But I find written scenes do more for me, and I’m betting the majority of people who are reading this feel the same way.
There are two points I want to make in this post:
1. What I mean by wrong: What’s wrong with sex in fanfic is that what you think is wrong in in fanfic sex is not wrong. There is nothing that you can write in fanfic that is wrong. What you choose to write is absolutely fine, no matter what it is. What is wrong is when authors are made to feel that certain things are required, when they should not be. There is nothing wrong with BDSM – quite the opposite – but BDSM is hotter if the author is aware he or she is writing it. If not, key emotional and physical reactions might be skipped over that take the reader out of the story.
2. There are a few anatomically questionable things that pop up a lot in fanfic. Things that I consider “wrong” are labelled with *** These are not terribly important, but if something anatomically questionable comes up, or something that is a fetish pops up constantly as “standard”, it can take a reader out of the moment. They are not strictly “wrong” because everyone is different and there may very well be people for who these things are very “right”. But in general, not, and so if they are included a writer might want to highlight emotional and physical reactions in these cases.
Unreliable narrators need to add something to the story. They aren’t an excuse for poor storytelling and inconsistencies.
If you have an unreliable narrator, you should be doing twice as much work in your plotting! At every turn of the story, you need to know both what’s actually happening AND what your narrator thinks is happening.
When you’re right, you’re right. And you’re right.
Not only does the author need to know what’s happening on both layers of story, they need to actually write in clues for the reader to telegraph the lower, “true,” layer of the story so the reader is capable of figuring it out if they choose to read closely. Without that double work, an unreliable narrator cannot perform its literary function.
It is the evidence of the truth, not the lie the narrator tells, that makes a narrator unreliable. Otherwise they are just a liar which the audience is incapable of catching due to the hobbling imposed by the medium. Which means the lie may as well be the truth, making it serve no function as a lie.
Just go read The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. Read it twice, once to fall for all the tricks, and once to… fall for all the tricks even when you know they’re tricks. You’ll scream a lot the second time, generally to the tune of “YOU LITTLE SHIT” and “HOW DID YOU TELL ME THIS AND I DIDN’T BELIEVE YOU”.
Because see the really big trick isn’t making your reader believe the unreliable narrator’s lies, it’s making them dismiss the truth.
i swear i was going to bed already logged off and everything but then i opened the art book and was flipping through and spotted the COMPLETE ENTIRETY of newton’s fanboy kaiju tattoos jfc this guy
Here come more quotes yall. This is fucking long so I’ll put most of it under a cut!
* “Jake turned to see a scientist–lab coat, glasses, awkward demeanor–stumbling away from a bunch of stacked canisters he had just knocked over…Hermann Gottlieb, one of the pair who had unlocked the secret of the Kaiju’s creators, known as the Precursors. Another legend in the history of the PPDC.” –yesss baby boy is a legend! Also, just his awkward fumbling is adorable.
* “Cheerfully he held up a handful of what appeared to be partially burned papers.” –Hermann your newt is showing.
* “Newt Geiszler looked different, too. The rumpled clothing and tousled hair of the Newt Jake remembered form footage of the Kaiju war had been replaced by a perfectly groomed and manicured corporate model, with the kind of swagger that came from a fat private-sector salary.” –NEWT ANIFA GEISZLER WOULD NEVER
* “Jake couldn’t believe this slick phony was the same Newt Geiszler who had Drifted with a Kaiju brain and helped save the world.” –new HC, Jake was a huge fan of Newt’s and when he met him in Uprising he was suspicious because his hERO WOULD NEVER
* “Hermann Gottlieb appeared out of nowhere, calling to his old colleague. ‘Ah! Newton! I was hoping you’d be tagging along. I could use your help on an experiment–’
Newt cut him off, his tone friendly but patronizing. ‘I’m on the job here, buddy. I got time after, we’ll play with your test tubes’.” –NEWT WOULD NEVER HE WOULD NEVER HOW DARE YOU
* “‘Hey, come on,’ Newt said. ‘We’ve been in each other’s heads…That was you and me, pal.’ They enjoyed that brief moment before Newt glanced as his watch.”--yeah you enjoy that moment babies you deserve it.
Avelera 